ow approaches a great American moment.
Tonight, Governor George W. Bush and Vice President Al Gore come together for their first debate and the biggest confrontation of the 2000 campaign - the most intimate, intimidating, and, recent history has shown, indispensible element of a presidential election.
It is the classic political event, the irresistible mix of the two essential elements of the modern age: personality and technology. And from tonight's debate here in Boston - plus the two that follow in Winston-Salem, N.C., and St. Louis and the single vice presidential debate in Danville, Ky. - will emerge new campaign issues, new campaign soundbites, new campaign perceptions.
And new campaign moments.
Among these will be moments of deep introspection - not for the debaters, but for the perplexed voters unsure of where to place their hopes, and their votes, in November.
This section centers on some of their worries and questions: We meet a family convinced that the costly education reforms promised by the candidates will come too late for their children; a couple with a chronically ill child for whom securing health-care coverage has been a heartrending, infuriating, preoccupation; a family that has lost three jobs to a globalized economy and hears only echoes of the vaunted boom; and a military couple prepared to follow their duty anywhere, but worried about whether the next president will pay the price to train troops - and have the character to lead them.
For these families and for millions like them, these debates are moments to ponder.
But since the first televised debate 40 years ago, these sessions also have provided moments of another kind - bits of history that, in rapid retrospect, come to explain our times:
These moments underline the primacy of television and of the visual image, proved when Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts, crisp and relaxed, confronted Vice President Richard M. Nixon, perspiring and wan, in the 1960 debates.
They display the devastating impact of the gaffe, proved by President Gerald R. Ford in his 1976 debate with former governor Jimmy Carter of Georgia when he stubbornly maintained that ''there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.''
They illuminate the beguiling appeal of the memorable phrase, used so effortlessly and yet so effectively by Ronald Reagan when he upbraided President Carter in 1980: ''There you go again.''
They demonstrate the uncanny ability of one televised event to freeze a political figure's image forever, as Senator Robert J. Dole of Kansas learned in 1976 when he referred to ''Democrat wars'' and earned himself a reputation as a ''hatchet man'' - Senator Walter F. Mondale's brutal characterization in their vice presidential debate in 1976 - that a lifetime of legislative mastery was unable to erase.
And they are moments to pause and look for the subtle signals, different for every viewer, that the men who would be president actually comprehend the difficulties in our lives. The people in the narratives that unfold inside this special section embody important national problems. Tonight they will search for a sign, perhaps ever so subtle, of understanding, of purpose, of determination, of vision.
The debates, to be sure, have detractors, scholars and analysts and commentators who believe the sessions are too glossy (the reward is almost always to the quick and not to the deep), too ephemeral (the events seldom explore the nuances of policy or even the high points of policy), too exclusive (omitting minor-party candidates whose views often point to the future of American politics). Maybe they have a point. But these events - imperfect, without question; imprecise, to be sure - nonetheless are a remarkable tool, a lens that allows voters to explore the deepest, unspoken, and yet unavoidable truths about the people they are considering for the White House.
In an image or in an instant, they show a candidate's mind at work, display a candidate's mettle under unimaginable pressure, reveal a candidate's strengths, uncover a candidate's ambiguities.
There, in front of the merciless gaze of millions of people, a contender for the presidency is stripped of his pollsters and their survey spreadsheets, yanked from his handlers and their whispered advice, ripped from the comfort of his prepared remarks and the teleprompter.
He is alone, irredeemably isolated, appearing before the people he seeks to lead, armed only with his intelligence and his character and what little he can remember from all the quips and statistics and attack lines crammed into his head in murderous training sessions.
In this event there are no lifelines, no timeouts, no do-overs. And while there are second takes to the writing of history, there are none to the making of it.
''This is the only unscripted piece of the campaign,'' says Alan D. Schroeder, a Northeastern University professor who is the leading chronicler of American presidential debates. ''It is the only time the candidates expose themselves to something that is unprogrammed. And even if they try to program themselves, the nature of television makes the event unpredictable. The debates let us see beyond the veneer.''
John Adams once described the American presidential campaign as ''a comedy, a farce, or ... a gymnastic exhibition.'' There is something to that, every day of the year, that is, save three or four. On those few days - debate days - the comedy fades, the farce disappears, the gymnastics are canceled. Those nights are different from all other nights.
Ordinarily the thrust and parry, the attack and counterattack fade into the shadow of the day's events. Not on debate nights.
If, for example, Senator Lloyd M. Bentsen, the Texas Democrat who was Governor Michael S. Dukakis's runningmate in 1988, had delivered a speech belittling Senator J. Danforth Quayle of Indiana, Vice President George H.W. Bush's runningmate, in front of a large crowd in the Boston Garden or in Philadelphia's Spectrum - unimaginably huge venues for a speech by a vice presidential nominee - the remarks would have had scant impact. But Bentsen's withering putdown - ''I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy'' - is an enduring part of American political folklore precisely because it was delivered in a nationally televised debate.
Ronald Reagan gave thousands of speeches across the United States in a career as president of the Screen Actors Guild, host of ''Death Valley Days,'' corporate pitchman for General Electric, two-time gubernatorial candidate, and three-time presidential candidate. But perhaps the most effective remark he ever made was a simple 10-word question he asked in his single 1980 debate with Carter in Cleveland: ''Are you better off than you were four years ago?'' The nation answered a week later, sweeping Carter out of office.
Sometimes the enduring moment is simply a fleeting image, an ordinary gesture transformed into a symbol merely because it occurred during a debate. Governor Bush's father has looked at his watch millions of times. It never mattered much that he did; it is, after all, an impulse we all share. But when President Bush, in a talk-show-format debate in Richmond in 1992, glanced at his watch not once but twice, it was taken as an unmistakable symbol of the president's impatience with an event being witnessed by 90.3 million people - and of his desperation to get out of the hall.
These debates are tests, and the graders are the voters.
''Many voters who themselves know the social and business power of language, the problem-solving power of language, and the role of eloquence in developing wisdom and personal convictions, will weigh heavily the facility with language that the candidates demonstrate or fail to demonstrate in the debates,'' says Elizabeth H. Sagaser, who teaches a course on political rhetoric at Colby College. ''We will watch the debates not only to gauge mental agility in Gore and Bush, but also to predict their respective capacities for diplomacy and negotiation, for workaday efficiency, for thoughtfulness about the nature of leadership.''
That is what Bush and Gore are really girding for tonight - the quadrennial physical, mental, and emotional examination performed by the public.
''These debates are an opportunity to take the measure of a candidate, to draw comparisons, to make contrasts,'' says Robert P. Schmuhl, a professor of American studies at the University of Notre Dame. ''Being president is much more than being an effective debater, but these occasions give voters a chance to make their judgments.''
Which is why these debates, the elemental blend of combat and combustibility, matter so much - to the candidates, who are being judged in the most unforgiving arena in American life, and to the voters, who on debate nights realize that they no longer are bit players in democracy's drama. We watch these events for a moment. The moments that emerge from them stay with us forever.
