ANVILLE, Ky. - Before last night's vice presidential debate went on the air, moderator Bernard Shaw gave instructions to the two candidates: just two minutes for your answers, he said. But Shaw then held out the possibility of an extension, if ''one of you is just seized with unstoppable passion.''
Going in, passion had seemed like a possibility. Dick Cheney, the Republican, was expected to try to counter his impassive image on the stump. And Joseph I. Lieberman, the Democratic nominee, had been tossing the boxing references around pretty liberally in the days leading up to last night's debate. He was training like a boxer, he said.
During the day, he appeared in a T-shirt that read, ''Fightin' Joe Lieberman.'' The matchup had been touted locally as ''The thrill in the `Ville,'' a reference to Muhammad Ali's ''Thrilla in Manila.''
But last night was far more butterfly than bee. For much of the debate, nobody had to worry about unstoppable passion. Nor, with one notable exception, were thrust and parry much of a problem either.
The vice presidential nomineers were decidedly civilized. Tuesday night's debate between the men at the top of their tickets, Vice President Al Gore and Governor George W. Bush of Texas, was a combative affair, replete with tart one-liners, interruptions, skeptical expressions and multiple sighs.
For the first hour, there was none of that here. Lieberman and Cheney listened patiently to each other's answers - with Lieberman occasionally shaking his head gently and sadly when he seemed to disagree, as he did during Cheney's comments on the sad state of the military - and they spoke in measured and complete sentences.
Then it came. Close to the end of the debate, the candidates, with smiles on their faces and many ''respectfully''s, began to slip the gloves off.
''Dick Cheney is one of the few people in America who thinks nothing has been accomplished in the last eight years,'' Lieberman said. ''Did Al Gore make promises in 1992? Yes. Did he deliver? Big time.''
Lieberman inserted that little jab - picking up the phrase Cheney had used in assenting to Bush's obscene disparagement of a New York Times reporter - with a smile and an ''I-can't-help-it'' expression on his face. Then the floodgates opened, as he alluded to Cheney's lucrative sendoff from the oil services company of which he had been chairman.
''And I see, Dick, from the newspapers, that you're better off than you were eight years ago,'' Lieberman continued to more laughter.
But Cheney had ammo, too.
''And I can tell you Joe, that the government had absolutely nothing to do with it,'' he said.
To Lieberman's comment that his wife, Hadassah, might like the Connecticut senator to return to private life to make more money, Cheney countered, ''I'm going to try to help you do that, Joe.''
''I think you've done so well there, I want to keep you there,'' was Lieberman's riposte.
The exchange was all the more remarkable because it was so different from the rest of the debate. Before then, there had been a couple of slightly combative moments, as when Cheney told Shaw that it was ''irresponsible to suggest we should not have this debate [over the state of the military] in a presidential campaign.''
But mostly, neither candidate seemed willing to fully engage the other.
Lieberman answered Shaw's questions in his best senatorial baritone, looking straight into the camera.
Cheney, shoulders hunched, made his quieter responses directly to Shaw, only occasionally glancing at the Connecticut senator and even more rarely at the camera. His loudest statement might have been his blue-on-blue shirt and tie - an unexpected flouting of red-tie, white shirt orthodoxy. Cheney called Lieberman ''Joe.'' Lieberman mostly referred to Cheney as his ''opponent.''
At the end, Shaw put a weapon in Cheney's hand and aimed it at Lieberman. He asked Cheney if he was disturbed what appeared to be a ''hypocritical shift'' by Lieberman on his positions and issues since his nomination.
''We've been trying very hard to keep this on a high plane, Bernie,'' Cheney said.
''Thanks, Bernie!'' Lieberman said.
''I like the old Joe Lieberman better than I do the new Joe Lieberman,'' Cheney continued. ''Joe established, I thought, an outstanding record on this whole question of violence in the media ... and many of us on the Republican side admired him for that.''
Still, Cheney delivered even these criticisms gingerly.
