INSTON-SALEM, N.C. - In a mostly low-key presidential debate that focused heavily on foreign policy, Vice President Al Gore and Governor George W. Bush laid out their positions on world policy, hate crime laws, and gun control with far less of the friction and biting rhetoric that dominated last week's face-off in Boston.
Indeed, Bush, the Republican candidate, offered support so frequently for the Clinton administration actions in the Balkans, Rwanda, and the Middle East that the Texas governor joked at one point, ''It seems like we are having a big lovefest tonight.''
Still, there was a host of polite but serious disagreements, from Bush's opposition to the Clinton adminstration's intervention in Haiti to Gore's slaps at Texas' record, during the Bush's years as governor, on environmental protection and health insurance for children.
Throughout the night, Gore avoided the audible sighs and rolling of the eyes that drew so much attention from commentators after his Boston appearance. And Bush mostly avoided the awkward pauses and gaps in his responses. Only toward the end, after the debate mostly skipped over the hot-button domestic issues of tax cuts, Social Security, prescription drugs, and abortion, did the two candidates more aggressively go after each other.
Bush, hurling his harshest attack of the night, charged that Gore was prone to exaggerate when he ran for president 12 years ago.
''I read a report or a memo from somebody in the 1988, I forget the fellow's name, warning then-Senator Gore to be careful about exaggerating claims,'' Bush said, evidently referring to 1988 campaign memoranda summarized in a Boston Globe story in January. The governor got more specific when he charged that Gore exaggerated some claims during in the primaries, asserting that Gore claimed to author the Earned Income Tax Credit ''when it didn't happen.''
''I think it's an issue,'' Bush said of exaggerations.
Gore, sitting at a half-moon table with Bush in Wait Chapel on the campus of Wake Forest University, then sought to erase any negative perceptions about his performance last week at UMass/Boston.
''I got some of the details wrong in some of the examples I used last week. I'm sorry about that. I'm going to try to do better,'' Gore said, adding that such misstatements shouldn't overshadow his larger arguments for more teachers and smaller class sizes.
But when Lehrer asked whether Bush was satisfied with Gore's apology, Bush said that would be up to the voters.
Gore responded by returning to his main point of last week about Bush's tax cut plan, saying that Bush has a hard time explaining why the governor ''gives almost half the benefits to the wealthiest of the wealthy.''
''That's the kind of exaggeration I was just talking about,'' Bush said.
''Well, I wasn't the one having trouble explaining it,'' Gore said, concluding the tartest exchange of the evening.
But for much of the debate, the two candidates stuck to what appeared to be their game plan, to politely disagree - and only when necessary.
One of the most revealing parts of the foreign policy discussion occurred when the two debated the outcome of a war waged by Bush's father. Bush, asked whether he had any difference with Gore on the Middle East, said that the Clinton administration hadn't done enough to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. Asked if he thought the Clinton policy on Hussein was a ''failure,'' Bush responded: ''I do.''
Gore, in rebuttal, noted that as a US senator, he supported the 1991 Gulf War led largely by Bush's father, former President Bush. But Gore said that when he became vice president in 1993, Hussein was still in power even though the United States won the war.
''At the end of that war, it was not finished in a way that removed Saddam Hussein from power,'' Gore said. ''That is the situation that was left when I got there.'' Gore said he would provide ''robust'' support to groups trying to oust Hussein.
The candidates seemed eager to agree on Israel, where the peace process has been derailed by an outbreak of violence in the last week. Both candidates urged PLO leader Yasser Arafat to call for an end to the violence. Neither suggested the need for parallel pressure on Israel.
''We need to insist that Arafat send out instructions to halt some of the provocative acts of violence that have been going on,'' Gore said. Agreed Bush: ''We ought to be speaking with one voice. I appreciate the way the administration has been working to calm the tensions.''
Bush also said the Clinton administration ''did the right thing'' by not intervening with force in Rwanda, where 600,000 people were killed in ethnic violence. Gore said that in retrospect he regretted that the dispatch of US soldiers on a Rwandan humanitarian mission didn't happen more rapidly.
While the debate is bound to be described as being on a higher plane than the Boston encounter, foreign policy has not been a major issue in the campaign, at least not until the last week of events in Serbia and Israel. At one point, Gore talked about the importance of ''reform of the IMF'' - a reference to the International Monetary Fund that may have been obscure to some viewers.
For Bush, whose foreign policy experience has been cited by some as a comparatively weak part of his presidential portfolio, last night's debate was an opportunity to show that he was comfortable in discussing the issue for the first 40 minutes last night.
Bush's main point, as it has been throughout the campaign, was his belief that the United States is overcommitted around the world. While Bush said he supported the Clinton administration's bombing of Kosovo, he said he wants US troops to leave the region. Attacking the Clinton administration's intervention in Haiti, Bush said: ''I am worried about overcommitting around the world. I didn't think Haiti was worthwhile. It was not very successful.''
Gore, taking up a theme his campaign has already been using, attacked Bush's record in Texas, calling the state as ''number one in industrial pollution'' and complaining about the governor's failure to support a new hate crime bill and strengthened gun control measures. Gore also faulted Bush's spending priorities, claiming that he favored tax cuts for ''the wealthiest of the wealthy'' over health care programs for children.
On the racial profiling question, Gore said he was prepared not only to issue an executive order to eliminate the practice among federal agencies, but would also support legislation to stop it locally.
''It's just flat wrong,'' Bush said of racial profiling. ''I don't want to federalize local police forces,'' he said, but warned that local authorities should know there would be ''federal consequences.''
Then, when Gore suggested that Bush had failed to follow through on tough legislation against hate crimes in his home state, Bush insisted that Texas had existing hate crime laws and pointed out that three men convicted in the racial murder of a black man, James Byrd, had been sentenced to death. ''You can't enhance the penalty anymore than to put these three thugs to death.''
But Bush misspoke. The Bush campaign put out a fact sheet saying two of the men were sentenced to death while the third received a life sentence.
The two candidates disagreed over gun control, with Gore saying he favored photo identification cards required for new handgun purchases and Bush opposing it.
At another point, Gore sought to portray Bush as differing with his own running mate Dick Cheney on gay rights, saying that Cheney was rethinking his position on gay unions. Both Bush and Gore said they opposed gay marriage, but Gore asked Bush if he would join him in supporting a federal law that would prohibit a gay or lesbian from being fired from a job because of their sexual orientation.
''I wonder if the governer would lend his support to that law,'' Gore said.
Bush objected to Gore posing a question, which was prohibited under the debate rules, but moderator Jim Lehrer of PBS said the query was ''logical.''
''Well, I have no idea,'' Bush said. ''I mean, he can throw out all kinds - I don't know the particulars of this law. I will tell you, I'm the kind of person - I don't hire or fire somebody based upon their sexual orientation.''
Gore also said that 1.4 million children in Texas had no health insurance and accused Bush of ignoring their plight by declaring a tax cut for oil businesses. But Bush had a ready response.
''If he's trying to allege I'm a hard-hearted person and don't care about children, he's absolutely wrong,'' Bush said. He claimed that the number of Texans enjoying health insurance was actually increasing and called Gore's charge ''totally absurd.''
Gore said he wasn't questioning Bush's ''heart,'' just his sense of ''priorities.''
Though the two men did not offer fundamental differences on the environment, Bush said he did not believe ''in command and control out of Washington, D.C.'' He questioned the administration's move to make 40 million acres of land untouchable without consulting with local officials.
Gore did not back down from the strong assertions he made in his 1992 book, ''Earth in the Balance,'' a treatise on the environment, though he acknowledged - after getting a needle from Bush - that he did not now favor new energy taxes, as he did in the book.
