hris Lehane smiled last night as he described Al Gore's performance in his first presidential debate with Texas Governor George W. Bush.
''Throughout it all, Al Gore was on an issues offensive,'' the vice president's spokesman said, gushing. ''The governor was on the defensive all night, trying to defend the indefensible and explain the unexplainable.''
There was only one weakness in Lehane's assessment: It was offered an hour before the debate began.
But such reality-defying statements were not unusual in ''Spin Alley,'' a parallel universe to the presidential debates. It's a place where winners and losers are not determined on the floor, but in the partisan eye of the beholder.
While Gore and Bush squared off for 90 minutes inside a gymnasium at the University of Massachusetts at Boston, the debate about the debate raged before, during, and after the Democratic and Republican nominees had arrived and departed.
A hockey rink across the hall from the gym was transformed into a media workroom, and the hundreds of reporters who filled it were the spinners' quarry. Overhead hung blinding klieg lights, which illuminated the scene for the local and national television crews lining the bleachers. The floor itself was a warren of tables, the cardinal-red carpeting between them forming the contours of Spin Alley.
Throughout the night, the byway coursed with humanity, from couriers sweating as they distributed news releases to finely dressed campaign spokesmen whose cheeks were dusty with TV makeup.
The Bush team fielded a group of 22 ''surrogates,'' ranging from the governor's brother, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, to an old friend from Dallas, Alphonso Jackson. If one couldn't find US Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, he need only look for an aide carrying a sign over the senator's head that read ''Bill Frist.''
Starting at 5 p.m., the campaign made those supporters available to local crews for TV live shots back to their home markets. The instant the debate began, the campaign started offering real-time fact-checking over the Internet.
When it was over, the surrogates returned, ready to explain why Bush had won the debate.
''The governor was very successful in outlining the clear philosophical difference in this campaign: He trusts the people to make decisions in their own lives, and Vice President Gore wants the government to make them,'' said Karen Hughes, Bush's chief spokeswoman. Behind her, a TV showed the image of her boss still onstage, shaking hands.
The Gore team rented a bank of high-speed copiers to duplicate news releases spelling out their points and counterpoints. The first one, titled, ''Reality Check: Big Government,'' was distributed by a bevy of red-shirted Gore workers 13 minutes into the debate, and only several minutes after Bush had said that a President Gore would ''increase the size of government dramatically.''
Another release followed nine minutes later, a third two minutes after that, all seemingly preformatted to answer anticipated points of criticism.
The Gore team also lined up 35 surrogates, including a past Labor secretary, Robert Reich, and the current one, Alexis Herman. Joining them in the rink were Andrew Cuomo, secretary of Housing and Urban Development, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, himself a former presidential candidate, and US Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the host state.
Aligning himself with the Democratic truth squad, Kerry said: ''I think we have an understanding of clear misstatements of fact and misrepresentations of issues. In addition, we're in the midst of debating these things constantly, so we may be able to shed some light.''
Both campaigns agreed that the Internet made the first debate of the 21st century different from all that preceded it.
In addition to the online fact-checking, the campaigns led up to the debate with a flurry of e-mails offering the ''facts'' on points they expected to be in dispute. Afterward, they used automated distribution lists to mass mail reactions to the local and national news media who cover their candidate.
''It's amazing how you now have instantaneous access to thousands of people,'' said Bush aide Alicia Peterson. ''A good majority of our response will happen electronically.''
