INSTON-SALEM, N.C. - For all but the waning moments of last night's debate, Al Gore and George W. Bush couldn't have stepped more lightly if the stage had been blanketed with eggshells.
''I know there are some people in my party who disagreed with the president,'' Bush said of the Clinton administration's intervention in Kosovo. ''The administration deserves credit for having made it work.''
When Gore began to question Bush's consistency on foreign intervention, he prefaced his remarks by saying, ''Maybe I've heard the previous statements wrong, governor.''
Not once did Gore interrupt the governor. Not once did Bush use the ''fuzzy math'' jab, or any jab from the ''fuzzy math'' family.
This was not mortal combat, like the candidates' first debate. Mostly, the men looked at moderator Jim Lehrer and not at each other. Mostly, they spoke humbly, conversationally, as if each man had been taking pointers from their running mates, who had been remarkably subdued and civil in their debate a week ago.
Bush sat back in his chair, looking relaxed. Gore sat forward, shoulders rounded, hands clasped unthreateningly. They both tried to be nice, generous guys.
''Let's move on,'' said Lehrer after the foreign policy to-and-fro.
''Far be it from me to suggest otherwise,'' said the vice president, who last week had suggested otherwise strongly and often.
''May I respond?'' Gore said later, again playing off his former self. ''I don't want to jump in.''
Each had ground to make up. Gore, who had conceded that his constant sighing had hurt him in his last encounter with the governor, needed to seem more human. Bush, whose command of foreign policy during the first third of last week's debate had been called into question, needed to seem sure-footed.
Even in being concilatory, however, the vice president couldn't completely shake his scholastic tone, at one point saying, ''Both of us, I guess, are stating the other's position in a maximalistic, extreme way.''
Bush tried to draw attention to departures from the debate rules. When Gore used his response time to shoot a question at the governor and Lehrer wanted him to answer it, Bush appealed to Lehrer.
''I was trying to figure out who the questioner was,'' he said with a chuckle.
The proceedings outside the hall were also more subdued than in the previous presidential debate. Several hundred protesters briefly faced off with police in riot gear, then held a peaceful sit-in at a gated entrance to Wake Forest University, while dozens of others left in frustration over restrictions on their activities.
Unlike last week's debate in Boston, which drew hundreds of vocal protesters, tight controls on everything from the type of signs they could carry (paper only) to the contents of purses (no cell phones or hair brushes) frustrated protesters who had obtained permits to demonstrate, Reuters news service reported.
During the debate, Gore's assaults on Bush were oblique for the most part.
''I guess I had misunderstood the governor's previous position,'' Gore began, referring to Bush's stance on new hate crimes legislation in Texas after the dragging death of James Byrd Jr. by three white men.
''The Byrd family may have a misunderstanding also,'' Gore continued, accusing the governor of failing to support a hate crimes bill in his state, adding: ''I may have been misled by all the news reports about this matter.''
Bush tried just as hard to make Gore seem like he was attacking him as Gore strained to avoid that image. When Gore rattled off a list of figures demonstrating what he called Texas's poor national record on health care, Bush tried to take the blow directly to his person.
''If he's trying to allege I'm a hard-hearted person and I don't care about children, he's wrong,'' Bush said.
Gore, fleeing from that characterization, voiced higher praise of the governor than has been heard in the entire campaign.
''I don't claim to know his heart,'' Gore appealed. ''I believe he's a good person. I believe him when he says he has a good heart.'' Gore then addressed Bush directly: ''I admire a lot of things you have done as a person.''
And even when Lehrer gave him a golden opportunity to wound the vice president, asking a question about Gore's exaggerations, Bush resisted. At first.
''We all make mistakes,'' he offered. ''I've been known to mangle a syll-A-ble or two myself, if you know what I mean.''
But in the end, the lure of battle was too strong for either man to resist.
''I think credibility is important,'' Bush continued, pointing out that Gore's propensity was nothing new and raising a 1988 memo warning Gore not to exaggerate his claims.
When Gore doubled back to criticize Bush's tax cut proposals, arguing that the governor himself had trouble explaining them, Bush was even less inclined to generosity, and each man began cracking the eggshells.
''That's the kind of exaggeration I was talking about,'' he said.
Gore retorted: ''Well, I wasn't the one who was having trouble explaining it.''
