he question put to both Al Gore and George W. Bush could not have been shorter or simpler; it was the shortest and simplest of all three debates:
''How will your tax proposals affect me as a middle-class, 34-year-old single person with no dependents?''
The question in question came from a woman named Lisa Key, toward the end of the debate, and Gore went first, crisply ticking off a half-dozen specifics listing how taxpayers at the lower end of income levels will benefit. Bush began by saying Gore's tax breaks, education and elder care benefits would ''cost a whole lot of money, a lot more than we have.''
But then the overmatched Texas governor wandered off into the sagebrush of Bush-speak, that linguistic no-man's land of wacky stream-of-not-quite-conscious rhetoric that baffles so many of us accustomed to articulate politicians. To the question of ''How will your tax proposals affect me,'' Bush uncorked the rest of his answer, which I reprint in its entirety:
''I think also what you need to think about is not the immediate, but what about Medicare? You get a plan that will include prescription drugs, a plan that will give you options. Now, I hope people understand that Medicare today is - is - is important, but it doesn't keep up with the new medicines. If you're a Medicare person, on Medicare, you don't get the new procedures. You're stuck in a time warp in many ways. So it will be a modern Medicare system that trusts you to make a variety of options for you.
''You're going to live in a peaceful world. It'll be a world of peace because we're going to have a clearer - clear-sighted foreign policy based upon a strong military and a mission that stands by our friends; a mission that doesn't try to be all things to all people. A judicious use of the military which will help keep the peace.
''You'll be in a world, hopefully, that's more educated, so it's less likely you'll be harmed in your neighborhood. See, an educated child is one much more likely to be hopeful and optimistic. You'll be in a world in which - fits into my philosophy; you know, the harder work - the harder you work the more you can keep. It's the American way. Government shouldn't be a heavy hand. That's what the federal government does to you. Should be a helping hand. And tax relief in the proposals I just described should be a good helping hand.''
That's it, word for word, transcribed by the Federal News Service.
If it were an essay submitted in any grade higher than the fourth, it would be sent back with stern comments from the teacher. It is garbled, disconnected, illogical, and unresponsive. It was the most telling example in the 41/2 hours of debates of Bush's intellectual grasp.
Get a grip, Guv. If you're the talking head who sits on our living room tubes for the next four years, well, it's going to be a head-scratcher of a four years. This answer was Reaganesque in one sense; I refer to the Gipper's hilarious detour along the Pacific Coast Highway in one of his debates against Walter Mondale, when the president was completely lost not only in terms of geography but in the thread of where he was and what he was trying to say.
That was an example of what stress can do to a politician on the spot. I put Bush's convoluted and goofy response in that same category. The overnight polls that scored the third debate a draw or a marginal Gore victory also rated Bush higher than Gore in terms of likeability. Gore has bested Bush twice in the three debates on my card, but the Republican propaganda machine and the news media, which are more hostile to Gore, have not focused on Bush's shaky performance under pressure.
I have no idea what Lisa Key thinks of Bush's answer. But here's what I think: The man doesn't get it. He doesn't understand the complexities of government. He's a sound-bite guy, a winker and blinker, a one-pager type of guy, who works short hours and doesn't sweat the small stuff, like the details. He can do two minutes, max, on a rehearsed answer, but any kind of follow up or extended colloquy throws him for a Texas-sized loop.
That's why, when the debate ended, he looked like a kid just off a roller-coaster - pale, nervous, hoping he never has to do that again.
The New York Times studied his office calendars for six years; typically he punches into the office around nine, quits daily at five, and takes two hours off for a jog or a nap every day. On the road he carries his own special feather pillow. He doesn't kill himself; never has. He's a delegater. Every time he executes a Texas convict he sets aside 15 minutes to review the case, but he never halts an execution, and aides say he rarely spends more than five minutes reading up on any one appeal for clemency.
He's not a reader, he's not a thinker, he's not any kind of an intellectual, he floats through life on the wings of the rich. His tax policies favor the rich for a very good reason: The rich favor him. Big time, as Dick Cheney would say. Ditto for Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Insurance, Big HMOs, Big Business generally; George Dubbaya is their guy.
And if the Lisa Keys of this world don't figure this out by Election Day, they and the rest of us will have to put up with four years of this kind of gobbledygook. Bush airily dismisses criticisms of his tall tales about his Texas record with his mantra ''fuzzy math.'' What's really fuzzy, as this verbatim debate excerpt suggests, is what's inside Bush's brain.
David Nyhan's e-mail address is nyhan@globe.com">nyhan@globe.com.
