Still, Texas Gov. Bush is balking at a planned debate in Boston because it is co-sponsored by Kennedy's presidential library, according to a Republican familiar with the Bush campaign's thinking.

Some can't blame him for wanting to avoid the symbol-laden venue devoted to Kennedy, a Democratic icon and telegenic orator whose 1960 debates with Richard Nixon sealed his bid for the White House.

"You could see stories ... 'Bush debates in Kennedy's shadow,''' said William Benoit, a professor of communication at the University of Missouri and a co-author of a book on the 1992 presidential debates.

"I don't know if Gore would want to debate at the George Bush (presidential) library,'' he said. "I think that's reasonable.''

The University of Massachusetts-Boston and the Kennedy library, which share a campus, were selected by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates to host one of three general election debates.

However, as of Friday, Bush had not accepted any debate offers. Democrat Vice President Al Gore has accepted the three commission debates, and others.

Bush representatives met with members of the commission Friday to discuss the sites. Janet Brown, executive director of the commission, said the Bush campaign never specifically balked at a particular site.

Mindy Tucker, a spokesman for the Bush campaign in Houston, said she didn't know if the issue was discussed during the meeting Friday.

Officials at UMass and the presidential library have heard talk of Bush's reluctance, but they forge ahead anyway. In fact, the school has spent nearly $250,000 so far in preparations, including shoring up the former wetland on which the campus was built to ensure it can support all the satellite television trucks. The actual debate will be in a university building, not in the library.

"I had a conversation an hour ago with the Commission on Presidential Debates. ... They assured me as of today this is going forward and to keep persevering,'' said Annemarie Lewis-Kerwin, the coordinator for the UMass campus.

Preparations at Washington University in St. Louis and Wake Forest University in North Carolina - the other two commission sites - also are moving ahead, even without a commitment from Bush. Each school has committed $550,000 to cover expenses.

Michael Goldman, a Boston-based Democratic political consultant, doesn't buy the story that Bush doesn't want to do the debate here because of the Kennedy connection. Goldman says Bush knows he's not as strong a debater as Gore and would be better served by debates in smaller, lower-profile venues.

"Were I one of his handlers, I would be saying the same thing they are saying: We are willing to do three debates, as long as they occur between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. on an infomercial channel during a blizzard,'' Goldman said Friday.

The Kennedy library and UMass campus were selected as a site in part because it is the 40th anniversary of the Kennedy-Nixon debates, the first to be nationally televised. Tom McNaught, a spokesman for the library, said the event would proceed in the "strictest nonpartisan sense.''

He also pointed out that former President Bush received a bronze bust of President Kennedy from Caroline Kennedy in May when he received the annual "Profile in Courage'' award. And, McNaught said, the library has twice hosted former GOP presidential candidate John McCain in the past couple months.

"We feel it's long overdue that Boston be a host site for a presidential debate,'' McNaught said. "This is the city where it all began. This is the cradle of American democracy.''