The Campaign Nears Decision by Default

IT MAY HAVE BEEN THE DECISIVE WEEK OF THE CAMpaign — not because of what happened but because of what did not. If the Republicans were ever to tighten the presidential race, last week, crowded as it was with TV debates, was when they had to begin. But if anything, their foray seemed to go backward. The latest USA Today/CNN/Gallup tracking poll showed Bill Clinton with an almost unchanged 13-point lead — and that was on the eve of the big face-off with George Bush and Ross Perot Thursday night, from which the Democrat emerged a clear winner. To some viewers, in fact, Bush seemed to adopt an almost elegiac tone, as if he knew he had lost and had decided to bow out with dignity — though that may have been primarily a consequence of a format that brought the candidates in front of a quizzical audience demanding a sober discussion of issues.

The tone and format were altogether different in the Tuesday-night debate among running mates: a single moderator posed questions and let the candidates talk directly to one another. Vice President Dan Quayle and Clinton’s No. 2, Al Gore, tore into each other with a zest that frequently left Perot’s running mate, retired Vice Admiral James Stockdale, a tongue-tied bystander. Quayle was a far cry from the vacuous dolt so often portrayed. He mounted a sharply focused, though overly glib and often shrill, attack, repeatedly taunting Gore about “pulling a Clinton” — that is, waffling. Gore, though a bit stiff and repetitious — it would be hard to count how many times he accused the White House of practicing “trickle-down economics” — had a sharp answer for everything; he came off, at worst, even. Quayle may no longer be a drag on the ticket, but he could not carry out the job of tearing down Clinton in voters’ minds. That had to be left to the boss.

Bush tried but ran afoul of a format for the Thursday-night debate that Clinton had suggested — reasons for which swiftly became apparent. Questioners, from a studio audience specially selected to consist of 209 uncommitted voters, quickly made clear that they were in no mood to listen to personal attacks. Early on, after the President again chided Clinton for organizing protests against the Vietnam War as a Rhodes scholar in England, one citizen asked, “Can we focus on the issues and not the personalities and the mud?” Thereafter, the debate settled into a remarkably civil exchange far better suited to Clinton’s talent for rattling off multipoint plans than to Bush’s attempts to defend his record. (Perot, the consensus winner of the first debate, this time appeared vague and rambling, his folksiness turned wearying.) Observers noted Bush sneaking glances at his watch, as if impatient to get away — perhaps from just the debate, perhaps from the whole painful ordeal.