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Change Your Life! |
Al Gore and W. Bush rehearsing for debate |
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October 3, 2000
WASHINGTON, OCT 2 (AP) - With briefing books and stand-in opponents, Vice President Al Gore and Gov. George W. Bush are rehearsing for their great debates - essential practice but not to be overdone, according to candidates who have been there before. "If I had to do it again, I would not go through as much of that rehearsal stuff," said Michael Dukakis, the 1988 Democratic nominee, who faltered against Bush's father. "I think it kind of took away from my spontaneity." Other debate veterans, Ronald Reagan among them, blamed overdone briefings for their worst moments. Bob Dole said his 1976 assertion that all the wars of the 20th century were "Democrat wars" was Republican boilerplate from a stack of briefing papers. Neither Gore nor Bush is new at debating, but the vice president has the experience edge. He faced Republican vice presidential nominees in the 1992 and 1996 campaigns, in settings like those of the 2000 debates that begin Tuesday in Boston. Bush debated Democratic rivals in the 1994 Texas gubernatorial campaign he won in an upset and before his landslide re-election in 1998. Each nominee debated in-party challengers 10 times during the primaries. But the stakes, the pressure and the audiences - expected to be well over 60 million Americans for the three nationally televised meetings between Bush and Gore - are different in these debates, when a single slip can become a fall. Hence the briefing books and preparation sessions. Bush has practiced debating with Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire standing in for Gore. The vice president had been doing the same with Tom Downey, an old friend, but the former congressman dropped that role after somebody mysteriously mailed him copies of briefing papers and a tape of Bush's debate rehearsals. The Gore campaign turned the package over to the FBI on Sept. 13, and the investigation continues. Paul Begala, a Democratic campaign consultant and former political adviser to President Clinton, has taken over as the Bush stand-in in Gore's rehearsals. This will be the eighth presidential campaign with televised debates; in the first, in 1960, only one candidate, John F. Kennedy, rehearsed and the other, Richard M. Nixon, suffered, in part because he was weary, ailing and looked it. Nixon campaigned through the morning of the first debate, and said he had only that afternoon for uninterrupted preparation. Kennedy spent two days in briefings and rehearsals at a Chicago hotel, checked the TV set at a production meeting Nixon skipped, and looked as hearty as the vice president looked wan. Rest and rehearsal has been the rule since debates resumed in 1976, after a three-campaign break - two in which Nixon was the Republican nominee and avoided them. Dole made his "Democrat wars" claim in the first vice presidential debate, in 1976, against Walter F. Mondale, who said Dole had earned his reputation as a GOP hatchet man. "It was boilerplate," Dole said in an interview for a PBS history of debates. "I had a stack of briefing notes about two feet high. That was in the briefing book ... I guess I should have exercised my own judgment." There was only one debate in 1980, and Republican challenger Reagan used it to advantage with a routine line performed with an actor's talent. "There you go again," he said wearily whenever President Carter criticized his campaign proposals. It stuck. "I'm sure that was a well-rehearsed line that President Reagan had prepared carefully," Carter said in the PBS history, "Debating Our Destiny." Reagan said not. "It just seemed to be the thing to say," he said. Four years later, Reagan rambled and seemed weary in his first debate with Mondale, raising questions about his age, 73. He said later he wasn't tired, "I was overtrained." "I just had more facts and figures poured at me for weeks before than anyone could possibly sort out and use," he said. Reagan said he avoided that in the second debate, when he got off his memorable line to the question of whether his age would affect his second-term performance. "I will not make age an issue," he said. "I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience." Reagan claimed that wasn't practiced, either. "That really was off the top of my head," he said. Dan Quayle complained of being overcoached for his 1988 debate against Democratic vice presidential nominee Lloyd Bentsen. But he ignored one bit of coaching by advisers who warned him against citing the fact that he had served as long in Congress as Kennedy had before running for president. Quayle said it, and walked into Bentsen's punch: "Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy." In 1996, Dole was the Republican presidential nominee, debating again and saying he'd learned from what happened 20 years before that "you really have to work on your briefing material and what you want to say and have it pretty well organized." His two debates with Bill Clinton didn't alter the course of a losing campaign. By then, Dole was 73, and the age issue came up again. "I don't think Senator Dole is too old to be president," Clinton said. "It is the age of his ideas that I question." "That was a rehearsed line," Clinton told PBS. "I tried to take two or three or four of those lines in my head into all the debates."
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