Peggy Noonan

Dick Cheney won. Big time.

But we’ll get to that in a moment.

The more important thing to note at the top is that Americans won last night, and democracy won, because the Cheney-Lieberman debate was an authentic public service. First, it was inspiring. For the first time in years millions of Americans saw two political men who were in bearing, seriousness, sophistication and thoughtfulness like the public servants of old, or rather the public servants you respected when you were a kid (or maybe I mean the public servants you imagined populated Washington when you were a teenager reading Allen Drury novels).

They were knowledgeable, interesting; their comments, answers and assertions came with context. That is, they didn’t just blurt a ragged thought that some aide dreamed up and then spend 38 seconds trying to wrestle the blurt into a coherent and meaningful assertion. They actually said coherent and meaningful things. Neither tried to be clever or swift—well, Mr. Lieberman a few times, and we’ll get to that too—and yet they were each consistently interesting. At least once, on the issue of gay rights, each candidate actually thought aloud about how he was thinking about the issue—what went into his reasoning, what the history of his thinking had been, where he was now and where he felt the issue fit into overall themes of justice and what might be called Americanism.

If you were listening, you learned. That is, a few issues probably made more sense to you, and so the arguments over those issues, over which fellow stands where and why, made more sense. Or perhaps I should say: Normally when I listen to political debates I get a little lost, wondering at some point what the phrase “$1.3 trillion shortfall” means within the argument, or what “the tax cut targeting initiative” connects to. But with Mr. Cheney’s answers, and often with Mr. Lieberman’s, a common-sense history course in common language was provided.

More than that, both candidates seemed free of the mind-freezing tension that makes thoughts lurch and then stop abruptly, like a thief who just heard something. And so a question on the Mideast, in Cheney’s handling, became a meditation on Israeli politics, on the death of Yitzhak Rabin, on the danger of Iraq and Saddam Hussein, on the meaning of the Clinton administration’s failure to go forward with and insist upon weapons inspections. It was quite a wonderful answer because it made you remember what is at stake in that part of the world.

So: I was inspired, and feel most grateful to Mr. Cheney and Mr. Lieberman for making a constructive contribution to our great democracy. I may change my mind about this by tomorrow, but right now I think it was the best presidential-level debate of my lifetime.

*   *   *

Why do I think Mr. Cheney won? Because he was consistently the more compelling because the more ingenuous figure. Because he was a surprise. I knew and know he is a serious and thoughtful man, but I didn’t know he had quite the calm, impressive intellect, high concentration, inherent modesty and warm dignity that he displayed. And he didn’t display it; it was just there. I didn’t know he had such a common and accessible touch as a communicator.

Mr. Lieberman was good too, but I think he was outclassed. And by the end I think he knew it. Apparently the Gore people did too: when I got home I read a wire story saying Gore’s people got their spinners into the spin room a full seven minutes before the debate ended. You don’t leave the room with the TV set in it that quickly when you’re having a good time watching your guy win.

I’ll give you an example of how Mr. Lieberman was a little too cute sometimes, and got a little sneaky, and if it had been a cute and sneaky debate it would have been OK but it was an elevated debate, and sneaky didn’t play. It was the moment when Mr. Lieberman, who I’m sure had been planning the line for days, pleasantly smiled at Mr. Cheney and told him the economy must be pretty good. “I’m pleased to see, Dick, from the newspapers, that you’re better off than you were eight years ago.”

A nice shot. Mr. Cheney laughs and looks at him and says, “ I can tell you, Joe, that the government had absolutely nothing to do with it.” Good laughter—Mr. Cheney wins the point.

But Mr. Lieberman doesn’t back off. “I can see my wife,” he says slyly, “and I think she’s thinking, ‘Gee, I wish he would go out into the private sector.’ ”

And Mr. Cheney shoots back, “ I’m going to try to help you do that, Joe.”

What was great about it was not that Mr. Cheney won the exchange, and without the help of a line in his pocket. What was great was that Mr. Lieberman thought he was going to have his bash-the-rich Mario Cuomo moment. Mr. Cuomo had a great moment in 1982 when he was debating an impressive Republican challenger named Lewis Lehrman. Mr. Lehrman was a rich man. So in the middle of the debate, Cuomo looked over and said, “Nice watch, Lew.” Mr. Lehrman cringed: caught having gold on your wrist!

It was one of those neat, sneaky, Democratic class-bash moments. And Mr. Lieberman thought he’d have his. But he didn’t. Because Mr. Cheney wasn’t some patsy Republican in a defensive crouch at being wealthy. He was like a Republican who supports conservative policies because they’ll give you a chance to get rich, too.

Mr. Lieberman also tried a bit of demagoguery that Al Gore gets away with, but Mr. Cheney nailed Mr. Lieberman on it. When Mr. Cheney argued that U.S. military spending and readiness have gone down the past seven years, Mr. Lieberman tried to pretend that Mr. Cheney’s criticism of Clinton-Gore stewardship was a criticism of American sailors and soldiers. Mr. Cheney didn’t let him get away with it, corrected him, and repeated his criticisms of Clinton-Gore. Mr. Lieberman, this time, wisely backed off. (I was watching one of those whacked-out response-line things on a monitor at MSNBC; you should have seen Mr. Cheney’s lines head skyward. It is very unusual, when Republicans talk about defense, to see the lines go up.)

Mr. Lieberman also tried to manipulate, and was altogether too cute, when Mr. Cheney spoke of Iraq and the danger it poses as an unimpeded maker of weapons of mass destruction. It was the only time Mr. Lieberman got sniffy: such dire national security questions have no place in a campaign, he said. (Really? Gee, those weapons might kill us. I think we maybe have the right to discuss it.) It was patently an attempt to claim the high ground while avoiding discussion of an administration failure.

Mr. Cheney did not cede the microphone; he is a vocal Republican. He didn’t hog it like Mr. Gore did the other night, but he clearly enjoyed saying his piece. He also, and to my surprise—he has had a life in government—doesn’t speak governmentese. He’d say, simply and clearly, that the policies he stood for were aimed at giving people as much control over their own lives as possible. He’d say of the Gore-Lieberman tax plan that you need an accountant to understand it and that “ They like tax credits. We like tax reform and tax cuts.”

Mr. Lieberman, on the other hand, proved himself fluent in governmentese: “the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office,” “by our calculation they are $1.1 trillion in debt,” even “ a very exciting tax-credit program.”

*   *   *

As for how they looked, which is not important but let’s do it anyway, they both looked just fine. They looked like normal humans having a conversation at a desk. Whoever said Joe Lieberman has a face like a melted clown was kind of right, but I prefer the observation of a friend who is not a Republican that Mr. Lieberman looks like Henry Gibson, of “Laugh-In” and “Nashville” fame, and like Harpo Marx without the horn.

I, being rude and seeking to show bipartisanship in my horribleness, noted this evening on MSNBC that Dick Cheney looks like a round lump of beige. This is not only uncalled for but, since both men really acquitted themselves so well, and in the acquitting gave our country an hour and a half of dignity, good nature, good sense and class, and since those things don’t come much from politics anymore, no one should make cheap jokes about them, and I think all writers and talkers should not make poke fun at either of them for the rest of the campaign, to show our appreciation and respect.

But really what was most inspiring about the debate, and about the two men in it, was a kind of civic sweetness, a high-mindedness with which they spoke sympathetically of so many issues that are painful for various ones of us, from racial profiling to abortion to gay rights. Both men spoke with what seemed an honest and deep engagement, not huffing and puffing but, again, thinking aloud. High-minded, I’d even say right-minded, thinking aloud. This was a good example for our children.

Boy these guys made me feel better.

And boy Dick Cheney was a revelation.

*   *   *

Early spin from the liberal media is going to be, “Cheney was pretty good, and so of course was Lieberman. But you know Chris/Tom/Dan/Brian, the very fact of Cheney’s excellence will no doubt be seen as an implicit criticism of Bush. Why, after all, isn’t he so impressive? I think Cheney’s triumph will work against Bush.” They’re already saying this. In the conservative media (the magazines, columnists, this page) they will call it “Cheney’s Night” and ponder why men like him have to be picked for veep and don’t get elected president.

I also see a coming debate, a big one, in conservative circles, over whether the Bush campaign should, as the Democratic strategist Pat Caddell and others, including me, have urged, do a big and serious speech about the meaning of the trampling of law and lowering of dignity in the past eight years. Mr. Caddell argues—I paraphrase—that in a time of peace and plenty the challengers must clearly define what the problem is, how it threatens our well being, and what the solution is (throw the bums out). I see a lot of sense in this. But there are those who warn, prudently, that the media will kill the Republicans if they go down that road—”negative,” etc. (Listen to Rush Limbaugh tomorrow, he in a sense started the debate with an interview Thursday on MSNBC.)

*   *   *

A clarification of how I see my role seems in order after the reaction I got in many quarters to my criticism of George W. Bush’s performance in Tuesday’s debate. Let me tell you how I see it. Everyone who cares to know my political sympathies knows them, because I don’t hide them. I declare them. (I wish everyone would.) But my job isn’t spin; my job is to tell you the truth as I see it. I don’t think spin is interesting. I think the truth is always interesting, and when you’re lucky enough to see it accurately and explain it clearly—actually I don’t think it’s luck, I think of it the way Walker Percy thought of it; he wrote once that when he wrote anything good he knew where it came from, he knew who had sneaked into him “like a thief with good tools”—you’re doing good. I’m for Mr. Bush. But I think Mr. Bush tanked in his debate. I’m for Cheney, too. I think he just triumphed.

I hope Mr. Bush does well next time, but if I think he doesn’t I’m going to say it. That’s my job—and my inclination. Sorry.

“He won the walk.” The speaker was a network producer just after Al Gore walked on stage, and she was right.

The moment seemed emblematic of the evening. Both candidates strode out looking like big attractive men in big attractive suits, and shook hands, and Mr. Gore seemed to whisper something to George W. Bush, who seemed to nod agreement; then Mr. Gore, still clasping Mr. Bush’s hand, subtly pushed him back half a step. Like a dominant personality. Like an unattractive dominant personality. Like a man who read Michael Korda’s “Power!” and decided to put his desk up on a little three-inch platform so he’d always be looking down at others sitting in the office. Mr. Gore was trying to intimidate physically, which is what Bill Clinton did to Bob Dole in the debates of 1996.

*   *   *

Normally it takes time for the cliché about a debate, the Official Agreed Upon Version, to emerge. No one announced the day after the first Kennedy-Nixon debate that Kennedy won, and that the reason was that Nixon was pasty and Kennedy ruddy. It takes time for people to fit the impressions of an event into the outcome of the story. In the end Kennedy won the election, ergo he must have won the first debate, ergo he won that debate because he . . . wore makeup.

The elements of the common wisdom are coming together on Bush-Gore I. It was a night of sighs and sniffs, and didn’t so much offer a new vision of each candidate as reinforce pre-existing perceptions. If you went in thinking Mr. Bush truly limited, he had a very good night. I didn’t go in thinking Mr. Bush truly limited.

Mr. Gore dominated the evening lopsidedly, and from the git-go. He was more fluid in the language of governance, more fluid in language, period. He was more aggressive, more focused and game; he had high concentration, and maintained his impressive ability to summon fact and statistic from the air and insert them in a series of sentences that had a subject, predicate and verb and that together made a coherent paragraph.

Mr. Bush seemed to me low-energy, less focused, a man of more ragged thoughts and arguments. He sniffled. He seemed to have a cold. He didn’t seem to like being there. Mr. Bush sometimes seems to like most of leadership and not much of politics, and this was such a night.

Jim Lehrer seemed to cede control to Mr. Gore, who was only too happy to take it. He bored in. His first statement was clear and clean. “If I’m entrusted with the presidency, here are the choices that I will make. I’ll balance the budget every year. I will pay down the national debt. I will put Medicare and Social Security in a lock box and protect it. And I will cut taxes for middle class families.”

From the first, he was presenting himself as a prudent steward whose primary concerns are essentially conservative—tax cuts, balanced budgets, no wild spending. Mr. Bush, in response, was reactive.

Mr. Gore issued charges and challenges that were not often fully answered, and buried Mr. Bush’s sallies in a steadily falling snow of factoids and counter-assertions.

So Mr. Gore dominated. But did he “win”? This is where the debate becomes complicated, in a way that no presidential debate has ever been. If by winning we mean “Which candidate seemed to be the one a majority of Americans would be comfortable having as president?” then not only acumen and command but personality and character come into the equation.

*   *   *

Al Gore was Al Gore. And George Bush was George Bush. Mr. Gore didn’t seem like a good man, and Mr. Bush didn’t seem like a weighty one. Everyone knows Mr. Gore is a gifted debater, but he allowed his mastery to work against him. He allowed confidence to become aggression, his sense that he has a superior grasp of issues to become a manner that was condescending, and creepy.

The impatient, disrespectful sighs into the mike as Mr. Bush spoke. The laughing, head shaking dismissals that seemed not natural but forced. Mr. Gore revealed himself to be quite an actor—but the kind who makes you think of words like phony, not words like gifted, which is how you think when you see Mr. Clinton act.

Mr. Gore so over-acted the role of Superior Person in Control of Events that he made me think of Snidely Whiplash, the railroad lawyer who twirls his mustache as he ties the damsel to the tracks. He seemed almost comically crafty. I remembered what was said in 1988 of George Bush the Elder: That he reminded women of their first husband, a putdown meant to suggest he was bumbling. But Mr. Gore may well have reminded women of their first husband during the divorce trial, rolling his eyes and snorting as she testified to his abuse. As it is expected that more women were watching than men, I can’t imagine this did him any good.

Mr. Gore always wanted to have the last word, and he mostly got it. I suspect he spoke at least twice as much as Mr. Bush, which we’ll find out when the word count is tallied. But when Mr. Gore talks a lot he opens himself to scrutiny, and increases the chance that some of his assertions will later be found not to be truthful.

He began with an assertion that could easily be found untrue. When asked what he’d meant by questioning whether Mr. Bush has the experience to be president, Mr. Gore denied making the charge. Mr. Lehrer referred to the charge as appearing in the New York Times. Mr. Gore responded that he’d questioned Mr. Bush’s proposals. In fact, the Times reported on April 13 that Mr. Gore had questioned Mr. Bush’s experience.

This seems small but isn’t; a sense that he’s a trimmer undercuts him. When he spoke of the girl who is forced to stand in her overcrowded classroom, I thought, and suspect many did: a) that’s terrible, and b) I wonder if it is true. (The principal now says the classroom was crowded because they were unpacking $100,000 in new equipment.) When your every statement is potentially undercut by your reputation as fabulist, you are never convincing.

*   *   *

Mr. Bush seems incapable of acting or making up stories. He is genuinely himself, not phony or showy. But throughout the evening he seemed tentative, lacking in Mr. Gore’s command and subtlety. In repose, when listening, when he thinks the camera is not on him, he gets a close-eyed, crooked-mouthed look; he looks perplexed.

More important, he doesn’t unspool arguments. He blurts out fragments of assertion; his sentences don’t hold, his thoughts don’t follow through. He didn’t make a case against Mr. Gore’s lurch back to the left, to pre-DLC liberalism; he didn’t make the case for modern conservatism, for his brand of compassionate conservatism. He reacted, sometimes effectively and sometimes not.

If Mr. Gore hadn’t seemed so off-putting, he might have put Mr. Bush in real trouble. But Mr. Gore was off-putting. And so both go on to live another day. In the next debate Mr. Bush would seem at an advantage. The format is more congenial to him—sitting at a table, talking. And while it will be difficult for Mr. Gore to present himself as a more attractive personality, it won’t be so hard for Mr. Bush to become a more focused debater.

*   *   *

And so the election continues with its own particular character. It is the most mysterious of recent years; no one seems to know how it will turn out. Not to be pretentious, but this election seems marked by an element in the work of the great Japanese movie director, Akira Kurosawa. It was said of his films that they are informed by a special and particular tension: that in them, always, the villain has arrived while the hero is evolving.

Hello, Governor. Big weekend ahead. You’re practicing for the debates. Here’s an idea right off the top. You’re practicing, they say, with Judd Gregg. He’s playing Gore. That’s okay, but no one can really play Gore because Gore is so . . . changeable is a nice word. So go ahead with Sen. Gregg, but somewhere along the way just sit with your staff for a few hours and let them tear you apart with the toughest, meanest attacks they can muster. And when a sarcastic aside takes you aback, demand to know what the suggested response should be. (Let them squirm for once.) Rick Lazio didn’t debate one on one before he met up with Hillary, for rehearsal he just got pounded by his staff. It’s a good thing to do, because as good as Gore is, he won’t be able to pound you as hard as a staff eager to show We’re Only Hurting You to Help You. It’ll make Gore seem like a softy Tuesday night.

Your mettle is about to be measured. Do you have the strength to assert persuasively, the wit to defend effectively, can you launch an offensive, make a case, take a punch?

This year, as you well know, the debates are as important as they were in 1960, and ‘76, and ‘80, which is to say they’re more important than usual because the race is so close. And whatever happens in them—your gaffe if you make it, your great line if you say it—will be played over and over more than ever in the million-network universe. So whatever drama happens Tuesday night will enter the national consciousness, and stay there.

It’s the first debate, and most everyone who cares will be watching, which according to my estimation is exactly half the country.

If you win Tuesday you won’t necessarily win the election, but you’ll come that much closer. If it’s a draw, pretty much the same thing—you get points for a draw because everyone knows Gore is a better debater. If you flop big-time Tuesday—well, it’s getting late in the game, and you might never recover.

So: high stakes.

*   *   *

What do you have to do on Tuesday night? You have to demonstrate once again on national television what you show on the stump: that you have the heft and height to be president, that you’re big enough for the job, that you’re a serious man familiar with the facts of government and governance. This is the task Ronald Reagan faced in ‘80: They may call me a low-IQ nuclear cowboy, but I’m a big, calm, intelligent man with the right ideas that grow from the right philosophy. This incumbent, Mr. Carter, is . . . so unfortunately small. But Reagan of course had hard times to help him, and you don’t.

Gore doesn’t have to show he’s bright enough; everyone thinks he’s bright. If you’ve read “Earth in the Balance” you may well think he’s weird, lacking in common sense and perspective, but not dumb. What Gore has to show is that he is not . . . creepy. There’s a big and growing creepiness quotient with him now. The lying thing, the robot thing, the weird-changes-of-speaking-style thing (preacher Al, Oprah Al, Alpha Al), the Buddhist temple thing, the excoriating-Hollywood-Monday-and-sucking-up-to-Hollywood-Tuesday thing, the Clinton-is-one-of-our-greatest-presidents thing.

Gore has to somehow demonstrate to us that he’s a good and normal man at the same time that he’s attacking his opponent. That’s hard.

So: advantage Bush.

Except that Gore is a better debater than you, a really wily coyote.

So: advantage Gore.

Gore is famously . . . let’s call it malleable. He can be what he thinks he has to be. He might be wise sensitive Al tonight, and seem ingenuous and likable, a man who’s sad to point out your flaws but feels forced to because we’re talking here about the leadership of a planet. That might be a pretty good tack to take, and might throw you off your game.

But again, people do what they know how to do. Gore knows how to fight and aggress. He knows how to eat his lunch off Ross Perot’s head. He knows how to flummox Bill Bradley. He’ll probably try to reveal you as a know-nothing bumpkin way out of his league, a guy who lacks command, who has a rÈsumÈ lighter than air.

*   *   *

How will you handle it? Like a Texan. You’ll be unfazed. You’ll laugh and point out that a lifetime immersed in Washington ways is about the worst preparation possible for the kind of president we need now. Outside blood. New ideas, new ways, not the reactionary politics of yesterday.

Normally I worry about your strange humility. No humble man runs for president, only men who think they should be among the most powerful humans in the world. And yet you have often shown a certain diffidence, a tentativeness in debates in the past, and in interviews with the press.

But one senses that is over, or at least very much ending. You spent a day with Sen. Slade Gorton in Washington state this week, and he says he’s never seen you so confident, so happy. And you certainly showed ease and high comfort in your own skin on “Larry King Live” Tuesday night. And your wife has the calm of a school librarian who knows the school bond issue’s going to pass. It’s not bland, it’s kind of a creamy confidence. No, it’s serenity! What an odd thing to see in a spouse in the midst of a presidential campaign. I think I know what she’s thinking: If God wants this to happen it will happen, and to our betterment; if he does not allow it to happen it won’t happen, and to our betterment. Why, then, worry? Except about all the high-cholesterol bologna sandwiches George keeps eating on the plane.

Anyway, those who know you aren’t worried about your confidence. They’re not worried about your ability to fight Tuesday night, either. This is good.

*   *   *

Okay, the big thing I want to say. Do not—not for one second, for one sentence, for one pause—let Al Gore claim and take the moral high ground. He’ll go for it right away. He’s protecting seniors and you don’t care, he’s protecting our schools and you’re their enemy. Well, you know different, don’t you. Go straight for him on the justice issues. How can he stand there and talk about his compassion when there are more uninsured kids in America now than the day he walked into the White House? How can he claim to care when his education policies consign poor children to dead schools? How can he claim to care about the young when his reactionary Social Security plan allows them no freedom to create a secure future? How can he claim to care when his every move is dictated by interest groups who look out for themselves and never for America? How can he claim to care when he won’t even take steps to see that America—and the world—are made safer from nuclear missile attack? Does he not understand that we will someday need it?

Don’t be afraid of that last one. It is the great issue of our time.

You go at Gore with moral confidence, with the conviction you display in private but only fleetingly in public. Don’t you go into the Republican crouch when he talks about the poor, the old. You get your facts out there chapter and verse. Nail him on his cynical (and risky!) scheme to keep the taxpayers’ money to buy off his base instead of giving the people back their hard earned overpayment. You talk about how a family that’s bringing in $75,000 a year with two kids is hit by taxes from every level of government, how the dry-cleaner owner is hit by the same. Tell Gore: “You care about everyone but the people.”

Don’t wait for him to go at you and then swing back. Come out and assert, set the pace, let him react to you. Put him on the defensive.

Don’t be afraid to talk about the character of the administration he represents and is part of and will continue. Even David Broder is urging you forward. Speak the truth about the long trail of eight years of cynicism and humiliation and grave damage to the rule of law.

Another thing. Everyone knows what Gore’s philosophy comes down to: Give everybody everything he wants in terms of money, which is power. Keep the coalition glued together with cash. They’re cynical, I’m cynical, turn the taps on high. Teachers? Pay hike! Schools? More money! Oldies? Subsidized prescription drugs! Social agenda? Maximum leftism to my lefties! Youngies? Whatta ya want, tight jeans? I got tight jeans! Whatever you want I’ll give you!

When giving people things is your “philosophy” you don’t need a philosophy. You’re the Good Humor man; here’s the ice cream. But conservatives have to have a philosophy. Because they have to explain why they’re not giving out the ice cream, why they’re not promising easy money and cheap grace. Or rather, they have to explain why their brand of “ice cream” is real and rich, that faith-based social policy is Häagen-Dazs, that a way to protect our country from missile attack and terrorism is Häagen-Dazs, that Gore’s ice cream is cheap, filled with chemicals and pumped with air.

What’s your philosophy? Do people understand it to be, Al gives too much? Ach—low budget liberalism, that won’t do it. Your philosophy is something else. Tell us. Put it in three sentences, or four. Great things can be put in three sentences or four. Lincoln did it; your hero Churchill did it; Reagan did it, and God knows your favorite philosopher, Jesus, did it every day.

Boil it down. This is what Bush believes. This is Bush’s philosophy. Write it down, internalize it, say it.

Keep it simple. Simple sentences are good sentences because they can be absorbed with ease by normal humans. And because we all know everything that’s true can be expressed in a simple way. “It is better to give than to receive.” “The meek shall inherit the earth.”

Your syntax collapses when you start in with clauses and subclauses. Don’t do that. Straight and simple as a well-thrown ball.

Do you need an opening statement? Short and sweet. Frame what the election is about. A closing statement? Short and sweet again, and direct and simple. This is what it’s about, this is what I believe, this is why you don’t want to go down his road, this is why you want to go down mine. “Come walk with me.”

*   *   *

Some small things.

Governor, when you get off a good line you have a way of looking at the audience as if to say, Isn’t that funny? Join me in laughter! If you can stop that, stop it. Say what you have to say, and when you get off a good line don’t look to the audience or Jim Lehrer for a response, just do whatever is natural—laugh, pause, whatever—and then continue your thought.

Gore likes to interrupt. It’s how he destabilized Bradley in debate and made him look like a tall tree about to crash into the soft green forest. He’ll do it with you, hoping to get you mad or confused or lose momentum. Realize the game and have your concentration high. Say what you have to say to the American people—that is, to the camera—and not to him.

An odd stylistic change. Liberals now think they have to be very tough, and their form of toughness includes sarcasm and balls-of-the-feet aggression. Conservatives now think they have to be Love Republicans, sweet and kindly. It used to be the other way around. Anyway, Gore will be tough in part because his supporters and aides want him to be, they’re stoking him. When he goes over the line, be ready to point it out. Remember he doesn’t know how to be sweet, but you know how to be tough.

Everyone’s sending you lines. Everyone’s sending him lines. The brightest, most withering line writers in the Democratic Party are sending them in from Hollywood and Manhattan and big cities and universities. They’re probably in a big book in Gore’s room on the plane. He’s underscoring the ones he likes in yellow marker right now. His secretary is about to put them on cards so he can review them on Monday.

You might need counterlines more than you need lines. Gore’s people have probably been culling Great Lines from Debates Past. Gore will probably use on you what Mondale used to good effect on Reagan: “It’s not what you don’t know that disturbs me, it’s what you know that isn’t true!” Why would Gore use old lines? For the same reason he uses, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Reagan’s signature line from the ‘84 campaign. Because he won’t get tagged, that’s why. Because we live in the Age of No Memory. Because we’re bombarded by images and sounds and keep hitting delete, because there’s just so much the human brain can hold on to. Because children aren’t taught history anymore. Because average Americans aren’t political columnists, and have more important things to remember than what Mondale said to Reagan. Because a lot of voters were five or seven or 10 when Mondale said it, and don’t remember.

Think about responses on Gore’s coming lines about (a) how uninformed you are, (b) how you have ties to dread Big Oil, (c) how you stand for and with the powerful at the expense of the powerless.

You need the comeback. And comebacks might rather undo him. Because no one ever has a comeback for Al Gore, have you noticed? He’s not used to someone really slamming the ball back.

Speaking of which, something Gore has to watch out for is an air of arrogance. He is seen as arrogant by present and former aides, he always knows best, has the better insight, the better idea. He’s got some conceit. It shows sometimes, like when he’s trying to pulverize someone in debate. In the past it’s sometimes worked for him. But in national debate in an even-Steven race I think it will. . . be unconsciously absorbed by some viewers, and give them a bad sense of him. When you think he’s being pompous and arrogant just sit back and watch. And then maybe zing him. “Meanwhile, back on planet Earth . . .”

You usually wear gray suits and a light shirt and a nice tie. To me this is good, as I don’t think running for president is a casual Friday event. But I’m afraid this is an old-fashioned view. At any rate, the suits you normally wear are kind of schlumpy, nondescript. Most American men wear that suit. You look like a New Jersey businessman grabbing the keys off the bureau in the morning and kissing his wife goodbye and saying “Didja call the Salvettis about Friday night? Didja ask about the pool when the guy came?”

You look like the nice man in the didja moment.

But debates as I say are formal, and it shows respect to get dressed up. How about a nice dark blue suit, pinstriped or plain. A nice mall suit from an expensive, upscale shop. Crisp bright white dress shirt. Bright tie. I know red is a cliché, but it’s a nice cliché. A deep red silk with stripes or patterns. You’re doing a reverse Regis. We’re all tired of same-colored tie/same-colored shirt. Go old-fashioned and masculine so when you walk in they can smell the after shave.

I hope you got a haircut last week. Don’t get one the day before the debate. Jimmy Carter got a haircut the day before the debates in ‘76 or ‘80 and I became so distracted by the pale gap between the shorn hair and the tanned campaign-face that I couldn’t quite concentrate on what he said, and came awake only for things like “I asked my daughter, Amy, what was the great problem we face today and she told me nuclear proliferation.”: Anyway, if you haven’t already gotten the cut, don’t bother; it can be a little long.

Don’t let them slather too much makeup on you; have your good campaign color and a little powder to take off the shine. By the way, if you start to sweat under the lights, as a normal person would, don’t be afraid to wipe it off. Try to do it when you know the camera’s on Gore but whatever, just wipe it. It’s distracting when you see a sweating candidate not brush off the rivulet that’s working it’s way down his cheek.

A final thing. I remember the good old days of bombastic Bushkin, the irrepressible candidate. You’re still that guy on the plane and the stump but not so much in TV interviews. Which is probably good. Now you’re grounded and sensitive and sober. The closer you get to the presidency the soberer you get. But the thing that made you bombastic Bushkin—the happiness—bring that Tuesday night. Joy is a good thing to see. Before you go on, sit down and breathe in and say a prayer—a born again Christian who forgets to pray is an unassisted warrior—and remember how much you love life.

Remember that it isn’t about you. If you’re serious about all this, and you are, you know that if you win you are going to help America, and if he wins he is going to hurt it. If you know this you know you’re on a mission and you’re a patriot and this is about America, not you. You’re just the guy fate put in the help-America position. Let fate, or as you see it, God, use you. When you know you’re being used by the Divine User you’ve got the only mo that never stops. People with the mo know joy, because that’s what mo is. Take it to the podium and fill the stage with it.

*   *   *

Since I’m enjoying myself bloviating with unneeded advice for you, I’ll give some unasked-for advice to my countrymen.

Please my beloved friends, remember this: Who you think won, won. The guy who impressed you was the impressive guy. As soon as the debate ends the networks will go into 45 seconds of anchor summation followed by a live standup report from the spin room, where, as you well know, the top aides of each candidate will insist he won no matter what:

“The moment when the vice president took out the gun and took wild shots at the audience strikingly demonstrated to the American people that he’s not at all programmed.”

“When the governor rolled his eyes and made fart sounds, he was connecting to the American people in the language they speak, unlike the vice president, who’s incapable of authenticity.”

“But the vice president invented flatulence!”

Then the anchors will throw it to some guy who’ll say his focus group liked this guy or that. Then come the talking heads. I’ll be one. But my opinion, as you well know, is worth no more than yours. It’s rather less important, as you may truly have been an undecided who decided how to vote on the basis of the debate. Which means you made news. You are news.

Don’t let us sway you.

Who you think won, won.

Period.

A friend of mine is voting for Hillary. My friend was born Dem, brought up Dem, lives in a Dem culture and will die Dem because (a) she doesn’t want to be shamed as a person who went Republican, which in her world is viewed as something like getting rich and joining a restricted country club, and (b) she doesn’t really care much about politics and finds all of it boring and off point somehow, with the exception of a woman’s right to choose. She has been watching the political scene in the distracted and impressionistic way most people do. That is, she has been watching the election unfold peripherally, from the corner of her eye, as she blow-dries her hair and talks on the phone. She called recently to share her impressions.

Both in New York and in the presidential race, she announced, we have been given a choice between a candidate who’s nice and not smart, and a candidate who’s bright but not nice.

I said yes, you get the impression it’s a battle between Dumb-Good and Evil-Smart. That’s exactly it, she said.

In a simplistic and therefore limited way—which I notice is more and more the way history is presented to our children because more and more it is taught by television, and television is pictures with thick-as-a-brick narration—”Nixon lost the debate because he tragically refused to wear makeup”—but in a cartoony way, consider:

Rick Lazio and George W. Bush are Dumb-Good. They aren’t followed by a thick cloud of scandal because they don’t make scandal; they appear to be good, honest men, normal men, maybe too normal. They seem more or less average in their interests, affections, gifts. No one hates them, because they’re not at all wicked. They’re not liars; they’re not thieves; they’re not power-mad, and no one will ever call their wives Evita. They’re good men. But they don’t have first-rate minds; they don’t inspire us with their insights or the brilliance of their understanding of the world. They would never say of an element of welfare reform that it is the biggest abrogation of governmental responsibility since the Corn Laws, as Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said. They won’t be writing learned monographs any time soon.

Mr. Bush, as we all know, has a tendency to mispronounce words, like a bright and nervous boy trying to show the admissions director that he’s well-read. His syntax is highly individualistic. He’s bouncy and affectionate and funny in a joshy way as opposed to a witty way.

But he is, almost transparently, a good man. He cares about children; he wants government to be honest; he wants to protect his country from bad guys; he wants to stand up for those who protect us. He is a good governor, he has a natural sympathy for those—the hardware store owner and the woman who starts her own housecleaning company—who are taxed and regulated to death in America. He thinks this abusive. He wants to liberate them. If he becomes president—when, I believe, he becomes president—he will drive conservatives to distraction with his tendency to think with his heart, and not his brain.

*   *   *

Mr. Lazio, continuing the cartoon, is a big happy puppy of a man: Vote for me or I’ll lick you to death. People are trying to paint him as Jake LaMotta after he famously crossed the stage to get Mrs. Clinton to sign the paper. It had been done before—Pete du Pont did it to Bob Dole in debate and to great effect, and Al Gore did it to Bill Bradley. Now Mrs. Clinton and her supporters are trying to turn the moment around by claiming he wasn’t a courtly cavalier.

Really, how tired Hillary-as-victim has become. When she smacked down one of her husband’s erstwhile opponents in an ambush/debate back in Arkansas, Hillary and her friends derided him for treating her like a lady. How sexist, how patronizing. But now Mr. Lazio is bad because he forgot she’s just a girl. Hillary playing victim on this makes me imagine a tag line in a coming Schwarzenegger movie. He kills someone, looks down at the corpse and says, “You invayded my spaaace.”

But Mr. Lazio is a nice man who gets up in the morning and reads the comics with the kids as they all eat Cheerios together. And who enjoys reading the comics. He doesn’t have the occasionally furrowed brow, the air of distraction, the face clouded by thought. He’s like the guy down the block who watches “Everybody Loves Raymond,” a guy who sells insurance and you’d buy it from him because you know he’ll give you the best rates he can.

He’s a good man. But he too is derided in private and in the press as not bright enough, not well-spoken, lacking in heft and height.

*   *   *

Mr. Lazio’s opponent, Mrs. Clinton, has higher-than-average intelligence, has a tough and disciplined mind, is shrewd and if not canny or subtle at least . . . piercing.

But to no one does she seem a good woman, or rather to few, and to no one who’s been watching and pondering these past few years. This week there is more reason to doubt her: the revelation that the guest list for the Clintons’ formal state dinner for the prime minister of India was dominated by cronies, would-be’s, hangers-on, operatives and, of course, big donors who are helping Mrs. Clinton in New York. And the White House continues not to release the list of New York donors and operatives who have been staying over in the Lincoln bedroom and flying on U.S. Air Force jets. Your tax dollars at work. The high mindedness of the diplomacy you pay so much for revealed.

Gossip—mere gossip but all too believable—on the reason for the White House delay: They were going to issue the list Wednesday, the day of the final Ray report, knowing the Ray report would be bad and would submerge the overnights scandal. But the Ray report was “good,” and found insufficient evidence to prosecute; release of the list of overnight/Air Force guests might now be incendiary. Today is Friday. Perhaps at midnight tonight, as the weekend begins, we will get the list. Or maybe 5 p.m. Sunday, when we’re all enjoying the last golden light of early autumn.

*   *   *

As for Mr. Gore, he is obviously bright, with a tough and disciplined mind not unlike Mrs. Clinton’s. But he too this week gave us more reason to doubt what is inside him. I suspect people are starting no longer to be amused but actually concerned by Mr. Gore’s tendency to lie in speeches and interviews. In the past five days he unspooled a heartfelt story of how his mother-in-law and dog both take the same arthritis medicine, but the pooch’s meds are cheaper and this is a scandal. It certainly might be if it were true, but apparently not a word of it is.

Then at a speech to the Teamsters Union Mr. Gore claimed his mother sang a union song as a lullaby when he was a babe, and he sweetly sang the song:

Look for the union label

When you are buying a coat, dress or blouse

All very moving and nice until you realize, as reporters quickly did, that the song wasn’t written until Mr. Gore was 27 years old.

Two big whoppers in one big week. We all know about “Love Story” and Love Canal and I-invented-the-Internet and all the other whoppers, but . . . it’s getting weird. Mr. Gore knows his proclivity for confabulation is dangerous. He has been heavily criticized for it this year, and he received a memo from an aide in 1988 warning him that his tendency to “exaggerate” was a threat to his candidacy. He knows it’s a problem, and he knows it damages him. He knows the press, and his opponents, are subjecting everything he says to scrutiny. And yet he cannot seem to stop it.

His lying looks at this point not like a foible but a compulsion, a tendency that is ungovernable, like a tic. He doesn’t have to do it. He can always make his point without telling stories that aren’t true. Seeing Mr. Gore lie in speeches is like seeing a rich kleptomaniac stealing things he doesn’t need. He seems a verbal kleptomaniac, grabbing untruths from the rack, shoving them in his pocket and hoping to make it past the metal detectors. And then when he’s caught and the bells go off, his reaction is blasÈ. “It was only a lipstick.” It was only about a lullaby, a novel, a dog.

The disturbing question is this: If Mr. Gore cannot help but lie about lullabies and grandma’s medicine, will he lie about troop movements, and espionage, and what our intelligence is telling us about what Saddam is up to?

This is where his predilection goes from gaffe-a-minute campaign fun to serious campaign issue, and question.

*   *   *

Interestingly, I think, Mr. Gore, with his cast iron pecs and the superman hair and the steely cold eyes, actually looks like Evil-Smart. Mr. Bush in his shambling gray suit and every-which-way hair and sweet insecurity looks Dumb-Good.

You might wonder which my friend is going to vote for. In both cases she’s going for Evil-Smart. For the simple reason, she says, apart from a woman’s right to choose, that public servants should be smart. It makes her nervous when they’re dumb.

She has a point, of course. But two other points might follow. One is that high intelligence is less important than character in a public servant. The left and right tend to see this differently. The left often acts as if it thinks brilliance is virtue—Adlai Stevenson was good essentially because he was brilliant and witty. The right tends to think brilliance and goodness are different things and prefers goodness—that is, character. They think—we think—character more than trumps IQ, and we’d rather have old uneducated Aunt Bridget the cook making governmental decisions than a scheming and duplicitous Nobel Prize-winning genius. Aunt Bridget, being a good person, will do less harm. And goodness itself is a kind of wisdom.

My view: in the struggle between Dumb-Good and Evil-Smart, Bush and Lazio have the great advantage. For they really are good men—but they really are intelligent. So what they have to prove is the truth: that they are bright.

Mr. Gore and Mrs. Clinton—forgive me, but I am a columnist and therefore obliged to honestly share my views—have to prove they are not wicked, which means they have to . . . well, it will be an uphill task for both of them. Because it’s easier in general to demonstrate a truth than to consistently get away with that which is untrue. So, advantage Bush-Lazio.

*   *   *

Mr. Bush has promised he will no longer mispronounce words. This will make things more boring, and at any rate is probably not a promise he can keep.

But he doesn’t have to. Here is how he might demonstrate his intelligence. With three big serious speeches, one of which captures as no one in politics yet has the meaning of the past eight years, the trampling of the rule of law, the institutionalized disdain for common citizens. The second speech, a big and serious statement about what is wrong with how things work now, and what you will do to turn it around and create a newer, better world. Include everything from the school-liberation movement to a defense system to protect the United States from missile attack, which we do not have and will to a certainty need before our children are grown. Make this speech into one hard round ball that can be thrown and tossed, thrown and tossed to the American people, so that in time they each catch it. And third, talk about something no one has talked about since 1987: America’s meaning in the world, what we’re here for, what our reason for being and must be in the changing geopolitical universe.

Men who talk like that aren’t stupid; men who talk like that are big, and serious, and right. The perception trickles down. People notice, and suddenly Jay Leno can’t make the Bush-is-dumb joke in the monologue anymore because suddenly the audience isn’t laughing as hard because suddenly they don’t agree with the premise. Because Bush ain’t dumb.

*   *   *

Since I’m writing this column weekly and I’ve decided we’re friends, I wanted to tell you about a wonderful thing I went to last night in Manhattan, the book party at Le Cirque for Liz Smith, whose memoir, “Natural Blond” was published this week. It was one of those sparkling New York evenings—I know that’s a clichÈ but it was, a dark cool autumn-breeze night. As I walked into the small, wood-paneled ballroom the sound of laughter and chatter and tinkling glasses made a great hum; everyone looked beautiful and they were all dressed up and I just stood there and thought: the whole busy world.

David Frost was over here against the wall talking to Gail Sheehy about interviewing Tony Blair this Sunday morning, Blair’s first live sit-down interview since his disastrous 21-point slide in the polls. Over there Matt Drudge was talking into the microphone of Jeannie Williams of USA Today as Mary Tyler Moore and Robert Levine walked by.

Henry Kissinger; Amy Gross, editor of O: The Oprah Magazine; an attractive young man who a friend said was a downtown hairdresser and who turned out to be Prince Edward of England made his way through the room; the murderer-finder Dominick Dunne, the agents Mort Janklow and Lynn Nesbit and Joni Evans, the director Joel Schumacher, tall and handsome as a movie star; Mitch Rosenthal of Phoenix House, than whom no one is more serious about helping kids in trouble with drugs, and the legendary editor and writer Henry Grunwald, with his civic-minded and glamorous wife, Louise.

Peter Jennings and Barbara Walters and Judy Miller and Geraldine Fabricant of the New York Times, and James Hoge of Foreign Affairs, and a nine-year-old boy in khakis and blue shirt who politely sipped a Coke as his mother, who works with Ms. Smith, politely introduced him to the great. It was glitteringly friendly.

Ms. Walters gave a short, funny speech in which she dryly announced that she was Ms. Smith’s lover, that in fact all the givers of the party, including Louise Grunwald and Joan Ganz Cooney of “Sesame Street,” were lovers, and got together as often as they could when their husbands were out of town. The roar of laughter that followed acknowledged the subtext: the attention given in many quarters to Smith’s references in the book to her energetic and colorful romantic life over the span of 60 years.

The book is full of good stories and gossip but the most striking thing about it is its air of sweet tolerance, as if Ms. Smith thinks we’re all damaged and full of excellence and sin and drama and fun and a rich, messy humanity. Which of course we are, at least on our livelier days.

Ms. Smith has mentioned me in her column a few times, in ways that were either mildly complimentary or mildly critical—I gather she finds my politics conservative—but she’s a very fine woman and it’s an honor to be lauded or knocked by her. The party they threw for her was blissfully free of politics and full of good feeling. What a relief from real life. What a great night.

Have you been watching Joe Lieberman? Did you see him on Conan last night, singing “My Way”? Did you see him on Imus this morning talking about religion and culture and Hollywood? He was masterly—interesting and funny and solid. He has the authenticity and self-command of the secure, mature adult, of a man who has nothing to fear from himself.

He is winning the charm offensive, the personality offensive. So is Al Gore; did you see his hip and witty self on Letterman last night? The other afternoon I was home surfing the Net and a friend instant-messaged me: “Are you watching Oprah? Gore is winning the election.” My friend told me later that Oprah’s debut show, on which Gore was the only guest for an hour, had an estimated nine million viewers, the vast majority middle-class women of all ages. From what I saw he must have impressed them all.

This is the problem for Bush-Cheney. I remember the days when the Republicans were the charming ones, when the Democrats were Jimmy Carter or Walter Mondale and the Republicans had the wit and self-possession of Ronald Reagan. Although it’s interesting to me that I can’t think of another charming Republican except Nelson Rockefeller, who was in many ways a regional taste, and John McCain, the flyboy, who has charm to spare.

George W. Bush was of course once famous for his charm. And Dick Cheney didn’t need charm, so full of heft, seriousness, experience and wisdom was he. But now .Ý.Ý. now both seem relatively charm-free zones, and to their detriment.

One of the problems is the obvious and famous one: the media tend to like the Dem and not the Rep, and the Dem feels it and blossoms and the Rep feels it and contracts. This is how an Al Gore—Al Gore!—becomes warm and funny. When Oprah loves you, you know it; when Oprah doesn’t you know that too. Ditto Imus, ditto everyone else. And of course when Mr. Lieberman is whimsical and funny on Conan it winds up being replayed over and over everywhere else, as you will soon find. If a Republican lapsed into charm it would go down the memory hole, straight into nowhere.

People always say, “But Reagan didn’t let them stop him!” That is both true and not true. Mr. Reagan didn’t care if Johnny Carson or Merv Griffin liked him. But Mr. Reagan wasn’t charming in an obvious television way, or rather in the modern television way, by which I mean he wasn’t particularly good at showing up on talk shows and doing witty or endearing badinage with the likes of Phil Donahue. Mr. Reagan was charming on the stump, where his speeches and comments were big and serious and marked by humor and modesty. (Much more important, of course: Mr. Reagan had Mr. Carter, and Leonid Brezhnev, and the Ayatollah Khomeini; Mr. Reagan had patriotism and America’s hunger to stop the long slide.)

Republicans are still capable of seriousness and substance leavened by sweetness and charm on the stump of course, but they’re no match on Oprah and Conan and Dave and Jay.

It would be hard to overestimate the extent to which this is a disadvantage for Republicans and a boon for Democrats. Presidents, as we all know, now live in our living rooms; they are never gone, are always in our face, will not leave. When I was a child the president was Dwight Eisenhower, and you could happily live in America and actually not know that. Presidents were like popes; they made their pronouncements from the balcony of a big white building and left. Now choosing a president is like picking a friend, or a tenant who’ll live downstairs with a four-year lease. You want this person to be pleasant and interesting and bright. It’s understandable that you’d want this.

Poor Republicans. They don’t, in their hearts, think any of this is worthy of them. They think to focus on humor and hipness is cheap, secondary, merely manipulative. They’re right, of course. We are entertaining ourselves to death in America, and one of the signs and expressions of this is the fact that we don’t want to pick a president who doesn’t entertain us. We don’t even want a head of the Joint Chiefs whom we don’t find attractive. As if it mattered. When of course it doesn’t.

And yet of course it does.

I am depressing myself, and may be depressing you. I will share yesterday’s thought, discussed at length with a friend. In 1992 the Democratic nominee for president, Mr. Clinton, won with 43% of the vote. The other 57% went to nominees more conservative than the Democrat, George Bush and Ross Perot. In 1994 the House and Senate went Republican for the first time since the 1950s. In 1996 the Democratic nominee for president won with 49% of the vote. In an era of extraordinary prosperity and almost unbroken peace, the incumbent couldn’t manage a majority. This is still a more-conservative than more-liberal country. It is not by any means over for Mr. Bush.

There, I feel better. But Gov. Bush: Please, please, get some Hollywood writers to send you wonderful funny lines and jokes. That’s what Al Gore does. His wit comes from Hollywood and New York. He isn’t sitting around wisecracking and then asking Bob Shrum, “Is that funny? Should I use that?” Hire humor. First-class humor. Now.

That sound you’ve been hearing, that wind softly rattling the window panes—that’s New York state’s three million registered Republicans breathing a sigh of relief. Rick Lazio’s got what it takes.

He won Wednesday’s debate. He not only won it, he won it by winning and not just by coming out even. He didn’t treat Hillary Clinton with kid gloves; he treated her like a pol who deserved a punch, and he swung. Crossing the stage with the agreement not to take soft money was masterly, reviving an old debating tactic—surprise your foe and don’t let go—and making every front page in the state. But most of all, Mr. Lazio engaged—he looked at her, talked to her, put the spotlight on her—and laughed.

All of it good stuff. But the most riveting moment, and the one that will be long remembered, was NBC’s Tim Russert’s use of videotape to confront Mrs. Clinton with her famous Matt Lauer “Today” Show interview when the Monica story broke. This was something new—I don’t remember ever seeing a debate moderator use taped clips of a candidate’s past interviews, and I’m surprised Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Lazio agreed to it, if they did.

Mrs. Clinton’s angry visage in that two-year-old tape, her bitter hardness, were fascinating to see after all this time. (So was the way her face has changed, which I don’t think was lost on anyone watching. It made you think of the old chameleon charge, “This woman will do anything and be anyone to win.”) And it is that—how she acted in the Lauer interview, the charges she made, and how she would now have to address her actions—that made Mrs. Clinton gulp, not the general subject matter, which she’s been handling smoothly for two years. But then she’s never once been pressed on her part in the Monica matter, or pressed for an apology for her statements.

She was very lucky in Mr. Russert’s choice of clips; he did not include the “vast right-wing conspiracy” but only referred to it later himself, and he did not include the most deadly quote from that interview, when Mrs. Clinton told Mr. Lauer: “When this is over some folks are going to have a lot to answer for.” Still, when Mrs. Clinton’s answered Mr. Russert, she floundered and lost her footing—”That was a very, a very painful time for me, for my family and for our country”—which was fascinating to see, because Mrs. Clinton is very smooth and doesn’t flounder. But she probably didn’t think anyone would ever play that old footage right in front of her and then insist on a response.

What a moment. Mrs. Clinton’s people are hopefully spreading the spin that Mr. Russert’s challenge will start a new round of sympathy for Hillary, who, they say, was a victim of that scandal. But one senses that people no longer view Mrs. Clinton as a sympathetic figure, that 18 months of seeing her operate as a hardball, hard-gut pol has diminished her ability to seem the victim.

*   *   *

Here is why I think the debate was important, even crucial. Mrs. Clinton had a strong voice and a steady gaze and she touched on all her issues and she looked attractive. But she was cold, and programmed, and when she tried to be tough and assertive she seemed sarcastic and Madame Nhu-ish. She did not lose any friends in the debate, but she didn’t make new ones. If you tuned it not liking her, you didn’t like her when it was over. She pleased her base. She didn’t didn’t move forward.

If you tuned in not liking Mr. Lazio, you may have changed your mind or begun to change your mind. He’s not sleazy or dark; he’s bright and winning. He was equal to his opponent, and maybe more than that. When he was tough with Mrs. Clinton he seemed not snarky but strong—”I agree that Mrs. Clinton has a record in education, and it was a disaster.” “I think that, frankly, what’s so troubling here with respect to what my opponent just said, is somehow that it only matters what you say when you get caught.” He seemed like a normal person, not like a programmed political windup doll. And though he still looked young, did you notice the hair in front that’s suddenly going gray? He wanted you to, I think. He combed his hair in front in a way that seemed to accentuate the grayness. (He’ll be on the stump upstate today saying things like, “Yeah, my first gray hairs—I’m calling each of ‘em Hillary.”)

He made new friends and showed doubters he was big enough to take Mrs. Clinton, which is half of what he has to do in the campaign.

Both candidates, stuck at about 45% in the polls, needed new friends. I think he got them and she didn’t.

But the other half of what Mr. Lazio has to do in the campaign—prove he’s big enough to hold the Moynihan seat, prove to New Yorkers that he has sufficient heft to be their senator—really remains to be done.

*   *   *

Mr. Lazio must more forcefully communicate his brand of compassionate conservatism, which he speaks of with engagement and feeling in private and inadequately on the stump and in commercials. I have had one private conversation with him, and he told me that he is a Republican who wants to help with the “rungs.” He said it is a legitimate function of government to help new immigrants and people in crisis to grab a few rungs on the ladder and pull themselves up and out. But he didn’t believe in the old-fashioned ways of doing this, the old tax-and-spend bloated government ways; there are other approaches that are both more effective and more constructive. It was really interesting what he said, and he ought to share it on the stump.

He also flattered me by saying—I didn’t take notes, so I quote from memory: “I have a big question that’s been on my mind and if you have any thoughts I’d like to hear.” I said sure. He said, “How do I on the one hand maintain the right level of combativeness toward an opponent and at the same time effectively communicate how the new Republicans think and what we believe? How do I break through on my philosophy?” I didn’t know what to say, because I was so surprised. I have heard politicians ask questions in private about the big thing that’s on their mind, and it’s always fund-raising or how do I get the teachers union or if I do this will the press say that. It’s never about meaning or philosophy.

I told Mr. Lazio this, and he started to laugh but continued to press: How to make his beliefs clear, how to show what new Republicans, the young Republicans, believe in? I said I guess he just has to start talking about it.

He was refreshing. Yet while I don’t see him much on the stump, it’s not my impression that he’s breaking through in this area as he should.

*   *   *

There will be another debate. A chastened Hillary will fight back hard. Next time she’ll have her own version of crossing the stage with a soft-money agreement, she’ll have her own version of Happy Warrior. Her aides are focus-grouping the debate right now, and they’ll be giving her lines and advice to counter what didn’t work this time.

It will continue to be close. It ain’t over until the first lady sings. But I will be surprised if Mr. Lazio doesn’t get a boost in the polls from Wednesday’s performance. And if he uses that boost to make it a stronger, deeper campaign it could mean everything.

*   *   *

Wednesday’s debate was the best in New York since the Lewis Lehrman-Mario Cuomo debate of 1982. That meeting was wonderful, in part because it served the public by focusing on meaning. Messrs. Lehrman and Cuomo spoke of the big things—the proper role of government, what it should expect of us and do for, and to, us. The Clinton-Lazio debate showed us two people, to the advantage of one and the disadvantage of the other. It was revealing in part because there was a moderator who pressed each candidate to reveal and respond and answer. But neither candidate really dealt enough with belief—she, one suspects, because she knows her true beliefs would not be attractive to a lot of voters, and he I think because he falls into the unconscious defensive crouch of Republicans in New York. They are a minority group; they fear being misunderstood; better just to smile. But they can’t, or rather their leaders can’t.

New Yorkers were well served in this first Senate debate. They got a sharp sense of who was at issue; next time, one hopes, they’ll get a sharp sense of what is at issue.

Memo to: Hillary Clinton, Rick Lazio
From: Lee Atwater
Re: Tonight’s debate

OK, listen up. Where I am you don’t root for Reps or Dems, you root for the truth and hope for a show. With you two I’m still waiting on both. This whole campaign you’ve been waging has been kind of . . . demure! Kind of “Who’s the nicest girl at Wellesley?”

Now you got to mix it up. The contest you’re in is so close, such a tossup, that it could actually be settled by what happens tonight in the ring.

That’s how I see you, as fighters. That’s what all good pols are, ultimately. Right now, Hillary, you’re on your stool in your corner and Harold’s whispering in your ear and Mandy’s adjusting your mouthpiece. Rick, you’re over there nodding to Murphy and moving your head left and right to unkink your neck, as fighters do.

OK. Here’s my last-minute advice before the bell.

You walk out there and you’re both so pumped with adrenaline, excitement and fear that your hands are shaking. Hillary, you walk over to Rick as soon as you get on the stage. Laughingly, real friendly, put out your hand and maybe try to kiss him, to show you’re warm and he’s a wuss.

Rick, don’t let her walk to you. You walk over to her instead, like a man. Don’t give her the big-tan smile, give her a small smile and a nod. Then pivot to the audience and wave to them with the big smile.

Go back to your podiums. Rick, if you wear reading glasses put ‘em on now, and look at your notes. Hillary, if you wear reading glasses, don’t.

*   *   *

It begins: “Ladies and gentlemen . . .”

All right, psychology. Rick, in your head she’s a tank. Fine. But her steering’s busted and she’s running out of gas, so don’t worry about her. Hillary, you’re not exactly nervous when you think of him. One of the great things about the Clintons is they never run against anyone they respect, because the minute someone becomes an opponent of the Clintons the Clintons understand he’s a bad person, an idiot. When it comes to Lazio—let’s face it—you think you’ve scraped more interesting things off your shoe. Fine.

Strategy. Rick, pols do what they know how to do. Hillary will fight and aggress. You’re still one of those white guys tying himself in knots on how tough to be when you’re debating a woman. Forget that, it’s not a question. No one thinks Hillary Clinton’s a woman, they think she’s a phenomenon, like the weather. Treat her like you’d treat a guy.

She’s smart. She’s going to take the issues on which she is most vulnerable—trustworthiness, etc.—and flip ‘em, pretend that they are the areas in which you are most vulnerable. She always does this, because it clouds things up and makes them confusing.

She’s going to accuse you of having a weak record, of being untrustworthy, of being a hypocrite. She’ll start out strong and say that in comparison with you she has a 30-year record of achievement in education and in other things.

Fine. Let her come out and land a few. That will establish that she is the aggressor. Then you get on the balls of your feet and unleash a serious critique of all that she is and represents. She says she has a record in health care, you say she tried to take away the right of patients to choose their own doctor and to decide their own treatment. She says she can work with the big boys in Washington, you say: “Your own party wouldn’t work with you in the House and the Senate.”

This is important, Rick: Look at her, and engage. Normally I tell debaters not to talk to the opponent but to talk to the camera, to the viewers. But in your case, look at her. Put out your arm and point sometimes. Don’t forget the camera, turn to it and play to it occasionally, but engage her. It’ll unnerve her a little.

And don’t always be smiling. Look serious, because this is serious business—you’re gonna save the people of New York from more high tax, high spend, high promise, high disappointment.

Lately, Hillary’s taken to talking about “what we do with our surplus.” But it isn’t her surplus, and it isn’t a surplus. It’s billions in overpaid taxes yanked out of the pockets of the people of Buffalo and Amityville. Challenge her: Why can’t the people have their money back? Why should they believe she and her friends will spend it better than they will?

Another thing. Hillary is completely used to talking in one-minute and two-minute speeches. She does this because she has spent the past eight years being the First Lady and not being interrupted. And before that it was 12 years as the governor’s wife.

So interrupt her, press her, knock her off her stride. Do it politely, but persistently. “Oh, Mrs. Clinton, that is only rhetoric. The truth is—.” She may well reveal the imperious temper that rattles her staff. It ain’t a pretty sight. Help her show it.

*   *   *

Hillary, you have to be careful. But you can win this. Rick Lazio has that fatal politeness, that disheartening good cheer. He’s one of the Love Republicans. They’re just so happy and eager they could burst. You go wipe the smile off his face.

Go in hard, right away, and destabilize him. Remember, no one thinks you’re a woman, they think you’re a toughie. Fine, be tough. Tough, but pretty. ‘Cause in a funny way, the prettier you look, the more competent you look.

People aren’t sure Lazio has enough heft to fill the Moynihan seat. One of his problems: Like most Republicans, he is palpably bored by the complexities of public policy and legislation. But Democrats—position papers are their pornography.

Dazzle and impress people with your grasp of the arcana of public policy. When he says, “We have to cut taxes,” you just smile and shake your head and assure him you want to cut taxes as much as the next guy but it has to be done in a way that helps working families and not the rich. Then say we have to protect the Kilicott Amendment within subclause 746 of the IRS Code as amended in 1982 by Ronald Reagan. I just made that up. But it sounds real. You can make one up, too. Rick’ll get that earnest look and try to puzzle it out and by the time he catches up you’ll be on a woman’s right to choose. He’ll be so confused he’ll stutter. People who stutter in debates don’t have heft.

You know that he’ll try to hit you with what his people and your people know are your weak points. A public perception that you’re dishonest, a user, too clever by half. But I like the way you’re going to turn it on him—that he’s untrustworthy on campaign funding, untrustworthy in his support of abortion, a maneuverer who got along with Newt Gingrich. You charge first. Then he has to say, “I know you are but what am I?” like a kid.

Look beautiful and smiling. The bright colors, that pastel-sweater-thrown-over-the-jacket thing you’re doing, it’s good. It heightens and warms your color. A solid hour for makeup—the eyes, the eyes. Smile a lot—a smile is your best friend, makes you look not fierce but friendly.

Hillary, you need humor. Rick, you need wit. Both of you should walk in with three good jokes or three good lines. Hillary, two of yours should be self-deprecating. Try to have a line about Lazio so good that it makes even him laugh. An opponent laughing is half taken.

Hillary, watch your voice. I saw you with Charlie Gibson on “Good Morning America” yesterday and believe me, the uninflected suburban school-board drone is wearing thin. Try to use your voice in a way that has more . . . woman in it. Don’t mean to be sexist but you sound preachy: “The Wellesley class of ‘68 tells us how to floss.” Don’t be patronizing. A little humility wouldn’t hurt.

If he gets on the scandals don’t look stricken, just shake your head sadly. “This isn’t about the past, it’s about the future.” “He can try to drag us down into this whole world of unproven allegations, and if that’s how he wants to spend his time then I think that’s just sad. I will spend my time trying to improve life for New Yorkers who aren’t as lucky as Rick Lazio, or me for that matter.”

*   *   *

Remember to thank Tim, and all the network news shows hooked in. Thank the people for their time and attention. It’s homework for them, remember. They do it because they want to be good citizens.

You be good citizens, too. Talk about the meaning of this election, and what’s really at issue.

Hillary, if you win this debate you probably win the election and reach straight for the presidency. Rick, if you win this one you stop Clinton II in its tracks, you win a moderate presence from New York in the U.S. Senate, and you settle down to being great, which is what you want on your tombstone. “New York’s Great Senator.”

That’s big, on both sides, for both of you.

Make it sound as big as it is.

Has George W. Bush bottomed out, and is he starting to come back? There is reason to think so, and not only because every newspaper in America has “Bush Done For—GOP Panics” stories on the front page which, considering your usual journalistic time lag, suggests his comeback is well under way. Mr. Bush’s campaign this week took on an urgency, with substantive proposals on Medicare and education, and an aggressive look at Al Gore’s programs. And the debate debate, which looked flaky at first, seems to deserve greater scrutiny, and bears the potential for dividends.

I think this because I’ve been reading transcripts of “Meet the Press.”

*   *   *

Mr. Bush agreed to debate Mr. Gore in a prime-time version of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” hosted by Tim Russert, because he had to make a virtue of necessity. Mr. Gore is a gifted debater—disciplined, seasoned by four national political cycles, possessed of a killer’s instincts. Mr. Bush is not a great debater. He hasn’t even shown himself to be a good debater. In the primary debates he looked like he was sliding down in his chair so teacher wouldn’t notice him. And when he tried to speak candidly, saying for instance that Jesus was his favorite philosopher, he couldn’t explain why except to assert that Christ had changed his heart, which seemed both believable and inadequate.

So Mr. Bush is bad at debate and Mr. Gore is good, but the latter has reason to fear a grilling from a persistent questioner and the former doesn’t. Mr. Gore wants to debate but not to be interviewed, and Mr. Bush wants to be interviewed but not to debate. The brilliant answer: have a “debate” in which Mr. Russert, who has his own killer instincts, asks questions. That way Mr. Gore, who has the talent to dominate, will not be allowed to. It won’t be Big Al versus the Shrub. It would be a moderator with two equals.

Mr. Gore had clearly agreed to this format and venue. In an interview with Mr. Russert on July 16, he even pushed for the CEO of General Electric, which owns NBC, to get Mr. Bush to agree:

Mr. Gore: I’ve accepted for two or three months now your invitation to debate on this program. Have you gotten a yes from Gov. Bush yet?

Mr. Russert: His campaign says he will debate you, and the request is under active consideration . . .

Mr. Gore: “Well, how are you going to persuade him to say yes, Tim?”

Mr. Russert: “Well, maybe you’re helping today.”

Mr. Gore: “Well, do you think so? But what kind of approach—can you get Jack Welch involved?”

But when Mr. Bush accepted the debate this week, Mr. Gore suddenly refused to take part. The media are letting him get away with it for several reasons, including (a) the other broadcast-network shows failed to get the debate and are not happy, and (b) the debate would be good for a competitor, and helping Tim Russert isn’t their job. It isn’t mine either, but getting both candidates in a setting in which they will reveal things about themselves, their history and their thinking is.

*   *   *

In the 40 years since John F. Kennedy debated Richard Nixon, presidential debates have declined as venues in which revelation and insight occur. They are now what was once said of flying—hours of boredom punctuated by a few seconds of sheer terror. (“Mr. President, are you saying that Poland is a free country?”) Modern debates consist of a 90-second sound bite in which one candidate asserts, followed by 60 seconds in which another rebuts, followed by 30 seconds of answer to the rebuttal. It is rote, ritualistic, unrevealing. It is perfectly suited to Al Gore, the human Conair 2000, who opens his mouth, flips the switch and blows, and who also wrote a college paper on how presidential news conferences can be handled through prefab sound bites.

But what has frozen and hardened in these debates could be broken up and made fluid again by the presence of a seasoned interviewer. Mr. Bush thinks Mr. Russert is tough but fair; Mr. Gore thinks Mr. Russert is—well, he thinks he’s the man who put him through this:

Mr. Russert: “I want to ask you a very simple question. Do you believe that life begins at conception?”

Mr. Gore: “No. I believe there is a difference. You know, I believe that the Roe v. Wade decision wisely embodies the kind of common-sense judgment that most Americans share.”

Mr. Russert then showed a letter Mr. Gore had written in 1987, in which he said he consistently opposed federal funding of abortions because government shouldn’t take part in “the taking of what is arguably a human life.” Mr. Gore answered that he had changed his mind on that “10, 15 years ago.”

Mr. Russert: “But you did vote to define a person as including an unborn child.” Mr. Gore said it was a “procedural vote.”

Mr. Russert: “When do you think life begins?”

Mr. Gore: “I favor the Roe v. Wade approach, but let me just say, Tim, I did—”

Mr. Russert: “Which is what? When does life begin?”

Mr. Gore did not answer, but referred instead to changing his position on federal funding of abortions. The interviewer pressed again.

Mr. Russert: “But you were calling fetuses innocent human life, and now you don’t believe life begins at conception. I’m just trying to find out, when do you believe life begins?”

Mr. Gore replied that Roe v. Wade “proposes an answer to that question.” Asked what it is, he replied that there is “a developmental process during which the burden kind of shifts over time.” He vowed to protect “a woman’s right to choose.” Then Mr. Russert changed approach.

Mr. Russert: “Should there be a restriction on minors getting abortions without parental consent?”

Mr. Gore: “Difficult question, because there are all kind of circumstances where you have some children kind of raising themselves in situations where their families are fracturedÝ.Ý.Ý.”

He added that the decision needs to “be worked out in the context of a woman’s right to choose.”

Mr. Russert: “But a child needs permission to have her ears pieced.”

Mr. Gore: “I understand.”

Mr. Russert: “You don’t want parental permission for an abortion.”

Mr. Gore said some proposals on this “have been a backdoor effort to eliminate a woman’s right to choose.” Mr. Russert asked why not support parental notification in which a judge could intervene in the kind of cases he refers to. Mr. Gore said, “Well, I’d want to look at that.” So Mr. Russert changed approach again.

Mr. Russert: “Right now there’s legislation which says that a woman on death row—if she’s pregnant, she should not be executed. Do you support that?”

Mr. Gore: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Mr. Russert: “It’s a federal statute . . . that if a woman is pregnant and she’s on death row, she should not be executed.”

Mr. Gore: “Well, I don’t know what the circumstances would be in that situation. I would—you know, it’s an interesting fact situation. I’d want to think about it.”

It was stupendous, an hour of relentless and informed questioning on Social Security, the surplus, tax policy, and whether the Boy Scouts should be allowed to exclude gay members (Mr. Gore couldn’t say). It was the most revealing presidential interview since Roger Mudd met Ted Kennedy in 1980 and showed us Mr. Kennedy’s utter inability to make a case for his own candidacy.

*   *   *

Mr. Russert is becoming the first indispensable television journalist since Walter Cronkite. With his happy-killer mug, and his desire to bore in, he makes you think of what was said of Lenin: “He could exhaust you by listening.” (Idiotic but defensively necessary note: I worked for MSNBC, which is part of NBC, during the political conventions this year; I also did a half-hour interview with Mr. Russert when my book on Hillary Clinton came out, and emerged exhausted though not horrified.)

Mr. Gore has his reasons for not wanting to be subjected to another grilling; but the public might benefit greatly from it, as it would be what we want all such events to be: revealing.

Mr. Bush, at this point, should speak frankly of his underdog status in whatever debates finally occur. He should start making jokes about it, too, and making people laugh at the difference between his lack of gifts in that area and Mr. Gore’s abundance of them. He might even come right out and declare Gore the winner going in. Mr. Bush should also explain frankly how you can be both best candidate and worst debater, the right man with the right ideas and the lesser talent for asserting them.

Which brings us to the old empty-chair gambit. Mr. Bush says he’ll show up at the debate time with an empty chair, put it down on the sidewalk and offer to debate. Some joker has already answered, “Watch out, the chair will win!” That is one great line, but it begs for a comeback, and perhaps if Mr. Bush meets with the press for an hour or two that night and takes all questions, the comeback will be his.

We approach Labor Day, the traditional kickoff of the American political season. Labor Day of course used to be a holiday with parades and picnics at which politicians celebrated the virtues of the working man who for once was getting a day off.

There are still parades, but Labor Day now is mostly a matter of the last day of summer vacation; Americans are at the beach or packing up the lake house or taking the kids to Target and Staples for school supplies. Most Americans this Monday will be preoccupied with coming or going, with planning the packing or navigating their way through traffic jams. But their cars have radios, and radios have news reports, and there’s no news on Labor Day but what politicians are charging and asserting, and so Labor Day is still Labor Day, and it still counts.

Politicians will have to try harder from here on in, and think smarter. Now they’re competing not with summer’s distractions but with autumn’s realities—school, and work, and the new TV season, which isn’t important everywhere but is in America. Also, they’re running out of time. Monday is Sept. 4; Election Day is Nov. 7. Sixty-four days. From now on there is no long-range planning in campaigns, just planning.

The two most fascinating and compelling races remain the presidential race between George W. Bush and Al Gore and the New York Senate race between Hillary Clinton and Rick Lazio. The polls say both races are neck-and-neck, which may in fact be true.

Mr. Bush’s presidential bid continues in the Perils of Pauline tone that has marked it since the beginning. He is always the strong, probably unconquerable frontrunner being surprised by the unexpected strength of the opponent. In the winter he couldn’t be beaten—until he got beat, by John McCain in New Hampshire. Then he came back in South Carolina and couldn’t be beaten—until he got beat, by John McCain in Michigan. Then a good convention and a good speech and he couldn’t be beaten—until Mr. Gore bounced out of Los Angeles and beat him in the polls.

*   *   *

Mr. Bush always seems hurt, jarred when he falls. His syntax, normally frail, collapses; thick tongue sets in, “hostage” becomes “hostile,” thoughts collide. His father was like this; when pressed about the closeness of his friendship with president Reagan he tried to say they have “excellent discussions” and wound up saying, “We’ve had sex.” It is not the sound of dumb, it is the sound of quick thoughts crashing into each other and producing verbal accidents.

Still, the Democrats and many in the media have been in a new round of the attempted Quayle-ization of Gov. Bush, and to some degree it has taken hold. Part of it is inevitable: clips of candidates fumbling are irresistible, and fun to see; they brighten every news and chat show, and so are repeated. But part of it is the way Democrats have learned to operate in the Clinton era. Rush Limbaugh isn’t wrong, he’s a big fat idiot. The Democratic operative Paul Begala has a book called “Is Our Children Learning?” that offers not a serious case for Gore or against Bush, or even a passionate one, but that simply asserts that Mr. Bush is a dullard. Democrats have learned the past eight years that you don’t have to make a serious case for or against; all you have to do is change the focus of the argument and heighten it. (When I went on call-in shows to talk about my book “The Case Against Hillary Clinton,” none of her supporters ever made the case for Hillary; instead they would say, “Mary Bono didn’t deserve her husband’s congressional seat either.”)

And part of the attempt to Quayle-ize Bush is simply tradition, and in a way an understandable one. Dwight Eisenhower was spoofed by Eastern eggheads as barely coherent, Gerald Ford as a fumbling idiot, Ronald Reagan as retarded, George Bush pére as a ninny. Bright Democrats do this because they don’t really understand how Republicans think, or why they think what they think; their answer, by now a tradition, has become: Because they’re stupid.

Democrats and media folk have been equally quick and keen to laud the intelligence of Democratic presidents. Jimmy Carter was brilliant, a nuclear engineer, probably the highest-IQ president ever to live in the White House. Or that at least is what they were saying in 1976 and ‘79. The same is said of Bill Clinton today, in almost the same words—”He’s probably the most brilliant man we’ve ever had as president,” a close friend, a doctor and no fool, told me recently. I pointed out that it was therefore a real accomplishment that he has never, in eight years, said anything intellectually interesting. My friend the doctor blinked, and thought, and did not dissent. We did however agree that Clinton has said interesting things in depositions.

*   *   *

Anyway, I don’t think any of this matters much. Voters don’t expect Republicans to be intellectuals, don’t seem to admire intellectuals greatly, and seem to have the sense that an extremely high IQ can be an encumbrance in the presidency, as in many other great leadership positions. Intellectuals are always tying themselves in knots, missing the obvious, discovering new things to believe in. Presidents have to have good heads, good hearts, solid beliefs, courage; they can hire brilliance and cleverness.

The Dan Quayle problem isn’t Mr. Bush’s great challenge. He doesn’t have to prove his intelligence. He’s obviously bright, he has had two successful terms as governor. But he needs to show solidity. He needs to show that he’s got a strong and even keel, that he is serious about policy because it grows from philosophy that grows from experience.

Mr. Bush doesn’t talk enough about his philosophy. I don’t believe he ever has, in any extended way. Most conservatives and libertarians, for instance, believe in general that that government governs best that governs least. They also know why they think this. Assuming Mr, Bush thinks it, I’d certainly like to know why. Why is it better that your federal government not take more power from people? Should it give some back? How?

When you explain the predicate to the American people they listen, and understand; and they work your positions into the predicate for you, as long as the positions make sense.

That’s what they did with Ronald Reagan. They understood what his conservatism was, what it was about, where it came from. And so they could fit his tax cutting logically under his philosophical umbrella. Thus Mr. Reagan cohered.

I am not sure Mr. Bush coheres. I don’t think he does, fully.

Mr. Gore is getting at this when he presses Bush to be specific. The vice president is trying to say of the Texas governor, “There is no there there.” But Mr. Bush is specific, and comes followed by a paper trail of dense issue papers, as Mr. Gore well knows. What Mr. Bush isn’t is abstract and thought-filled. But Mr. Gore can’t challenge Bush to be more philosophical and thought-filled because .Ý.Ý. well, he might do it, which would help him beat Mr. Gore.

*   *   *

Mr. Gore is like Mr. Bush in that he seems affected, perhaps unduly, by what the press is saying, by whether or not he’s thought to be on a roll or in a dive. (Politicians are amazingly frail, or at least frail for tough guys. They really care what’s being said about them. You’d think by the time a man is running for president he’d be less impressed by what’s in Tuesday’s paper.) Right now Mr. Gore is on a roll, enjoying the Lieberman bounce, which sounds like a new dance. The vice president is, as Maureen Dowd points out, newly moussed, his hair thicker, his chest broad and his buns steely. He looks energetic and attractive, like a model in a boomer khaki catalogue, stepping forward as he looks at his wristwatch in a peaked-pecs pose.

I keep wondering why, since Al Gore first became vice president eight years ago, Tipper has made it a point to talk about how sexy he is, how virile. What have their focus groups been telling them that she has to keep telling people how hot he is? Haven’t we had enough of hot? One of the funniest moments of the political year was on David Letterman’s show the other night, when two of his stagehands read an “Oprah” transcript of Tipper telling Oprah how passionate Al is. The Clintons used to flaunt their passion in order to prove they have a marriage and not an arrangement. But why do the Gores do it?

Since I appear to be on a rant, why does Bill Clinton keep holding Chelsea’s hand and giving her little smiles? Did you see them in Africa? They even get off Air Force One now holding hands. Chelsea is a grown woman now, and it’s kind of creepy.

But to be fair, all this hand holding started at least as far back as the Reagans, who just liked to hold hands. Some political operative found out people liked it, so when George and Barbara Bush came in they had to do it too. It looked absurd. Every presidential couple has had to do it since. Could we just allow future presidents and their wives not to hold hands in public? Thank you.

*   *   *

Mr. Gore’s people say, and he himself said in his acceptance speech, that this election is not a personality contest. This has led some observers to state that Mr. Gore’s people know Mr. Bush’s personality is better. But Mr. Bush doesn’t have a glittering personality—he doesn’t dazzle us with his good humor or his homespun ways or his self-deprecating charm. I think when Mr. Gore talks about personality he really means character. And Mr. Bush’s character does seem to work for him—he seems transparently a good person, a genuine fellow who isn’t hidden or crafty or sneaky or mean, a person of appropriate modesty. He seems like a normal man, imperfect but normal, and rather nice.

Mr. Gore’s character, on the other hand, is a question mark. In part because of whom he’s been close to the past eight years and how well he fit in with them. In part because of the constant swirl of changes he’s shown us, both in terms of style (the alpha man) and of substance (where he stands on free trade, where he once stood on abortion). A man well into his 50s who changes so much seems odd. And not very solid.

I suppose some of the presidential campaign will come down to which candidate voters feel they can trust personally. And so I have been wondering which candidate would be most likely to lie to me. My impression of Mr. Bush is that he doesn’t lie because if he did he’d feel so guilty and so insecure in his ability to pull it off that his face would redden and his eyes shift and he’d break out in sweat. But Mr. Gore seems to me capable of telling a lie, of spinning just about any fiction, and with utmost conviction, too. This is a talent, but not a good one.

*   *   *

So where do I think the presidential race stands now, as Labor Day approaches?

I think where it stood last spring. Mr. Bush has to prove that he’s solid. People I know whom I trust with good reason have long told me he is. He has a record, which might illustrate his solidity. Maybe he ought to talk about it more. Maybe he should explain how Texas is a triumph, and not a squalid environmental disaster where barefoot children beg for pencils on the way to dilapidated schools. Maybe he could tell us how his philosophy yielded his positions, which have helped his state.

And Mr. Gore, I think, has to show he is good. That’s a tall order, too.

They both have a lot to prove to us. So I guess I think Labor Day really is the final beginning, the real kickoff.

Everyone seems to have something to say about “Survivor,” and I don’t see why I should be any different. It seems to me the popularity of the show rests on two things. The first obviously is that it’s kind of fun, or at least not without interest, to watch sandy people in shorts squabble, scheme and eat rats. The other is that viewers can’t resist making unconscious connections between what they’re seeing on the screen and what they’re doing in their lives.

I don’t mean to sound like Al Gore, but I believe the power of metaphor is alive here. I think the wild popularity of Wednesday night’s show is due in part to people seeing the attempts of the folks on the island to survive as crude expressions of their own attempts to succeed, to achieve lives of satisfaction and meaning. Some of us are tough and assertive, like Susan; some are cold and calculating, like Richard; some resourceful like Rudy or sweet and kind like Sonja or a bit of a mixture, like Kelly. We don’t want to harm anyone, we just want to win. Sometimes we find ourselves caught in the snares of others; sometimes we throw a snare or two ourselves. I think people rooted for the person most like them, or the person most like what they’d like to be.

Last night Susan gave the most memorable speech by an American so far in this political year. Her—I’m paraphrasing—Richard, you’re a snake, and Kelly, you’ve become a rat, and I think we should do as nature intended and let the snake eat the rat is already famous and was talked about in offices across America all morning today. But Richard’s speech—again paraphrasing—I did what I felt I had to do, and I hope you can respect that—and Kelly’s—I’m not proud of all of my actions here, but I was trying to do well while also doing right—were also solid, and memorable.

No one was trying to be eloquent. They were just trying to get their point across. They did. Some politicians could learn from this.

*   *   *

Since this column is called Hillary & Company, I think it’s time to discuss Mrs. Clinton. I have been thinking about her . . .

I have been thinking about a candidate for the U.S. Senate who was a nationally known figure, had never run for office before and was not in fact a native of the state in question. The candidate had been a central figure in a White House scandal and had garnered both a hard-core following of passionate supporters and an army of critics spurred to great effort by great loathing; they said the candidate was using the Senate run as a stepping stone to the presidency.

The candidate had a relatively weak opponent, one who already held state office but whose record was lackluster.

This candidate fought hard, with solid television commercials paid for in part by thousands of donors from outside the state who felt they had a stake in the election. Gales and torrents of money came in to help the candidate, gales and torrents of money sent in, too, to help the opponent. Everyone cared about this one.

The nation watched and waited; the Tuesday in November came. And when it was over, the candidate—Oliver North, a Republican—lost by 50,000 votes of two million cast to his opponent, the incumbent senator, Democrat Charles S. Robb of Virginia. (Final tally: Robb 46%, North 43%.)

*   *   *

Interesting, yes? The North-Robb parallels to Clinton-Lazio aren’t perfect by any means, and we’ll discuss that in a moment, but one thing that is interesting about the North-Robb race is how broadly and deeply hated Ollie North was, and how the passion he inspired determined the election. More than half of Mr. Robb’s own supporters told exit pollers they were voting against Mr. North, not for Mr. Robb. I think it was Richard Nixon who observed that voters are motivated more by dislike than affection, and this race would seem to illustrate the point.

Mr. North was called dangerous, a threat to constitutional governance. When we think of him now, a lot of us see the smiling, thick-eyebrowed man who joshes with Paul Begala on commercials for their TV talk show, “Equal Time.” But a dozen years ago Mr. North was one of the goofier players in a goofy scandal about trying to get Western hostages out of Lebanon by offering U.S. arms to Iranian “moderates” in exchange and dedicating profits from the transaction to the contras of Nicaragua, a ragtag group who fought for and ultimately witnessed the ouster of the communist Sandinista government run by the vain and limited Daniel Ortega.

It was a scandal to be sure, and a disheartening one; America’s president was humiliated, his foreign-policy establishment rocked. To me it seems so long ago, a generation. But only six years ago, Mr. North was still castigated as a monster of history.

Here is a representative critique, from retired army colonel David Hackworth, in a piece published four months before the 1994 election in Playboy: “North’s career shows an undeniable streak of deceit and misuse of the trust of colleagues. . . . [He] would become a threat if he were to succeed in a bid for the Senate. . . . He’s smarmy. . . . He boasts that he was a can-do guy when he was in the White House, but the record spells no-can-do.”

Much the same of course has been said of Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Hackworth foreshadowed another frequent criticism of the first lady by targeting Mr. North’s Northern Virginia home, saying it was not a “plain old farm” as Mr. North maintained, but a million-dollar estate likely funded by campaign donors.

Among many people, Mrs. Clinton is rather roundly despised too. Even her supporters would agree she is a dramatic and divisive figure.

*   *   *

So should she be discouraged by the parallels to the North-Robb race? And should Rick Lazio be encouraged by them? Not necessarily.

True Mr. North and Mrs. Clinton both raised and are raising record sums in their campaigns; and true, out-of-state giving is very high; and true, the rise of both Mr. North and Mrs. Clinton seems to their foes to represent unfortunate trends in our democracy. But the differences between the races are big. For one thing, there was a third candidate in the Robb-North race, Marshall Coleman, a Republican who disapproved of Mr. North and won 11% of the vote. Most of those voters were Republicans, who, had they been denied a third-party option, might have held their nose for Mr. North. If two-thirds of them had done so, he would have won.

Mr. Robb got almost 90% of the black vote and more than half of the women’s vote. Mrs. Clinton hopes to do as well, and still could. Mr. Robb ran as a relatively conservative Democrat in a relatively conservative state; Mrs. Clinton portrays herself as a moderate liberal in a liberal state.

Mr. North didn’t run with the glamour and apparatus of the White House behind him, as Mrs. Clinton does. Mr. North’s bid was complicated when the incumbent Republican U.S. senator from Virginia, John Warner, came out against him and backed Mr. Coleman. Mrs. Clinton has the support of Sen. Charles Schumer and of retiring Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose seat she seeks.

But Mr. Moynihan is less enthusiastic than he was a year ago, when he said, “She’ll run, and she’ll win, too.” In a little-noticed-on-these-shores interview with Roy Hattersley, published in the Times of London on Aug. 11, Mr. Moynihan muted his trumpet. Here are the first three paragraphs of Mr. Hattersley’s piece:

At the mention of Hillary Clinton’s name the temperature in Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s office dropped by at least ten degrees. I had naively assumed that, after 24 years on Capitol Hill, and on the point of retirement, the Senior Senator for New York would enthuse about the Democratic Party’s choice as his successor. But he was uncharacteristically non-commital.

“I’m a Democrat. Of course I support her.” That seemed to me a less than enthusiastic endorsement. So I asked him if he had encouraged her to stand. “I was there when she announced that she was standing,” he replied in his strange, hard-edged New York accent. And that was as much enthusiasm as he was prepared to counterfeit.

He was equally half-hearted about Mrs Clinton’s prospects of success. All he would say about the First Lady’s chances of election was “We’ll see.” And, when he warmed to his theme, his faint praise was even more damning: “Somebody had to run. We took Bobby Kennedy from outside and he won. He got fewer votes than LBJ won in New York that year. But he won.”

Sen. Moynihan is a talker, a gentleman of delicious offhand eloquence who likes to share his doubts and enthusiasms, which are uniformly interesting and usually buttressed by historical references. Perhaps he thought his comments might go unnoticed in an English newspaper; perhaps he thought if they were noticed he’d say, “Ah, ah, the newspapermen of Britain are a rather exciteable lot, and I’m sure the interpretations of my comments by this particular fellow reflect that tendency, which is now a tradition. Except of course in the case of the Irish famine, whose ferocity they managed to downplay with startling uniformity.”

But that interview—that’s something Mrs. Clinton perhaps should worry about.

*   *   *

We are deep into August; autumn beckons. But neither Mr. Lazio nor Mrs. Clinton seems to have distinguished himself or herself lately. He has nice soft commercials portraying himself as a warm caring spender of tax dollars. She has commercials portraying herself as a warm and friendly person who’d like us to know her, and to remember that her opponent is a hard-right ideologue.

Neither seems to be breaking through in any big way, not yet. Neither has given a speech half as memorable as Susan’s on “Survivor.” But few in life get to give a speech that memorable, at least in public.

The problem is that neither has given a speech to the tribe quite as persuasive as Richard’s or Kelly’s.

We are waiting, Mr. Lazio. We are waiting, Mrs. Clinton.

*   *   *

I will end on a happy note. I had a moment of great affection for Americans last night as I watched the interminable post-”Survivor” special on CBS. Listening to all of them analyze the show and their parts in it, hearing them discuss the generational differences between the older survivors and the younger ones, I thought: If I were new here I would think modern Americans practical, tough, bright and funny. They have wit and irreverence and insight. They’re really quite hardy. They are the kind of people who could win a war. It was a happy thought.

So is this. In a country with 167 channels, with a fractured marketplace in which we’re all part of a niche, a sliver, a particular demographic at which is aimed particular programming, it was a relief last night to realize half the country was watching the same thing. Blockbusters still bust blocks; “Survivor” is a blockbuster, and every demographic from grandma to kids was watching.

It is good when these seemingly small cultural moments occur, and when we’re all talking about the same thing the next day. These things help hold us together, like the Evening News did in the 1960s and “Roots” did in the ‘70s. Or like big earthquakes in California, and murderous hurricanes back east. They are things we can refer back to, commonalties we share.

Politics does this too, when it works. It can hold us together with interest so that even the least engaged of us manage every few years to work up an opinion and vote.

This is good. It can make you feel gratitude you don’t fully understand.