Peggy Noonan

I will vote Tuesday and so will most readers of this page because we love politics and history. We are interested, engaged, highly motivated. We not only care about our country but see the direct connection between the decisions made at the polls and the country’s literal future.

But not everyone votes, as we well know. This is considered a matter of grave concern in many quarters, but to me it is only partly a matter of concern. It is also to some extent a reason for gratitude.

Because we live in a democracy we are free to vote; because we have individual liberty, we are free not to. We each of us get to decide. We can go or not go, take part of not. This is good. In some countries in the past voting has been mandatory. Even if you didn’t care, even if you were drunk, even if you were completely unwilling, they made you vote. This is not good. It is a violation of rights in the name of “democracy.”

Today I would like to thank that portion of the nonvoting public that does not vote for good reasons.

If you have absolutely no interest in how our country runs and is run, and know that you have no interest, and feel that your disinterest should preclude your taking part in this great national decision—well then heck, thank you for not diluting my vote with your vote. Because I have a great deal of interest.

If you pay no attention to the great issues of the day, refuse to read or hear about politics and politicians, and know that you are utterly uninformed about political and current affairs, and feel that your relative ignorance should preclude your taking part in the vote—well heck, thank you for not watering down the vote of those who bother to be informed, and who put themselves out to learn, who feel it’s part of their responsibility as citizens. It’s good of you not to weaken their vote with yours. It’s good of you to be honest about it.

And if you have no real views on things—if you are in fact that amazing thing in America, a walking talking opinion-free zone, and don’t feel you should be out there voting with all the people who’ve formed views and pondered questions, well, great. Thank you for not voting too.

I’ve always had the hunch that some maybe-significant portion of the people who don’t vote may be acting on a kind of personal modesty or humility: “Why should I vote when I don’t really care, why should I dilute the vote of the neighbors who do, who have signs on their yard and show up at speeches and read the papers? I haven’t really earned the right by caring.” This strikes me as fair minded and just. Also generous.

So I thank principled and honest nonvoters, and hope that when we vote a lot of us think of you and say, “Thank you, modest people for not diluting my serious and thought-through vote. I will try to make the one I cast worthy of your generosity.”

*   *   *

Most every adult I know will vote this year and not only because we live in New York, where politics is our religion. And not only because we have pro-Hillary and anti-Hillary on our ballot.

Turnout will probably be high pretty much across the board this year because two men are running for president who are very different, who stand for different things; because there is no incumbent; and because so many of us on both sides have been building up passion the past eight years. We’ve been passionately for what’s going on in Washington, and passionately against.

It feels like 1980. Either stay the course or change.

Al Gore is doing a great job this weekend getting out the vote among members of his base, and on Sunday he said something that a lot of us would agree with. He told a rally in Pennsylvania, “This is the kind of election you’ll tell your grandchildren about.” It will be “close” and “hard fought,” he said, and at the end we may be able to brag, “My vote changed the outcome.”

A lot of us feel that way—that our vote really counts this year. It’s almost as if we feel each vote this year has a special weight.

I believe Mr. Bush is going to win this year, that Republicans across the country will do well but that Mr. Bush in particular will win more handily than expected. One of the reasons is that I think the kind of people who poll Americans by phone—and the way they sound as they ask for your views—and the times and places they call—chronically turn off and ignore and so underreport Republican voters. (Also, so many Republicans are the kind of people who would hang up on pollsters. We don’t have time for interviews.) I think the Gore campaign is insisting the race is close because it’s not close, and I think the networks and broadsheet papers are trumpeting the Gore line because they want to whip up interest in their product, which is the news.

And this is all fine with me. First, maybe I’m wrong and they’re right: maybe it is close. Second, and more important, the closer people think it is the more people will feel their vote really counts, the more people will show up.

*   *   *

The one group I know will show up is the group I expect will have the biggest impact on the election’s outcome.

And they are the Broken Glass Republicans. So named by Byron York of the American Spectator.

They’re called Broken Glass Republicans because that’s what they’d walk over to throw the Clinton-Gore administration out. That’s what they’d crawl over to remove them from power. That’s what they’d crawl over to remove this extraordinary corruption from our national life. That’s what we’d crawl over to give Clinton-Gore a rebuke, and remove them from our history.

The BG Republicans want to do something else. They want to prove that we’re still a good people—that we’re still a good people in a good country, that the Clinton-Gore reality is not representative of who we are.

Someone somewhere along the way will try to capture the sheer propulsive force of the BG’s, the size and drive of their emotional and philosophical commitment.

Let me give you two examples that I think speak of or to how we feel, and I say “we” because though normally I see myself as a conservative, these days I’m rooting so much for the BG’s that I know I must be one.

Bear with me on the cliché, but my examples are movie images.

The first is from “The Verdict,” with Paul Newman. It’s near the end of the movie and the gifted actress, Lindsay Crouse is on the stand. She’s the working class nurse who knows the secret the hospital is trying to hide: The doctors made a mistake in administering an anesthetic, and that’s why the patient was mortally injured. The nurse doesn’t want to testify but she does. And she says of the doctors who did the deed and the establishment that protected them, “Who are these people? Who are these people that they could do this thing?”

It’s a great heartfelt cry. A decent person looking at organized malevolence and saying: These people are not us.

And that’s part of what the BG’s think when they look at the long trail of corruption that has been Clintonism: Who are these people?

Another scene, from the movie “Rudy.” A popular but not fully appreciated movie of about a dozen years ago about “Rudy” Rutiger, the kid who wanted nothing in life but to play for the Irish of Notre Dame. (It has a wonderful, rousing musical score that they use in a lot of movie commercials. It also has beautiful, tight editing, and first rate acting in the star role by Sean Astin.)

It’s the last game of Rudy’s senior year, his last chance to be chosen to play. He’s suited up, the team is in the field house, they’re waiting to go on. It’s a home game there in South Bend, and it’s a big game, and the coach does the speech.

And he looks at the boys and he says, “No one comes into our house and pushes us around.” And the kids begin to clap, and they take to the field, and they win. And Rudy gets in the game.

That’s how the BG’s feel: No self appointed elite comes into our country and pushes us around, not forever, not without answering. The answer comes Tuesday. And we’ll all be in the game.

It is because of the BG’s that Clinton-Gore are about to be rebuked. They are about to be chastised. They are about to be rejected. They are about to be ejected.

And this is good. A new beginning, a fresh start, the stables swept clean. New history begins.

*   *   *

A final word for those who will vote, and who even look forward to it and, corny as it is, feel a spring in their step as they go to the polls.

The other night I was dining with another family and I turned to a mother and said, “I actually get choked up when I vote. Do you?” I said it because it’s true but also because kids were there and I wanted us to do a little spontaneous commercial for democracy.

And she said, “Oh yes,” and I was surprised. She told me she takes her kids to vote with her, so they’ll remember.

I do that too, I told her, I take my son. I let him press the lever with his finger over my finger.

When I vote I get kissing sickness, and have to stop myself from embarrassing my son. But I want to kiss the curtains of the voting machine, I want to put my lips to them quickly in gratitude. I would like to kiss the metal knobs and paper with the candidate’s names.

My heart beats quickly when I’m in the booth, and my hands tremble a little. I get choked up as I wait on line. I go and sign in at the big registration desk and I am so proud to write my name, it gives me satisfaction, and I make a joke with the ladies who hold the book, and I look at the people on line and smile and I notice a lot of people are kind of—there’s a heightened feeling.

I know I should be thinking things like, “Good men died so I could do this,” and “God bless the Founders,” and in a way I guess I do, but really I’m thinking, Thank you God that I’m so lucky I can vote, isn’t it wonderful this country has been voting for more than two centuries, aren’t we the luckiest people on earth that we have this gift. And we all do it together and we’re all equal and Bill Gates has a bigger boat and a bigger house and a bigger pool than the girl at the counter at the deli next door but his vote is no bigger and has no more weight.

She is his equal.

We are all equal. In the eyes of God, in the eyes of the law, and in the voting booth. It’s really wonderful. It leaves me choked up. Maybe it does you, too.

And so to those who chose this year not to vote: Ladies and gents, I still respect your choice but please start to pay attention so that next year you’ll let yourself vote. It feels great. It’s very moving. So earn yourself the right.

You’re in danger. What you do or fail to do now could conceivably change the outcome Tuesday. So breathe deep, get serious and don’t get stubborn.

Let’s start with the facts, which in many ways are on your side. It happened a quarter century ago. You always said that when you were young and irresponsible you were young and irresponsible. Now we have fresh proof of how right you were. Only you were 30 when it happened, which isn’t so young. But it’s early enough in the arc of the story of your life to be not a revelation but a reaffirmation of what we know: You used to drink much, then you grew up and stopped.

You never lied about your wild and wooly past, and that’s good, and right too. But in your own way you’re sensitive about it. That time I saw you last spring at dinner, as we chatted you mentioned that when you were a young man you’d taught Sunday School in Midland. From everything I’d read about your life I associated your young manhood with party time, so I blurted, “You taught Sunday School? Boy, that musta been some class!”

Karl Rove and Karen Hughes were there and they laughed, and so did I. But you didn’t. You looked mildly irritated.

Well, people get irritated when relative strangers refer to their foibles. But I’ve got a hunch you’re feeling a little irritated now, and if I’m right it’s gonna do you no good, so I want you to listen.

I’m watching you right now, live, on CNN. You’re talking Social Security in Saginaw, Mich. That’s no good. I can almost feel it, thousands of miles away, sitting in my office in New York: The audience is thinking about A, and you’re talking about B. And you can talk B for the next four days, but no one’s going to stop thinking about A.

So you get on A too.

*   *   *

You could lose the election over this thing if it breaks badly, and if you don’t begin to view it as an opportunity.

It’s not that America will turn against you because of a drunk-driving incident 24 years ago, especially when you never hid the theme of your past.

But Al Gore is surrounded by people who see themselves as killers, and they mean to kill you. That’s what I’m told some of them call themselves, “The Killers.” So expect their continued efforts to make you dead.

A Democratic political professional told me this afternoon: “The guy who leaked the story was a Gore delegate to the Democratic convention. And they [the Gore campaign] have no involvement? I’m a priest who can fly.”

What the killers will likely do next is make this story just a bit worse, and then just a bit worse, so by Tuesday everyone who’s for you has doubts. Maybe on Sunday some man will come forward and announce that he owes it to the country to tell us he saw you drunk 10 years ago, after you said you’d stopped drinking. Or maybe some woman will come forward and say you made a drunken pass at her back in ‘90. Whatever it is, even if it’s a lie, it will be the Gore people trying to make the story worse, so you’ll lose.

So what should you do? Know what’s up, and respond. Breathe in deep, put your feet on the floor of the plane cabin, shake your head, and decide to go with what’s going on. Use it to communicate more of who you really are.

That’s apparently not your first impulse. Your first impulse has been to stay on message, undeterred by the scandal.

It’s a mistake. Turn the scandal around by talking scandal. Talk about it the way you feel about it.

*   *   *

You’ve already outclassed Clinton and Gore by owning up to the truth of the story, taking responsibility, admitting the facts are correct. You didn’t lie.

When it happened you actually pled guilty and paid the fine. Your family didn’t try to hide or destroy the records.

A good beginning, but more is needed.

Today or tomorrow, give a serious thoughtful speech about the scandal. Begin with a candid statement in which you again take responsibility, again refuse to dodge the facts, again admit the charges are true, again explain that you didn’t want your kids to know.

That last most everyone understand, a lot of us very personally. It’s something that all of us grownups are facing these days: how to be candid with our kids and yet not corrupt them with our candor, not damage them with an implicit message of “I smoked dope and lived to tell the tale, so can you.” Sometimes you can’t put all the cards on the table, because children aren’t old enough to see the joker was wild.

This statement should be within a speech at a rally, and the speech should be like the one—or exactly the one—you gave at that San Jose rally two days ago. It was a speech about faith and healing, about what makes people become better human beings, and it was terrific. It was about how God changes lives, and how he changed yours.

This scandal is part of that story. So use it, include it, weave it in.

Connect your own past experience with the experience of all of us who’ve done awful and stupid and harmful things. Believe me, and you know without being told: That’s most of the country.

Don’t let this story, and the ones that will follow, knock you out. Let it help you connect and be serious with all the other imperfect Americans.

*   *   *

One of the great and delightful clichés about you is that you’re putty in the hands of your staff—pliant, pliable, ever willing to listen, ponder and agree. But it’s not true. You’re often prickly, sometimes mulish, frequently sure you’re the one who knows the answer. What I’m speaking of is the layer of obstinacy below which is your humility and above which is your charm.

I suspect there’s another element at work here. You saw your father get ragged around by consultants and advisers. Deep down in your gut you hate the idea of consultants and advisers. Or rather, you hate the idea of handlers. You don’t want to feel you’re being handled. You don’t want to doubt your own gut.

And you don’t want to talk about the foibles of your past any more than you have. For a number of reasons including this one: You know your past was nothing compared to those of some of your contemporaries, in politics and out, who never got tagged for bad behavior and who acted up worse than you.

Well, that’s too bad. They’re not running for president. You are.

You don’t want the scandal to change the facts and tone of the campaign—but it’s already changed the facts and tone of this campaign. And now you must be nimble.

*   *   *

Don’t be a rock, be a river. Rocks sit and get hit by the wind and the rain. The elements wear them down. Rivers flow around obstacles. They flow true, with force, they go over rocks and around them and wear them down.

Don’t be a rock, be a river. Flow over, through and around this trouble. You can wear it down into the small thing it is—or should be.

Readers of this page are familiar with the policy questions at issue in the election. As president, George W. Bush’s natural inclination and stated intention is and will be to lower taxes, not raise them, to clear away regulation rather than create it, and to reform Social Security in a way that makes it more lucrative for recipients, more secure as an entitlement, and more respectful toward those workers who will be allowed to redirect a portion of their contributions into markets. He will allow Americans once again to look for and develop energy resources, while opposing irresponsible treatment of precious unspoiled lands.

In taking these actions Mr. Bush will strengthen the foundations of today’s prosperity so the long boom continues. Federal decisions of course can weaken prosperity. Al Gore’s proposals—new entitlements, new spending, a balanced budget and no tax increase—seem so contradictory as to be schizophrenic, and more likely to turn a downturn into a deep recession.

In the area of public education Mr. Bush, unlike Mr. Gore, is sympathetic to the effort to extend choice to those at the middle and bottom of the economic ladder through charter schools and voucher scholarships. This—the school liberation movement—is the most promising development in American public education because, by its nature, it elevates the needs of children over the demands of unions.

In foreign affairs Mr. Bush’s intentions are marked by moral modesty and a lack of illusions: America, he repeated in the last debate, must fully engage the world, but with humility. His first and most crucial foreign-affairs endeavor will begin, appropriately, at home: improving the national defense, remedying the effects of eight years of confusion and neglect, enhancing responsiveness to future challenges, increasing morale, restoring those aspects of the old military culture that are positive and needed.

In all this he will differ from Mr. Gore, who, if he took such actions would rouse the anger of his base, parts of which are animated by a reflexive animus to, or indifference toward, American military might. Having been forced to fight to keep his base during the election, he will not soon defy it in the White House.

In character, personality traits, history and attitudes, Mr. Bush seems the opposite of both Bill and Hillary Clinton and of Mr. Gore. Mr. Bush has an instinctive personal modesty, an easygoing sense of both human and governmental limits. He will know how to step aside and let the country take center stage; he will know how to show respect for others; he will not bray endlessly about his own excellence, will not compare himself to Nelson Mandela, Mark McGuire, or the heroes of the novels “Love Story” or “Darkness at Noon”; he will not discuss his underpants. Laura Bush will not announce that her husband’s power is hers, that she is co-president, and that she will soon nationalize 17% of the gross national product. Both Bushes seem not emotionally troubled but mentally balanced, which was once considered the lowest of expectations for our leaders but now seems like a gift to the nation.

All of this will be a relief. What’s more, it suggests a restoration of civility and grace to the White House, and to political discourse. This will have happy implications for our democracy, and for the children who see it unfold each day.

A Bush presidency would mark a cultural-political paradox: a triumph of class that is a setback for snobbery. Class—consideration, a lack of bullying ego, respect for others—has been not much present the past eight years. The Clintons and Mr. Gore have acted and spoken in ways that suggest they believe they are more intelligent and capable than others—superior, in short. They have behaved as if they believe they are entitled to assist others by limiting their autonomy; thus the tax policies in which they take our surplus and spend it for us, the social programs in which they limit what you might fritter away in your sweet but incompetent way.

The Clintons and Mr. Gore, intelligent and ambitious, came of age at the moment in our history when America As Meritocracy took off like a rocket; and they had merit. They were educated at fine universities at the moment those universities became factories for manufacturing the kind of people who prefer mankind to men and government to the individual. To absorb those views was to help ensure one’s rise. They rose. In time they won power in the system they helped invent—command-and-control liberalism. In rising and running things they became what they are: vain and ruthless as only those who have not suffered could be. Not realizing they were lucky they came to think they were deserving; they were sure they had the right to show the inferior—that would be you and me—how to arrange their lives.

Mr. Bush came from the same generation, lived in the same time, but became a very different sort of man. He wasn’t impressed by Yale; when he saw the elites up close he didn’t like what he saw. He was of Midland, Texas.

He became a businessman, floundered, knew success, experienced disappointment, became a deep believer in God. His religious commitment has meant for him the difference between a clear mind and a double mind. It has helped him become a man who is attached to truth on a continuing basis, and not just an expedient one. It means he sees each person as a unique individual worthy of dignity, freedom and responsibility.

Mr. Bush has the awkwardness of the convicted, meaning roughly, “I’m a mess, or at least have been; I’m not a hypocrite but I’ve been that too. I am utterly flawed and completely dependent; and I’m doing my best.” He knows he is better than no one. The man with the swagger and the smirk is humble.

Mr. Bush has a natural sympathy for, and is the standard bearer of, the modest, the patronized, the disrespected. The lumberman of Washington state who wants to earn his living responsibly and with respect; the candy store owner of New Jersey who’s had it up to here with regulation and taxes; the Second Amendment-loving Louisiana housewife who keeps a gun high up in the closet; the Ohio nurse who worries about abortion and who knows that “You oppose abortion? Then don’t have one!” is as empty and unsatisfying as “You don’t like slavery? Then don’t own one!”; the courthouse clerk in Tennessee who says he’ll go to jail before he’ll take the Ten Commandments off the wall; and the tired old teacher who carries a copy of the Constitution in his pocket and knows that while it is a living document it is not the plaything of ideologues. All of these—the shouted down and silenced in what the Clintons and Mr. Gore call the national conversation—are for Mr. Bush, and he for them.

That is a great irony of the 2000 election: The man who speaks for the nobodies is the president’s son, Mr. Andover Head Cheerleader of 1965. But history is replete with such ironies; they have kept the national life interesting.

If Mr. Bush is wise he will continue as president to stand with them, and speak for them, so that in time their numbers increase, and a big but beset minority will grow and become again what it once was: a governing coalition. This election could in this sense be a realigning one.

*   *   *

There is the question of intelligence: Is Al Gore bright enough to be president? Both Mr. Bush and Mr. Gore are intelligent men, but they have very different kinds of minds. George Bush respects permanent truths and is not in the thrall of prevalent attitudes. He thinks the Sermon on the Mount is the greatest speech ever given. This would strike some as an obvious thing to say, but it takes courage now to say the obvious thing, because to say the obvious is to declare that you see it, and to declare that you see it is to announce yourself . . . a bit of dunce. If you had a first rate mind you’d see what isn’t obvious, such as . . . the illustrative power of metaphor to speak to the existential challenge to postmodern man, which is to flourish within a democratic framework and negotiate its inevitable power centers while balancing the need for communal unity on the one hand with the necessity to find and unlock individual potential on the other.

I don’t think that sentence made sense, but you could speak it in a lot of places—a faculty dinner, the vice president’s house—and elicit nods of approval. And not in spite of the fact that it is nonsense but because of it.

The intellectually ambitious of the Clinton-Gore class seem willing to follow any small crumbs in their search for truths, perhaps because they can’t see so many of the older and enduring ones. Mr. Gore with his metaphor grids and his arrows and circles shows us not a creative mind at work but a lost mind in search of shelter. Henry Hyde once said of Newt Gingrich: “He’s always discovering new things to believe in.” He meant: a real grown-up doesn’t carry on like this, inventing new philosophies, drawing arrows and sparks; a real grown-up learns what from the past is true, and brings it into the present.

Mr. Bush speaks of God and George Washington and Reagan, and the elites find it unsophisticated. But for many citizens it will be good to see in leadership one of such simplicity, grounded in such realities, respecting of such wisdom.

Mr. Bush is at odds with the spirit of the past eight years in another way. He appears to be wholly uninterested in lying, has no gift for it, thinks it’s wrong.

This is important at any time, but is crucial now. The next president may well be forced to shepherd us through the first nuclear event since World War II, the first terrorist attack or missile attack. “Man has never had a weapon he didn’t use,” Ronald Reagan said in conversation, and we have been most fortunate man has not used these weapons to kill in the past 50 years. But half the foreign and defense policy establishment fears, legitimately, that the Big Terrible Thing is coming, whether in India-Pakistan, or in Asia or in lower Manhattan.

When it comes, if it comes, the credibility—the trustworthiness—of the American president will be key to our national survival. We may not be able to sustain a president who is known for his tendency to tell untruths.

If we must go through a terrible time, a modest man of good faith is the one we’ll need in charge. That is George Walker Bush, governor of Texas.

On Saturday I went to the opening game of the World Series, at Yankee Stadium. I felt so lucky: I had a friend with tickets. It was so exciting, really inspiring. It had been two years since I’d been to the stadium, enough time for everything to look new to me—the soft, thick-striped grass, the beautiful mauve-beige of the dirt of the diamond.

I was with friends from college whom I love, and I couldn’t have been happier. I found myself absurdly moved by the thousands of brilliant, sharp lights that exploded through the bleachers as the first pitch was thrown and everyone took pictures to bring home and say, “See, I was there.” And by the handmade signs—”Truth, Justice, and the American League,” “All Aboard.” But the sweetest was a banner held by a man just below us in the right-field seats: “The Luckiest Fans on the Face of the Earth.” After of course the great speech Lou Gehrig gave when, mortally ill, he tipped his hat goodbye to the people of New York.

Well, lucky is what we are.

We took the subway into the Bronx and it was packed. We made friends with a group of young men, and all of us got lost at 125th Street when we jumped on the wrong train. But a stranger with a shaved head in a sleeveless undershirt took us under his wing and led us off at 149th Street in the Bronx. From there we walked to the stadium, or rather toward it; we couldn’t see it against the skyline but we followed a great glow of lights in the darkness, and then headed toward a blimp with blinking lights, and soon we were there, in the great gray coliseum.

There were four of us, two Yankees fans, and a friend and I for the Mets. We made ourselves unfashionable by cheering for Mike Piazza, and when I got home I found myself singing a song called Benny Abgayani, to the tune of “Gary Indiana,” from “The Music Man.” Baseball is so seductive, you can find yourself ignoring it all year, as I do, and then the series comes or a McGwire hits 61 home runs and you find yourself with moist eyes, cheering.

*   *   *

We all agreed the dreaded Yankees, whom of course we root for when they’re playing a team from America, are the team of Manhattan imperialism, the team of the powerful—of Wall Street greedheads and deputy mayors and union chiefs and the kind of people who used to be called Broadway swells. And of course immigrants and working people.

Whereas the Mets, my Metties, are the team of square, flat Long Island and the striving unchic boroughs—the team of the middle and working class. Mets fans aren’t the poor and the downtrodden, they’re in more trouble than that. In a country in which status is everything, the Mets are the team of the nobodies. They are the team of those lacking in status, the ones with no special claims, the people who’ll never be in style. God bless all Met fans, a hardy crew that don’t give a damn.

Democrats, God bless them, are Yankees; they’re better. Republicans, God love them, are Mets; they hate the guys who are better. Hillary is, these days, she says, a Yankee. Lazio is, of course, and has declared, a Met. Gore would be a Yankee, Bush would be a Met. Although years ago he fired Bobby Valentine. But Valentine’s still for him, so there you are.

Anyway it was a wonderful game with thrills, chills and spills, but somehow the most memorable part of the night for me, or the image that lingered, was on the train on the way to 149th Street. All around us as I said were pumped-up guys and poppas with sons and lots of jostling and yelling—and in the middle of the sea of noise was a young woman in a black jacket, holding close a delicate little baby, in a blue-and-white cotton blanket. He slept in her arms. She was black, maybe 30, and her baby had thick, wavy black hair, and I stood near them to be a buffer in case someone pushed or got raucous. After a while I sat down and looked and asked how old.

“Two months,” she said.

“Oh, congratulations, he’s beautiful,” I replied.

“Thank you,” she said, so softly.

She was all alone, apart from all the hubbub, and she stared straight ahead, alone with her dignity, looking toward a window. And as we got off I wondered where she was going and who would meet her, and I wanted to kiss the baby, to kiss his thick-haired head, and my friend looked at her and me and he smiled.

She was all alone. It’s hard to remember that so many Americans are all alone. Last night on television, on Fox, they said one of the biggest parts of the undecided vote in the presidential election is people who live alone . . .

*   *   *

On Monday I stayed home with a pain in my neck—literally a pain in my neck—and had a good time watching Bush and Gore on television. It’s wonderful with all-news cable channels and C-Span that you can watch, live, the campaign unfolding in Nevada and Ohio and Tennessee. It didn’t use to be like that—you used to have to read the newspapers! You used to have to trust the reporter that the crowd went wild or the crowd was small or the candidate sniffled. Now you just have to see what you see. It’s a great gift, and has made all of us anchormen. I am the anchor of my mother-friends; I keep them up on what’s happening.

George W. Bush and Al Gore were slugging it out down South on MSNBC, clashing over education and Social Security. Mr. Bush looks happy and pumped; he prowls the stage like an infomercial master. Mr. Gore stands straight with a mike and looks sweaty and distracted. He never loses his place in the speech, but he keeps raising his voice, as if he thinks the man who talks loudest wins.

Here is Mr. Bush saying: “I am running against a man who is of Washington, for Washington, by Washington.”

The biggest difference between Mr. Bush on the stump 10 months ago and Mr. Bush today is that back then he used to look as if he was afraid he’d win, and now he looks as if he knows he’ll win and is happy about it. I will never forget what he said when I saw him in a speech in New York this summer. “Ahm becomin’ the president. I’m becomin’ it.” He meant he was . . . well, becoming the president, absorbing the fact of it. I thought: Good.

But something makes me nervous about Mr. Bush when he’s winning. A triumphalism, an assumption that good things happen to good people. He is a good man. He’d be a better man if his life had been harder. But you can’t have everything.

I was thinking the other night: Mr. Bush seems the least radical politician in America. He lives in the middle of the land of the possible. He is by nature moderate, by habit and thinking a moderate man. Mr. Gore, with his fevered brow and his dramatic eyes, looks like a man who could be radical—ban all cars!—and who would see his radicalism as proof of his own authenticity.

*   *   *

On Tuesday night a dinner with seven jolly adults. We are friends or friends of friends, and we gather in an apartment in Manhattan, on Central Park West. As we eat the conversation turns to why Al Gore is a liar—that is, what makes him lie, what is it in him? Of the seven, one (me) is a Republican, one a conservative Democrat, the rest Democrats of various points on the liberal spectrum—a former great union leader, a teacher of the theater, sophisticates of all sorts.

Someone says Mr. Gore doesn’t lie so much as embellish and exaggerate. I say no, he actually lies. He makes up stories that are not true. Everyone nods, some sadly.

“But why?” says a woman, with a perplexed look.

“I think” I say, “that what has perhaps happened with Gore is that he is so used to a certain amount of built-in dishonesty in his political positions that when he stands up to speak, the dishonesty stands up with him, and gets a voice, and is allowed to talk. He becomes confused between truth and lies.”

“That is a sympathetic interpretation,” says an intelligent man, and I’m surprised, because if I seemed sympathetic then I wasn’t getting my point across. Then the conversation goes off in different directions.

But this is what I meant and what I’m thinking, and I think there is truth in it:

Al Gore knows that so many of the things he says and has been saying for years are lies. He knows his positions are based on lies. He talks passionately about a woman’s right to choose, and how he’ll never let anyone limit it in any way. But he knows this means he must support a procedure, partial-birth abortion, in which a full-term or almost full-term baby is pulled down from a womb, its skull punctured and its brain sucked out. This is a gruesome form of killing, and of an utterly innocent child, a little frail baby just ready to suck in clean air. It’s the kind of thing an Al Gore would never allow! But Al Gore is for it.

And Al Gore knows what it is. But he cannot oppose partial birth-abortion—or rather he feels he cannot oppose it—because he must not offend any part of his base, including pro-abortion fanatics. Real fanatics, the kind who’d kill a living baby.

On the other hand he can’t say, “I’m for killing babies!” So he says he is against partial birth abortion . . . unless the life or well-being of the mother is at issue.

But the “life or well-being” of the mother is never at issue, as Al Gore knows. That’s only code for: If you really want to get an abortion when you’re eight or nine months you can have one—as long as you say it’s necessary to your well being.

Al Gore knows all the ins and outs, all the gradations of this issue better than you and I. And he’s made his choices. In order to get what he wants—the presidency—he supports something he knows to be sick and wrong. And he lies about what it is. And it’s a big, important lie. It’s not small, like My mother used to sing “Look for the Union Label” as I fell asleep. It’s big.

Al Gore talks passionately about education—we must hire 100,000 new teachers, we must have smaller class size. But he knows the most hopeful proposal of our time to make government schools better is the school liberation movement—including scholarship-vouchers for disadvantaged kids who can, through them, get out of the local dead school and into a living school a few miles away, be it a Bible school or a Catholic school or whatever.

When people like Teddy Forstmann cough up their own money to make $100 million in voucher scholarships available for kids, the ambitious disadvantaged—immigrant kids, black mothers with three kids they’re damn well going to get out of the local hellhole and into that clean school down the road—show up in droves. They wait overnight in line to get their chance. They want choice and freedom and opportunity—just like a senator and his wife looking at all the clean private schools in Washington and trying to choose between Sidwell Friends and St. Albans.

Al Gore knows the poor deserve a chance like the one he got. He knows in his heart they’re just as deserving as he was. He knows that if you believe in equality you believe in giving parents who aren’t senators the power and autonomy to send their kids to a good local school.

But a big part of Mr. Gore’s base—the teachers unions, who see their own power diminishing in a more competitive educational environment—passionately and fiercely opposes vouchers.

So Al Gore lies and says vouchers are bad, a plot to suck money from the system and put it in ungovernable places like—well, like places where nuns teach. Can’t have that.

The list goes on and on. Al Gore knows that it is responsible and constructive to allow greater freedom and choice in Social Security. But he lies and says it’s bad.

The poor guy lies all the time. If he were dumber he wouldn’t know it, but he’s not that dumb.

This is Mr. Gore’s problem: Lies are so built into everything he stands for, everything he says, everything he campaigns on—lies are so built into him, that he can barely tell the difference between the truth and a lie anymore.

The difference doesn’t even seem important. Winning the presidency is all that matters.

And if you lie about big things like human life and the education of children and the financial freedom of adults—if you lie about those things, it barely seems worthy of notice when you make up a little story about what medicine your dog takes and whether you discovered Love Canal or invented the Internet.

If every policy you put forward is based to some degree on a lie, and the degree is often major, then a small, innocuous-seeming personal lie—”And I told Einstein, ‘No, e doesn’t equal mc, it equals mc squared!’ And his hair stood right up! I invented Einstein’s hairstyle!”—seems like nothing.

And when people point it out, it feels like they’re picking on you. That’s why Mr. Gore seems so irritated and put upon when he’s caught in those little lies. He’s used to not being caught, and he’s used to not being criticized for lying. He’s used to getting applause for it. “And I will always protect a woman’s right to choose, no matter what the mean-spirited challenge,” he says as his supporters cheer.

Once, about seven years ago, a friend of mine who is a Catholic-school teacher told me the way she sees it, a small lie is a drip of water on a rock. But small lies tend to bring more small lies, which bring more drips. Soon the drip is a torrent, and the torrent wears the rock away. That’s what you do to your character when you lie: You break it down and make it disappear. You make yourself into nothing.

That happens with politicians. It can happen with anybody. And it’s what, ultimately, puts us off about Al Gore. We know what the little lies mean.

*   *   *

An interesting thing happened at the dinner party. One of the women, a political figure, started banging away on the issue of abortion, saying that Mr. Bush will do away with Roe v. Wade.

“Someone should do away with it,” said a male voice. We looked. A second of silence. I can’t tell you how rarely one hears sentences like that at Manhattan dinner parties.

“What?” the woman said.

“It’s bad law!” he said. “I’m a Democrat, I’m pro-choice, but no one who has ever read the Roe-Wade decision respects it as law.”

“I respect it” says the woman.

“Have you ever read it?”

“Well no—”

“That’s why you respect it. Because you don’t know what it says, what it argues.”

He said the ruling was undemocratic, without basis in the law, that abortion should and eventually will be thrown back to the states, for each to decide.

“Why should that happen?” the woman demands.

“Because this is a democracy. Because that’s what a democracy is, we vote on these questions.”

She says, “What if there’s a poor woman in South Dakota who wants to get an abortion, she has to go to New York?”

“Maybe” he says. He adds that democracy can be uncomfortable and imperfect, but is still democracy.

“I don’t think it’s a democracy for poor women,” the union guy says. “They don’t have democracy!”

But they do, of course. And some poor women are pro-life. And their voices deserve to be heard too. And if Roe v. Wade is repealed one day, perhaps they will be.

But how interesting it was to see someone who is never challenged, and on an issue on which fierce and talkative women are rarely challenged, at least at dinner tables with crystal and silver and smart people and good food.

And to see her, to her credit, admit she’d never read the decision to which she has plighted her troth, and which she says means the most to her of all political issues!

But you know, when you stand up to those who are used to being in the majority, or used to being a member of an elite and in a majority—when you challenge them with facts, they often crumble like the facades on the Main Street of Potemkin Village: There’s nothing there, it was all front, nothing behind it.

*   *   *

On the way home from the stadium that opening night of the series, after the long game, in the dark, at 2 in the morning, we got off at the 86th Street station and walked for a while. The city was bright and happy in the darkness, and crowds of people and groups of families, dad and kids, dad and mom and sleeping six-year-old, made their way past us like affluent refugees, dragging their blankets and Yankee jackets. The city these days is, and has been for some years now, so sweet and gentle, and full of the possibility of joy.

They used to sing in the Sondheim years of a city of strangers, a lonely crowd of untethered dreamers going after empty dreams. All the grit and the crime and the pace—what a scary place it was. But that was long ago, 20 and 30 years. Now as then, “another hundred people just got off of the train” but now they join a city that sees itself, once again, as the empire of possibility. We are proud again of our town. New Yorkers of a certain age are shocked to find themselves sentimental when we see the lights like a string of pearls on the bridges that cross the rivers . . . or the skyline from Jersey . . . or when we see what color the lights on the Empire State Building are tonight, as we celebrate someone’s great day. St Patrick’s, Gay pride, Puerto Rican Day . . .

We are growing sweet in our hard-shouldered city. We even don’t wear those hard-shoulder Armani suits anymore, but have softer, natural shoulders, as if we no longer have to try to scare people on the streets with our size and strength. As if we no longer have to be Al Gore, but can be nice, like Rick Lazio. We are better to each other, and kinder to strangers. We have so much to be happy about. We are the luckiest fans on the face of the earth.

The third presidential debate was a public good, both informative and, once again, revealing of both presidential candidates. It seems to me that all three debates, now that they’re history, have been a paradoxical triumph: They were at times rote, stilted and even cringe-making, especially when Al Gore would take over and show his manly dominance, and Jim Lehrer would seem to shy away—”Don’t hit me!” And yet taken as a whole, all three debates had real power, made a real impact—so much so that I suspect when we look back on the election of 2000 the reigning cliché will be: It was settled in the debates.

*   *   *

All three made clear Mr. Gore’s central problems, one being that while it is certainly possible to respect his talents it is very hard for normal humans to like him.

And this is a very particular problem for him. After the third debate one of the whacked-out focus groups of supposedly undecided voters (really, has it not occurred to all in our great country that if focus-group undecideds actually decide then they won’t get to be on television anymore, and won’t be able to chat live with Tom, Dan and Brian?) threw out words to the moderator that described Mr. Gore. Among the words were “aggressive” “impolite” and “lacking in respect.”

Mr. Gore’s lack of courtesy is an old story of course, but it occurred to me as the focus group chattered that to a unique degree Mr. Gore’s affect—his demeanor and way of presenting himself—undercuts and puts the lie to the meaning of his whole campaign. Mr. Gore in his very Gorey-ness steps on and obliterates his own message. His lack of good nature becomes a lack of good faith.

The message of his campaign is: I will be just. But he can’t manage to be fair to George W. Bush. His message is: I will care about the weak. But then he smacks the easygoing and accommodating Mr. Bush on the head. His message is: I will be sensitive and kind. And then he attempts to menace and intimidate Mr. Bush by creeping up behind him and, as we say in New York, invading his space. Mr. Gore’s message is: I care for the little guy and not the powerful, and then in his power suit with the five foot shoulders he turns and looks with derision at the little guy Mr. Bush.

Voters absorb these things, and what they absorb coalesces into impression and, in time, hardens into opinion: “If this guy can’t manage to be courteous and good-natured to the courteous and good-natured man on the stool, why would he be good-natured and courteous to us?”

When people say of Mr. Gore that they don’t trust him and are asked to come up with why, they say things like, “He’s kind of a liar.” But they often don’t necessarily remember specific lies. What they’re remembering, I think, is the difference between what Mr. Gore says and how Mr. Gore acts. That’s the lie, the real one that haunts him.

*   *   *

Mr. Bush is no longer diffident, and no longer seems taken aback by Mr. Gore. In the cutaway shots, as he watched Mr. Gore Tuesday night, he wore a smile that seemed bemused and partly perplexed, like a younger actor watching an old-style actor eat the furniture and overact.

But the key moment, to me, was when Mr. Gore, who was supposed to be perched on his little stool, decided to get up and walk toward Mr. Bush as Mr. Bush answered a question—the invading-his-space moment. That moment was almost an exact replica of what Bill Clinton did to poor Bob Dole in debate. It unnerved Mr. Dole and sent him scurrying back to his podium for protection.

But Mr. Bush was not unnerved. He gave Mr. Gore a sideways double take, and the audience laughed. Mr. Menace looked foolish, Mr. Bush unfazed.

But that moment spoke to another thing that occurred to me last night. Mr. Gore was quite the actor, as usual. But all the stuff Mr. Gore does—the preacherman cadences, the sprayed, lifted, thickened hair, the posture disciplined, big chested and sucked in, the moderated strut, the exaggerated movements, the putting his hand UP when he says “revenues will increase” and sweeping his arm down when he says “taxes have DEE-creased,” the angling himself at a specific, preplanned point close to the bleachers and in front of both Mr. Bush and Mr. Lehrer, that made Mr. Bush seem a little shrimp in a chair and made it difficult for Mr. Lehrer to signal to Mr. Gore that his time was ending, and which put Mr. Gore Dominating the Camera Shot Like a Manly Man . . .

All of those tricks of the Clinton era, all that cleverness—suddenly as I watched, with admiration and disgust, suddenly I thought: It isn’t working anymore. It’s over. They’ve run it into the ground! Talking to normal humans afterward I thought: It doesn’t impress people anymore. After eight years they’re on to it. They’re bored with it.

And Mr. Bush, the ingenuous man-next-door, with his very lack of polish, his heartening normality, his sometimes awkward demeanor—Mr. Humblebumble seems the antidote to it, the antidote to Clintonian cleverness and savvy. And my sense is more and more people think: We need an antidote.

*   *   *

Mr. Bush may well have closed the deal in that last debate, as he made some progress in closing it in each of the first two. His positions are more in line with the majority of voters, a moderate conservatism that he is now able to explain and telegraph with a clear and commonly put argument that we don’t want to give people more government but more autonomy and freedom.

And his personality and character reinforce those positions. He is in his presentation, in his affect and demeanor, a reflection of his programs. He is respectful, moderate, commonsensical, courteous. He is, by nature, humorous and sort of joshing, but his jokes assume an equality of observation and experience—an equality, period.

*   *   *

The left will soon be saying, in a Gore loss, that it all came down to personality. It wasn’t Mr. Gore’s ideas that were wrong, it was the guy’s—charmlessness! This will be a replay of what they said when Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter: It was charm.

But it is never charm. It is always philosophy as expressed through programs, plans and pronouncements. Still, when the speaker for a philosophy has a persona that enhances his ability to communicate his programs and plans, that means something. It makes a difference.

Mr. Bush does. Mr. Gore doesn’t.

The Republicans seem on an upswing, 20 days out, and one senses for the first time that it just might not be as close as everyone’s saying. Though of course elections can change on a dime (she said not at all self-protectively). Joe Lieberman the other night told Tim Russert there will be no October Surprise. One wonders if the surprise was supposed to be a Mideast peace, and that quite melted in the mists as the president for once seemed to get unlucky.

And there is Mr. Bush himself, who, when he’s ahead and when he can feel his own inevitability, has a way of unfocusing, sliding, making mistakes.

It will be an interesting few weeks but this observer feels she is about to see something she saw coming in the summer: a restoration.

Do you sense things are moving, immeasurably but perhaps decisively? I do.

George W. Bush not only won the debate Wednesday night, but in a way that damaged a central assumption of the Gore campaign. That assumption is that Mr. Bush doesn’t know very much. But Mr. Bush demonstrated that he knows a lot, and that his common-sense views and observations can be spoken in a common-sense language accessible to all. He sat back in his chair, spoke of America’s role in the world, and made it clear that that role should be grounded in moral modesty and strategic realism. He suggested that the various forces at work in the world should be met not with American hubris but with moderation, and with attention to the kind of example we can, as a great power, set. He seemed thoughtful, knowledgeable, and he buried the memory of the less-seasoned Gov. Bush who one day in Boston flailed when pressed by an interviewer who insisted he name the ruler of Pakistan.

But what must have been most painful for Al Gore was that Mr. Bush showed that in six years of government he has learned as much about government and policy as Mr. Gore has in 24 years.

He was Mr. Gore’s equal or better. He has come a long way as a candidate. By the end, I thought of something I hadn’t thought of in a while. About two years ago I saw George Shultz, a man of great judgment and experience who is both shrewd and wise. Mr. Shultz told me that George Bush, the Texas governor, would run for president, and that he was enthusiastically supporting him.

I was surprised. Isn’t Bush . . . young? I asked. He’s been governor for one term, is that enough experience?

Mr. Shultz’s eyes narrowed, and he shot me a look. I’ve spent time with him, he said. “He’s like Reagan. He’s got it.” He told me Mr. Bush had a Reaganesque understanding of the world and attitude toward it, and a Reaganesque charm to boot.

I was impressed. It was the moment I started to realize Mr. Bush was coming down the pike.

Watching Mr. Bush in the debate Wednesday night I remembered that conversation and thought: Now I am seeing what George Shultz saw.

*   *   *

In the postdebate analysis Mr. Gore was called “anesthetized.” I found him only subdued, but that was not his problem. His problem was that he was so busy constraining his natural aggression, his desire to make himself big by making others small, that he spent all of his energy keeping himself in. And the space left by the absence of his aggression was not filled by warmth or humor or a philosophical turn. It wasn’t filled at all.

Or rather it wasn’t filled by Mr. Gore. It was filled by Mr. Bush—with his humor and warmth and a philosophical turn.

As a personality and in terms of character Bush is, of course, more attractive than Gore—more “normal”, more genuine and authentic and good natured.

It has been established already in this race that Mr. Gore tells a lot of lies, that he lies a lot even for a politician. But I think it has also been established that Mr. Bush not only does not lie but is probably incapable of lying. He is, transparently and simply, not a liar but a plainspoken teller of the truth as he is able to see it. This is a wonderful thing in anyone, and marvelous in a politician. A palpably honest man running for office in the Clinton era!

A friend of mine who is liberal and a Democrat sighs that Mr. Gore now seems like someone whose innards have been taken over by pod people; he is a robot, or something worse, something—Damien-like!

This is not a new thing to say. But my sense is that all of this, the Bush-knows-his-stuff part and the Gore-is-dishonest part, the Bush-is-a-good-man part and the Gore-is-another-weirdo part, has filtered down in the country in a way that is becoming decisive.

I think Mr. Bush has begun to win. Or rather Mr. Bush has begun to win again. In some immeasurable way he is moving forward, gaining ground, becoming seen by more and more people as a good man who can be a good president. This idea of Mr. Bush is driving forward, and the image of Mr. Gore as the next president is receding, shrinking back.

I think this in part not because of the second debate, but the first.

*   *   *

In the first Bush-Gore debate most of the instant polls and those who chatter on television and write in newspapers, including me, said that Mr. Gore had won. Mr. Bush, to my mind, was not impressive, was on the defensive, did not follow through on his thoughts. That was pretty soon more or less the common wisdom—at least for a few days and at least among the chattering classes.

But only a week after that first debate, the common wisdom has changed. The first debate damaged Mr. Gore, we now know, and not Mr. Bush. It was Mr. Gore’s highhandedness, his smugness, the sighs and eye rolling. I had seen the highhandedness—everyone had—but I didn’t know it would be received by people as so obnoxious, and that it would ultimately prove so damaging.

People say it was the now-famous “Saturday Night Live” debate skit with the horrid Gore and the bumbling Bush that did it. But that skit didn’t give form to public opinion, it caught and reflected public opinion that had already jelled. And why did it jell so critically against Mr. Gore? That’s where guessing comes in, and here’s mine. People—more people than have been quantified by and spit out into the polls—don’t like Al Gore. They are looking for a reason to not vote for him. They want to like Mr. Bush. And if Mr. Bush, in the first debate, didn’t give enough reason to like him people were ready enough to respond to the reasons Al Gore gave them not to like him.

In the second debate, Mr. Bush gave plenty of reason to like him. And as Mr. Bush gives them more reasons to be for him they will continue to turn toward him, and the turning I think will be reflected in time in the polls.

*   *   *

When George Bush the elder ran for president in 1988 after eight years as vice president in a stunningly successful administration—the biggest peacetime economic expansion in U.S. history, the impending defeat of Soviet communism—Bush made an argument lifted from Franklin Roosevelt’s 1940 campaign. FDR, attempting to become America’s first three-term president as the winds of war swept east to west, said: “Don’t change horses in midstream.” George Bush in 1988 said: When you have to change horses in midstream, doesn’t it make sense to take the horse that’s going in the same direction?

Mr. Gore has been implicitly making that argument all year. My sense is it is not or is no longer taking. Because too many people think that in the case of Clinton-Gore, the horse didn’t take the stream, the stream carried the horse. The horse didn’t get us to the shore; Bill Clinton wasn’t the hardy cowboy who got us safely across. It was the stream itself—the stream of American invention and entrepreneurship—that pushed the horse across safely. When Mr. Gore makes his argument that he and Mr. Clinton created the new economy, I suspect more and more voters are coming to feel: I was the horse, and 100 million like me, and we made it across the stream carrying these two heavy guys who brag now about how well they wielded the whip.

*   *   *

Some weeks back I called the race the battle of Dumb-Good vs. Evil-Smart. But I must tell you, I just spent five days in America. I left the island on which I live and journeyed through the continent, at least as far as Colorado, and then Indiana. And the strong impression I got is that more voters than I knew see this race more and more as a battle between Good Guy vs. Bad Guy. The idea that Mr. Gore is a phony, a creep, a dishonest guy who doesn’t know who he is, is out there. The idea that he’ll shape-shift and do and say anything to win is, simply, out there. And so is the idea—there is no polite way to say this—that he is not fully stable, that he is altogether as strange and disturbing as Bill Clinton.

As for Mr. Bush, in conversations with normal people I did not get the impression that they think he’s stupid. I got the impression they were debating and making their minds up about his policies. The most striking conversation I had was with an airport van driver, a big strapping mid-20s young man who wants to be a fireman. He told me he wasn’t sure whom he’d vote for. I told him that in a time of peace and plenty I’d expect a lot of people to vote for the incumbent, and I asked why he hadn’t committed to Mr. Gore. He looked over at me and said, with what seemed some embarassment, “I kind of get the impression he’s . . . a liar?” I asked why he hadn’t yet gone for Mr. Bush, then. He said he wasn’t sure Mr. Bush was right about tax cuts. It seemed clear to me though, the way he described how he saw both men, that his vote, ultimately, wouldn’t go to the liar.

No one knows of course, but my sense is that aversion to Al Gore is reaching some kind of critical mass, that the charge that he is a dishonest man at a time when we badly need an honest leader has taken hold, and that this is damaging to Mr. Gore to a greater degree than Bush-isn’t-smart-enough has been damaging for Mr. Bush.

I think Mr. Bush is winning, I think it’s happening day by day, and I think things will probably get real ugly real soon. The next presidential debate, next Tuesday, should be full of sparks and drama. Mr. Gore won’t be constrained next time; by now he’s decided the only way to take Mr. Bush is to pound him into the ground. He’ll go after Mr. Bush with knives and knuckles. People do what they know how to do, and that’s what he knows how to do.

We’ll see how Mr. Bush handles it. One thing about him Wednesday night: he sure didn’t look afraid. He didn’t look cowed. He looked happy. Like someone who knows something.

Candidates get better when they think they’re winning. Hillary Clinton has gotten better. She dominated yesterday’s debate. It was her show, with Rick Lazio playing a supporting role.

Mrs. Clinton spoke at her lectern with the fluidity and concentration of an Al Gore, unspooling her answers in full paragraphs, with each reply telling the story she wanted told. She presented herself as more in tune with the liberalism of New York, and in her final statement she did something I have never seen her do. Knowing that she was winning the debate, she uncoiled enough not to seem to be acting or reciting or manipulating but to seem to be sincere—and actually happy—as she gave a deft and effective tribute to the New York character, to what it means to be a New Yorker. I have a feeling we’ll be seeing that part over and over.

*   *   *

Mr. Lazio and his people obviously game-planned his debate strategy with this in mind: Since he already has the anti-Hillary vote, he must now reach out with gentleness, with a more winning personality, to undecided voters who are thought to be uninterested in critiques of Clintonism. Moments after the debate ended, Gov. George Pataki said on CNN that Mr. Lazio was trying to get more voters to vote for him, rather than against Mrs. Clinton.

But this stance left Mr. Lazio in effect ruling out effective criticism, and not moving forward on rich target areas of attack. When moderator Marcia Kramer asked the candidates how they would respond to a U.S. Postal Service plan to put a five cent tax on each e-mail sent in America in order to recoup revenues lost to snail mail—an Internet hoax, not a real piece of legislation—Mrs. Clinton breezily told Ms. Kramer that, “based on your description,” she would not support the bill, that she thinks the Internet is a very promising development, and that she would take in general a wait-and-see attitude toward Internet taxation.

Mr. Lazio might have responded with an assertion of the difference between Mrs. Clinton’s views on taxation and his, and challenged her on her past support of her husband’s tax increases. He did not. He said he was against Internet taxation, and let it go.

Invited to elaborate on his past references on the stump to what is called the character issue, Mr. Lazio demurred, and instead spoke of his own history, accomplishments and character. Again, his strategy was obviously to make the case for himself and not the case against Mrs. Clinton. But the question remains: Can Mrs. Clinton be beaten in a state with five million registered Democrats and three million Republicans if her opponent does not focus on her history—again and again?

Mrs. Clinton seemed to anticipate Mr. Lazio’s Softness Strategy, and she made the best of it. At the beginning of the debate she referred in a challenging manner to his crossing the stage and approaching her with a soft-money ban in his hand. Thus she put him on the defensive for having, last debate, put her on the defensive. She challenged him also on the issue of trust, which in the past has been his issue against her—”Hillary Clinton—you just can’t trust her,” some of his most effective commercials have declared. But now she challenged him on breaking his own soft-money vow, which elicited from him his only clear, clean shot: “Mrs. Clinton, please—no lectures from Motel 1600 on campaign-finance reform.”

Mrs. Clinton was tough. She was also, almost invariably, smug. She seemed to know that Soft Rick wouldn’t body-slam her over her the Clinton administration’s failure to veto a United Nations Security Council resolution attacking Israel, and she used the question on it to stake out an assertion of her own independence. Pretty deft. She said Republicans “do not have the best interests of our country at heart,” and then claimed she is the real bipartisan candidate. She was not corrected. She seemed to know she would not be corrected. Mrs. Clinton now says “our” country where she used to say “the” country, and, when speaking of New York, goes out of her way to say “our” state, “our” roads, “our” bridges. (A friend of mine quipped: “our limos.”)

Mrs. Clinton’s primary problem continues to be an almost unrelenting charmlessness—a Nurse Ratched demeanor, a dead-eyed and rather joyless aggression that makes those who care about such things recoil. I say “almost” unrelenting, for at the close of the debate she showed an engagement that was almost charming.

*   *   *

By the end of the debate, in the cutaway shots of the audience, Mrs. Clinton’s supporters were smiling. Mr. Lazio’s seemed to be concentrating, thinking. And maybe planning the spin.

One senses right now, with less than a month to go before the election, that conservatives are on the defensive, finding it very difficult to break through and reach voters with the soundness of their arguments. Clinton-Gore-Clinton attacks on conservative heartlessness seem to me to be taking hold in some immeasurable way; and the Clinton-Gore spin that criticism of their derelictions, flaws, foibles and scandals is a “personal attack” and “the politics of personal destruction” seems also to have life in it, chiefly because the Republicans have thus far failed to refute it.

Nothing is over, almost four weeks remain, but in the sense that you’re either rising or falling, I do not have a sense that Mr. Lazio is rising.

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.