From: barrett@cc.gatech.edu (James Barrett)
Subject: GORE/QUAYLE/STOCKDALE: VP debate text (10/13) part 2/2
Reply-To: barrett@cc.gatech.edu (James Barrett)
Organization: Georgia Tech College of Computing
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 19:17:11 GMT

  STOCKDALE:  I know that--I read where Senator Gore's mentor had
disagree with some of the scientific data that is in his book.  How do
you respond to those criticisms of that sort?  Do you--
  QUAYLE:  Deny it.
  GORE:  Well--
  (Laughter.)
  STOCKDALE:  Do you take this into account?
  (Laughter.)
  GORE:  No, I--let me respond.  Thank you, Admiral, for saying that.
You're talking about Roger Revelle.  His family wrote a lengthy letter
saying how terribly he had been misquoted and had his remarks taken
completely out of context just before he died.
  (Jeers.)
  He believed up until the day he died--no, it's true, he died last
year--
  BRUNO:  I'd ask the audience to stop, please.
  GORE:  --and just before he died, he co- authored an article which
was--had statements taken completely out of context.  In fact the vast
majority of the world's scientists--and they have worked on this
extensively-- believe that we must have an effort to face up to the
problems we face with the environment.  And if we just stick out heads
in the sand and pretend that it's not real, we're not doing ourselves
a favor.  Even worse than that, we're telling our children and all
future generations that we weren't willing to face up to this
obligation.
  QUAYLE:  Hal, can I--
  GORE:  I believe that we have a mandate--
  BRUNO:  Sure.  We've still got time.
  GORE:  --to try to solve this problem, particularly when we can do
it while we create jobs in the process.
  BRUNO:  Go ahead, Mr Vice President, there's still time.  Not much,
though.
  QUAYLE:  I know it.  We've got to have a little equal time here now,
Hal.  In the book you also suggest taxes on, gasoline taxes on
utilities, taxes on carbon, taxes on timber.  There's a whole host of
taxes.  And I don't just--I don't believe raising taxes is the way to
solve our environmental problems.
  And you talk about the bad situation in the auto industry.  You seem
to say that the answer is, well, I'll just make it that much worse by
increasing the CAFE standards.  Yes, the auto industry is hurting,
it's been hurting for a long time, and increasing the CAFE standards
to 45 miles per gallon, like you and Bill Clinton are suggesting, will
put, as I said, 300,000 people out of work.
  BRUNO:  Okay, let's move on now.  I would like to remind the
audience of one thing.  Trying to stop you from applauding may be a
lost cause.  I didn't say anything about hissing, but I do think it is
discourteous, and there's no call for that, and it reflects badly on
the candidate you're supporting.  So let's knock that off.
  Let's go on to health care.  Health care protection has become a
necessity of life in our society, yet millions of Americans are not
ensured and the cost of medical treatment is practically out of
control.
  How do you propose to control these costs and how are you going to
provide access to health care for every American?
  Let's see, whose turn is it to go now?
  QUAYLE:  I think it's Admiral Stockdale's.
  BRUNO:  I think it's Admiral Stockdale's turn to go first.  Go
ahead, sir.
  STOCKDALE:  Well, we have excellent technical health care, but we
don't administer it very well, and the escalating costs top any other
budget danger in the--on the horizon, I think.  And what Mr Perot has
suggested is that we try to re- -to look at the incentives, the
incentives that are in our current way of doing business, are what are
killing us.  There's-- there's no incentive for a hypochondriac not to
go to the--to Medicare every day.  There is no incentive for a doctor
to curtail the expensive tests because he's under threat of
malpractice lawyers.
  And so we--we just have a web of wrong-way incentives that has to be
changed by some people who are in the medical profession and some
other crafty people who know how to write contracts to change
incentives or get--get the--the incentives situation under control.
  BRUNO:  Senator Gore.
  GORE:  Bill Clinton and I believe that if a criminal has the right
to a lawyer, every American family ought to have the right to see a
doctor of their own choosing when they need to see a doctor.  There
are almost 40 million Americans who work full time today and yet have
no health insurance whatsoever.  We are proposing to change that, not
with a government-run plan, not with new taxes, but with a new
approach called managed competition.
  We are going to provide a standard health insurance package provided
by private insurance companies and eliminate the duplication and red
tape, and overlap, and we're going to have cost controls to eliminate
the unnecessary procedures that are costing so much money today.
  There was a bipartisan commission evenly divided between Republicans
and Democrats who looked at our plan and the Bush-Quayle proposal.
They said ours will save tens of billions of dollars and cover every
American.  The Bush proposal, by contrast, will cost us tens of
billions and still leave Americans uninsured.
  But what I want to know is, why has George Bush waited for 3 and a
half years during this health insurance crisis before finally coming
out with a proposal, just before the election, and he still hasn't
introduced it in Congress.  Why the long wait, Dan?
  BRUNO:  Mr Vice President.
  QUAYLE:  Hal, President Bush has had his health care reform agenda
on Capitol Hill for 8 months.  He's had parts of it up there for
years.  You talk about increasing costs that the president has had on
Capitol Hill- - medical malpractice reform legislation--for several
years.  Defensive medicine and health care today cost $20.7 billion.
Defense medicine defined as testing and treatment that is only
necessary in case of a law suit.  Wouldn't that be nice to take $20.7
billion that we're putting into our legal system and put it to
preventive health care or women's health care or something else
besides trial lawyers?
  But no--you don't want to reform the health care system to drive
down costs through medical malpractice.  What you're doing--you are
talking about a government program.  Your program is to ration health
care.  You said in your statement to see a doctor when you want to see
a doctor.  When you start rationing health care there's going to be a
waiting line to see a doctor unless it's an emergency.
  Remember when we rationed energy in this country?  Waiting lines at
the gasoline stations.  The same thing would happen when you ration
health care.  The president's proposal deals with tax credits,
deductions and purchasing health care in the private sector and making
health care affordable and available to every single American.
  BRUNO:  Admiral Stockdale, would you like to start the discussion
period?
  STOCKDALE:  Well, I'm out of ammunition on this--
  GORE:  Well, let me talk then because I've got a couple of things
that I want to say.
  BRUNO:  Go ahead, Senator.
  GORE:  We still didn't get an answer to the question of why George
Bush waited for 3 and a half years--
  QUAYLE:  He didn't wait 3 and a half years.
  GORE:  --during the national--
  QUAYLE:  I did answer the question.
  GORE:  --health insurance crisis before he even made a proposal.
And it still hasn't been submitted to Congress in the form of
legislation.  I also want to respond to the question about
malpractice.  Do you know which state has the lowest malpractice
premiums in the entire country?  Bill Clinton's Arkansas does--partly
because he has passed reform measures limiting the time during which
malpractice suits can be filed.  In fact, tort claims generally have
fallen 10 % under Bill Clinton there.
  But you know, that's not the reason for this health insurance
crisis.  The reason is, we've had absolutely no leadership.  Let me
tell you about a friend of mine named Mitch Philpot from Marietta,
Georgia--not far from here--who Tipper and I met with his family in
Johns Hopkins Hospital.  Their son, Brett, was in the bed next to our
son and they couldn't pay their medical bills.  They used to live in
Atlanta, but they lost their house.  And while they were there, both
Mitch and his wife lost their jobs because they could not get unpaid
leave.
  We pass legislation to give family leave under circumstances like
that, exempting small business.  How can you talk about family values,
Dan, and twice veto the Family Medical Leave Act?
  (Applause)
  BRUNO:  Mr Vice President.
  QUAYLE:  Pass our Family Leave Act, because it goes to small
businesses where the major problem is.  Your proposal excluded small
business.  That's the problem.
  Now, let me talk about health care and--
  GORE:  Did you require it?  Did you require it?
  QUAYLE:  My turn-- (holding hand up at Gore)
  GORE:  Did you require (inaudible)--
  (Simultaneous conversation)
  QUAYLE:  My turn.
  GORE:  It's a free discussion.
  QUAYLE:  Take a breath, Al.  Inhale.
  GORE:  It's a free discussion.
  (Applause)
  Did you require family leave in that legislation?  Yes or no?
  QUAYLE:  We offered incentives to small businesses.  Yes or no--
  GORE:  That's a no, isn't it?
  QUAYLE:  Was small business exempted under your proposal?
  GORE:  Yes.
  QUAYLE:  Yes.  And that's where the biggest problem is--
  GORE:  Did you require it of anyone?
  QUAYLE:  I'm going to get back to the topic again--
  GORE:  Did you require it of anyone?
  QUAYLE:  --because he obviously doesn't want to talk about health
insurance or health care, which you address.  I was absolutely--I
shouldn't say that--another Clinton.  You pulled another Clinton on me
because here you go again.  Medical malpractice legislation has been
before the Congress of the US and you tried to convince the American
people is for tort reform?  The biggest campaign contributors to your
campaign are the trial lawyers of America.  We have a letter--and
we're going to release it again to the media, if the media is
interested--where the head of the trial lawyers of Arkansas said that
Bill Clinton was basically in their back pocket, that Bill Clinton has
always opposed tort reform of any kind.  It's in the letter, we have
it, we'll make it available-- because Bill Clinton is not for tort
reform.
  I'd like to know where Bill Clinton stands on health insurance.
When he was campaigning in New Hampshire, he said I am for the
pay-or-play health insurance.  Pay or play, that's a 7 to 9 % payroll
tax on every worker in America that participates in this program.
  GORE:  Can I respond?
  QUAYLE:  And then, all of a sudden, this summer he says, oh, I'm not
for a pay or play.  Here we go again.  Bill Clinton, one day he's for
pay or play, the next day he's against pay or play.  He does it in
education.  He writes Polly Williams, a Democrat state legislator in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, saying I'm for choice in education; then he goes
to the NEA teachers union and says, sorry, I'm not for choice in
education because you won't let me be for choice in education.
  One time Bill Clinton says term limits--we ought to limit terms,
it's ridiculous that a member of Congress can serve for 30, 40, 50
years, and you limit the terms of the president-- but that's another
subject.
  GORE:  We're fixing to limit one.
  (Laughter)
  QUAYLE:  It's not going to be mine; it's going to be people like you
and Kennedy and Metzenbaum and George Mitchell and the rest of that
Democratic Congress on Capitol Hill--that's who we're talking about.
  (Applause)
  And that's who the American people--as you well know, you've got
term limits for a president, you don't have term limits for Congress,
and I think it's absolutely ridiculous that we don't.
  GORE:  I want to respond to some of this.
  QUAYLE:  Here goes Bill Clinton again:  he says, well, term limits,
that's an interesting idea, I think I might be in favor of that.  Then
his Democratic friends in Congress say, no, Bill, you can't be for
that.
  Bill Clinton has trouble telling the truth.
  GORE:  I want to respond, if I might.
  BRUNO:  Go ahead, Senator, quickly.
  GORE:  You know, in response to my question before that long laundry
list, he said that they had their own family leave proposal.  It was
just like the proposal of your party back when Social Security was
first proposed.  You said:  we're for it as long as it's voluntary.
Same with Medicare.  You said:  we're for it so long as it's
voluntary.  Civil rights--we're for it so long as it's voluntary.
  BRUNO:  Senator, I'm going to have to ask you to wrap this one up.
  GORE:  Family leave is important enough to be required.
  (Applause)
  BRUNO:  Okay, thanks.  Coming out of health care, again trying to
avoid controversy, let's talk about the abortion debate.
  (Laughter)
  Abortion rights has been a bitter controversy in this country for
almost 20 years.  It's been heightened by the recent Supreme Court
decisions.  So I'll make it very simple in this question:  Where do
each of you stand on the issue?  What actions will your president's
administration take on the abortion question?  Will it be a factor in
the appointment of federal judges, especially to the Supreme Court?
And I believe that Senator Gore goes first.
  GORE:  Bill Clinton and I support the right of a woman to choose.
  (Applause)
  That doesn't mean we're pro-abortion; in fact, we believe there are
way too many abortions in this country.  And the way to reduce them is
by reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies, not vetoing family
planning legislation the way George Bush has consistently done.
  The reason we are pro-choice and in favor of a woman's right to
privacy is because we believe that during the early stages of a
pregnancy the government has no business coming in and ordering a
woman to do what the government thinks is best.  What Dan Quayle and
George Bush and Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson think is the right
decision in a given set of circumstances is their privilege--but don't
have the government order a woman to do what they think is the right
thing to do.
  We ought to be able to build more common ground among those who
describe themselves as pro-choice and pro-life in efforts to reduce
the number of unwanted pregnancies.
  But, Dan, you can clear this up very simply by repeating after me:
I support the right of a woman to choose.  Can you say that?
  BRUNO:  Vice President Quayle, your turn.
  QUAYLE:  This issue is an issue that divides Americans deeply.  I
happen to be pro-life.  I have been pro-life for my 16 years--
  (Applause.)
  --in public life.  My objective and the president's objective is to
try to reduce abortions in this country.  We have 1.6 million
abortions.  We have more abortions in Washington, DC, than we do live
births.  Why shouldn't we have more reflection upon the issue before
abor--the decision of abortion is made.  I would hope that we would
agree upon that.  Something like a 24-hour waiting period, parental
notification.
  I was in Los Angeles recently and I talked to a woman who told me
that she had an abortion when she was 17 years of age.  And looking
back on that she said it was a mistake.  She said--she said I wished
at that time, that I was going through this difficult time, that I had
counseling to talk about the post-abortion trauma, and talk about
adoption rather than abortion.  Because if I had had that discussion,
I would have had the child.  Let's not forget that every abortion
stops a beating heart.  I think we have far too many abortions in this
country, in this country of ours.
  BRUNO:  Admiral Stockdale.
  STOCKDALE:  I believe that a woman owns her body and what she does
with it is her own business, period.
  (Applause.)
  Period.
  BRUNO:  That's it?
  (Applause.)
  STOCKDALE:  I don't--I, too, abhor abortions, but I don't think they
should be made illegal, and I don't--and I don't think it's a
political issue.  I think it's a privacy issue.
  (Applause.)
  BRUNO:  You caught me by surprise.  Let's go ahead with the
discussion of this issue.  Senator Gore.
  GORE:  Well, you notice in his response, that Dan did not say I
support the right of a woman to choose.  That is because he and George
Bush have turned over their party to Pat Buchanan and Phyllis
Schlafly, who have ordered them to endorse a platform which makes all
abortions illegal under any circumstances, regardless of what has led
to that decision by a woman.
  Even in cases of rape and incest, their platform requires that a
woman be penalized, that she not be allowed to make a choice, if she
believes, in consultation with her family, her doctor, and others,
whoever she chooses, that she wants to have an abortion after rape, or
incest.  They make it completely--
  QUAYLE:  Senator, do you support a 24-hour waiting period?
  GORE:  --illegal under any of those circumstances.
  Now they want to waffle around--
  QUAYLE:  Do you support a 24-hour waiting period?
  GORE:  Let me finish this, briefly.  Now--now you want to waffle
around on it and give the impression that maybe you don't really mean
what you say.  But again, you can clear it up by simply repeating I
support the right of a woman to choose.  Say it.
  BRUNO:  Let him say it himself.  Let him say his own words.  Go
ahead, Mr Vice President.
  QUAYLE:  Thank you.  Talk about waffling around.  This issue is a
very important issue.  It has been debated throughout your public life
and throughout my public life, and one thing that I don't think that
it is wise to do, and that is to change your position.
  At one time, and most of the time in the House of Representatives,
you had a pro-life position.
  GORE:  That's simply not true.
  QUAYLE:  In 1987, you wrote a letter, and we'll pass this out to the
media--
  GORE:  That is simply not true.
  QUAYLE:  You wrote a letter saying that you oppose taxpayer funding
of abortion.  Bill Clinton has the same type of a record.
  GORE:  In some circumstances.
  QUAYLE:  You're going to qualify it now.
  GORE:  And I still do.
  QUAYLE:  And Bill Clinton, when he was governor of Arkansas, also
worked with the Right to Life people and supported Right to Life
positions and now he has changed.  Talk about waffling around.  This
is the typical type of Clinton response.  Even on the issue like
abortion.  He's on both sides of the issue.
  Take the NAFTA agreement--
  GORE:  Well, wait--
  BRUNO:  Let's stick with the question, Mr Vice President.
  QUAYLE:  How long did he have--
  GORE:  I know you want to change the subject, Dan, but let's stay on
this one for a while.
  QUAYLE:  How long did he have to wait-- or how quickly did he change
his position on education?  He changes his position all the time.
  GORE:  Let's stay with this issue for a while.
  QUAYLE:  Bill Clinton--Bill Clinton has trouble telling the truth.
3 words he fears most in the English language.
  BRUNO:  Does anybody have any view about the appointment of judges
on this?
  QUAYLE:  Tell the truth.
  GORE:  Yeah, I want to talk about this, because the question was not
about free trade or education.  The question--
  QUAYLE:  Talk about waffling.  You're the one who brought up the--
  GORE:  Now, I let you talk.
  QUAYLE:  --issue of waffling.  He's waffled on the abortion issue.
  GORE:  I let you talk.  Let me talk now.  It's going to be a long
evening if you're like this, now.
  QUAYLE:  Oh, no, it's not--
  GORE:  Don't change the subject--
  BRUNO:  Let's get on with it.  Gentlemen, let's get on with it.
  GORE:  Don't change the subject--
  QUAYLE:  Well, answer my questions, then.
  GORE:  What you have done--
  QUAYLE:  Answer my questions.  On the 24 hour waiting period--do you
support that?
  GORE:  I have had the same position--
  QUAYLE:  Do you support that?
  GORE:  I have had the same position on abortion in favor of a
woman's right to choose.  Do you support a woman's right to choose--
  QUAYLE:  Do you support a 24 hour waiting period to have--
  GORE:  You're still avoiding--
  QUAYLE:  How about avoiding the question?
  GORE:  --the question.  Now, wait a minute.  Let me tell you why
this is so important.  There are millions of women in this country who
passionately believe in the right of a woman to privacy.  And they
want to stack the Supreme Court with justices who will take away the
right to privacy.  Make no mistake about it.  That is their agenda--
  (Applause)
  And if you support them, don't be surprised if that is exactly what
they want to do and that is why Dan Quayle refuses to say this evening
that he supports the right of a woman to choose.
  I agree with Admiral Stockdale and the vast majority of Democrats
and Republicans in this country.  You know, one of the reasons so many
Republicans are supporting the Clinton- Gore ticket is because they've
turned over the party to this right wing extremist group which takes
positions on issues like abortion that don't even allow exceptions for
rape and incest.
  BRUNO:  Senator--
  GORE:  Again, can't you just say you support the right of a woman to
choose?
  BRUNO:  Could we give Admiral Stockdale a chance to jump in here if
he wants to, if he dares to.
  STOCKDALE:  I would like to get in--I feel like I'm an observer at a
pingpong game, where they're talking about well, you know, they're
expert professional politicians that massage these intricate plots and
know every nuance to 'em.  And meantime, we're facing a desperate
situation in our economy.  I've seen the cost of living double in my
lifetime.  A new granddaughter was born in my family--my
granddaughter- -3 weeks ago.  And according to the statistics that we
have-- that is, the Perot group--the chances of her seeing a doubling
of the standard of living are nil.  In fact, her children will be dead
before another--this standard of living is doubled.  So what the heck!
Let's get on with talking about something substantive.
  (Applause)
  BRUNO:  All right.  Mr Vice President, you'll have a chance to--
  (Applause)
  You'll have a chance in the closing statements.
  QUAYLE:  We need to get on--
  BRUNO:  No, let's move on to another topic.
  QUAYLE:  Just 15 seconds to respond.
  GORE:  Well, can I have 15 seconds also?
  BRUNO:  No, let's move on, gentlemen.
  QUAYLE:  I'll tell you what.  If--
  BRUNO:  Let's not--we're not horse trading.  We're having a debate.
Let's go on.  Let's talk about the cities.  Because that's where a
majority of Americans live, in urban areas, and they're facing a
financial and social crisis.  They've lost sources of tax revenue.
The aid that once came from the federal and state governments has been
drastically cut.  There's an epidemic of drugs, crime and violence.
Their streets, the schools are like war zones.  It's becoming
increasingly difficult to pay for public education, for
transportation, for police and fire protection, the basic services
that local government must provide.
  Now, everybody says, talks about enterprise zones, that may be part
of the solution, but what else are your administrations really going
to be willing to do to help the cities?
  Vice President Quayle, it's your turn to go first.
  QUAYLE:  Well, Hal, enterprise zones are important and it's an idea
that the president has been pushing, and there's been very strong
reluctance on, with the Democratic Congress.  We'll continue to push
it.
  We also want, Hal, to have home ownership.  I was at a housing
sub--a housing project in San Francisco several months ago and met
with people that were trying to reclaim their neighborhood.
  They wanted home ownership.  They didn't want handouts.  And I was
with the Democrat mayor of San Francisco who was there supporting our
idea.  But when you look at the cities and you see the problems we
have with crime, drugs, lack of jobs, I also want to point out one of
the fundamental problems that we have in American cities and
throughout America today, and that is the breakdown of the American
family.
  I know some people laugh about it when I talk about the breakdown of
the family, but it's true.  6ty % of the kids that are born in our
major cities today are born out of wedlock.  We have too many
divorces.  We have too many fathers that aren't assuming their
responsibility.  The breakdown of the family is a contributing factor
to the problems that we have in urban America.
  BRUNO:  Admiral Stockdale.
  STOCKDALE:  I think enterprise zones are good, but I think the
problem is deeper than that.  I think we are--you know, when I was--I
ran a civilization for several years, a civilization of 3 to 4 hundred
wonderful men.  We had our own laws.  We had our own, practically our
own constitution.  And I put up--I was the--I was the sovereign for a
good bit of that.  And I tried to analyze human predicaments in that
microcosm of life in the--in the world.  And I found out that when I
really got down to putting out do's and don'ts, and lots of these
included take torture for this and that, and this and that, and never
take any amnesty, for reasons they all understood and went along with.
But one of the--we had an acronym, BACKUS, and each one of those
B-a-c-k was something for which you--you had to make them hurt you
before you did it.  Bowing in public, making, making--getting on the
radio and so forth.  But at the end it was US, BACKUS.  You got the
double meaning there.
  But the US could be called the US, but it was Unity Over Self,
Loners Make Out.  Somehow we're going to have to get some love in this
country between races, and between rich and poor.  You have got to
have leaders--and they're out there--who can do this with their bare
hands, with--working with, with people on the scene.
  BRUNO:  Senator Gore, please.
  GORE:  George Bush's urban policy has been a tale of 2 cities:  the
best of times for the very wealthy; the worst of times for everyone
else.  We have seen a decline in urban America under the Bush-Quayle
administration.  Bill Clinton and I want to change that, by creating
good jobs, investing in infrastructure, new programs in job training
and apprenticeship, welfare reform--to say to a mother with young
children that if she gets a good job, her children are not going to
lose their Medicaid benefits; incentives for investment in the inner
city area, and, yes, enterprise zones.  Vice President Quayle said
they're important, but George Bush eliminated them from his urban
plan, and then--
  QUAYLE:  Well, that's not true.
  GORE:  And then, when they were included in a plan that the Congress
passed,--
  QUAYLE:  We have been for enterprise zones--
  GORE:  --George Bush vetoed the enterprise zone law, the law that
included them, for one reason:  because that same bill raised taxes on
those making more than $200,000 a year.
  Let's face up to it, Dan:  your top priority really, isn't it, to
make sure that the very wealthy don't have to pay any more taxes.  We
want to cut taxes on middle-income families and raise them on those
making more than $200,000 a year.
  QUAYLE:  What plan is that?
  GORE:  And if we can take our approach, the cities will be much
better off.
  BRUNO:  Let's start the discussion period right here.  Go ahead.
  QUAYLE:  What plan is that that's just going to raise taxes on those
making over $200,000 a year?  You may call that your plan, but
everyone knows that you simply can't get $150 billion in new taxes by
raising the marginal tax rate to a top rate of 36 % and only tax those
making $200,000 a year.  It's absolutely ridiculous.  The top 2 %
which you refer to, that gets you down to $64,000; then you have about
a $40-billion shortfall--that gets you down to $36,000 a year.
Everybody making more than $36,000 a year will have their taxes
increased if Bill Clinton is president of the US.
  And I don't know how you're going to go to urban America and say
that raising taxes is good for you.  I don't know how you're going to
go to urban America and say, well, the best thing that we can offer is
simply to raise taxes again.  This is nothing more than a
tax-and-spend platform.  We've seen it before.  It doesn't work.
  Let me tell you about a story.
  GORE:  Can I respond to some of that?
  QUAYLE:  I've got a very good example--
  GORE:  Can I respond to some of that?
  QUAYLE:  --when we talk about families here, because I was meeting
with some former gang members in Phoenix and Los Angeles and
Albuquerque, New Mexico.  And when I talked to those former gang
members, here's what they told why they joined the gang.  They said,
well, joining a gang is like joining a family.  I said, joining a
family?  Yes, because the gang offered support, it offered leadership,
it offered comfort, it was a way to get ahead.
  Where have we come if joining a gang is like being a member of the
family?
  BRUNO:  Senator Gore, you wanted to respond?
  QUAYLE:  And that's why I think that families have to be
strengthened, and you don't strengthen the American family by raising
taxes.
  GORE:  I do want to respond to that.
  BRUNO:  Go ahead, Senator, Admiral.
  GORE:  George Bush and Dan Quayle want to protect the very wealthy.
That is the group that has gotten all of the tax cuts under the
Bush-Quayle administration.  Nobody here who is middle income has
gotten a tax cut because middle-income families have had tax increases
under Bush and Quayle in order to finance the cuts for the very
wealthy.  That's what trickle-down economics is all about.  And they
want to continue it.
  We're proposing to also require foreign corporations to pay the same
taxes that American corporations do when they do business here in the
US of America.  George Bush has not been willing to enforce the laws
and collect those taxes.  We want to close that loophole and raise
more money in that way.
  BRUNO:  Senator, can we stick to the cities, sir?
  GORE:  Excuse me?
  BRUNO:  Stick to the cities.
  GORE:  All right.  Well, he, he talked about ways to raise money to
help the cities.  What we're proposing is to invest in the
infrastructure in cities and have targeted tax incentives for
investment right in inner city areas.  The enterprise zones represent
a part of our proposal also, and strengthening the family through
welfare reform.  And you know the Bush administration has cut out--has
vetoed family leave, they have cut childhood immunization and college
aid.
  If you don't support parents and you don't support children,
how--how can you say you support families?
  QUAYLE:  How about supporting parents and the right to choose where
their kids go to school, Al?
  (Applause.)
  Do you support that?
  GORE:  We--
  QUAYLE:  Let the parents--let the parents--
  GORE:  Do you want me to answer?
  QUAYLE:  --public or private schools?
  GORE:  Want me to answer?
  BRUNO:  Go ahead.
  GORE:  We support the public school choice to go to any public
school of your choice.  What we don't support-- and listen to what
they're proposing--to take US taxpayer dollars and subsidize private
schools.  Now I'm all for private schools, but to use taxpayer
dollars, when the people who get these little vouchers often won't be
able to afford the private school anyway, and the private school is
not--
  QUAYLE:  Al, I think, I think it's important--
  GORE:  --under any obligation to admit them, that is a ripoff of the
US taxpayer.
  QUAYLE:  That's important.  This is a very- -this is a very
important issue.  Choice in education is a very important issue.
  BRUNO:  Let him respond.
  QUAYLE:  And he said that he was not for choosing--giving the
parents the right to choose to send their children to public schools.
But it's okay for the wealthy to choose to send their kids to private
schools, but it's not okay for the middle class and the working poor
to choose where they want to send their kids to school.
  I think that it's time that all parents in America have a right to
choose where they send their kids to school to get an education.
  (Applause.)
  BRUNO:  Admiral Stockdale, would you like to have the last word in
this period?
  STOCKDALE:  I--I come down on the side of freedom of school choice.
The--and there's a lot of misunderstandings that I've heard here
tonight, that I may have the answer to.  The-- starting at, you know,
for the last, almost a decade, we've worried about our schools
officially through Washington, and the president had a meeting of all
the governors, and then they tried the conventional fixes for schools,
that is, to increase the certification of-- requirements for the
teachers, to lengthen the school day, to lengthen the school year and
nothing--this is a very brief overview of the thing--but nothing
happened.  And it's time to change the school's structure.  In
schools, bureaucracy is bad and autonomy is good.  The only good
schools--
  (Applause.)
  --we have are those run by talented principals and devoted teachers,
and they're running their own show.  How many times have I thrived?
You know, the best thing I had when I ran that civilization, it
succeeded, and it's a landmark.  The best thing I had going for me was
I had no contact with Washington for all those years.
  (Applause.)
  GORE:  Could I respond?
  BRUNO:  We have to go on.  What I'm about to say doesn't apply to
the debate tonight; it applies to the campaign that's been going on
outside this auditorium.  With 3 weeks to go, this campaign has at
times been very ugly, with the tone being set by personal negative
attacks.
  As candidates, how does it look from your viewpoint?  And are these
tactics really necessary?  Admiral Stockdale--it's your turn to go
first.
  STOCKDALE:  You know, I didn't have my hearing aid turned on.  Tell
me again.
  (Laughter)
  BRUNO:  I'm sorry, sir.  I was saying that at times this campaign
has been very ugly with personal negative attacks.  As a candidate,
how does it look from where you are and are these tactics really
necessary?
  STOCKDALE:  Nasty attacks--well, I think there is a case to be made
for putting emphasis on character over these issues that we've been
batting back and forth and have a life of their own.  Sure, you have
to know where you're going with your government, but character is the
big variable in the success.  Character of the leads is the big
variable in the success--long term success--of an administration.
  I went to a friend of mine in New York some years ago and he was a
president of a major TV network and he said, you know, I think we have
messed up this whole--this election process--it was an election
year--by stressing that--putting out the dogma that issues are the
thing to talk about, not character.
  He said, I felt so strongly about this, I went back and read the
Lincoln-Douglas debates.  Read those debates.  How do they come down?
Douglas is all character.  He knows all of the little stinky numbers
these guys do.  Abraham Lincoln had character.  Thank God we got the
right president in the Civil War.
  But that is a question that is a valid one, and you know, I would
like to brag about the character of my boss.
  BRUNO:  Okay, Senator Gore.
  GORE:  This election is about the future of our country, not about
personal attacks against one candidate or another.  Our nation is in
trouble and it is appalling to me that with 10 million Americans out
work, with the rest working harder for less money than they did 4
years ago, with the loss of 1.4 million manufacturing jobs in our
nation, with the health care crisis, a crisis of crime and drugs and
AIDS, substandard education, that George Bush would constantly try to
level personal attacks at his opponent.
  Now, this, of course, just reached a new low last week when he
resorted to a classic McCarthyite technique of trying to smear Bill
Clinton over a trip that he took as a student along with lots of other
Rhodes Scholars who were invited to go to Russia.  It's a classic
McCarthyite smear technique.  I think the president of the US ought to
apologize.  I think that he insulted the intelligence of the American
people and I'm awful proud that the American people rejected that
tactic so overwhelmingly that he decided he had made a mistake.  Do
you think it was a mistake, too, Dan?
  BRUNO:  Okay.  Vice President Quayle.
  QUAYLE:  Let me answer the question.
  BRUNO:  Go ahead.
  QUAYLE:  Hal, you said--and I wrote it down here--"personal negative
attacks." (Laughs) Has anyone been reading my press clippings for the
last 4 years?
  (Applause)
  But I happen to--I agree with one thing on--with Senator Gore, and
that is that we ought to look to the future, and the future is, who's
going to be the next president of the US.  And is it a negative attack
and a personal attack to point out that Bill Clinton has trouble
telling the truth?  He said that he didn't even demonstrate--he told
the people in Arkansas in 1978.  Then we find out he organized
demonstrations.  You know, I don't care whether he demonstrated or
didn't demonstrate.  The fact--the question is, tell the truth.  Just
tell us the truth.  Today, Bill Clinton-- excuse me--yesterday in
Philadelphia on a radio show, yesterday on a radio show, he
attacked--Admiral, he attacks Ross Perot saying the media is giving
Ross Perot a free ride.  The press asked him when the klieg lights are
on, said what do you mean by Ross Perot getting a free ride?  He says
I didn't say that at all.
  I mean, you can't have it both ways.  No, I don't think that is a
personal attack.  What I find troubling with Bill Clinton is he can't
tell the truth.  You cannot lead this great country of ours by
misleading the people.
  (Applause)
  BRUNO:  All right, gentlemen, the control room advises me that in
order to have time for your closing statements, which we certainly
want, there simply is not going to be time for a discussion period on
this particular topic.
  So let's go to the closing statements.  You have 2 minutes each.
And we'll start with Admiral Stockdale.
  STOCKDALE:  I think the best justification for getting Ross Perot in
the race again to say is that we're seeing this kind of chit-chat back
and forth about issues that don't concentrate on where our
grandchildren--the living standards of our children and grandchildren.
He is, as I have read in more than one article, a revolutionary; he's
got plans out there that are going to double the speed at which this
budget problem is being cared for.  It was asked how, if we would
squeeze down so fast that we would strangle the economy in the
process.  That is an art, to follow all those variables and know when
to let up and to nurse this economy back together with pulls and
pushes.
  And there's no better man in the world to do that than that old
artist, Ross Perot.  And so I think that my closing statement is that
I think I'm in a room with people that aren't the life of reality.
The US is in deep trouble.  We've got to have somebody that can get up
there and bring out the firehoses and get it stopped, and that's what
we're about in the Perot campaign.
  BRUNO:  Thank you.
  (Applause.)
  Senator Gore, your closing statement, sir.
  GORE:  Three weeks from today, our nation will make a fateful
decision.  We can continue traveling the road we have been on, which
has led to higher unemployment and worse economic times, or we can
reach out for change.  If we choose change, it will require us to
reach down inside ourselves to find the courage to take a new
direction.
  Sometimes it seems deceptively easy to continue with old habits even
when they're no longer good for us.  Trickle-down economics simply
does not work.  We have had an increase in all of the things that
should be decreasing.  Everything that should have been increasing has
been going down.  We have got to change direction.
  Bill Clinton offers a new approach.  He has been named by the other
49 governors, Republicans and Democrats alike, as the best and most
effective governor in the entire US of America.
  He's moved 17,000 people off the welfare rolls and on to payrolls.
He has introduced innovations in health care and education, and again,
he has led the nation for the last 2 years in a row in the creation of
jobs in the private sector.
  Isn't it time for a new approach, a new generation of ideas and
leadership, to put our nation's people first and to get our economy
moving again?
  We simply cannot stand to continue with this failed approach that is
no good for us.  Ultimately, it is a choice between hope and fear, a
choice between the future and the past.  It is time to reach out for a
better nation.  We are bigger than George Bush has told us we are, as
a nation, and we have a much brighter future.
  Give us a chance.  With your help, we'll change this country and we
can't wait to get started.
  (Applause.)
  BRUNO:  Vice President Quayle.
  QUAYLE:  Thank you, Hal.  I'd like to use this closing statement to
talk to you about a few people that I have met in these last 4 years.
I think of a woman in Chicago when I was talking to parents about
education where she stood up and said I'm sick and tired of these
schools in this city being nothing but a factory for failure.  And
that's why we support choice in education.
  I was in Beaumont, Texas, and met with small business people, and
they wanted to reform the civil justice system because they think our
legal system costs too much and there's too much of a delay in getting
an answer.
  I was in Middletown, Ohio, talking to a welfare woman, where she
said I want to go back to work and I had a job offered to me but I'm
not going to take it because I have 2 children at home and the job
that is offered to me doesn't have health insurance.  Under President
Bush's health care reform package that woman won't have to make a
choice about going back to work or health care for her children,
because she'll have both.
  I was in Vilnius, Lithuania, Independence Square, speaking to 10,000
people in the middle of winter.  Hundreds of people came up to me and
said:  God bless America.
  Yes, in the next 4 years, as I said, somewhere, some time, there's
going to be a crisis, and you need to have a president that is
qualified, has the experience, and has been tested.  Not one time
during this evening, during 90 minutes, did Al Gore tell us why Bill
Clinton is qualified to be president.  He never answered my charges
that Bill Clinton has trouble telling the truth.
  The choice is yours.  The American people should demand that their
president tell the truth.  Do you really believe-- do you really
believe Bill Clinton will tell the truth?  And do you, do you trust
Bill Clinton to be your president?
  (Applause)
  BRUNO:  That concludes this vice presidential debate.  I'd like to
thank Vice President Quayle, Senator Gore, Admiral Stockdale for being
participants.
  The next presidential debate is scheduled for this Thursday at 9:00
PM Eastern Time at the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia.
To all of our viewers and listeners, thank you and good night.
  (Applause)

------------------OS/2 v2.0 -- Why settle for anything less?--------------------
James C. Barrett (barrett@cc.gatech.edu)|"If your so damned smart, why are
Georgia Tech College of Computing       |  you doing what you're doing, and I'm
                                        |  president of the U.S.?" - G.Bush