Their race deadlocked, Gore and Bush knew that this first debate was likely to have the largest audience and the potential of tilting the contest decisively. At the outset, Gore appeared more comfortable and confident than did Bush, which was to be expected given Gore s greater experience in high-stakes debates. Gore essentially sloughed off Jim Lehrer s first question, about whether he had been questioning Bush s experience, and turned it into the first of about ten occasions in which he went after Bush s tax cut plan as a sop to the wealthy. After awhile, Gore s clearly planned lines became mind-numbingly repetitive. Because it is so very unlike normal communication, such scriptedness nurtures a cynical response.
Nobody talks that way in real life.
Bush s response to this and several other particular policy matters involving number-crunching was not fully satisfying. Gore is cut from the same cloth. Foreign policy should be a real strength for the Republicans. But in this debate Bush lost the moral high ground by articulating the more narrow definition of American national interests characteristic of old-time Republican realists like Henry Kissinger. Thus only Gore was willing to say that genocide in a foreign land might be a reason for U.S. military intervention.