2 Bush-Dukakis Debates, 1 for Running Mates Likely

The campaign chairmen for Vice President George Bush and Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis tentatively agreed Tuesday on a schedule of two face-to-face presidential debates with a third debate reserved for the vice presidential candidates.

Paul P. Brountas, Dukakis’ chairman, told reporters traveling with the Democratic presidential nominee that he accepted the two-debate offer of James A. Baker III, Bush’s chairman, during a 25-minute telephone conversation Tuesday morning.

Still to be worked out are the dates and the format.

The two sides previously had been split over the debate schedule, with Dukakis favoring as many as four televised encounters and Bush insisting on just two.

“We can live with two presidential, one vice presidential,” Brountas told reporters.

The two sides are planning to continue their negotiations today on the other arrangements. Baker has said nothing will be considered firm until all questions involving dates, locations, format and subjects have been settled.

Dukakis had urged that the first of four proposed debates be held as early as next Wednesday, the date proposed by a bipartisan debate commission formed last year by the two major political parties.

Brountas said Sept. 25 now appeared to be a good possible date for the first face-off, inasmuch as the commission had set aside that day for a televised encounter at Wake Forest University at Winston-Salem, N.C. But he said no details have been resolved, including sponsorship of the debates.

Janet H. Brown, executive director of the bipartisan commission, has expressed an interest in a single-moderator format. However, the League of Women Voters, which sponsored campaign debates in 1976, 1980 and 1984, has sought to participate in working out a format and making arrangements.

Mark Goodin, a spokesman for Bush, said only that Baker and Brountas made “some progress” in their telephone conference and would confer again today.

Competition From Sports

The Bush campaign has expressed skepticism that voters would be interested in as many as four televised debates, considering that the debates would be competing for attention with the Olympics, which begin late next week in South Korea and continue for two weeks, followed on prime-time television by the major league baseball playoffs and the World Series.

Baker also has objected that “debates have a way of freezing a campaign,” causing a candidate to stop a busy schedule of speeches to prepare for an encounter with his opponent.