He Plans to Expand on Theme of ‘Kinder and Gentler Nation’ : Bush’s Strategy in Debate Is to ‘Get My Position Out’

“Here’s my key line,” the vice president said, warming up to the task: “Who would have thought we’d be debating on Christmas night, Sept. 25?”

It was George Bush, neatly appropriating a joke that has been making the rounds in Washington. But at the same time, he was getting ready for tonight’s 90-minute televised debate with Michael S. Dukakis in Winston-Salem, N.C., by jumping, feet first, into the pre-debate practice of lowering expectations by pointing up his own tendency to commit the costly verbal blooper.

In this case, the joke was based on Bush’s slip earlier this month in which he said the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 occurred on Sept. 7 (he was exactly three months premature). It was set up when a reporter unwittingly fed him a straight line: “The Democrats say you’re prone to gaffes.”

“That’s true, that’s true,” Bush replied, ruefully.

But through the jokes and the relaxed demeanor--studied or not--Bush has sent signals in brief encounters with reporters over the past week that shed light on the approach he might pursue in the debate.

VFW Endorsement

Early Saturday, he strolled out his front door with leaders of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Political Action Committee, who endorsed his bid for the presidency, and with the five-minute formalities of the endorsement out of the way, the topic turned quickly to the debate.

While Roger Ailes, his media adviser and one of the central figures in preparing the vice president for the debate, ambled up the driveway, Bush said the format of the debate allowed little room for developing detailed responses to questions or to present lengthy, specific policy plans.

Under the rules of the program, answers and rebuttals to questions posed by reporters on a panel and to the comments of the two candidates must be kept to two- and one-minute segments--enough for a zinger of a riposte the size of a television sound bite, but not long enough to begin to lose a television audience.

In Boston, meanwhile, Dukakis remained closeted in a downtown hotel with his debate coaches. He and his aides staged one mock debate Friday night and were planning one more Saturday evening, said Dayton Duncan, the Massachusetts governor’s campaign press secretary.

The vice president has made it clear that his overall goal tonight is much as it was the last time he faced a nationwide television audience, when he addressed the Republican National Convention last month. So, he will try to use his share of the 90 minutes to shape the nation’s perception of him.

‘Heart,’ Not Statistics

“It is important to be saying what you feel in your heart rather than reeling off some statistics,” he told reporters last week aboard Air Force Two.

He expanded on that Saturday, when he said his goal was to “get my position out. Get the American people to understand how I feel on the issues. Be what you are. Try to let the American people feel your pulse, your heartbeat.”

For a week, Bush has been working into his basic campaign speech a segment lifted in spirit from his convention address, telling audiences as he did in Houston on Thursday evening at a $3-million Republican fund-raising dinner that “prosperity has a purpose and it’s to pursue the better angels of our nature. And that means making greater strides in education, the sciences, the environment and the things of the spirit. But it also means just giving a helping hand to a fellow citizen who needs it.”

It is a theme, he has indicated, that he would hope to work into the debate, following his well-received call at the convention for a “kinder and gentler nation.” But it is one that he has not addressed in detail, in terms of specific programs or costs.

Played Role of Dukakis

On and off for the past week, Bush has been closeted at the vice president’s residence at the north end of Embassy Row, rehearsing for the debate. Richard G. Darman, former deputy secretary of the Treasury, has played the role of Dukakis.

Has Darman been a “good Dukakis?” Bush was asked.

“Let’s wait and see,” he replied.

“I think it’s going to go all right,” he said of the debate, offering none of the locker room bravado that characterized his appearances coming out of his debate with Geraldine A. Ferraro, the Democrats’ vice presidential nominee four years ago, when he said he had “kicked a little ass.”

“I don’t know how you measure these things. But I feel comfortable at this point,” Bush said Saturday.

When asked whether he would be nervous this evening, he replied: “I don’t think so. I’ve gotten a little bit laid back.”

Still, he said, “you sense the tension.”

The vice president has said that the debate preparation has left his wife, Barbara, bored silly, and that as he launches into his position on this issue or that, she invariably nods off to sleep.

Now, however, with the debate a day away, Bush said, “she’s a little more fired up.” Barbara Bush stood nearby, smiling, before wandering off in the midst of the vice president’s conversation with reporters to inspect the trees on the residence grounds, trailed by the family’s spaniel.