Negotiations on Debate Format Start

After weeks of posturing and a day of name-calling, representatives of President Bush and Bill Clinton finally sat down late Wednesday to begin negotiating presidential debates.

“I can’t imagine we’ll get anything done in one day,” a senior Bush aide said.

But the prospect that the two candidates would face each other appeared much closer. “This should move the whole debate issue off the dime,” White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater said.

The meeting ended early today but both sides had no comment about the negotiations. Campaign representatives will resume their talks at 8:30 a.m. today.

The meeting came at the end of a day in which both sides continued to play their elaborate game of chicken over the debates, with Bush aides calling Clinton everything from “a scalded duck” to “Chicken Clinton,” and a Clinton aide saying: “My advice to the President is show up or shut up.”

This lofty dialogue ended when the Clinton campaign finally agreed to meet with the Bush camp, without the auspices of the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, to discuss Bush’s proposal. The President had resisted the commission’s proposed debates, which Clinton had accepted.

The commission had proposed four debates, with a single moderator rather than a panel of questioners, as Bush preferred. Three of those debates have been canceled. The latest was to have taken place Sunday night in San Diego.

The logjam over debates, which had dragged on for weeks, saw its real break Tuesday when Bush challenged Clinton to four debates, one every Sunday night from Oct. 11 until Nov. 1, just two days before the election. He suggested splitting the difference on the format--two his way, two the commission’s way.

But the Bush proposal left several significant questions unanswered. For one thing, it could lead to drastically reduced viewership of the debates than in the past.

Three of the four dates Bush suggested conflict with the baseball playoffs and the World Series, some of the most heavily watched television events of the year. CBS is contractually obligated to carry those games, and for Major League Baseball to move the times of the games would push them either into the early afternoon--when they would conflict with the football games CBS is also obligated to carry--or late into the night.

All previous presidential debates have been carried on all the major networks--a so-called roadblock--and four years ago averaged 60 million viewers per debate, twice as many as watch the conventions.

The Bush campaign tried to dismiss the potential conflict with the World Series. “So what?” Fitzwater said. “Life goes on. We’ve got four networks and millions and millions of people can see these debates.”

In an interview with The Times, however, Clinton said: “I don’t think they (Bush) thought through the dates very well. They’ll lose at least one network on the last three Sundays because I think CBS has already said they’ve got two baseball games and a football game.”

The meeting between the campaigns almost didn’t happen. All through the day, they had exchanged letters trying to outmaneuver each other about how to meet to discuss the President’s challenge. First, the Bush camp invited the Clinton camp to meet “in Washington, Little Rock, or any location of your choosing.”

Clinton campaign Chairman Mickey Kantor quickly wrote back agreeing to meet and suggesting the offices of the debate commission in Washington at 8 p.m. Kantor added that he hoped the first debate could be held this Sunday in San Diego, as the commission had proposed--not Oct. 11, as Bush suggested Tuesday.

The bipartisan commission was set up to produce the debates in 1988 and to work out the details and format for this year’s encounters. It suggested the debates be held with a single moderator to make it more closely resemble a classic debate, and worked out dates that avoided the conflict with baseball. Under the proposal, the final debate would have been Oct. 15, three weeks before the election.

A barrage of insults from the President and several of his aides ensued in an effort to win the publicity war over which candidate was the one who was dodging whom.

“I can’t find him,” Bush said Wednesday at a rally in Fond du Lac, Wis., implying that Clinton was hiding. “He’s lost. He’s missing in action.”

Fitzwater later accused Clinton of “jumping around like a scalded duck,” and trying to “hide behind the skirts of the commission.”

Bush deputy campaign manager Mary Matalin offered that “Chicken Clinton never wanted to debate. He wants to stay locked up in his henhouse and sit on his lead.”

Clinton, at a campaign stop outside a shopping mall in suburban Maryland, tried to argue that the Bush proposal represented a “victory” for the Democrats because “it does seem at long last that Mr. Bush is going to meet me in debate to discuss these issues.”

By late afternoon, however, the Clinton campaign agreed to meet with the Bush campaign directly in the Washington office of Kantor’s law firm, Manatt Phelps.

After the agreement to meet, Clinton continued the tit-for-tat by suggesting yet another debate proposal--Larry King’s CNN show Sunday night.

Saying that he had just learned that “Mr. Bush is going to go on ‘Larry King Live,’ ” Clinton suggested that “Larry King ought to have us both on--that would let the American people call and talk to us. Then we get the best of both worlds--one moderator and millions of questioners. . . . I’m ready to go. Let’s get it on Sunday night on Larry King.”

CNN President Tom Johnson quickly told reporters that if the candidates agreed, he would be happy to arrange the program.

But the Bush camp replied that the President was going to tape the appearance earlier in the day and would not change his plans.

Clinton strategist Paul Begala was talking tough, too, telling Bush to face his man on cable Sunday like a man. “My advice to the President is show up or shut up,” he said.

Times staff writers James Gerstenzang in Wisconsin and Jack Nelson and Sam Fulwood in Washington contributed to this story.

Today on the Trail . . .

Gov. Bill Clinton campaigns in Milwaukee and Madison, Wis.

President Bush is at Camp David, Md.