Quayle and Gore Trade Angry Barbs on Character Issue : Debate: Stockdale says their arguments during the vice presidential face-off show why ‘nation is in gridlock.’ They also clash over the economy.

In a debate that was by turns aggressive, interruptive and taunting, Vice President Dan Quayle and Tennessee Sen. Al Gore clashed heatedly Tuesday night, struggling over which of their political philosophies could salvage a troubled economy and colliding most fiercely over the character of their running mates.

Their exchanges in the 90-minute meeting--the only one for the vice presidential candidates in the course of this year’s campaign--overshadowed the third man on stage, James B. Stockdale, a retired vice admiral who is the running mate for independent candidate Ross Perot.

Quayle offered a far more assertive defense of President Bush than Bush himself delivered in last Sunday’s presidential debate. And Quayle raised the threatening specter of future world crises when he lashed out at Democratic nominee Bill Clinton as a man who cannot be trusted.

“Bill Clinton does not have the strength nor the character to be President of the United States,” he said. “. . . You need to have a President you can trust. Can you really trust Bill Clinton?”

Gore slashed back at Quayle and Bush, accusing each of caring only for the wealthy and abandoning the rest of America to a harsh and economically difficult future. To Quayle’s contention that only Bush had the experience to be President, Gore scoffed.

“When the recession came they were like a deer caught in the headlights,” he said of the Republican ticket. “Paralyzed into inaction. Blinded to the suffering and pain of bankruptcies and people who are unemployed. We have an environmental crisis, a health insurance crisis, substandard education. It is time for a change.”

” . . . The experience that George Bush and Dan Quayle have been talking about includes the worst economic performance since the Great Depression,” Gore said.

Stockdale, frequently uncertain and confused in demeanor, largely played the role of referee between two warring parties. His counterparts generally treated the much-decorated former Vietnam War prisoner with deference or ignored him outright.

Surprisingly, Stockdale sided more often with Quayle than Gore--a reversal of the scenario in the presidential debate, when Perot more often took sides with Clinton against Bush. Like Perot had Sunday night, Stockdale also played the crowd for laughs.

At one point, he interrupted a lengthy argument between Quayle and Gore with a line that drew sustained applause: “I think America is seeing right now the reason this nation is in gridlock.”

Later, he added a good-natured complaint: “I feel like I’m an observer at a Ping-Pong game.”

Despite Stockdale’s presence, the debate in large part was not a tri-cornered affair, but a sizzling, occasionally nasty wrangle between Quayle and Gore, who came into Congress on the same day 16 years ago but have come to represent polar opposites in their political ideology.

Their differences on both policy and personality were on display throughout the debate, with Quayle mounting a bouncing, finger-pointing assault and Gore more often adopting a more rigid, scholarly denunciation.

Evidence that the debate was going to be far more explosive than Sunday’s presidential debate came with the opening statements.

Gore began with a searing attack on Quayle, referring elliptically to the vice president’s lack of service in the Vietnam War and his devastating experience in a 1988 debate with then-Democratic nominee Lloyd Bentsen, who cut Quayle down by contrasting him with former President John F. Kennedy.

“Adm. Stockdale, may I say it’s a special honor to share this stage with you,” said Gore, a Vietnam veteran. “Those of us who served in Vietnam looked at you as a national hero even before you were awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.”

To Quayle, he added: “I’ll make you a deal this evening--if you don’t try to compare George Bush to Harry Truman, I won’t compare you to Jack Kennedy.”

Quayle responded to the jab with laughter and aplomb.

“Well, thank you, Sen. Gore, for reminding me about my performance in the 1988 vice presidential debate,” he said, launching into a sharp attack on Clinton: “This is 1992. Bill Clinton is running against President George Bush. . . . Bill Clinton’s economic plan and his agenda will make matters much, much worse. He will raise your taxes, he will increase spending, he will make government bigger. Jobs will be lost.”

Each of the candidates came into the debate with something to prove--Quayle more so than either of his counterparts. The vice president has been trying for four years to live down the embarrassments of 1988, when he compared himself to Kennedy only to be caustically upbraided. “I knew Jack Kennedy,” Bentsen said. “Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

Gore came into the debate on the heels of several months of good reviews, having sparked up his personality and shown himself to be a less-wooden campaigner than in 1988, when he ran for President. But the weight of heavy expectations was also upon him.

And Stockdale was the debate’s enigma, entering as a virtual unknown to the American public--and having to follow in spirit his tough-talking running mate.

As the debate came to a close, representatives of each campaign indulged in the traditional “spinning”--with Quayle and Gore partisans contending that each had won. But the spokesman for the Perot campaign made no such claim about Stockdale.

“I did not think he was articulate,” said Orson Swindle, a top aide to Perot. “He didn’t make his case as well as he could have.”

The debate was held in an auditorium of the Georgia Institute of Technology, with an audience largely made up of partisans and a small group of Georgia Tech students. The crowd alternately applauded and hissed throughout despite the ministrations of moderator Hal Bruno, the political editor of ABC News.

One exchange in particular demonstrated the caustic nature of the sparring between Quayle and Gore. It came as they discussed “family values.”

Gore: “How can you talk about family values, Dan, and twice veto the family medical leave act?”

Quayle: “Pass our family leave act, then, because it goes to small businesses, where the major problem is. Your proposal excluded small businesses. That’s the problem. Now let me talk about our health care--”

Gore: “Did you require it (family leave)? . . . Did you require it?”

Quayle: “My turn.”

Gore: “Did you require it?”

Quayle: “My turn.”

Gore: “It’s a free discussion.”

Quayle: “Take a breath, Al. Inhale.”

Gore: “It’s a free discussion. Did you require family leave in that legislation, yes or no?”

Quayle: “We offered incentives to small businesses.”

The vice president never said what Gore was seeking--which is that the Administration’s family leave proposal was voluntary, not mandatory--unlike the Democrats’ plan.

Quayle’s major thrust was to set forth the Republican assertion that Clinton is essentially unfit for the presidency because he prevaricates on the issues and on past details of his own life.

Repeatedly, he took up the cudgel against Clinton for the Democratic nominee’s varying statements about the Persian Gulf War and whether or not he would have supported allowing U.S. troops to use force against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

“Bill Clinton, running for President of the United States, said this about the Persian Gulf War. He said: ‘Had I been in the Senate, I would have voted with the majority in a close vote. But I agreed with the arguments of the minority.’

“You can’t have it both ways,” Quayle said. “You have to make a decision.”

“President Bush has made the decisions. He’s been tested. . . . He has got the integrity to be our President for the next four years.”

The vice president also used Clinton’s opposition to the Vietnam War, saying that the issue was not whether he had demonstrated against the war but that Clinton “has trouble telling the truth.”

Gore spent much of his time in a defensive posture, repeatedly denying Quayle’s assertions that he and Clinton would raise taxes on the American people.

And he sought to turn the tables on the credibility question raised by Quayle about Clinton, using it instead to indict Bush. Repeatedly, he suggested that it is the President who cannot be trusted.

“George Bush, in case you’ve forgotten, Dan, said: ‘Read my lips. No new taxes,’ ” Gore said.

“He also said he wanted to be the environmental President. Then he went on to say he wanted to be the education President. Then he said that he wouldn’t raise taxes again, no, never, ever, ever. Then the next day his spokesman, Marlin Fitzwater, came out and said: ‘That’s not a pledge.’

“Then two weeks ago he said that after the election, if you win, then James Baker is going to go back to be secretary of state. Then a week later in the debate a few nights ago, he said: ‘No, after the election, if we win, James Baker is going to be in charge of domestic policy.’

“Which is it, Dan? Is he going to--what’s your role in this going to be?”

Gore also defended Clinton’s record as the governor of Arkansas, saying the Democratic presidential nominee has proved that he could create jobs and jump-start a sluggish economy.

And he ridiculed Bush for failing to address the nation’s pressing domestic concerns until well into the current presidential campaign.

“Bill Clinton and I will target America from Day One,” he said. “We won’t wait four years before we concentrate on the problems of this country.”

Discussions about the economy, as expected, took up much of the debate, with Quayle castigating the Democratic proposals as tired “tax-and-spend” economics and Gore insisting that Republican “trickle-down” economics had brought the country to the brink of ruin.

“You all still support trickle-down to the very last drop,” chided Gore.

Gore said that Clinton’s economic plan would target job-producing programs and would end Republican policies that he said forced jobs overseas.

He outlined a Bush Administration program, run by the Agency for International Development, that Gore said had enticed U.S. firms to relocate in Central American countries where the costs of production are far lower than in the United States. The program was reported last month in The Times and on CBS-TV’s “60 Minutes.”

Of the workers formerly employed in the shutdown U.S. firms, Gore said: “Some of them are in their 50s and 60s. They want to know where they are going to get new jobs when their jobs have been destroyed.”

Quayle denied Gore’s contention about the AID program and accused the Democrats of planning to raise taxes to accommodate the programs Clinton has pledged to implement.

“I hope that when you talked to those people (the laid-off workers), you said: ‘And the first thing that Bill Clinton and I are going to do is raise $150 billion of new taxes,’ ” the vice president said.

“You’ve got that wrong too,” Gore snapped back.

“You know what you’re doing? You’re pulling a ‘Clinton,’ ” Quayle responded. “And you know what a ‘Clinton’ is? A ‘Clinton’ is when he said one thing one day and another thing the next day. You try to have both sides of the issues. The fact of the matter is that you are proposing $150 billion in new taxes.”

Clinton’s economic plan does in fact propose spending that money for what the Democrat calls “investment” in transportation, communications systems and other jobs programs. Clinton has said that the money will come primarily from an increase in taxes on those making more than $200,000 a year and higher taxes on foreign corporations doing business in the United States.

Stockdale frequently appeared uncertain of his running mate’s proposals and, further, unclear about how to jump into the increasingly wild fray taking place in front of him. At one point, he asked Bruno to repeat a question, because “I didn’t have my hearing aid turned on.” Another time, he recused himself from a brewing disagreement by saying: “I’m out of ammunition on this one.”

He misstated Perot’s position on defense spending cuts, saying they more closely resemble Bush’s--when in fact they resemble Clinton’s.

Time and time again, he saluted Perot’s economic plan, saying that it would cut the deficit more sharply than the proposals of the independent candidate’s counterparts and would return a sense of potency to the U.S. economy.

“The trickle-downs and the tax-and-spends or whatever you want to call them are at swords’ points,” he said. “We can’t get this economy going. . . . We’re people of the non-professional category who are just sick of this--this terrible thing that’s happened to the country, and we’ve got a man who knows how to fix it.”

And he broke up the audience with his opening line, one that by the end of the debate seemed rather plaintive.

“Who am I? Why am I here? I’m not a politician, everybody knows that.”

Decker reported from Los Angeles, Fulwood from Atlanta.

Next Debate Is Thursday

Here is the schedule for the two final presidential debates:

Thursday Richmond, Va. 6 p.m. PDT A single moderator and audience questions Monday E. Lansing, Mich. 4 p.m. PDT Single moderator for first half, panel for the second

ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and C-SPAN are carrying the debates live.