COMMENTARY : Clashes Put ‘Danger’ Back Into Debates

Cancel the two remaining presidential debates now. Bring back these vice presidential guys and serve popcorn. This was fun.

Sunday’s rigidly formatted presidential debate, with President Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot appearing to be separated by invisible walls while answering questions from a panel of journalists, was pretty much of a stiff.

But what a difference two days made.

Utilizing a format under which only moderator Hal Bruno of ABC asked primary questions and two of the three candidates challenged each other almost at will, Tuesday’s vice presidential debate was a doozy. Unlike Sunday’s forum, it projected an aura of danger and unpredictability.

Although probably irrelevant to which ticket wins in November--the notion of such an important election being significantly influenced by TV oratory is frightening on the face of it--the widely telecast Atlanta event was smashing entertainment, the shame being only that its 4 p.m. PDT starting time cost too many viewers an opportunity to see it.

And what a dramatic contrast in candidates.

Tennessee Sen. Al Gore was especially vice presidential, if you like your vice presidents chipped from Mt. Rushmore. He was utterly stolid, delivering stiff stump-style speeches and moving so mechanically--even during spirited exchanges--that he appeared to be operated by a hand crank.

As for Vice President Dan Quayle, next time he should consider laying off the caffeine. As a TV commentator noted earlier Tuesday, expectations for Quayle were so low--based on his disastrous 1988 vice presidential debate with Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen--that he could have claimed a moral victory merely by speaking English.

However, he did much more than that, ferociously attacking Gore and hitting again and again at Clinton’s alleged dissembling. Sometimes speaking so fast that he sputtered, Quayle often seemed on the verge of losing control, sounding alternately like Tommy Smothers and Capt. Queeg. No, Dan, Gore didn’t eat the strawberries.

Meanwhile, Perot’s running mate, retired vice admiral and former POW James B. Stockdale, appeared to be in attendance primarily because there was an extra lectern. He may be a fine fellow, but the stumbling Stockdale appeared to be having an out-of-body experience throughout much of the 90 minutes.

When Bruno asked him a question at one point, Stockdale replied: “I didn’t have my hearing aid turned on. Ask me again.” He was debating on national TV, with the White House at stake, and his hearing aid was off? Asked at another point if he wanted to begin the debate’s free-for-all discussion on health care, he admitted: “Well . . . I’m out of ammunition on this.”

Ripping a page from Perot’s joke book, however, it was Stockdale, while flanked by his better-known politician foes, who supplied the audience at Georgia Tech with the most laughs and newscasters with the most sound bites. With Quayle and Gore bickering over who had the right to speak, Stockdale cracked: “I think America is seeing right now the reason this nation is in gridlock.” And later, during another particularly testy Quayle-Gore exchange, Stockdale observed: “I feel like I’m an observer at a Ping-Pong game.”

For all that he contributed, beyond a rough-hewn charm, he might have been.

Thursday’s second presidential forum will use the moderator format combined with questions from a studio audience, with Monday’s final clash of candidates scheduled to feature a split format, half moderator-only, half panel of journalists. These awkward fusions were arranged when the Bush campaign rejected a bipartisan commission’s recommendation, endorsed by the Clinton campaign, that the debates use the moderator format.

With someone as strong and capable as Bruno in control, the moderator format has the most potential, although no more impervious to hyperbole and flat-out lying. “What I find troubling about Bill Clinton,” Quayle charged Tuesday, “(is) he can’t tell the truth.”

Yes, that must trouble him deeply. However, correspondent Brooks Jackson, assigned by CNN to be its one-man truth squad for these debates, reported Tuesday that, although Gore also fudged at times during the 90 minutes, it was Quayle who told the most outright lies.

And it was ABC’s Peter Jennings who provided the wisest counsel on learning about the evening’s inaccuracies. “Our best advice to you,” he told viewers while signing off, “is to read your newspaper tomorrow.”

Perhaps he meant the sports pages, for the Ping-Pong results.