Quayle, Gore, Partisans Don’t Pull Any Punches

Gore was “snotty” and “condescending.” Quayle was “sarcastic,” and hit “below the belt.”

Such acrimony was the byword at Tuesday night’s vice presidential debate, and the rancor didn’t end at the edge of the blood-red stage. Behind the scenes, the three-way debate among Sen. Al Gore, Vice President Dan Quayle and retired Vice Adm. James B. Stockdale clearly was more of a grudge match between Gore and Quayle.

No sooner had the candidates left the stage Tuesday night than partisans for the two major parties began crying foul. At the press center a stone’s throw from Georgia Tech’s university theater, a clot of bystanders suddenly grew into a crowd, as the campaign partisans launched into indignant spins.

Said Torie Clarke, chief spokeswoman for the Bush-Quayle campaign: “I went to prep school, so I know prep school snotty--and Al Gore was prep school snotty. He was snotty, he was a little mean-spirited.”

Mary Matalin, the Bush campaign’s political director, interrupted a shower of compliments for the vice president long enough to second that view.

“Al Gore was snotty, he was contrived, he was condescending, and he was bitter,” said Matalin. “He was like an imitation of a bad politician--something I expect to see on Saturday Night Live.”

The Democrats summoned outrage of their own. They claimed Quayle had broken the rules by, among other things, using Gore’s book to suggest the Democrat was an environmental extremist.

“Dan Quayle hit, and he hit hard--and some of his blows were below the belt,” said Rep. Dennis E. Eckart (D-Ohio). Eckart, who played the role of Quayle in Gore’s practice debates, said the Democrats planned for Quayle to be aggressive. “But he was even more aggressive than we expected,” he said.

Sen. Timothy E. Wirth (D-Colo.), another Gore surrogate, said there was “a lot of mutual contempt” evident between Gore and Quayle.

The ill feeling between the two men has been developing for some time. Quayle has let it be known that he thinks Gore has gotten easy treatment from the national press, in sharp contrast to the harsh reviews Quayle got when he was chosen by George Bush in August, 1988.

Some of this sentiment has been evident in preparations for the debate. On Monday, the Republicans fought off an attempt by the Democrats to move the three lecterns somewhat closer. The Republicans believed the intention was to make the taller Gore overshadow Quayle somewhat in the camera’s eye.

Last week, Quayle’s staff asked permission to bring Gore’s book, “Earth in the Balance,” as a prop. The Democrats countered that they could only if the Republicans allowed Gore to appear with a potato--a reminder of Quayle’s misspelling of the word at a New Jersey grade school last spring.

At the competitors slugged it out at the university’s 1,200-seat Theater of the Arts, the audience sat transfixed.

Occasionally, they belted out cheers when their candidate got off a particularly sassy one-liner. But mostly they remained quiet--seemingly riveted by the intensity of the stinging attacks.

“I couldn’t believe that it was such a dogfight,” said Sidney Wilson, a Columbus, Ga., resident who drove in with her husband, Ed, for the evening. “It was really like two mutts going at it in an alley, with the admiral just sort of watching the spectacle. It was entertaining, that’s for sure.”

In the press room, the charge and countercharge between the campaigns’ partisans was accompanied by a rain of documents intended to rebut the other side’s claims.

When Gore denied Quayle’s charge that Democrats want to raise taxes by $150 billion, the Republicans issued a photocopy of a page from a Bill Clinton’s “Putting People First,” purporting to show that the figure is real.

When Quayle claimed that he had gained important experience as commander in chief by filling in for President Bush during a threatened coup in the Philippines, the Democrats passed out a page from Bob Woodward’s book, “The Commanders.” The page suggested other Administration officials thought little of Quayle’s performance in the hot seat.

But as the two parties’ partisans savaged the other side, few Democrats or Republicans would risk a direct attack on Stockdale, the honored war hero more than two decades their senior.