Voters Note Experience, but It’s Their Own That Counts : Reaction: After watching debate, many say Bush offers too little, too late. Perot scores points for fresh approach after rough years, muddy race.

From her home in Tampa, Fla., Peggy Obell got George Bush’s message loud and clear, the one that demanded that American voters consider experience more than anything else as they go into the voting booth two weeks from today.

And she took that to mean not Bush’s experience but hers --her worries about an economy that has sent her electrician husband to the unemployment line a couple of times this year, and has also sent him across the state line in a fruitless search for work.

As the miniseries of presidential debates wound to a close Monday night, the junior high school teacher was edging closer to a decision dependent more on her experience than on the thick resume of President Bush.

“We’ve already had four years of him,” she said, “and we’ve seen what his experience has given us.”

Not that she thought Bush was beaten to a pulp; indeed, she and about two dozen other undecided voters interviewed by The Times after Monday’s final presidential debate thought that Bush had delivered his finest performance of the three rhetorical contests.

For most, however, the verdict was simple: Too little, too late. More than anything else, voters interviewed by The Times swung not toward Bush but to the man who forcefully attacked the President Monday night: independent candidate Ross Perot.

“I was very happy with him,” said Mary Cox of Englewood, Colo., talking on the telephone as she cradled a crying toddler.

“He acted like a real professional. Clinton was acting like my 3-year-old. He said he was there to talk issues, but every other word was a dig at Bush. And Bush was somewhere in the middle. He needed to make a stand tonight and he did not.”

The consensus of voters interviewed by The Times squared with an instant survey conducted after the debate by ABC News. According to the survey, Perot’s support rose from 11% to 19%, while Clinton’s dropped slightly to 48% and Bush stayed at 29%.

If there was any good news for Bush in the words of voters, it was that his most intense effort--to depict Clinton as a man too untrustworthy to assume the presidency--appeared to be taking hold even if the President himself was not the immediate beneficiary.

“I wouldn’t trust Clinton to be President,” said Steve Turner, who is 37 and unemployed, an Alvaton, Ga., resident--in short, just the kind of Southerner that Clinton has spent much time this year courting.

“He’s just too smooth. He’s like a con man to me. What he says is fine, but I don’t see that he can do it . . . . He’s done a lot of sweet-talking, but he’s really said nothing to me.”

Rich Bulgarelli, a 29-year-old sales representative, had been leaning toward voting for Clinton. But as the Monday night debate closed, he was leaning ever so slightly toward Perot--ironically, because of advice forwarded by Bush.

“As President Bush pointed out, it’s easy to make criticisms, but it’s different when you’re in the ballgame,” Bulgarelli said. “Clinton should make a decision at one time or another. He needs to get off the fence, and it scares me that he doesn’t.”

Perot delivered an alternately feisty and coldly critical performance, and at the close of the debate seemed to have been aided by a curious phenomenon: Attacks by the non-politician were not seen as political attacks.

While many decried Clinton and Bush for slinging mud across the East Lansing stage, Perot seemed to escape similar criticism, even though he delivered stinging rebukes of his competitors all night long. At best, voters said, Perot forwarded himself as something of a political pot-scrubber, willing to go in and get dirty up to his elbows if that is what it takes to improve the nation’s government.

“He is really coming across as someone who can go in there and clean house, and I feel strongly that’s something that needs to be done--clean up Congress and get the country away from special interests, give it back to the people,” said Steve Parker, a real estate broker in Austin, Tex. “More power to him.”

Not everyone, of course, was so smitten with the tough-talking Texan. For some, their vote will hinge less on an impression left in a hard-charging debate than on a lonely pondering of their own particular worries.

Jody Richmond, a homemaker from Lincoln, Neb., has a nephew who worked his way through college as a meat cutter. Now he’s out of school with a degree in business--and, in this job market, she said wryly, is “working as a college-educated meat cutter.”

“My son is starting college and his future worries me,” she said. “That’s why we need a change. I don’t know if Clinton can make a change, but I’m willing to give him a chance.”

Debates are said to be reinforcing devices in a campaign; barring any massive trip-up, they generally serve to convince voters that their initial leanings are correct.

Clinton entered the debate on top in virtually every national poll; indeed, interviews with voters across the country by numerous polling organizations have determined that a large part of that support comes from people who want to take a stand against Bush.

And so it was on Monday night for a number of voters, who said their desire to vote against Bush had been confirmed in the 90 minutes the three candidates shared the Michigan stage.

“Bush did very well, more forceful than in any of the debates, but he just can’t defend the last four years and Reagan’s eight years, as far as the economy is concerned,” said Leo Bannon, a 65-year-old from Oneonta, N.Y., who voted for Bush in 1988. “I’ll probably have to vote for Clinton.”

Across the country in Westminster, smack in the middle of Orange County, another 1988 Bush supporter was writing the President off.

“I stopped believing anything he said a long time ago,” said Richard Strobecker, 48. “The thing that gets me about the debate tonight is that Bush was still saying things are not so bad with the economy in this country. I can’t believe he said that. He’s still out of touch.”

The President does still have his backers, but even in that select group there were few hosannas for Bush.

“I’m probably going to vote for Bush,” said Paul Romanies, a student from Southhampton, Pa. “I don’t trust Gov. Clinton at all. I’d love to vote for Perot, but he doesn’t have the experience to get anything through. I like the experience Bush has.”

Contributing to this roundup were Bill Billiter in Costa Mesa, Garry Boulard in New Orleans, Mike Clary in Miami, Doug Conner in Seattle, Lianne Hart in Houston, Matt Marshall in Washington, Lyn Riddle in Simpsonville, S.C., and Edith Stanley in Atlanta.

Today on the Trail . . .

Gov. Bill Clinton campaigns in Ypsilanti, Mich., Chicago and Milwaukee, Wis.

President Bush campaigns in Atlanta, Norcross, Gainesville and Cornelia, Ga., and Spartanburg, S.C.

Ross Perot has no public events scheduled.

TELEVISION

Marilyn Quayle is a guest on ABC’s “Good Morning America” at 8 a.m. PDT.