In Debate, Light Conversation Rises to the Top

Tonight’s presidential debate offers the chance for the two major-party candidates to rise above trivial pursuits to explore questions that go to the heart of the nation’s future--reform of the entitlement state, the rights and obligations of immigrants, the future of affirmative action, the role of American military and economic might in the world.

But don’t count on it.

These and other critical questions have so far been drowned out in a high-decibel but somewhat irrelevant discussion of who is to blame for the rise in teenage drug use, which candidate loves cops more, which man is to be trusted to tuck your kids in at night.

Although despair over the quality of campaign discourse is a recurring complaint about the American practice of politics, neither tonight’s face-off between President Clinton and Republican challenger Bob Dole nor the Oct. 16 reprise offers much hope for relief, analysts said.

“These ‘debates’ should really be called joint press conferences,” said presidential historian Michael Beschloss. “The format makes it too easy for them to give their prerecorded answers, and, even worse, you won’t get an answer with substance.

“What you’ll get is two candidates trying to score by using the tricks that scored in the past--amusing bon mots that don’t tell us much about how the candidate will act as president,” Beschloss said.

Past debates have generally been memorable for visual cues, verbal gaffes or other moments that have helped form public impressions of the candidates but rarely enriched the discourse on the day’s pressing issues.

There was Richard Nixon’s unshaven look in 1960; Dole’s reference in 1976 to “Democrat wars” when he was running for vice president; then-President Carter’s revelation in 1980 that he held nuclear policy discussions with his daughter, Amy; then-President Reagan’s quip in 1984 that he wouldn’t hold Walter F. Mondale’s age against him.

Advisors to Clinton and Dole insist that during the last few days, they have been preparing for a fact-filled, substantive exchange on a host of important issues. Earnest young aides have been seen in the combatants’ camps in upstate New York and South Florida, hauling briefing books into the candidates’ training rooms.

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On Saturday, Dole wound up his debate rehearsal with a visit from former President Bush, who flew to Bal Harbour, Fla., from Texas at the Dole campaign’s request. Bush debated Clinton three times in 1992, and Dole campaign spokesman Nelson Warfield said, “We thought it would be a good idea to sit down and get some firsthand guidance on the wiles of a very wily debater, Bill Clinton.”

In the GOP’s weekly radio address, Dole asked Americans to tune in to the debate and gauge his differences with Clinton.

“It really boils down to a contest between the warmed-over liberal ideas of President Clinton and my common-sense conservative ideas that put the opportunities, safety and future of our children and families before government,” he said.

Clinton, meanwhile, has been preparing at a retreat in Chautauqua, N.Y., with former Maine Sen. George J. Mitchell playing the role of Dole. Asked Saturday whether he had gotten the better of Mitchell, Clinton replied, “Well, I don’t know. Maybe I got him to a draw.

“I think it’s a very important debate because if a lot of people watch it, it could affect their views. But I think the main thing for both of us is to go be ourselves and do the best we can.”

The day before, the president said his aim was to educate the public, not to “outwit” his opponent.

But it is certain that he and Dole are polishing their attack lines and their clever ripostes.

The rapid-fire format of televised debates and the pressure of discussing difficult and nuanced issues in sound bites make these high-stakes campaign set pieces an unlikely forum for policy seminars. And polls have found that voters--many of them focusing on the campaign for the first time--often say they believe that they learn more about potential leaders from how they conduct themselves under such stress, rather than from the details of a given answer to a difficult question.

Still, experts continue to hope for more from campaign speeches, advertisements and debates.

“Leadership is supposed to ask you to face larger questions, and neither one of them is doing it,” said Lewis L. Gould, professor of history at the University of Texas.

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Former Congressional Budget Office Director Robert D. Reischauer said both candidates are ducking questions on how they will ensure the solvency of Medicare and Social Security while balancing the federal budget.

“The whole thing is so absurd--we know that the [program] cuts both sides are proposing are going to be politically impossible to deliver,” said Reischauer, now at Washington’s Brookings Institution think tank.

Dole contends that economic growth will pay for his proposed 15% cut in income tax rates, while Clinton appears to assume that the deficit will continue to shrink without painful spending choices.

“Both are being equally evasive about exactly what they will cut,” Reischauer said. “It’s really come down to a debate over whose scenario is rosier.”

Analysts noted a long list of other subjects on which the candidates have been largely silent this fall: affirmative action, immigration, racial and class divisions, the explosive growth of legal gambling, campaign-finance reform, trade and foreign policy.

Bert A. Rockman, a political scientist at the University of Pittsburgh, says he would like to hear a discussion of the appropriate level of legal immigration.

He would also like a real debate on affirmative action: “This is a sore issue to bring up, but it has to be raised in some fashion. Does the idea continue to be sensible, and if so, how should it be implemented? At what point should it come to an end?”

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, has been disturbed by the emphasis in the campaign so far on issues that are largely handled at the local--not the presidential--level.

Clinton and Dole, she said, have highlighted crime, drugs and education without discussing what the proper role of the federal government is in these areas.

“These are largely state and local matters,” said Jamieson, who has written widely on presidential rhetoric and debates. “They have taken a lot of things that once were family and school issues and moved them up to the White House. We should be having a debate over what level of government should handle these matters.”

Beschloss said foreign policy, which during the Cold War was usually a central issue in presidential campaigns, has been virtually absent this year, as it was in 1992.

In the first exchange of foreign policy fire in the campaign, Dole last week sniped at Clinton for the inconclusive Middle East summit, saying it was symptomatic of the “photo op” foreign policy of the administration.

But Clinton didn’t rise to the bait, and he and Dole are more in accord than discord on the chief foreign policy challenges of the last several years--Bosnia, Iraq, Russia.

“For a variety of reasons, most of the discussion to date has focused almost entirely on domestic policy, almost none of it on the place of the United States in the world,” said Michael Traugott of the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan.

“There has been little real discussion of their visions for the future, beyond rhetoric about entering the 21st century. The biggest problem is that Clinton is so far ahead in the polls that there’s no incentive for him to engage in a substantive debate. He’s adopting a very comfortable and conservative strategy,” Traugott said.

With the decision to exclude Reform Party nominee Ross Perot from this year’s debates, the forums will lack not only his unique perspective, but also perhaps some of the complex of issues he brings to his public appearances.

Perot, however, will get an opportunity to make his case during an appearance on CNN’s “Larry King Live” immediately after the Clinton-Dole debate, as well as in a 30-minute infomercial to be broadcast on ABC-TV at 9:30 p.m. PDT.