Bush, McCain Tussle Over Campaign Reform, Taxes

In the most spirited debate yet among the six Republican contenders for the presidential nomination, George W. Bush and John McCain wrangled over campaign finance reform, farm policy and taxes here Monday night.

Unlike the two earlier debates that included the entire GOP field, the 90-minute forum broadcast from America’s heartland contrasted a more relaxed and confident Bush, the governor of Texas, with a stiffer and more combative McCain, a senator from Arizona.

Although the lesser-known candidates all hoped to use the debate to break out of the crowded pack, the event was most crucial for front-runner Bush, who was criticized after forums in Arizona and New Hampshire for everything from stiffness and smirking to reliance on his stump speech.

In the latest debate, which came exactly six weeks before the Iowa caucuses, a smoother Bush sat back in his chair, legs crossed, and spoke without reading from the mental note cards that he seemed to consult throughout his earlier performances.

Republican pundits said that Bush finally did exactly what he has to do in debates to dispel concerns that he does not have the intellectual heft to be president.

“I don’t think there’s any way to describe this other than Bush won. Compared to the other two [debates] it was a huge difference,” said Rich Galen, former press secretary to Newt Gingrich and author of “Mullings,” an online political column.

Bush continued to be the target of his competitors Monday, particularly McCain, who holds a slim lead in New Hampshire polls. McCain lit into Bush, asking if the front-runner would pledge to do away with so-called “soft money” donations to political parties, which are not regulated like contributions to candidates.

In an instructive departure from the touchy-feely “gee-my-competitor-is-a-great-guy” tenor of the earlier debates, the two tussled over what kind of campaign finance reform could work.

“Here’s my worry with your plan,” Bush told McCain. “It’s going to hurt the Republican Party, John. And I’m worried for this reason.”

At that point, McCain interrupted: “How did Ronald Reagan get elected in 1980? There was no such thing as soft money then.”

“May I finish?” Bush countered, saying that if the Republican Party eschewed soft money, then labor unions, which usually back Democratic candidates, should be prohibited from using members’ dues for campaign donations.

McCain has chosen not to campaign in Iowa, and the debate was his first visit here of the political season. In contrast with Bush, who has spent about three weeks here all told, McCain behaved as if in enemy territory.

The humorous Arizona senator and war hero was gone, replaced by an enemy of ethanol--a sacred cow here in corn country. He told the audience: “I’m going to tell you the things you don’t want to hear.”

Ethanol is a corn-based vehicle fuel, and the federal government subsidizes its production by Iowa farmers. When asked whether a program to combat methamphetamines was really wasteful government spending, McCain said that the program should be weighed against others; then he launched into a riff on how ethanol “is not worth it.”

“It does not help the consumer,” McCain said. “Those ethanol subsidies should be phased out, and everybody here on this stage, if it wasn’t for the fact that Iowa was the first caucus state, would share my view.”

Bush and publisher Steve Forbes not only supported the ethanol subsidies but said they believed there should be more research into innovative uses of farm products.

Ethanol was only one difference among the candidates highlighted in the debate, which also skewed to the right what had been a centrist and economics-based discussion among the Republicans.

In fact, the first questions in the free-wheeling exchange were whether the gun, video-game and entertainment industries bore responsibility for the carnage wrought by two gun-wielding adolescents at Columbine High School in Colorado and what a president could do to stop such violence.

While McCain and Bush talked about the need to bring families and communities more strongly into the child-rearing equation, the more socially conservative candidates drew a direct line between violence in America and Roe vs. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

“We express great shock and outrage that we are bloodying the hallways of our schools with the blood of our children,” said former ambassador Alan Keyes. “What about the blood of our children killed in the womb on the basis of a doctrine that completely rejects the basic principles on which this nation was founded?”

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah concurred, saying that “when you have 30 million babies aborted since Roe vs. Wade, there’s an insensitivity” to human life whose end result is a culture of violence.”

The debate format had NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw and John Bachman, anchor at Des Moines’ WHO-TV, asking questions of the candidates and then allowing each candidate to ask one of his competitors a question.

Gary Bauer, a conservative activist, used his question to ask Bush to pledge publicly that he would choose a running mate who was solidly opposed to abortion.

Deftly dodging the divisive issue--which enjoys more support in conservative Iowa and could alienate moderates--Bush said: “I think it’s incredibly presumptive for someone who has got to win the party’s nomination to go picking vice presidents.”

He said instead that he would want his prospective running mate to be loyal and “to share my conservative views.”

New Hampshire Republican political consultant David Carney said both McCain and Bush had done well, preserving what at least in the Granite State is their first- and second-place status. In Iowa, Bush is far ahead of his closest competitor, Forbes.

Bush “looked good and comfortable and casual. He seemed to be confident, taking it in stride, and in control,” Carney said. “I don’t think he was rattled.”

Forbes, who has gained little ground on Bush here in recent months, had perhaps the toughest job, to break into the top tier on the national stage. Although he did nothing to embarrass himself and stopped using every question to flog his flat-tax proposal, he seemed peripheral.

A question about each candidate’s favorite political philosopher i underscored this. Forbes cited John Locke and Thomas Jefferson. Keyes brought up the “Founding Fathers.” McCain said Teddy Roosevelt.

Bush mentioned Jesus Christ, explaining that “When you turn your heart and your life over to Christ, when you accept Christ as the savior, it changes your heart. It changes your life. And that’s what happened to me.”

Hatch also mentioned Christ, with a dismissive “but that goes without saying.”

Bauer was eloquent: “I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. Christ, with those words, told all of us about our obligations to each other.”

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They Have Issues

Their position papers can run for page after page, but here is some of what 2000’s major presidential candidates think about some major issues.

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Source: Associated Press *

Times staff writers Massie Ritsch and Janet Wilson contributed to this story from Los Angeles.