Candidates Do the Surplus Math

Battles over taxes, abortion and campaign finance reform flared anew as the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination debated Wednesday night, but this time John McCain bore the brunt of the attacks.

The Arizona senator was scolded for being soft on abortion, hectored for an allegedly muddled education plan and taken to task for a new campaign ad that was characterized as disrespectful to his opponents.

The focus on McCain, and the debate’s testiness, underscored McCain’s front-runner status here, along with the pressure building to New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary Tuesday.

Former ambassador Alan L. Keyes and Texas Gov. George W. Bush lit into McCain during the 90-minute forum, which ended with every Republican candidate under the gun at some point. Publisher Steve Forbes and conservative Gary Bauer crossed swords over China. And everybody took jabs at two favorite punching bags, Vice President Al Gore and the Clinton administration.

McCain defended his television ad, arguing that it did not characterize his opponents as lesser leaders. He said the ad states “what I believe, and that is that I am fully qualified, I am the best prepared to lead this nation in the next century in very dangerous times.”

“Unfortunately, this administration has conducted a feckless photo-op foreign policy,” he continued, “for which we may have to pay a very heavy price in the future in American blood and treasure.”

The debate--which covered everything from school vouchers and mosh pits to Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and oral sex in the Oval Office--comes between the Iowa caucuses and this tiny state’s primary.

Bush won the caucuses Monday, with Forbes coming in a strong second. But McCain leads the Texas governor in New Hampshire by anywhere from 5 to 13 percentage points in a welter of polls.

Conspicuously absent from the forum was Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, a wry debater who gave up his presidential bid Wednesday and endorsed Bush.

Maybe it was the cold weather, maybe it was fatigue from the flat-out pace of the Iowa caucuses, but Wednesday’s debate took some time to ignite. It finally did and abortion served as kindling.

While campaigning earlier in the day, McCain had been asked what he would do if his 15-year-old daughter came to him and said she was pregnant and wanted an abortion. He responded that what happened to the fetus would be a “family decision.”

Keyes, for whom banning abortion is no less than a sacred mission, argued that McCain showed “a profound lack of understanding” and asked if the decision actually belongs to God.

A visibly perturbed McCain defended his anti-abortion stand and his Senate voting record, saying that he has worked hard to ban late-term abortion and win approval for requiring parental consent when minors seek abortions.

“I am proud of that pro-life record and I will continue to maintain it,” McCain said. “I will not draw my children into this discussion.”

Bush and McCain exchanged sharp jabs over their tax and education plans, with each comparing the other to Gore. Bush described his plan to reduce the national debt, plus provide big tax breaks. McCain, who has made paying down the debt one of the distinctions between himself and Bush, congratulated the Texan.

“I appreciate your renewed dedication to reducing, to paying down the debt,” McCain jabbed. “I could have written that myself.”

“No, no,” Bush retorted, “Al Gore would have written your plan, senator.”

Moments later, Gore was back. Bush described his voucher-based education plan--which would reward high performance and punish failing schools. Then he challenged McCain’s criticism of the plan.

“There’s two people that openly criticized this plan, you and the vice president,” Bush said. “Why don’t you think, why don’t you think that high expectations will work? Why don’t you think this plan will work?”

“First of all, George,” McCain replied, “if you’re saying that I’m like Al Gore, then you’re spinning like Bill Clinton.”

And there was Gore again--in one of the debates’ first nods to the general election in November--when Bush and McCain sparred on campaign finance reform, McCain’s favorite topic.

“When I’m in a debate with Al Gore, I’m going to turn to Al Gore and say, ‘You and Bill Clinton debased the institutions of government in 1996 and you engaged in reprehensible conduct . . . I’m going to make what they did illegal,” McCain declared. “George, when you’re in that debate, you’re going to stand there and you’ll have nothing to say, because you’re defending the system.”

But Keyes had, perhaps, the best line of the evening, when Bauer accused him of betraying the dignity of the presidency by jumping into a portable mosh pit during the run-up to the Iowa caucuses.

“I do know that when I got down,” Keyes recalled, “one of the folks who was there with one of the news crews looked at me and he said, ‘You know, you’re the only person I’ve ever seen dive into a mosh pit and come out with his tie straight.’ And I think that, you know, the real test of dignity, the real test of dignity is how you carry it through hard times,” he continued, “ . . . that whatever circumstance you are going through, you can carry that dignity with you and no one can take it away.”

Besides, he said, his daughter thought it was a good idea.

*

Contributing to this story were staff writers Mark Z. Barabak, Anne-Marie O’Connor, Elizabeth Mehren and researcher Massie Ritsch in New Hampshire and Janet Hook in Washington.