How Would Bush and Gore Govern?

October 2, 2000

Transcript prepared from a tape recording

Introduction:	Norman Ornstein, American Enterprise Institute
	Thomas Mann, Brookings Institution
Moderators:	E.J. Dionne, Washington Post, Brookings Institution
	David Brooks, Weekly Standard
Panelists:	Hon. Teel Bivins, Texas State Senator (R-Amarillo)
	Hon. Elton Bomer, Texas Secretary of State
	Hon. Vic Fazio, former U.S. Representative (D-Calif.)
	Susan Feeney, senior Editor of Morning Edition, National Public Radio
	Hon. James Jones, former Ambassador to Mexico
	David Shribman, asst. managing editor and Washington bureau chief, The Boston Globe

Proceedings:

MR. PUTNAM: Welcome to the Kennedy Library. My name is Tom Putnam. And as director of education, it has been my privilege to plan the educational forums to coincide with the first presidential debate of Campaign 2000, co-hosted by the Kennedy Library and the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

Throughout this process, we've endeavored to be as substantive and nonpartisan as possible, with sessions featuring David Gergen, Helen Thomas, and this even's forum with David Broder, Jack Kemp and Michael Dukakis.

Before opening today's panel, I wanted to recognize that with us this afternoon are the co-chairs of the Commission on Presidential Debates. Actually, there's only one in the room. The other one is on the phone probably attending to some details regarding tomorrow night's event. But I did want to recognize both Frank Farankoff [ph] and Paul Kirk, who have been at the forefront of the fight to guarantee the American people substantive debates between the two major candidates. And I wanted to take a moment to recognize Mr. Farankoff and--

[Applause.]

MR. PUTNAM: I was so pleased this summer when Paul Kirk and Norm Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute connected and realized that the Kennedy Library would be an ideal site for a session on the Transition to Governing Project co-sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, the Hoover Institution and funded by the Pew Charitable Trust. This project seeks to create a better climate for governing in the era of the permanent campaign. In these sessions on how the two major candidates for president would govern, if elected, reporters and colleagues who have worked with or covered the two major candidates for office discuss their experiences and their perceptions of the leadership styles of those two candidates.

It is my pleasure to introduce the co-chairs of the Transition to Government project, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein. Thomas Mann is the W. Averell Harriman senior fellow in American Governance at the Brookings Institution.

Dr. Mann is an expert on the presidency, the Congress, political parties, polling and values in public policy. He is involved in a number of ongoing initiatives, including efforts to reform campaign finance and to explore the future of Internet voting. Dr. Mann earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan and is the author of a number of books, including the forthcoming permanent campaign and its future.

Norman Ornstein is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He also serves as an election analyst for CBS News and writes regularly for USA Today. He is currently involved in three major policy initiatives, including campaign finance report, seeking an alternative to the independent counsel statute, and the effort that brings him here with us today.

Dr. Ornstein earned his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. He has written a number of books, including Debt and Taxes: How America Got Into its Budget Mess and How it Can Get Out of It.

On behalf of the Kennedy Library, I thank all of you for coming today and express my appreciation to Dr. Mann and Dr. Ornstein for bringing the Transition to Governing Project to the Kennedy Library.

[Applause.]

DR. ORNSTEIN: Thank you very much, Tom. I'm Norm Ornstein. I want to thank the Kennedy Library, the Commission on Presidential Debates, its two distinguished co-chairs for co-sponsoring this session. This is the ninth in a series of programs that we have run to try and turn the focus to governing and the qualities that would improve the governing process.

We're doing these, as Tom Putnam said, through a project jointly run through the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution in conjunction as well with the Hoover Institution called the Transition to Governing Project, which is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

Our goal, in this era of the permanent campaign, is to try to shed some light on governing and turn the focus back from a campaign that continues throughout the year and that has tended to crowd out governing back to those qualities that matter. We also hope to have an impact ont he transition itself, which will, of course, begin formally on November the 8th, and try to do something about the process by which we select, nominate and confirm people to positions of executive office down the road as well.

Governing is a very important quality these days. And as we look ahead and see that very likely the next president will face a Congress with the smallest majorities in several generations, with deep partisan and ideological divisions, just knowing the candidates' issue positions down to the minute details or knowing what seems to pass for questions about character these days; namely, what substances did you or did you not ingest in your youth, isn't enough.

So we have tried, through previous sessions and through this one, previous ones focused on individual candidates; this one, where we're going to look at both of them, will look at what qualities, based on past experience and the knowledge that we have of these candidates, they can bring to bare and how they, in fact, would govern.

We have an extraordinary panel today. Let me introduce them, and then I'm going to turn things over for a comment or two to my co-chair, Tom Mann. Let me start over at my far right by Tom.

Susan Feeney is the senior editor of "Morning Edition" on National Public Radio. Until earlier this year, she had been with the Dallas Morning News, where she worked her way through a whole series of positions--Washington reporter, White House reporter, national political reporter--and won a number of awards over time, has appeared on a number of radio and television programs, has been a Woodrow Wilson visiting fellow for the last several years, and began her reporting career with the New Orleans Times-Picayune in the early 1980s.

Vic Fazio is currently a partner at the firm of Clark and Weinstock, before that, a distinguished career in public service, including 20 years in the United States House of Representatives, where he became a senior major player on the Appropriations Committee, including the subcommittee chair, and also served in a variety of important positions of leadership in the House of Representatives, including chairman of the Democratic Caucus, vice chairman, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and a whip. Prior to that, he served in the California State Assembly, where he was chairman of the Ways and Means Subcommittee.

Elton Bomer became Texas's 101st secretary of state on January 11th, 1999. He serves as a senior advisor to Governor George W. Bush, chief elections officer, chief international protocol officer and is also the governor's lead liaison with Mexico and on border issues. He served as a Texas insurance commissioner before that and also in the Texas House of Representatives.

Jim Jones is currently a partner in the law firm of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips. Before that, he had quite a career in public and private life. He was the youngest person to be chief of staff to a president of the United States under President Lyndon Johnson. He must have been about 12 at the time. He served in the House of Representatives for more than a decade and a half, moving up to be chairman of the Budget Committee and a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee. He then became chairman and CEO of the American Stock Exchange, then ambassador to Mexico from 1993 to 1997.

Teel Bivins, and I think we may have spelled your name wrong there Teel.

SENATOR BIVINS: That's all right.

DR. ORNSTEIN: It's with an "I"--two "I's." He has served in the Texas Senate since 1989, now in his fourth term. He's chairman of the Education Committee, serves on the Natural Resources Committee and vice chair of its Subcommittee on Agriculture. He serves on a number of other committees. He was president pro tempore of the Senate and is also the author of a major state education finance legislation.

And David Shribman, familiar to many in this territory, is assistant managing editor, columnist and Washington bureau chief of the Boston Globe. Before that, he served as a national political correspondent for the Wall Street Journal, covered politics for the New York Times and then, before that, for the Washington Star, winner of a Pulitzer Prize, he also writes a column for Fortune and appears regularly on "Washington Week" and other shows as well.

Let me turn things over to Tom for a comment and then I'll introduce our moderators.

DR. MANN: Thank you very much, Norm. I'd also like to offer my thanks to Paul and Frank, the Commission on Presidential Debates, to the Kennedy Library. It's very exciting for me and for us to be here five weeks before the election, the night before the first presidential debate.

On the flight up here from Washington, I was reading through, again, a book that I have to admit our project has recently published called Preparing to be President: The Memos of Richard E. Neustadt. Now, many of you know that Dick Neustadt, Harvard professor, wrote a series of memos to Candidate John F. Kennedy and then to President-Elect John F. Kennedy. In going through these materials, I was struck again by Neustadt's reports of the Kennedy people. He said, "Those people could not wait to begin governing. The season for governing was real to those people."

Well, in the era of the permanent campaign, it's increasingly hard to separate out the season of campaigning and the season of governing. So I think it's especially appropriate that a project and a forum that hopes to plumb questions relevant to what happens after the election is situated here at the Kennedy Library. Kennedy's appetite for these questions I think sets the proper stage for the exploration that we're going to have today.

As Norman said, campaign narrative, strategies and tactics, character and issues are all important. But there's something else, and that has to do with governing issues. How would each of these individual presidential candidates and teams more generally govern after the election.

Dick Neustadt posed three questions that I would sort of end my comments with. He said, "How does the president view the job? How does he work best? What does he want to accomplish?" Neustadt argued the transition has to be pegged to answers to these three questions. And I am convinced that we're going to learn about that and many related things in the two hours that follow.

Thank you very much. Back to you, Norm.

DR. ORNSTEIN: Thanks, Tom.

One disclaimer, the Kennedy Library, the Commission on Presidential Debates, the Transition of Governing Project and the Pew Charitable Trusts do not endorse any candidates for president or support them. This is not an effort at that. And I would also note that we take pride in all of these sessions that we do not run cross-fire here. This is intended more to enlighten, with a little entertainment, as you will see, provided by our moderators and our panelists, but not to throw mud or engage in food fights.

Our moderators have done this eight times now, and they have learned how to make this work. They are David Brooks, who is a senior editor of Weekly Standard and a contributing editor of Newsweek, also a commentator on National Public Radio. He's been with the Standard since it began, and before that served in an astonishing range of posts with the Wall Street Journal, including Op-Ed page editor, a European correspondent, right down to a book and movie critic. He is author of the best-selling Hobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. And that means "they," not any of us--

[Laughter.]

DR. ORNSTEIN: --which was published by Simon & Shuster this year. And he will be joined or paired with E.J. Dionne, who is a columnist with the Washington Post, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, served before that as a reporter, an editorial writer for the Post, a correspondent for the New York Times and various places in the world from Rome to Beirut, and is the author of a number of books, including the very widely read and acclaimed, Why Americans Hate Politics, also published by Simon & Shuster.

I turn it over to you.

[Applause.]

MR. DIONNE: I want to welcome everyone here today and thank our distinguished panel. You know it was James Michael Curley who famously said, "I don't care what you write about me, as long as you spell my name right." And we can't even say that to Senator Bivins.

[Laughter.]

MR. DIONNE: But I figure that if he says anything that Governor Bush doesn't like, he can say, "Oh, that was that other Bivins. That wasn't me." They didn't even have the name right.

I also want to note that this is the year of subliminal or subliminable campaigning. And if you look carefully at that sign up there, you will notice you see that word looks debate, but the word that you're supposed to see is "bat," and that's supposed to make us Red Sox fans think that the team that's going interrupt the debates with a baseball playoff is the Boston Red Sox. So just keep focused on the "bat."

The last thing I want to say before I turn it over to my friend, David, to start the questioning, Congressman Jones told a wonderful story that ended up entailing Senator Kennedy of Massachusetts. He said that he first got involved with Vice President Gore when he ran for Budget Committee chair in the House. And these are strange elections. If you can imagine it, a bunch of politicians who vote by secret ballot, but also promise their fellow politicians that they are going to vote for them. And as you can imagine, there were usually about twice as many commitments as there are actual votes on the day that the election happens.

And Congressman Jones, former Congressman Jones, said, "Yeah, Al Gore was with me." And then he paused and said, "I think Al Gore was with me in that vote." And he reminded us when Senator Kennedy lost his whip race to Senator Byrd--was it, I'm sorry?

MR. : Russell Long.

MR. DIONNE: Was it to Russell Long or Senator Byrd?

MR. : No, Byrd, Byrd.

MR. DIONNE: It was to Senator Byrd of West Virginia. He lost the race and very graciously got up, and he said, "I want to thank the 28 people who committed to vote for me and the 22 people who actually did."

[Laughter.]

MR. DIONNE: Just one housekeeping detail. There will be cards passed around the audience. We would like to have your questions. All the most thoughtful questions will be given to David, and I'll take all of the rest of them. But we very much want you to join this conversation with us. So I think at some point you'll get some cards, and we will get to as many of those questions as we can.

And I especially want to say thank you to my friends, Susan Feeney and David Shribman, who are not only two of the best political reporters in the country, but two of my favorite people in the world. I'm very glad you're here.

David?

MR. BROOKS: Thank you, E.J. And thank you for sending me the tape of your preparation for this event before we started.

[Laughter.]

MR. BROOKS: I've also got your pants.

[Laughter.]

MR. BROOKS: If I could ask somebody to get us some water. The moderators don't have water, so if we could somehow get some water.

As Norm and Tom mentioned, these events are always very serious and very worthy dealing on policy and not just politics. But at the risk of angering the Gods of the Pew Foundation, we thought with the debate tomorrow we might start off just a little talking about the debates and a little political strategy because we do have people here who have seen the candidates debate before, and we thought it would seem unnatural and uncurious to me to get their views on how the candidates have performed in debates and how they view this as part of politics and governing.

And I thought maybe just starting with the two Texans, maybe with Elton Bomer first, having seen Governor Bush debate Ann Richards. First, how did he handle that debate and what was it like?

MR. BOMER: Well, I think the governor handled it very well. I think the large segment of the population was surprised that he handled it so well because Governor Richards, who was governor or one of the governors when I was serving in the Texas legislature, was a champion debater. She is really very good. But he handled it very deftly, and he didn't make any mistakes in the debate, and he was very cordial in the debate, and it is my recollection--that was in 1994, I believe, it's been some ago--but I think he could not have handled it better.

MR. BROOKS: Teel, Governor Richards was known for her rapier tongue, and some say Al Gore is known for a sort of aggressive manner himself. Were there any moments in that debate, that you recall, where then soon-to-be-Governor Bush was pushed on the defensive, and how did he handle those moments?

MR. BOMER: No. He didn't, as I recall, did not challenge the governor at the time on any particular major issue. He took issue many times, but not in a sharp way. He was very cordial. We have seen governors candidates in the past--in fact, the one right before that particular campaign--that didn't treat a lady like a lady, and he did. And he came across that way, and it was very pleasing to the people that watched it I think.

MR. BROOKS: Teel Bivins?

SENATOR BIVINS: I guess my lasting memory of the debate with Governor Richards was that Texans got to see the George Bush that a lot of us know. His most effective trait is his ability to work with people, and in fact to get people to like him, whether they be Democrats, Republicans, vegetarians, whatever. And that came across, in my mind, that's my lasting memory of that first debate with Governor Richards.

And debates, in my mind, really are more than just a forum to discuss issues. They are a way for the electorate to look into and see what this person is really like, and that infectious personality that Bush has one-on-one came across, I thought, pretty well. And it is my hope, obviously--I'm a partisan here today--it is my hope that that same thing happens tomorrow night.

MR. BROOKS: It's very kind of Mr. Bivins and Mr. Bomer to help the Democratic Party by raising expectations of Governor Bush in his performance tomorrow.

[Laughter.]

MR. BROOKS: I wanted to ask specifically about the debate with Gary Morrow [ph], his opponent in the last election, where I think it was a debate scheduled at 9 o'clock at night mountain time, run on one or two public television stations. But there were a lot of reports of that debate, and not just from people hostile to Governor Bush, that his heart wasn't in that debate, that Gary Morrow I think told a number of people afterwards that he was stunned at how well he had done in that debate against Governor Bush.

Do you have any recollection of that debate and what happened in it? And this is your chance to lower expectations for tomorrow.

[Laughter.]

MR. : I didn't think he did very well at all.

[Laughter.]

MR. : It was at an odd time, and it was located, I believe, in El Paso.

MR. : Yeah.

MR. : Texas. And it was not many people, I don't think watched, but he did win about 69 percent. So he did something right there. And so I think--

MR. : Scheduling it at 9 o'clock--

MR. : I think he held his own.

MS. FEENEY: And can we add a Friday night in Texas football, high school football season.

MR. : On the other hand, El Paso is in another time zone in Texas. And yet Governor Bush carried El Paso for the first time for any Republican gubern atorial candidate. And he has worked very hard, and this fits into this whole strategy of trying to bring across a new Republican image, as it relates to minority relations, immigration issues. And that's why he's worked so hard on the border. That's one of the reasons why the debate was held in El Paso.

But, frankly, he was leading in an overwhelming amount of the polls. And I tend to agree, I don't think his heart was really in it. And I think his heart is in this deal tomorrow night.

MR. : Susan and David, do you have any sense of those debates from your own reporting or watching old tapes or what you've heard from either campaign?

MS. FEENEY: Well, just that the governor hugely benefitted by the sense of expectations. Even when people think that he--they thought at the time that he was going to be so awful that he couldn't nearly be as funny as Ann Richards, as charming, as witty. You stand up there, you do pretty well, people are used to what she's like, and they take another look at him. So I think that's what we'll see a little bit tomorrow, too, in that when people don't expect very much, there's a lot of opportunity to impress.

MR. SHRIBMAN: Yeah, there's a lot of, if your expectations are low, there's a lot of up--

[Laughter.]

MR. SHRIBMAN: This is an astonishing--E.J., you didn't note that this is the first time in history that the guy from the Globe is on the far right.

[Laughter.]

MR. DIONNE: It depends on how you look at it.

[Laughter.]

MR. SHRIBMAN: But if you take a look, Susan, at the first Republican debate in Manchester, where the expectation was, of course, that Governor Bush was far and away the giant in that field, and the expectations were so heavily in his favor, and his performance was so underwhelming that this whole expectations game, in a way, probably evens itself out because, you know, for two minutes they're up, then they're down. And of course the expectation now is that the expectations for Gore are so high that you have to consider Bush the favorite? Well, this is kind of screwy.

MS. FEENEY: It's complicated, yeah.

MR. SHRIBMAN: So in the end, I mean, it's all the more reason why you should probably boycott NBC on Tuesday night.

[Laughter.]

MR. : But there is one issue here which does lead to a governing issue, which is his attitudes towards talking, and intellectuals and the minds of intellects when he was here at Harvard or in New Haven at Yale, he did develop what seems to have been a lifelong distrust of talkers and intellectuals. I see even yesterday on the stump he has revised some of that, talking about planners, and talkers and eggheads almost in good old-fashioned Republican tradition.

Is that something that you can foresee carrying over into a governing style or influencing a governing style? This is to anybody on the panel.

SENATOR BIVINS: I hate to monopolize the microphone, but while it may come across that he is anti-intellectual, and he is most comfortable in a one-on-one kind of raconteur, but the reality is Governor Bush has the best staff that any governor has put together in my lifetime in Texas. And these are all professionals that are at the top of their field, whether it be environmental matters, education matters, immigration, judicial affairs. And he spends a lot of time with these folks in a roundtable situation--Elton has been in the room several times--where ideas are the order of the day, and he establishes his policy positions based on, in my estimation, a thorough review of the policy options that are out there.

So while he may portray that image, I think he's a pretty bright guy.

David?

MR. SHRIBMAN: I kind of think he views them the way he views probably proctologists and dentists. He doesn't want to be one, but he probably recognizes the value of having them around.

[Laughter.]

MR. : Thank you for our first proctology reference of the afternoon.

[Laughter.]

MR. SHRIBMAN: One in a series.

MR. : Could I ask Vic Fazio if you could talk a bit about Gore and debating. And there's been a lot written, Jim Fallow's [ph] piece in the Atlantic and other things about Gore's debating style. Could you take us back to the NAFTA fight. There was a lot of anxiety among Democrats about putting Al Gore up against Ross Perot. What did people say to each other at the time before that? Could you take us through that decision and what did people say about how he did in that debate and why it happened?

MR. FAZIO: Well, Al Gore has always been somebody who believes that politics is essentially an argument between people with competing ideas. And he's always been the kind of politician who was a little bit different than his peers in that he focused a great deal, not only on explaining his views, but understanding his opponent's, and he saw the kind of bloodless battle of a debate as a way of, you know, scoring points.

And I think when he took on the challenge of dealing with Ross Perot, the presumption was that perhaps he would win on points and lose in the ultimate to a guy who knew what he believed and was dedicated to getting that point, that giant sucking sound that he constantly reminded us. And as it turned out Al not only outpointed him, but he knocked him flat. He totally threw him off his message and caused him to be left sputtering on the "Larry King Live" show.

So I think Al Gore has shown the ability to deal with the kind of debate, depending on the setting, depending on the kind of opponent, all the variations and variables are part of what he has come to understand he has to deal with. He is, in some ways, the opposite of the challenge that Governor Bush faces. He needs to be the Al Gore of the convention, the person with the family life, the kind of emotional communication, body language even, that sent people away from the Los Angeles experience feeling very different about him.

This event tomorrow night is probably his largest challenge, in the sense of getting at new and undecided voters, and conveying more than just his intellect and his ability to be conversant with the issues, but a lot more about his personality and how he would hope to govern.

MR. : Who's he going to kiss?

[Laughter.]

MR. : David, you want to comment?

MR. SHRIBMAN: Congressman Fazio's remarks remind of I think we should, in the course of this afternoon, think, because we're talking about governing, about the difference between the kinds of skills which it gets you through an evening like tomorrow night, and through the next five weeks and the kind of skills that gets you through four years of being president. And the principal question in my mind, and this is probably a good final exam question for any of the students--

MR. : How the norm will take the test.

MR. SHRIBMAN: Yeah. To what extent are the things you have to do to be president different from the things you have to do once you get the job. And it strikes me that, until recently, this kind of showmanship was completely foreign to American governing. And now it seems, and the example of NAFTA gives you an example of when it's kind of creeping the other way. But there seems to be a little bit more merging of it than there was before.

MR. : As Richard Nixon used to say, "I'm glad you asked that question." Because Congressman Jones was actually caught up in the giant sucking sound. He ended up our ambassador to Mexico. So his was one of the first jobs to move south of the border.

[Laughter.]

MR. : But David raised an interesting point in terms of sort of debating in a forum like we're going to see here tomorrow night versus the kind of debating you do in the house.

Al Gore has got this reputation now, in large part because of the Perot debate, as a kind of fighter or shark is a word sometimes his friends, sometimes his critics use. Could you compare that to how he was seen in the House as a debater or as someone to deal with. What was his style like then and how might it tell us something in answer to David's question?

MR. JONES: I think he's evolved a lot since his time in the house, even since his time as vice president. One of the factors that as long as I've known Al Gore is he is prepared. He really does his homework thoroughly, he challenges his staff, he challenges others who are trying to convince him to go to a certain point of view, and he's very intense about it.

One of his downsides in the past has been a lack of spontaneity. He has gained that, I think, a great deal lately. And as vice president, he was a very loyal, almost staffperson. I saw him in the Mexican bailout situation, where most of the political types at the White House didn't want President Clinton to have anything to do with that. It was bad form, bad politics. And Al Gore dug into it, got the facts, and then became really the devil's advocate, both challenging us, Larry Summers, myself and others, and then making the case to the White House. So he does his homework thoroughly.

I think what Vic says is true. At a time when there's not another overriding national issue or concern, the likability factor is probably the most important thing. And that's what came through at the convention, and I think he did it very well, and I think that's his challenge for tomorrow night.

As far as David's comments about show business being a part of governing, again, I think the answer is it's really true. You have to have that. Ronald Reagan is someone who is not intellectual in any sense of the word. In fact, he was somewhat frightening to me in his lack of attention to the issues that he had to deal with, at least that I was familiar with. And yet I came away, as time has gone on, with a grudging respect for a number of his qualities. And one of it is the show business, the symbols, and the acts of leadership that he displayed to rally a nation on various things.

One funny--two funny stories. At the height of the Mexican devaluation, when President Zedillo didn't know if he was sitting on the largest trash heap in the world or whether his policies were going to work, we were late one night at their equivalent of the White House.

And I was telling him the Ronald Reagan story about leadership. And I said, "You know, I hate to say this, but to be a good leader and a good president, you have to be part actor."

At which point President Zedillo shrugged his shoulders, and he said, "You know, I am who I am. I just--I can't do that."

I said, "Let me tell you another story. When I was Budget chairman, I was coming back from a speech. And in St. Louis, Jesse Jackson got on, and we were seated next to each other. And I'm Catholic, but I believe very much in the Kennedy tradition. You don't mix religion and politics. And so we were talking about the right wing religious movement that was gaining real strength in the early '80s, and I told Reverend Jackson, I said, you know, I just can't display publicly my religion and mix it with politics.

And he said, "You better learn to fake it."

[Laughter.]

MR. JONES: So if you don't have those qualities, I think you have to learn to fake it.

[Laughter.]

MR. : Could I ask a more specific version of E.J.'s question--I think to Mr. Jones or Mr. Fazio--which is that we were on the plane up here talking about some of the debates Al Gore has been in in his life--I think 43 I read this morning--and most of them against Democrats. And a lot of them he has beaten some Democrats pretty badly: Bruce Babbitt, Paul Simon on foreign affairs, Dick Gephardt, Bill Bradley on race and other matters.

Did you observe in him an ability to then go back to those people and make allies and friends, the sorts of allies he would need as president, to people he has offended along the way, in one way or another?

MR. : Well, I think there's no question he's been able to reach out to the people, like Dick Gephardt, who he has gone up against, even in more recent days, Bill Bradley is coming around to support the ticket, despite having been vanquished in several debates. I mean, Al Gore sees these as an exchange of ideas, as a battle over which direction we want to take the country, but he doesn't take it personally. I mean, this is not for him a life or death kind of thing. It's what politicians do to convey ideas to the public and to try to bring them along behind him.

So I don't think it's impossible, and I certainly don't think it's ever been the case with Al Gore. I mean, I think he and Jack Kemp are still friends today.

[Laughter.]

MR. : I think that is the case. And I believe Governor Bush is of the same mind in that politics is a combat of ideas, and policies and principles. And then you can go down to the gym and play basketball with the one you just had a debate with.

MR. : Absolutely.

MR. : Which there's less and less of that in politics today. But I think Gore and Bush both--

MS. FEENEY: It does, though, come up over and over about whether Al Gore is a better idea person, someone who is out there on the cutting edge and thinking ahead, but rather solitary in the sense of how he makes his decisions. And there's some question about whether he can build those broad coalitions and especially across party lines. I'm wondering what you think of that.

SENATOR BIVINS: I'd like to jump in there. Back to E.J.'s question. You know, what does it take to become president and then what does it take to be president I think are two very different things. And there's probably more show business in the former than the latter.

But the real hope that I think I have for George Bush and America is the fact that above all else he's a uniter. He has been able, in a Texas legislature dominated by Democrats, to bring Democrats on board, as well while keeping his Republican base on board, and making initiatives that he endorsed the premier legislative causes of each session. And this is additionally remarkable in that Texas has one of the least powerful governors of all 50 states.

And I think that executive skill, that ability, and it's highly personal. He gets you in a room, and you're there ten seconds, and he's got a nickname for you that will stick for the rest of your life.

MR. : What's yours?

SENATOR BIVINS: I met him in 1988, and my nickname was Biv, and it is to this day. I don't know what else it is, but I'm sure he has one.

But it is that skill that I think enables him to be a great governor, can make him a great president, and also hopefully can bring some more--or bring civility and lower the level of rancor that seems like--

MS. FEENEY: Do we have to make that disclosure that I feel like we have to all the time that among Texas Democrats there's no Charlie Rangel, no Barney Frank? Texas Democrats are a little more conservative.

MR. : There are, there's the Ron Wilsons of the world, the Imaran Hales [ph] of the world. I mean, I don't know--I've read a lot about that in the national press. But I think--I've run into some pretty card-carrying liberals in the Texas legislature.

MR. : But Susan raised a good point. I mean, there are a lot of Texas Democrats who would lose a Republican primary in Massachusetts for being too conservative.

[Laughter.]

MR. : And that the kinds of people that--the liberals you're describing were, unless I am wrong on this, were not for the most part the people that Governor Bush did business with. He did business with the conservative Democrats who would, in many other parts of the country, be comfortable in the Republican Party; is that not fair?

MR. : No, I don't think it is. I mean, Ron Wilson is a black House member from the fifth ward of Houston, who is quite flashy. He has a lot of the show business that we've talked about and has been highly critical of other Republicans. But he and Governor Bush actually made a deal on the consigned--or what do you call it--the concealed weapon bill, that was a remarkable coalition that nobody ever dreamed would come about.

And so I guess I just think that's a little bit of an unfair rap of Texas liberals.

MR. : I think we have a Texas Democrat right here.

Could you--Governor Bush presumably reached across the aisle and asked you to become his secretary of state--could you describe how he made the pitch and what the process was like, how he approached you.

MR. BOMER: I should have known you knew that, right?

[Laughter.]

MR. BOMER: I was a Democrat from East Texas, the Eastern part of Texas, the district up there, and I called on him in the 1994 campaign and asked him to come to East Texas, that I'd like to visit with him, and I had about a dozen or so friends of mine that joined in the visit. And that's the first time I'd ever met him, and got to know him, and liked him, and fished with him, and got to be good friends.

And then he asked me to be commissioner of insurance. And I told him in the interview, that's about a $40 billion revenue job in Texas. It's a big business in any state, but certainly in our state it's a big business. I told him, I said, "I don't know very much about insurance."

And he said, "That's perfect. I don't want anybody with an agenda." And I didn't have one. And so I served there for four years, and I was very loyal to him. I was involved deeply with him on matters of legislation that, even before I became an adviser to the governor, as commissioner of insurance, it's a high-profile job in Texas, a very tough job, as it is in most states. But we got involved in lots of health insurance matters, the Patient Protection Act, for example, where I advised him to sign a bill that he vetoed, as a matter of fact.

And we got to be very frank friends. And I asked him one time, when I was commissioner of insurance, "Is it important to you that I change parties? Since I work for a Republican governor, is that important?"

And he says, "No, not at all. It's not important to me, unless it's important to you. I don't really look at it that way, and I selected you because you're a conservative businessman, and I like your ideas." And then subsequently he said, "I'd like for you to be my secretary of state."

And I asked him why he closed the door behind me. And he said, "In case you say no."

[Laughter.]

MR. BOMER: But nothing sinister about it at all. It's just we were friends and shared a philosophy. And I'm more than a Democrat or Republican, I'm a Bush loyalist.

MR. : Before we leave the debate issue entirely, I wanted to ask David and Susan, both of you have covered Al Gore going back to his '88 campaign for president, and both of you have been following Governor Bush going back to the time he was working for his father, can you sort of give us some bits of enlightenment on what you're anticipating not only tomorrow, but also for the rest of the campaign when you think about what you've learned over these last 12 or 13 years about these guys.

MS. FEENEY: I guess I have learned, since as you said we have covered them back to 1980, that they really aren't any different than they were then. They were, let's see, well, I'll start with Al Gore. He was a very feisty debater then. He wasn't a great candidate, but some of the same qualities we saw then, it's historic now, that he first brought up the question of Willie Horton in a debate with Michael Dukakis. That's pretty well known. He's always been prepared. He comes armed. He brings weapons with him into a debate.

And what we knew from George W. Bush back in 1988, he was a bit of his father's enforcer. And when there was something that had to be put across to the press, when he wanted to tell something, he came, and he did it. And he basically would do it in a nice way and sometimes not.

And so I see, actually, one other thing, and it's getting off your point of debate, but I see them both as people who, in the big picture, would rather never deal with the press. If they could both live the lives they wanted to and not deal with reporters, they would be all the happier. They sort of suffer us, and deal with us, and use us to their benefit when they can, just as we'll try to use them, too. But in a lot of ways, what we know about them, and their characters and their qualities we knew then. I don't think they're very different people.

MR. SHRIBMAN: I would agree with Susan in that their styles are similar. But I would argue that unlike, say, Lyndon Johnson or Ronald Reagan or even Omar Garcia Power--

[Laughter.]

MR. SHRIBMAN: Who are all finished products, that for both of them the campaign itself, and even the first few years of being president, will be learning experiences and formative experiences. I don't think, for example, the presidency was a formative experience for either President Johnson or President Reagan. But I think the presidency and the campaign will be a formative experience for both of these two candidates.

MS. FEENEY: Absolutely.

MR. SHRIBMAN: So to steal another line, Ambassador Jones, from Jesse Jackson, God isn't finished with either of them yet.

MR. : Why don't we go to Ambassador Jones, since you saw Lyndon Johnson, and maybe ask you to react to that comment.

MR. JONES: Well, I'm not sure how to react to that. I think the presidency is an evolving experience for whomever is there. And I think they will both be learning.

The interesting thing about Al Gore is that he has had I think the most incredible experiences as vice president, in a very substantive way, of any vice president in my lifetime. So he has a great deal of understanding of what the issues are.

Obviously, Governor Bush to probably a lesser extent, but talking to his father, understands the same thing.

So I think that they'll both evolve and grow, as I tried to indicate Al Gore has, in becoming more spontaneous, and becoming more likeable and the things you have to do to get a gathering so that you will have a following to get your points across.

The other thing, mentioning about the reaching out to the other side, I think Vic was there during the NAFTA debate. I was in Mexico. But on some very key issues, Al Gore has shown an ability to reach over to the Republican side to get votes when there weren't enough Democrats to pass; i.e., the NAFTA, the China trade bill, et cetera. So I think both of them recognize that the Congress that they will inherit or that they will deal with next time is going to require bipartisanship.

And I think both of them, at their very core, would rather deal, would rather govern in a bipartisan way than a partisan way. And hopefully that's going to be the wave of the future, as opposed to the highly partisan--

MR. : In his convention speech, Al Gore used the word "fight" 20 times, I believe. And I think the keynote of that speech was a sentence that said, "The presidency is a daily fight for your interests." Is that fighting strain, is that really indicative of a bipartisan approach or who's he going to be fighting against?

MR. JONES: Well, first of all, I think fighting for people, the kind of people he's been reaching out to, certainly since the convention, is a way of defining who should be lining up behind him and which side you should be on as a potential voter. But I don't think you necessarily translate that fighting for people into combat in Congress. In fact, I think, no matter who is elected, there's going to have to be a real effort to try to break down the incredible partisanship that has infected the institution in recent years.

Bill Clinton was a very charming host at the White House for many Republicans on many occasions. But after the deeply-imbedded disagreements over impeachment, et cetera, poisoned the well. It became very, very difficult for him to build alliances. I think Al Gore will want to go back and rekindle that bipartisan sense that he felt as a member of Congress, a member of the Senate, as well as the House.

I also think Governor Bush is going to find it's not quite as simple as it was in Texas reaching out to people who may have shared your ideology, were going through the kind of party transition that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have recently gone through. That's not to say that anything that he did to try to bring you on board was inappropriate or unnecessary. He did a wonderful job, from his perspective. But it's difficult in Washington sometimes even getting your own party in order, getting your own team to work behind you.

I, personally, think a more hands-on approach would benefit whoever is elected. And I think, certainly from their experience, they're ready to do that, if they want to succeed. And succeeding in this kind of environment in Congress for any president is very tough.

MR. DIONNE: David, did you--

MR. BROOKS: I was going to ask the four guys in the middle here, I have been watching the last couple of nights reruns of the 1960 debates, as many of you I'm sure have also, and I was struck by the number of times Senator Kennedy said, made the argument that the Democratic way of doing things was better, and that Vice President Nixon made the argument several times that the Republican values, and the Republican approach was better. I'd be surprised if either of the candidates this time said anything remotely like that; am I right?

MR. : I agree.

MS. FEENEY: Not when the fight is for the votes in the center.

MR. : But the fight was for the votes in the center in 1960, too, Susan.

MS. FEENEY: No, I know. But they wouldn't say it now.

MR. : But there were a lot more--

MS. FEENEY: Many more Independents.

MR. : --people who identified themselves as Republicans and Democrats in '60 than now.

MR. : It's a striking difference.

MS. FEENEY: Yeah, that's true.

MR. : I want to go to this issue of governing because, Congressman Fazio, you were in the middle of a big budget fight in '93, and I wanted to ask you about how Gore behaved in that fight. And then Congressman Jones was right at the heart of the fight over the '81 Reagan budget. And if you could take us back to that Al Gore.

I just wanted to say one thing. Congressman Jones mentioned basketball games. And we had a session that included Congressman Eddie Markey of Massachusetts. And Norm, I believe, introduced him as saying he was a great basketball player, except that he never passed.

And Markey said afterward, "That's entirely true, but not entirely fair because no one in congressional basketball games ever passes."

[Laughter.]

MR. : But why don't we go back to '81 with Congressman Jones and then to the '93 fight with Mr. Fazio.

MR. JONES: Well, you know, in many ways the seeds of the high partisanship that exists today started in 1981. And I can understand the reasons why the political advisers to President Reagan wanted it to be partisan showdown because this happened right after the assassination attempt on President Reagan.

And they had come to town to put their stamp of being in charge. But up until that point, from the 1980 election forward, David Stockman, who was the budget director, and a colleague of ours in the House, and I had been working behind the scenes to have a bipartisan budget, with the differences between us on tax policy, and defense and education policy to be taken to the House floor for the normal vote.

And then after the assassination attempt, somehow the lines of communication were cut off, and it was a highly partisan showdown between the Reagan budget and the Democratic budget. And they had a solid vote of Republicans, and I think 35 what they called boll weevils, but the more conservative members of the Democratic side in the House. And then it was a big victory in all three of those budget debates in '81.

And then Tip O'Neill, who was the speaker, in order to preserve his sense of power, had to come back in '82 with a highly partisan showdown on the Social Security vote. And it just became progressively more partisan from there on. And I think that was a mistake, in terms of the way the institutions conduct itself. But that's where it started

MR. : Where was Gore in the middle of all of this? What's your recollection?

MR. JONES: No, Gore was, he was very much--he wasn't that involved in the budget debates. He was more into things that were not even issues at the time, Internet and things like that.

[Laughter.]

MR. JONES: No, he was involved in environmental issues and technology issues, and the broad budget policy he didn't, he was not a leader in that. But he clearly voted with the Democratic budget all through those years.

MR. : Could I just, apropos of that, there's a piece in David's magazine, the Weekly Standard, that quoted a Democrat saying of Al Gore, "If you look at his career, particularly in the House, it was a career based more so, than almost any other I know of, on noncontroversial issues like liver transplants. The Gulf War was one of the only issues I can recall when he took a position that was very controversial, but then he was not actively involved," and then it goes on from there.

He was, in fact, he was gifted at picking issues that were not at the center of partisan or ideological controversy. I mean, is that a fair comment, this quotation?

MR. : I think it reflects both his intellectual interests, but also the nature of his district and his state, which were both politically marginal. You don't take on the most cutting issues when you are seeking reelection in a district that's very evenly balanced, as his were throughout most of his career--certainly, the state has continued to be right up through this election.

But looking at '93, I think we saw a different Al Gore, and that is somebody who pitched in to try to build the confidence that was needed to get that one-vote majority in the House to pass the '93 Budget Reduction Act.

Ross Perot had made deficit reduction a mandatory item when Bill Clinton was elected. And while we all understand how popular reducing the deficit is, I think most of you come to realize that there isn't one thing you can do to do it that's popular, whether it's tax increases or spending cuts, there are critics.

And so what Al Gore did, as one of the team, was to go to the Hill and build the confidence in people to make that courageous vote, which is, of course, contrary to all Republican predictions, had a vary salutary effect on the economy, one that we don't talk much about now when we look to the future.

But it was a seminal decision in the entire Clinton presidency, and it was really continuing, as Jim said, the repercussions of the Gingrich revolutionaries' impact on how we govern, starting in the early '80s right on through to the early '90s. It was probably an almost impossible political act to accomplish. And, of course, Al Gore's vote in the Senate, as the 51st senator, made it happen.

MS. FEENEY: I was going to say I wonder if you can talk to about the energy tax and the role of that. Because that also became quite controversial.

MR. : Well, obviously, the only broad-base tax, as it was portrayed by our political foes, was a gas tax, which even up to the moment we have never seriously considered repealing. Oh, a few feints in that direction for political purposes by Dick Armey and a few others, but we've never done it because the Bud Shuster wing of the Republican Party doesn't want to see us reduce our expenditures for highways and transportation.

Energy policy is a good subject for further discussion here. But I would simply say--

MR. : This is the wrong audience to talk about reducing transportation expenditures.

[Laughter.]

MR. : I understand. I saw those cranes all of the way over here.

MR. SHRIBMAN: Absolutely.

MR. : Incredible dig.

MR. : But didn't Gore, as Susan said, Gore started out with this rather complicated, you could say either complicated or innovative BTU tax, and he was for it for energy conservation reasons and for environmental reasons.

MR. : Sure, cutting down our reliance on foreign oil.

MR. : And it eventually failed. What happened, what was the politics surrounding that?

MR. : I think there was a failure of will. I remember talking to my good friends Jamie Whitten and Bill Natcher, who were the two leaders on the Appropriations Committee who really protected the domestic policy priorities from the Roosevelt era through Lyndon Johnson's New Society or Great Society. But when asked whether they could vote for a gas tax increase, neither chose to do so because, in fact, as Bill Natcher said, some of my people even drive all the way into Louisville, and they wouldn't like that.

So the wherewithal, the political courage to do what most energy analysts on both sides of the aisle, frankly, think is necessary, which is to get energy costs up to promote conservation and domestic production, was more than most people could stomach politically.

MR. : What I might add, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, at least on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean today, that very idea of having fuel prices that are three times the price of the underlying commodity is causing demonstrations, riots sometimes in Paris. I'm not certain that that's something that this audience would like either.

MR. : Could I go back a few months from that legislative fight in '93 to the fight within the administration, which you signalled was the seminal event of the Clinton economic policy, certainly. There was a fight between the Robert Reich wing, who wanted more aggressive domestic spending to combat inequality and stagnant wages, and then there was the more fiscally conservative wing--

MR. SHRIBMAN: Rubin--

MR. : --Rubin and Alan Greenspan supported. Do you have any understanding where Al Gore stood in that debate and where he threw his weight?

MR. JONES: I was in Mexico.

[Laughter.]

MR. : We were trying to spend it.

[Laughter.]

MR. JONES: I'm afraid I can't be explicit enough to really respond to that one. I just don't know where he was at the time.

MR. DIONNE: Anyone else want to get in on that?

[No response.]

MR. DIONNE: Could I move to Governor Bush and to Al Gore. and it goes to Susan's point earlier that there's a strange paradox with both of these men, it seems. Both seem to be willing to do whatever it takes to win, yet both seem fairly consistent in where they have stood in their political lives. David and I were joking, I view Gore as a moderate liberal and Bush as a conservative. He views Gore as a liberal and Bush as a moderate conservative. But somewhere or another, they are broadly in the same ballpark.

Now, you could say that wanting to win and being fairly consistent is a good definition of a successful politician, in general. But I'm just curious if anybody here on this panel has a take on this sort of deep drive to win. You know, George Bush this week was willing to say how much he wanted to be like President Clinton, the president who was trashed rather fiercely at the Republican Convention. And Al Gore has gone through his own transformations. Could anybody take that on, this issue of which one of these is the right one to emphasize or is there any way of answering the question?

I'll pick David first, the thoughtful David Shribman.

MR. SHRIBMAN: I was hoping it was the thoughtful other David.

[Laughter.]

MR. SHRIBMAN: I think, in a way, in this context, to be--it's one of the problems I think Vice President Gore has is that he's portrayed as somebody who will do almost anything to win, and that's not one of his--if he were in J.V. football at Harvard, that would be--well, maybe not Harvard.

[Laughter.]

MR. SHRIBMAN: Anywhere else it would be regarded as a positive attribute. But in this particular context, sometimes it comes over as cravenness. And I think that's a danger that he has.

At the same time, not to skew the question too much, E.J., but I think that the casualness, I think, that sometimes Governor Bush projects, the "Aw, shucks, if I don't win this, I'll go back home, and I still have my two daughters and my wife."--he hasn't noticed the two daughters have gone off to college since he started campaigning-- I mean, that also gives him a certain lightness, I think, in terms of his commitment that I think is one of his challenges to overcome.

Given that, they're competitors and neither likes to lose, I think that that in a way bodes well for tomorrow's challenge and confrontation in that they will be trying to, as we say again, to confound expectations, but not to give the other guy any quarter at all. And I think when you project that into how they would govern, E.J., that I think that they may talk a good game about reaching out to the other side, but in the end, no president likes to lose.

And the presidents who lose, and we know who they are, you know, they become really splendid ex-presidents. And I don't think, you know, everybody admires President Carter right now, and everybody admired President Hoover in the '40s, because these are the people who invented the job of ex-president. But basically, they have to fail in order to succeed in that role, and I don't think either of these guys is looking for the Hoover/Carter role.

MR. : In defense of Jimmy Carter, he is the author of one of the great lines in American politics, "Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser."

[Laughter.]

MR. : Susan?

MS. FEENEY: It does remind me of one point. The vice president certainly has gained this reputation in the campaign of say anything, do anything. But one thing that I found, I was doing a piece a while back comparing Gore's style with Clinton's style, and one of the things that many members of Congress told me that any day of the week they would much rather negotiate with Clinton than Gore because when Al Gore makes up his mind on something, he studied, he studied, he believes he is right, and he is not likely to give a lot either way on a policy issue or whatever it is. So that's very different from sort of the Gore campaigner that we hear now.

And in some ways, Governor Bush is seen now as the person who is sort of steadfast on these issues. But it's pretty clear I think in the Texas legislature that he set his priorities, and he was willing to negotiate. I'm not saying throw his principles out the window, but negotiate where he could and where he needed to in order to make some things happen. It's sort of an add--maybe that's the question between governing and campaigning again.

MR. : I would like to pick up on Susan's point because I think a lot of what gives Al Gore the image of being someone who refuses to lose is probably based in his youth, watching his father's political career. Here's a man who ran, who had portentions to be on the ticket, vice president, when Kefauver was actually put forward. Here is a guy who lost on principle because he had voted for the Civil Rights Act. He cared deeply about that issue in a state that wasn't quite there yet.

So when Al Gore comes off as somebody who's always fighting to win, I don't think I've ever seen him really abandon principle. And that's the point Susan was making. And I think you sometimes see him as more rigid, perhaps, as a result. But my impression is people like Ronald Reagan, who campaigned on principles, do very well with the American people, even when they step back perhaps and let the compromise occur out of sight. It is a way in which they define themselves and reached incredible leadership popularity and effectiveness as a result. And I think that's the kind of skill that I think Al Gore needs to develop.

Losing on principle never hurts any politician, as long as he has made very clear why he believes as strongly as he does.

MR. : But Susan was also describing decision-making procedures. And George W. Bush strikes one as someone who is very comfortable making decisions with a lot of people around him, working through the decisions. I was even struck in the preparation of the debate, they released video of him preparing for the debate with Judd Greg in a room on the ranch and all sorts of people--

[Tape 1, Side 2.]

The region shared problems from pollution to drug trafficking, to traffic congestion, leading critics to question his leadership skills and his credentials as a reformer abroad. And the same piece quotes an independent senator from Mexico, saying, "He only listened to high government officials. He's never done anything to shake up the status quo."

And there was another quote from a professor at the University of Texas, who said, "All that he's shown so far is that he's good at getting along with "good people." How do you respond to all that?

MR. BOMER: My response is that some of his best friends--I guess you'd call them, not best friends, but friends--contacts in Mexico are well below the presidential level. He gets along very well with the six states of Mexico that border Texas. He's attended the Boarder Governor Conferences, and participated with relish, in those issues, that some of those--that you just mentioned.

But I have to tell you that the first day on the job in January 11th of 1999, the first day that I was secretary of state in Texas, he called me into his office. And I knew what the duties were of secretary of state, but he has--he can delegate some other duties as well, and one of those was the conditions that we have along the border of Texas are--there's a good bit of poverty there, an estimated 400,000 people along the border that didn't have fresh water and wastewater facilities. And he addressed me in a way that left no doubt, that he wanted me to go about getting it fixed. And so I spent the last two years working on that, and we have a plan in place now to address 300,000 or the 400,000 people. In the next 12 months we'll have 100,000 people with water and wastewater facilities, simply because the people before me had not really addressed the problem.

Lots of governors had sent lots of money to Mexico--or to the border of Texas to address water and wastewater, and they did it in the form of putting in six and eight-inch lines in the middle of the streets or along the side of the street to handle the water and wastewater. Just no money was ever allocated to run the three-quarter-inch lines from there up to the house. And so we did that with the help of the NAD [ph] Bank, and the Water Development Board in Texas, through grants and loans, were able to do that. And he wanted me to address those problems specifically, and he would call me in and tell me, "What about the hook-up program?" And so he followed up very closely on that program. He was very concerned about it.

So his feeling for humanity is not just at the presidential level or just at the governor level. It's for the people in South Texas and also the people in Mexico. And one of the reasons that he's so intensely in favor of NAFTA and the full implementation of NAFTA is that it's good for both countries and Canada as well.

But the statistics don't lie. There's 1.3 million Mexicans now employed in US and European countries along the border. That's 1.3 million people that don't want to cross the border and go into Texas and California and the other border states all over this country, to find jobs.

MR. : Mr. Ambassador, is Bush right to say that what we saw in Texas is an example of a proto-foreign policy?

MR. JONES: I've never--I don't know what his feelings are in other areas. Ann Richards, I thought, was absolutely superb at relations between a state and Mexico, and I must say that George Bush has been equally good in those relations.

He did do, in 1996 or so, when Governor Pete Wilson of California was pushing Proposition 187, Bush did come out and oppose 187, and said that that would not be in Texas, those kinds of punitive measures would not happen in Texas. And that gained him a great deal of friendship with Mexico. So he did handle those relations well, and he did do it also on personal friendship basis.

MR. : Can you extrapolate into how that would play out into sort of a world view?

MR. JONES: Well, I think--first of all, Texas and Mexico have so much in common, and he had a real interest because Mexico is our second largest trading partner now, having exceeded Japan and just behind Canada, and 40 percent of that is Texas, so it's a major issue for Texas. Again, I don't think those kinds of personal relationships that he established in Mexico can be duplicated all around the world, so I don't know what kind of foreign policy leader he would be when you're talking about Asia and the former Soviet states and things like that. It's a much different situation.

MR. : If I could broaden it, and maybe ask David Shribman, there hasn't, like all recent presidential debates, there hasn't been a lot of foreign policy talk. Do you feel that we're just in an age of relative consensus on most of these issues?

MR. SHRIBMAN: Well, I think that it's an area that American people themselves haven't been concentrating too much on. One of the things that Governor Bush started to talk about when he started to run for President, was prosperity with a purpose. And I think if you could extrapolate that really quite nice phrase, is: "what are the uses of prosperity at home?" And another part of that might be: "what are the uses of prosperity abroad? How could we use our prosperity to maybe sow some prosperity and democracy abroad?" That would be a logical extension of the Bush notion, and of a notion I don't think that Vice-President Gore would object to.

And I think if we don't hear something about foreign policy in the next two weeks, I'll be astonished, but I'm not sure there's a huge American domestic audience for talk about this, because, you know, it's a huge market here. To the extent to which we think abroad, we think about making money rather than geopolitics, and maybe that's where the big change, is that the world now seems more of a economic challenge than a geopolitical challenge. I'd like to hear the candidates talk about that a little bit tomorrow.

MR. : I would like to echo that, because I think there is no political sex appeal in talking about foreign policy in this particular year, and I think it's a time bomb that's going to disrupt all of the economic and the political and democratic reforms that have taken place in the last decade or so. And only the president can take that lead, and unless that president rallies the American people to address the tremendous disparity between not just rich and poor today, but the opportunity of the next generation, I think we're going to see the great reforms that have happened in the last decade or two be rolled back.

SENATOR BIVINS: If I could jump in here, the Governor's attitude towards Mexico and our relations with Mexico, I think are illustrative of an approach that can grow up high, as opposed to shrinking it or building walls. His goal--he doesn't have a problem like his dad did with the vision thing. In fact, if anything, I would say that George W. Bush's horizon is much further out maybe than his opponent's, because while he doesn't deal in specific policy, nail down everything having studied his briefing book, he does have a vision for the relationship with this country and Mexico and immigration policy, and also the education and health care issues that arise from immigration, legal and illegal in Texas. And his goal is the only way we're going to stop illegal immigration is to build up Mexico's economy to where--as Secretary Bomer said you have more than a million people--but you have 20 million people that do not want to come across the border, that want to stay where they are.

And I think that has resonated very well with Hispanics, and this is a place where politics and policy merge. That's why he's done so well with Hispanic voters in Texas, why I think we're going to do well in California, and I think it's going to play very positively into the foreign policy of a Bush Administration.

MR. : You know, it's interesting you raise that point about wanting to lift up all votes. I've always been curious about Governor Bush's decision last year on the Children's Health Care Program, where the early proposal--the Democrats wanted to cover children up to 200 percent of poverty, and Bush held out for a long time, saying he only wanted to cover children up to 150 percent of poverty. And I knew the numbers once, but it cut out several hundred thousand kids in Texas from health care.

And at the same time, he had signed a $45 million tax cut for the owners of stripper wells. And do not ask me to explain that, because I've totally forgotten what stripper wells are--

MR. : They're not very sexy, I'll tell you that.

MR. : Stripper Wells dances at one of the clubs down here.

[Laughter.]

MR. : And eventually he signed the 200 percent bill and covered the extra kids. Why would he hold out on something like this? Especially a chunk of the money was federal money, and it was--what was going on there, Senator, and then Susan wanted to get in too.

SENATOR BIVINS: Well, I'm going to have to be like Congressman Fazio. I chair the Senate Education Committee. I'm deeply involved in the energy policy in Texas, energy taxation. I can talk to you about that tax cut which happened when we had $8 crude oil and people were going broke in droves in our state. It's a very important sector of our economy, but frankly, I was no involved in the health care debate, and so I'd lie to you if I tell you I knew what the answer to that question was.

MR. : By the way, I think I said a Democratic Senator at the time said, "I've seen a lot of poor children. I've never seen a lot of poor Texas oil men." But go ahead, Susan.

MS. FEENEY: Well, what was said at the time--and the Governor's concern was like the concern of some other Republican governors, and that is that while the federal money was free to this, there was state matching money involved. And his concern--and as was people who had trouble with the CHIPS [ph] Program, I guess--was that as you brought more people in for the CHIPS Program, that the families would also apply for other assistance programs, and that it would swell the state budget.

I guess what I've always wanted to ask the Governor about that, is holding out for the 200 percent, really delayed all Texas children from getting the CHIPS money, and there was a year or more time when they were arguing about the level, that children weren't getting insurance, they weren't getting health care out of it. That's really what I want to know. Was the day worth it because he gave in on it anyway?

MR. : On top of that, of course, Texas has had historically one of the lowest participation rates in the Medicaid Program, which again, I guess, is a budgetary issue which sort of calls into question the degree to which the compassion in this conservative really is seen in a policy sense.

MS. FEENEY: Well, that particular fight certainly didn't mix with the "leave no child behind" in my book.

MR. DIONNE: David, you've done a lot of research down there. What's your take on this sort of general area? And also, in general, the question of what Bush budgets look like. He has increased spending a great deal on education. It's not clear where the rest of the money has gone.

MR. SHRIBMAN: In the end, the Bush budget seemed to look pretty--I hate this word again--moderate. It's a lot like Governor Reagan's budgets used to look, E.J. There's a lot of talk about welfare cutting, but welfare spending under Governor Reagan in California, seemed to grow astonishingly, as did the number of abortions under Reagan.

And so I think under Governor Bush that there's a lot of--there's some conservative rhetoric, but I think in the end he seems to govern from the center, which brings us right back to the center of what we're doing right now, is that both of these gentlemen operate at the center, look to the center, and despite their rhetoric, end up at the center.

SENATOR BIVINS: And I would say on "leave no child behind", I can tell you honestly that Governor Bush has a passion for public education, and that term really came out of our efforts to address reading at the Pre-K levels and to end the practice of social promotion, of shuffling kids through the system, who we knew did not have the skills to perform.

MS. FEENEY: And I'm not questioning the education commitment. I'm wondering why it didn't--you know, I think you've got to give the kids some health care if you're going to teach them. So I wondered why it didn't really shift over to that.

MR. : Let me read a question from the floor which pertains a bit to this or might illuminate this. The question is: "The evaluation of Bush's role of Governor is often accompanied by the observation that the governorship of Texas is a very weak office, and that the policies he takes most credit for, e.g., education, were set in place long before him."

Could anyone please comment?

MR. BOMER: Well, I'd like to comment on it--excuse me, Senator.

SENATOR BIVINS: Go right ahead. I'll yield to the secretary of state.

MR. BOMER: Well, you're better qualified to comment on this because it addresses your body. In the Texas Senate there's a rule called a two-thirds rule. It's about evenly split--well, there's 16 Republicans, 15 Democrats now in the Texas Senate. But you have to have a two-thirds vote in order to get a bill heard, get a bill up to the floor for debate. So it can't be on a partisan basis; nothing would every pass. Reagan had that ability. He worked in California in a bipartisan way with a similar situation, I believe, Congressman, and certainly Bush worked very well in that environment, and it suited him to a tee. He couldn't have had it any better -- [tape malfunction] -- system in Texas has no money attached to it at all. It just gives campuses and districts grades in determining how good a job are they doing teaching the kids what we want them to know, and through that--and also through disaggregating the data, so that we measure each group, each subgroup, socioeconomic, Hispanic, black, and focus on where is the education gap between the Anglo students.

Texas has made enormous progress, and this is not just in the TOSS [ph] test results, but the National Assessment of Education Progress, the NAEP test scores. I think the consensus is Texas is moving in the right direction. So the reforms did begin before Bush got there, but it's in the area of accountability, and I might add, social promotion, that I think he deserves the greatest accolades.

MR. : I have a couple of specific questions for you, Senator, from the audience. There are some great questions here, including some wonderful partisan questions. There's one here, actually, that would be fun to answer, which is simply, "Is Texas air as bad as some say?"

[Laughter.]

MR. : Which I wouldn't mind if somebody tried to deal with, but let me just go first to the two education questions. One is to Senator Bivins. "What percentage of students were exempted from the state-mandated test, and what is the breakdown of that in terms of minorities?"

SENATOR BIVINS: The exemptions early on were extraordinary, and every year, really, since we began this in the mid '80s, the number of students that have been exempted from taking the TOSS test has shrunk. In terms of specific percentages, I can't really give it to you, but I can just tell you that, for example, today we now have a TOSS test that is printed in Spanish, so that all of those limited-English-proficiency students that were exempted in the past are now no longer exempted. Many students were exempted because they were deemed to be, quote, "special-education-eligible students." And through our accountability system, we've really cracked down on those exemptions, and this is all consistent with this idea of leaving no child behind.

MR. : What about the controversy over the test being so easy that even journalists could pass it? I mean, that there was a--there was a big controversy that the scores went up in part because the difficulty of the test went down. Can you talk about that?

SENATOR BIVINS: Well, I think I would take issue with that.

MR. : Leave no journalist behind.

[Laughter.]

SENATOR BIVINS: When we first implemented the TOSS test, there was a great deal of fear that this is going to show public schools up, teachers didn't like the idea at all. They felt limited and constrained. And we set the bar pretty low when it was first implemented. But when it was first implemented in '93, only 35 percent of the students had to score 70 or better on this exam for the campus to get an acceptable rating. That has now gone up 5 percent each year, so that now the standards are higher. But more importantly, what the test is designed to do is to measure the curriculum that is adopted by our state board of education that we require kids to know. And we now have a brand new curriculum that is far more rigorous, and students, in my mind, are being exposed to a much more difficult, rigorous curriculum, and therefore, assessment, than they have been in the past.

MR. : If I could maybe get to Al Gore on education. Every year I try to go to something called The Democratic Leadership Council Annual Meeting, which is held in Washington. You meet a lot of great lawyers there, and lobbyists too. There's the whole diversity of Washington there. And there's always a series of speeches. And one I recall a few years ago, Joe Lieberman, who was head, gave the first speech. Senator Kerry from Massachusetts gave a speech, a very bold speech on education reform, which was very DLC document, really taking great issue with the teacher unions on a whole variety of issues. Then Senator Kerrey from Nebraska gave a very bold speech on Social Security privatization.

And then at the end of the day Al Gore came along and gave the final speech of the day, and after three Lieberman, Kerry and Kerrey bold speeches, we really had a speech that was not a DLC speech, which was more a conventional on education in regards to vouchers, in regards to attitudes to the teachers' unions.

Is there--maybe, Ambassador Jones, have you ever seen Al Gore flirt with vouchers, flirt with some of the more DLC positions?

MR. JONES: I've only seen him flirt with Tipper.

[Laughter.]

MR. JONES: On national television.

No, I think he takes a more traditional view of trying to upgrade the public school system and to support the public school system, but I don't think he's--to my knowledge, ever gone with vouchers.

MR. : Well, I think there's a growing feeling on the part of people who heretofore have been considered liberals, people like George Miller, who will probably be the new chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, or whatever it's being called at the moment. He has, for example, led the whole fight toward teacher accreditation, making sure that all of the people in the classrooms in this country are qualified to teach the subjects that they have been confronted with. I think Al Gore is comfortable in that area. I think, however, vouchers are a completely different subject. I don't think it's appropriate to make vouchers a litmus test to determine whether you're for education reform. I think there are a lot of things now in both National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, that tell me that teachers are beginning to step up themselves to some of the challenges that parent organizations and others are putting before them. And I don't think Al Gore's at all uncomfortable with that.

MR. DIONNE: Could you, either of you, point to examples where Al Gore has played a role in bending what the Democratic Party he inherited--and I'm thinking, for example, of attitudes towards religious charities and the way religious action can be used to combat social ills. Is there anything else that leaps to mind the way he's shifted the party?

MR. : Certainly, that's one good example.

MR. : I think trade is the big thing, where he has not been afraid to take off a fundamental part of the Democratic Party, organized labor, and fight very hard for opening trade issues around the world.

MR. DIONNE: Do you have an idea why the words NAFTA were not mentioned at the Democratic National Convention?

MR. : Why the word?

MR. DIONNE: NAFTA.

MR. : It's pronounced NAFATA.

[Laughter.]

MR. : They couldn't pronounce it.

MR. : The convention was to be a unifying experience, that's the answer.

[Laughter.]

MR. DIONNE: There is a question here which is half facetious--by the way, I don't know if anybody wants to take on Texas Clean Air. I am so tempted to say that we wanted to have the Texas Air Quality Commissioner answer the question is the air as bad as they say, but she was having bronchial troubles, but that's not true.

MS. FEENEY: E.J., E.J., the honest answer is: it depends where you are. There are beautiful places with great air in Texas.

SENATOR BIVINS: And I'm venturing into an area that again I'm not expert on, but the problem area in Houston--that's Freudian--the problem areas in Texas are just like they are anywhere else in the United States that are major urban centers. And Houston has a real problem with ambient air quality, as does Los Angeles, as do a lot of--Denver, a lot of--

MR. : But, Senator, look how nice Boston Harbor looks.

SENATOR BIVINS: Couldn't see it. It was covered by air pollution when I flew in.

But the reality is, when you look inside baseball and get into the specifics of this issue and particulate emissions and NAAQS emissions, and volatile organic compounds, the Houston area--and this is an area thing; it doesn't just follow the city limits--has made enormous progress. I think the EPA would agree that they had made enormous progress from where we were, but it's like approaching the speed of sound, the closer you get, the harder it is to get there. To get it to where we're going to meet the Clean Air Act, ambient air quality standards, is going to be a giant undertaking, but I think Governor Bush is committed to getting it done.

MR. : I had a Mexico City friend that said, "Don't trust any air you can't see."

[Laughter.]

MR. DIONNE: There's one other question here which I'd actually like to ask as written, and then ask another way as well. It says: "If the Governor of Texas was not named Bush, would he be the Republican nominee?"

And I guess what I wanted to add to that question to our Texans here, is when Bush came on the scene in 1994, could you talk about how he was received in the Republican Party, how he built himself up? I mean, my understanding is that he and Carl Rowe [ph] basically went out to all the small television markets of Texas and tried out--you know, tried out their appeal, and then they refined it there and went into the B markets before they went into the A markets, and by the end sort of had this message pretty well down. Could you talk about that process and how he was taken once he was elected, by Republicans in particular, but by the state generally.

MR. : Me?

MR. DIONNE: Yes.

SENATOR BIVINS: I certainly can. I didn't know George Bush. I knew who his father was, but the name didn't impress me nearly as much as the four major issues that he ran on in 1994, frivolous lawsuits or tort reform, if you will; his education package; juvenile justice reform; and welfare reform.

Those were interesting to me as a legislator, and I didn't know--that that's what they did for the small markets versus the larger markets. That's an interesting approach. But that's what interested me.

He carried the eastern part of Texas, very few million people, I guess 2 or 3 million people live in what we consider to be the eastern part of Texas, not a metropolitan area over there, traditionally, a very Democratic territory.

MR. : Of course, he told Oprah that if his name had been George Jones instead of Bush, he might have been singing country songs instead of running for President of the United States. But there's no way to answer that question, like how long is a piece of string?

However, I think that when I watched the primary primary process, Bush, much like when he ran for the presidency, took a long time to decide whether to enter the race for governor. And the process of him taking a long time to decide put a chilling effect on everybody else that was interested in running for governor, and people just didn't jump in because they thought, "I don't want to run against George Bush", because George Bush is a Texas political icon. And his son, at that point being the owner of the Texas Rangers, a major league baseball team, he had a lot going for him. You know, we all have lucky aspects of our lives, and for him I guess that was a lucky aspect. But what got him elected, and I think most importantly, what got him reelected by 69 percent of the vote was his position on issues, not his last name.

MR. DIONNE: Susan, do you--yeah.

MS. FEENEY: I was going to make two points. One, when I hear that question about would George W. Bush be running for President if he wasn't a Bush, I have to think back and say, would Al Gore have been a House member, a Senator, if he wasn't a Gore. He also benefited from a family legacy.

And secondly, I was reminded, when you mentioned those four point that the governor campaigned on, we have two of the most disciplined candidates that you could ever imagine running. We underestimate how focused they are. I was kind of thinking lately that I missed Bob Dole, because you never knew what would happen in a given day. And these guys are--

MR. : So you're the one who misses the Dole campaign.

[Laughter.]

MS. FEENEY: That's me, in the national polls, that's me, as a reporter.

MR. : Here's a question, which I'm going to twist negative as my role as a professional journalist. If Vice-President Gore were elected President, what would he excel in, and if Governor Bush were elected President, what would he excel in? Conversely, were would each be the weakest?

I think we've talked about the excel part, but maybe if I could ask the Texans to describe where Governor Bush would be weakest, and the two former members of Congress to describe where Vice-President Gore would be weakest.

MR. : And we have a lie detector down there in front of the podium.

[Laughter.]

MR. BOMER: There would be no weakness in--no, I'm kidding.

I suppose from my standpoint--we didn't need to caucus on this, Senator, before we--

MR. : Keep you two honest--

MR. BOMER: From my perception, I guess it would be on foreign policy as being his weakest position starting out, but I think--well, I know he's a quick learner. I've been in the meetings. He grasps issues very quickly, and he does have some heavyweights that are in his corner with respect to foreign policy, and he's consulted them for a long time now, months and months and months.

I think with respect to his strengths, I think he's very serious about this question of reading and leaving no child behind, and making sure that every child has an opportunity to succeed, knowing full well that they have no chance of succeeding unless they can at least read, and read well.

SENATOR BIVINS: And I'll just follow up very quickly. I agree. I think that Governor Bush's weakness would be the same as the major weakness that Governor Clinton and Governor Carter and Governor Reagan brought with them to the White House, that is, an extensive personal knowledge of foreign policy.

But like each of those, he's chosen a running mate who brings to the table some pretty heavy credentials when it comes to foreign policy, just as Governor Clinton, Governor Carter and Governor Reagan did.

MR. : Well, let me say I think Al Gore has so many interests and so many areas he'd like to see the country move forward, I worry about a lack of focus on a few attainable things, because I think ultimately, whether you get a second term and you can begin to impact on many other issues, you've got to prove your utility to the American people, your ability to take care of things that they feel most strongly about. I think we look back on the Clinton years and wonder if we hadn't gone first with welfare reform, instead of the health care plan, we might have been building confidence and ultimately gotten further.

The other issue I think is one we've talked about, and that is, given his high level of understanding of a lot of issues, and his ability to, you know, dialog with people of great understanding in these individual areas, will he reach out to people who aren't inclined to work with him and who have far less knowledge of these issues? Will he go more than halfway perhaps toward a congress that will ultimately have a lot to say about his level of success, and which we believe, looking at the tea leaves, is not going to be particularly positive in its attitude toward him, were he elected. It's that more than halfway that will almost be essential to accomplish a legislative agenda.

MR. DIONNE: We have a thoughtful question here, where the--

MR. : E.J.

MR. DIONNE: Oh, I'm sorry.

MR. : You're excusing somebody from a difficult question.

MR. : No. I was going to say I was stumped on the question.

[Laughter.]

MR. : To me, his biggest challenge will be his communications skills. He has the tendency, when he has done his homework and believes deeply in the subject, to act like the librarian--no offense to librarians--but--

MR. : My late mother was a librarian, watch it.

MR. : Put the book back on the shelf, you know, kind of lecture a little bit. And I think the Al Gore personality has to come across, and particularly because I think he'll be compared to Bill Clinton, who just seemed to have fun in the job. And I think he's not going to be able to look like he's just--

[Laughter.]

MR. DIONNE: Somebody send up more written questions on that particular theme, please.

[Laughter.]

MR. DIONNE: Could we ask just David and Susie, could you talk on this question too?

MR. SHRIBMAN: I would say the potential [unintelligible] speech or the lack of curiosity and lack of flexibility, and if you can guess which one applies to which, you know it's a real problem.

[Laughter.]

MS. FEENEY: I would say similar. With Governor Bush, I guess his belief that you don't have to know the details of things makes me a little concerned. It's a question Tom Friedman raised [unintelligible], "What if your advisers disagree?" You need to know everything, I think.

And I guess with Al Gore, that he's always pretty sure he's right. Flexibility, as David said.

MR. : I have to add one more thing--

MR. BOMER: I think that--

MR. : --and that is--I'm going to trump you, Mr. Secretary, because I yielded to you a minute ago.

I think that Governor Bush's greatest weakest--and this is a conditional question--is a Democrat majority in congress. And President--it's hard to say--President Gore's greatest weakness would be a Republican majority in congress.

MR. : I'm afraid either one is going to face, an almost, you know, majority of hostiles. I mean, it's going to be right on the line. It's going to be 50/50. And it's going to have enough elements of dissent in both parties that the way to find, through the labyrinth of political challenge in congress, is going to be very, very hard for anybody to obtain. But I do believe--you know, working through your own people is not the only way to do it. You're going to have to reach out to the other guys.

MR. DIONNE: Anybody have views on this--that's a good point--on the question, who would be easier to move, the conservative Democrats to Bush's side or the moderate, liberal Republicans--you can't say that word anywhere except Massachusetts, liberal Republican--but the moderate and liberal Republicans to Gore's side? Does anybody have a sense of--

MR. : I think, historically, E.J., we have seen boll weevils, blue dogs, more conservative Democrats, line up with Republicans. In fact, out of that 40 years of Democratic majorities in the House, probably only 20 were Democrats really in charge other than just electing a speaker and organizing. But I do think in the current era, when suburban voters are really lining up with Gore on the issues, were he to win a majority, I think he would find just as much possibility of crossover among suburban Republicans, particularly on the Coast, as we have never seen before.

MR. : Particularly on issues like the environment.

MR. : On gun control and on choice. I think the moderate Republicans would be more inclined to move over, both of them would.

[Laughter.]

MR. : David, did you have one you wanted to ask?

MR. DIONNE: Well, this isn't really to our mandate, but I had several cards with the same essential question, so I think if the audience demands it, we should respond.

"The presidential debates will be televised worldwide with only two democratic parties being allowed to present their agendas to the American voting public. Does anyone on the panel believe that the American voting public has lost an idea opportunity to hear all viewpoints and agendas from other presidential candidates?"

MR. : Paul Kirk and Frank Farenkoff [ph] are available outside to answer this afterward too. Anybody want to take that on?

MR. : I support Paul and Frank.

MR. : No.

MS. FEENEY: No, you don't want to take it on; no, you don't want the other candidates?

MR. : No. That wasn't the question. The question was, do I believe that the country has lost a great opportunity, and I don't think we have.

MR. DIONNE: David, Susan, do you have any--

MS. FEENEY: I'll be contrary for the heck of it, in the sense I think that having Ross Perot in the other debate brought something to it, and made the mainstream candidates react in different ways. As a reporter, I'm sort of interested in the unpredictable, and in the sense--you'd learn something about Al Gore and George Bush if they had to deal with Ralph Nader. You just would.

MR. SHRIBMAN: Well, but Ross Perot did have a following, a significant following at that time, and neither Nader or Buchanan or the other fellow have.

MS. FEENEY: Yeah, they don't have that level, absolutely.

MR. : And it's declining.

MR. : That's right.

MR. DIONNE: For what it's worth, I always thought there should be a fourth debate where you would have them. But Frank Farenkoff, when I suggested this to him, talked about some of the difficulties involved, but I still think it was a good idea.

MR. : It would appear only on the Fox Network.

[Laughter.]

MR. : With wild animals that kill.

[Laughter.]

MR. DIONNE: I actually agree with Susan's point, that I would love to watch these guys react to Nader and Buchanan. I do think you'd learn something useful and also get some views in that wouldn't get in otherwise.

Let me ask--I'm going to put people on the spot because it's hard to--remember, Dwight Eisenhower was asked, you know, did Richard Nixon play a role in an important decision, and he replied, "Oh, give me two weeks and I might think of something." And it wasn't what he intended to say. So it's asking somebody on the spot to think of something that may not be fair.

The questioner said the quality that most--that is most involved in the debate seems to be quick thinking, the ability to respond to unforeseen situations. And in fact, this is a very fair question about governing, because with a president, especially at a time of national crisis, responding to unforeseen situations well is one of the things we most desperately hope he or she would do.

Can any of you think of an unforeseen situation involving Gore or Bush, some time when they had to react to something that just came out of the blue? And as I say, it's not fair to throw this at you cold, but I'm curious, does anything strike any of you? Or you could put that at the back of your head, and we could go to the next one, and then if anybody's inspired, it could be like a Quaker meeting, you could just come out and tell us. But keep that in your head, and why don't you go, David?

MS. FEENEY: I can certainly--want to go first, David?

MR. SHRIBMAN: No, no.

MS. FEENEY: I can certainly think of something. I was covering Al Gore I China when they brought in the trays of champagne with Lei [ph] Pong, and they had a toast, which became very controversial, and the answer in that case, I think, Al Gore was taken aback by it, but I think his role as a statesman and a diplomat just caused him to proceed rather than back off. It was the easier role to take, to pick up a glass and have a toast, even though we were all standing there with our eyes bulging.

MR. DIONNE: Go ahead, David. If anybody thinks of anything else.

MR. : I can think of two things, one, going back to the Mexican peso prices. We had tried to work with the congress to get a congressional supported bail-out, because if it had not been addressed, in my judgment, it would have caused a global recession, because it would have had an effect of going from one under developing country to developed countries. And when it--on a Monday evening, when Gingrich and Gephardt couldn't reach agreement, we met the next morning at 8 o'clock with the President, and Al Gore was the driving force to say we just had to do it out of the special treasury funds, and we had to do it and bring leadership in. He was the driving force in those meetings, so that's one instance that I can think of.

MR. DIONNE: Was Bush, by the way, ever called in about that? Did he ever express a view at that moment?

MR. : I think he supported the President on that.

MR. : Yes, he did. He supported in the--he supported to loans, the bail-out, and I forget how many millions or billions it was, 12, 15 billion?

MR. : Well, we put up about--well, it was 12 that was actually extended, and we made a lot of money on that.

MR. : But he did go out on the line there and support that, and not only did they pay it back, they paid it back with interest early.

MR. : Well, he was on the line as a lonely voice, because there were very few Republicans in congress who were willing to support the administration on that. He deserves credit.

MR. DIONNE: David?

MR. BROOKS: This is just someone who's asking for a comment on Governor Bush's tax cut proposal that seems to run contrary to what Mr. Greenspan has been trying to do in terms of paying down the debt. I believe there was actually a precursor to this in Texas where there was a large tax cut and there was an argument, we need the surplus for this and that.

SENATOR BIVINS: We--I've sponsored both of the major tax cut bills, on the Senate side, that Governor Bush has initiated in Texas, the two largest tax cuts in the state's history, and invariably, when you propose cutting taxes, you get a lot of debate about what better ways are there to use the money.

We went into the 1997 session with a projected $6 billion surplus, and by the time the session began in January, we probably had about $90 billion worth of ideas on how to use that $6 billion surplus.

But I think that both of those sessions are illustrative of the Governor's willingness and ability to focus on a goal, but compromise on the details, and in the '97 session, we enacted the largest pay raise for public school teachers that we had since--for two decades. It was in excess of a $3,000 per teacher pay raise, which cost about $2.3 billion. But in the same bill, we also got about a $2.2 billion tax cut. So there was horse trading there, and I think it served Texas well. And I think the democratic process worked well. You know, I would have liked to have seen a tax cut that was bigger and a pay raise that may not have been quite so big, but the way it all worked out, the democratic process worked, and the Governor declared victory. And that's something you need to be able to know how to do as chief executive, is to know when to declare victory. Some chief executives don't.

MR. : There are a lot of stories we've already heard today about his ability to compromise on this and on the children's health care. What about issues where there is no compromise, thinking of abortion; is he as uncomfortable with those issues as he sometimes appears? Maybe, David Shribman, do you have a view on his view on social issues?

MR. SHRIBMAN: I've never talked to him about this, but he does to be--he does seem to not want to talk about those kind of issues, but I'm not sure whether Vice President Gore would want to talk about them if the poll data were going against him also. So I'm not sure whether his reluctance to talk about it isn't necessarily--doesn't tell us a whole lot about his character, because I wonder whether, if the situation were reversed, whether Gore would be any different.

MR. : And maybe gay rights for a Democratic candidate is not roughly parallel but somehow--no.

MR. SHRIBMAN: No, I don't think so.

MR. DIONNE: I just want to give this--on these cards, this last question, because it just--maybe it's just a moderator's prerogative. It's a person who expresses concern, clearly not a Bush voter, about both the distribution of wealth in Texas and the use of the death penalty. I'd love our Texans to talk about how--when Michael Dukakis ran, you know, he came from liberal Massachusetts, and was seen in a certain way. When the rest of the country looks at Texas, putting aside the question of Texas bashing, it does have a more unequal distribution of wealth, a much wider range, a smal