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Sunday Morning News

Bush and Gore Get Set For Second Debate in North Carolina

Aired October 8, 2000 - 8:41 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Al Gore and George W. Bush are fine tuning their debate strategies. The second presidential debate is set for Wednesday in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Two guests joining me now from Washington to talk about the debate and maybe debate about the debate, who knows?

Mark Mellman is a Democratic pollster. He is screen right for you. So that's some kind of confusion there. And Neil Newhouse is a Republican pollster, screen left. Gentlemen, thanks for being with us.

MARK MELLMAN, DEMOCRATIC POLLSTER: Good to be here.

O'BRIEN: Neil, let's begin with you. You know, I get the sense that George W. Bush and his team played the expectations game perfectly on round one. What's your sense of it? Was everything played perfectly in the sense that all he had to do was put together a single English sentence and he wins?

NEIL NEWHOUSE, REPUBLICAN POLLSTER: I wouldn't go quite that far. But I think if you look at the Bush debate with Al Gore and then the Dick Cheney debate, I think both men exceeded expectations. I think, in truth, the bar was set fairly low and the bar was set low because there was a sense that Al Gore was an expert debater. He has picked people apart extremely well in the past and I think there was a, maybe an over confidence on behalf of the Gore people that they would population mop the floor with George W. And that clearly wasn't the case.

He came out of the debate pretty well and then I think even after the debate the stories now about Al Gore's penchant to exaggerate the facts and exaggerate his own personal experience, this kind of inserting himself into these events I think has hurt him afterwards. I think, all in all I think the night of the debate was a tie. I think what's happened after the debate, I think George W. has got, edged ahead, maybe, a little bit in terms of expectations and how he performed.

O'BRIEN: Mark, if you were advising the Vice President on how to go about things on round two, would you tell him to perhaps throttle back a little bit?

MELLMAN: Well, I think what he did in the last debate was really display his mastery of the facts, his command of the policy dimensions. And you talk about expectations, I think you're right, George Bush did set expectations such that if he came and sat down at that debate or stood up at that debate and failed to drool into the camera for 15 minutes, he wanted to declare himself the winner.

But what you saw on display there was really a gentleman's sea and that's really not good enough, I think, for the American people. They want a president who not only can just show up, they want a president who actually has a mastery of the facts, who has command of the policy initiatives. And I think that's what Al Gore displayed. I think that's what he's going to display in the next debate, as well, and that's why, depending on which poll you want to look at, by somewhere between an eight and a 20 point margin, people said Al Gore won that debate.

O'BRIEN: Yeah, but Mark, do the American people want to elect a guy with all the answers? Is that what we want or do we want somebody we're comfortable with?

MELLMAN: Well, people want somebody they're comfortable with but they prefer someone with most of the answers to somebody who doesn't have any of the answers and I think...

NEWHOUSE: Well, Mark...

MELLMAN: ... that's the problem that George Bush is displaying. He didn't have any of the answers to the questions. He didn't even know his own program and his own policies very well.

NEWHOUSE: Mark, it was in, if Al Gore kept talking, he would have covered all the answers. I mean he wouldn't be quiet. He kept talking. He interrupted. He wanted to have the last word on every single topic that was out there. I mean I think voters found it fairly irritating.

MELLMAN: Well, but again, Neil, we have the bottom line of the polls, which as I said between eight and 20, an eight and 20 point margin, people said that Gore won because they were more concerned about whether he knew the material, whether he understood the facts, whether he had command than they were about some elements of style.

O'BRIEN: All right, let's talk a little bit about this debate for just a moment, gentleman, because the format is slightly different. It's a little more freewheeling. Explain, you know, a little bit about that and how that's going to factor into performance. Neil, since you were going to talk, why don't you go ahead?

NEWHOUSE: Yeah, I think this second debate is critical. First of all, every debate, since there's not a knockout so far, every debate kind of ratchets up the pressure because the candidates need to perform even better. But this second debate is what the Bush people fought for. It's an informal situation. It is actually, I mean, fairly similar to the kind of setup that the V.P. candidates had.

And I think that George W. expects to do decently in this debate very well. I think that this is a, this is a format that should highlight his strengths, his personality, his charisma and his ability to connect with American voters. And I think you're going to find if we found Al Gore irritating last Tuesday night, I think it might be even exaggerated in this one. And that's probably a good word for Al Gore right now is exaggeration.

O'BRIEN: Mark, equal time time. Go ahead.

MELLMAN: Well, it sounds from Neil like George Bush is aiming for another gentleman's sea and I just don't think that's good enough for the American people. The reality is this debate, that format that we're coming to does allow for more close, personal interaction and there's a great opportunity there. The pressure is on George Bush to change the dynamic in this race in a significant way. He's going to want to reach in and get into an argument, get into a fight. But when you're in that kind of format and the pressure is on to start an argument, to go negative, the possibility for it to blow up in your face is Gore.

So there's a great opportunity here but there's also great peril for both candidates. They've got to maintain dignity and have the kind of personal interaction I think that we saw in the vice presidential debate the other day. And if Bush tries to go for the jugular here, he's going to be in trouble.

At the same time, if he doesn't go for the jugular, if he leaves the dynamic the way it is coming out of this debate, he's in deeper trouble. He's got to change the way the public thinks about him and about this race.

O'BRIEN: All right, gentlemen, I'm going to have to invoke cloture here, unfortunately. I enjoyed the talk. I wish we could go on further. We appreciate you both joining us, Mark Mellman, Democratic pollster, Neil Newhouse, who looks at things from the other side of the aisle. We'll see you some time soon, we hope.

NEWHOUSE: Thank you, Miles.

O'BRIEN: Thank you.

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