All this was on display in the knock-down, drag-out sessions with Weld, a serial drama of shouted statistics, rapier gibes and cheap shots landed so quickly no referee could flag them. Here's the flavor of it, from a debate in which Weld was trying to defend his record on education while Kerry kept butting in.
Weld: We are funding K-12 education . . .
Kerry: Forty-nine states . . .
Weld: A billion dollars more than we were in 1993. I don't know how the priorities could be any clearer than that. . . .
Kerry: . . . That's the problem, Governor. You don't understand how they could be greater. And if you did understand, you'd have a different set of priorities!
A wave of applause ended the exchange before Weld could point out that he said "clearer," not "greater."
Like Bush, Kerry is disciplined about returning to his key themes over and over again. Against Weld he was relentless about tying the moderate governor to the far more conservative Republican leaders in Washington. This, plus President Bill Clinton's landslide victory in Massachusetts, allowed Kerry to stave off Weld's challenge.
The lesson that Richards and Gore both learned, however, is that debate skills alone are not enough to shake Bush. Kerry must latch on to something more. And he may find clues in the two debates in which Bush has not done well. They have something in common: Bush was not playing the role of challenger.
In 1998, as the incumbent governor of Texas, Bush met Democrat Garry Mauro in a single debate. He was uncharacteristically "nervous and defensive," in the view of Austin political reporter Dave McNeely. In 2000, Bush's weakest performance came in a primary season face-off against surging underdog Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).
"Bush seems to be more comfortable portraying himself as the outsider, but he can't do that anymore," said Bill Benoit, a professor of communication at the University of Missouri who has extensively studied presidential debates. As the outsider, Bush has freedom to stay on the broad, thematic level, above the thicket of details.
"He used the idea that he was on the outside to say, 'Don't pigeonhole me,' " said Benoit. As the outsider, Bush has been able to strike appealing chords -- a promise to be "different" from other leaders, a promise to be "a compassionate conservative," a promise to be "a uniter, not a divider" -- while allowing viewers to convert those chords into music of their own liking.
That won't be so easy this time. "Who is more insider than the president of the United States?" Benoit asked.
Some critics charge that presidential debates, as structured, aren't much good for determining anything beyond who best survives the strange test of 90 minutes under a relentless gaze. A gesture as small as President George H.W. Bush's glance at his watch in 1992 can be enormously damaging. Many of the most important issues a president will face never come up for discussion -- Kosovo came in for far more discussion in 2000 than al Qaeda -- and other issues, such as Social Security, are eternally talked about but never resolved.
Nor are the debates necessarily a good barometer of brains or character.
When he appeared in the 1992 vice-presidential debate, retired Adm. James B. Stockdale was: a former college president, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, an authority on the Stoic philosopher Epictetus (whose work he read in the original Greek), the holder of 11 honorary doctorates and the only man in naval history to wear three stars, aviator's wings and the Medal of Honor.
All that evaporated under the harsh stare of the camera when, with earnestly wide eyes, Stockdale introduced himself by posing two rhetorical questions: "Who am I?" and "Why am I here?" The hero-scholar came across like an addled old man.
Imperfect, even misleading, the debates are nonetheless the crucial final act of this close-fought and momentous campaign. Kerry must do what he has not been able to do so far: make himself a more plausible president for the last few undecided voters than the one they already have.
"In the final analysis, there's a very small percentage of people who haven't made up their minds by now," Tate said. "And they make their decision based on who they like, who they think they can trust -- and it's a very amorphous, very emotional decision."
Political researcher Brian Faler contributed to this report.
