Bush Scores A Warm Win

By WALTER SHAPIRO

The question was in ghoulish taste, but it proved revealing. Moderator Bernard Shaw of CNN began the final presidential debate by demanding that Michael Dukakis reconcile his opposition to capital punishment with a macabre scenario in which his wife Kitty was raped and killed. Such a hypothesis justified almost any conceivable answer. Dukakis could have vented anger at the premise of the question or passionately explained his own feelings of outrage when his father was badly mugged. Such a response would have been a perfect way to introduce his view that the legal system is designed to temper human impulses for hang-him-high vengeance. But even as his political dreams hung in the balance, Dukakis mustered all the emotion of a time-and- temperature recording. He managed to turn a question about his wife being brutalized and murdered into a discourse on the need for a hemispheric summit on drugs.

The debate -- and perhaps even Dukakis' chance to inspire a late-inning rally to win the election -- may have been lost in those opening two minutes. George Bush strode onto the stage in Los Angeles determined to prove with an avuncular assortment of smiles, chuckles, winks and asides that he was the affable heir to Ronald Reagan. But even when Dukakis tried to compete in this smile-button sweepstakes, his eerie grin had the spontaneity of a Dale Carnegie student practicing before the mirror. Asked why he did not appear more "likable," Dukakis felt compelled to launch into a petty aside disputing Bush's earlier attacks on his stewardship of Massachusetts' pension funds. Finally, as if he heard his handlers screaming, "Lighten up, Mike!" Dukakis claimed, "I think I'm a little more lovable these days than I used to be back in my youth." But he quickly added, "I'm also a serious guy. I think the presidency of the United States is a very serious office."

Bush won the debate largely because he triumphed in the congeniality competition. But has the pursuit of the presidency become trivialized by this intense emphasis on likability? After all, TV game-show hosts are uniformly genial, but few Americans want Pat Sajak presiding over the National Security Council.

Ever since the televised Kennedy-Nixon debates gave voters a sense of personal access to the candidates, charisma and charm have tended to overshadow all but the most transcendent election issues. But in an era of peace and at least a veneer of prosperity, the 1988 campaign has so far been dominated by slogans and sound bites masquerading as substance. Small wonder that, after two terms of aw-shucks Reaganism, the electorate seems to be measuring Bush and Dukakis by the same standards they assess Bill Cosby -- comfort and likability.

Bush, whose apparent nervousness in the initial debate led to long interludes of incoherence, was as relaxed and confident in Los Angeles as he has ever been on a national stage. His efforts at humor seemed mostly spontaneous rather than the spoon-fed one-liners of backstage handlers. Asked to find something to praise about his Democratic rival, Bush flashed a broad grin and said, "Listen, you're stealing my close. I had something very nice to say in that." This easy-listening tone was established early in the debate, when the Vice President interrupted moderator Shaw, who was trying to pose a hypothetical question about Dan Quayle's becoming President following Bush's death. "Bernie!" Bush interjected at just the right moment, conveying with that single word the natural human reluctance to dwell on one's own mortality.

For issue-oriented voters, it may be unfortunate that the debate seemed to turn on the 1988 versions of Reagan's famous "there you go again" quip. But here the blame rests equally with both candidates, who consciously refrained from raising new issues and arguments before the more than 62 million TV viewers. Despite a barrage of questions on the deficit, Bush and Dukakis clung to the fig leaf provided by their dubious budget nostrums. The Vice President escaped serious challenge on his implausible insistence that his so-called flexible freeze of 4% budget growth can accommodate new domestic proposals like $1,000 child-care grants, special-interest tax cuts and muscular military spending. Dukakis, however, was hammered as he repeated his lame argument from the primaries that up to $100 billion can be recovered by vigorous enforcement of existing tax laws. Challenged as to what taxes he would raise as a last resort, Dukakis asked haplessly, "May I disagree with the premise of your question?"

Deprived of realistic road maps as to how either candidate would behave in the White House, voters were almost forced to depend on factors of character and personality to predict presidential performance. As they have through much of the campaign, both Bush and Dukakis peppered the debate with carefully chosen code words designed to camouflage their vulnerabilities. Bush, whose privileged background is alien to the life experience of most Americans, kept harping on the word values as he proclaimed that he was in tune with "the heartbeat of the country." For Dukakis, who often seems closer in spirit to Roger Rabbit than Rambo, his mantra was the adjective tough. Whether it was tackling the "tough choices" on domestic spending or the "tough and difficult decisions" on Pentagon weapons, Dukakis used the word to portray himself as possessing the macho fiber to sit in the Oval Office.

Why did Dukakis, trailing in the polls, resist aggressively challenging Bush in the final debate? The clearest explanation for this passivity came from Kitty Dukakis, who said Friday, "It's hard to be aggressive and warm at the same time. Michael was warmer." Maybe so, but at this rate, it may take until springtime to raise Dukakis to room temperature.

Still, the Vice President's handlers had clearly expected a more adventurous foe. In his mock debates, Bush had been carefully prepared in case Dukakis challenged him to jettison the programmed format and instead debate man-to- man, addressing each other rather than responding to the panel. This rumored Dukakis gambit was dubbed a "Nashua," after the 1980 New Hampshire G.O.P. debate in which Reagan adroitly changed the ground rules on Bush after declaring, "I paid for this microphone." Had Dukakis tried this desperation ploy, Bush stood ready to exploit his most natural advantage: the 6-in. height + gap separating him and the Democratic nominee. Bush would demand that Dukakis come out from behind his height-adjusted podium as a condition for attempting any reprise of Lincoln-Douglas pyrotechnics.

Instead, Dukakis cleaved to the prearranged ground rules, even when Bush, in response to a question, uttered the fateful words, "I will not agree to another debate." The Vice President's unyielding position on a third installment of this prime-time grudge match makes strategic sense for a candidate who continues to hold a consistent lead in the polls. Even before Los Angeles, an aura of inevitability was beginning to envelop the Vice President. Already, the networks have unveiled their multicolored election- night maps to depict Bush's apparent lead in the Electoral College. As in 1980 and 1984, wide swatches of color cover most of the South and Rocky Mountain West, as the Vice President solidifies the Reagan-era Republican base. Last week's seemingly one-sided debate will only encourage the media's proclivity to pronounce the race all but over three weeks before the first votes are cast.

The challenge facing Dukakis is indeed tough. Campaigning in Sacramento the day after the debate, Dukakis declared wanly, "You know that this victory is out there to be won." The quiet crowd on the steps of the state capital barely stirred. "You know that," Dukakis repeated, almost as if he needed to convince himself.

But having squandered his last major opportunity in the debate, Dukakis is beginning to seem like a beleaguered contestant on that old-time game show, Beat the Clock. With three weeks to go, he now must depend on short bursts on the nightly news and in campaign spots to communicate a compelling rationale for his candidacy. Unless he does, the American people are likely to provide George Bush with four years in the White House as his reward for being the loyal heir to the Reagan era's legacy of peace and apparent prosperity.

With reporting by David Beckwith with Dukakis and Alessandra Stanley with Bush