The Great Debate Spate

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Farfetched? Not when you consider that 1987 has become the year of the Great Debate Spate. The seven Democratic contenders have already traded mild jabs on PBS and C-Span. Two more Democratic events are scheduled for September. On the Republican side, Moderator William Buckley will toss out the first bon mot on Oct. 28, when all six G.O.P. contenders, including an initially reluctant Vice President George Bush, appear on Firing Line.

By then, a full year before Election Day 1988, most candidates will be debating more often than members of the Oxford Union. Campaigns are besieged by would-be hosts; both Senator Paul Simon of Illinois and Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis have more than 50 invitations to debate their Democratic rivals.

Talk is cheap, which may be the simplest explanation for this unexpected glut of gab. Cable television and inexpensive satellite hookups provide the perfect forum for sparring candidates to receive free media exposure. The possibility of wide-open races also contributes to the outbreak of political logorrhea. When a candidate is running behind "Undecided" in the polls, a debate gaffe holds little risk. Small wonder that the strongest resistance to an all-talk campaign comes from the handlers of Bush, the candidate with the most to lose. Campaign Manager Lee Atwater complains, "The thing is just getting out of hand."

For the Democrats, the initial face-offs have been polite enough to satisfy Miss Manners. During a forum at the Iowa County Fair in late August, Senator Albert Gore of Tennessee won headlines for his so-called aggressiveness toward Dukakis. In truth, Gore's criticisms were tepid in the extreme: "With all due respect to my friend from Massachusetts, we need some specifics." But with the Democrats in ideological tandem on everything from opposition to aid to the contras to horror at the Reagan deficits, any expression of individuality is treated as major news. The Republicans will soon be debating within their own philosophical straitjacket: the need to prove they are at least as conservative as the Reagan Administration.

Faced with the tedium of me-too panel discussions, candidates have created their own exhibition season. No longer does a contender have to wait to be nominated to experience the joys of hurling invective face-to-face at an opponent from the other party. Democrat Bruce Babbitt and Republican Pete du Pont invented the do-it-yourself presidential debate back in May as a way of calling attention to their long-shot candidacies. It may have been a gimmick, but their interparty face-off produced a vibrancy rarely matched in a campaign season devoid of transcendent issues.