Ninety Long Minutes in Omaha

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Though Bentsen claimed that his J.F.K. line was spontaneous, it had been germinating for days. The weekend before the debate, the Bentsen camp descended on Austin for practice sessions. In a vacant basement bar adjacent to the Four Seasons Hotel, they set up a mock debate stage. Congressman Dennis Eckart, a golf tee stuck jauntily behind one ear, played Quayle. But Bentsen was nervous; he was not having fun. (They did not realize it at the time, but Bentsen aides mistakenly positioned him at the wrong lectern.) Then at one point Eckart, playing Quayle, compared himself to Kennedy. Bentsen became irritated. According to press spokesman Mike McCurry, he responded, "You're no more like Jack Kennedy than George Bush is like Ronald Reagan." No one commented on the line, and Bentsen's handlers did not even review it on the videotape. But when Quayle cited Kennedy in Omaha, Bentsen was primed.

Quayle's own preparation started more than three weeks ago, when Henry Kissinger met with the candidate and other advisers at Washington's Ritz- Carlton hotel to provide a three-hour tour d'horizon of world affairs. Over the next few weeks, Quayle aides concocted more than 200 possible questions. In the week before the debate, Quayle, intensively coached by Bush media guru Roger Ailes, performed two mock debate rehearsals with Oregon Senator Bob Packwood playing Bentsen. At one point Packwood rudely interrupted so the handlers could see how Quayle would react. They even considered faking a power failure to test Quayle's composure, but rejected the idea.

By the time the Quayle entourage arrived in Omaha, the staff had reduced bulky briefing books to fewer than 30 index cards with probable questions and answers. Some of the preparation paid off: Quayle had already scripted and rehearsed an answer for what turned out to be the evening's single slightly unusual question, ABC correspondent Brit Hume's query about books that had influenced him.

The morning of the debate, an ABC camera crew caught Quayle with Ailes on the stage. Quayle could be seen at the lectern practicing one of his prepared sound bites in a husky whisper: "When are our opponents going to learn that you can't build yourselves up by tearing America down?" But Quayle seemed hesitant, nervous, already beaten down. Moments later he asked Ailes, who was patrolling the stage like the lord of the manor, whether a certain gesture would be appropriate. "Hey, Roger . . . does . . . on, on this, you know, if I'm gonna, if I, if I decide on my gesture over there . . . is that all right . . . you don't mind?" Because they had been caught rehearsing it, Quayle's handlers decided to scrap the "tearing America down" line of attack. Instead, Quayle substituted his own line about America being "the envy of the world," a bromide he has been repeating on the stump.