2004 Election: Inside The War Rooms

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The sniggering started when the Washington politocracy got a look at those 32 pages of debate rules. The candidates were going to have their time limits policed by lights and buzzers, like a couple of Jeopardy! contestants. What a trap the Bushies had laid for a windbag like Kerry. At 30 seconds left, a green light would come on; at 15, a yellow one; and with five seconds left, a red one. If a candidate repeatedly went over his allotted time, the moderator could start using the buzzer--and everyone knew which of the two was more likely to make that happen.

As for Kerry, he was none too keen when his handlers took him off the road for four precious days so that he could go to "debate camp" in Wisconsin. Hadn't he been training off and on all summer? Hadn't he memorized all those briefing books they kept sending to the plane? Hadn't he spent two whole days in Nantucket, Mass., in August, practicing, practicing, practicing, especially the foreign policy answers?

When Kerry got to the House on the Rock resort outside Madison, he found his advance staff had transformed an old machine shed into a near perfect replica of the first debate site, figuring in everything from the lectern specs to the camera angles, even the color of the carpet and the walls.

The first day was a disaster, with Kerry struggling to keep his answers within the time limits. "He was awful," says one of the few advisers allowed into the shed. Aides Shrum and Ron Klain, who were running the practices, imposed what they called "zero tolerance," and by the time Kerry had drilled a few days, he had figured out how to make those lights his friends. The green one, for instance, would be his cue to pivot from attacking Bush to talking about his own proposals, so that every answer would end on an upbeat note.

But Kerry had to do more than avoid tripping a buzzer if those debates were to put him back in the race. The first debate--the one on foreign policy--would be the crucial one. Kerry was going to have to make two big, risky points: The war in Iraq was not the war on terrorism, and Saddam Hussein was not Osama bin Laden. Again and again, Klain coached Kerry: "He says Saddam? You say Osama."

By the time Kerry boarded his plane for Miami, he had gone through four full 90-minute dress rehearsals and more hours than anyone could count refining the back-and-forth on every conceivable question. But before they left that shed for the last time, Kerry took Klain aside. "You know, when we came here, I wasn't sure what I'd get out of it," Kerry told him. "But this has been really, really useful."

BUSH

"We Were Watching Our Lead Disappear"