Campaign 2000: The Lover vs. The Fighter

Before last Tuesday's town-hall debate, advisers for George Bush and Al Gore agreed that each candidate would be surrounded by an invisible perimeter, about an arm's length away, that could not be breached by the other. For the Vice President--who had been told that this "hockey crease," as it was described to his amusement, had been requested by the Bush camp--the make-believe security zone was an invitation to rattle and challenge his opponent. Like a boy playing red light--green light, Gore encroached. "I thought he was going to hit George," Barbara Bush said the next morning. The ploy, along with Gore's purposeful stride around the stage, was about more than intimidation; it was meant to show that Gore, who constantly vows to "fight" for average Americans and used the word 10 times in the debate, would almost literally do so. By contrast, W. wouldn't play that game. The Texan opted for a slow sashay, winking and smiling knowingly to the audience when Gore ran hot. "We've had enough fighting," said Bush. "It's time to unite."

As they circled around each other last week on the stage's red plush carpeting, the body language of both candidates told voters everything they needed to know about the way each man will pose and paint himself through the final two-week act of this election. Here, laid bare, was the choice: Whom do you want to tame Washington for the next four years--the lover or the fighter?

With the polls creaking in Bush's favor, Gore has returned as the hard-charging populist, a pose that helped revive his campaign after the Democratic Convention. "He knew he'd gone too far in the second debate, and he had to repair the damage," says a top Gore adviser of the matchup, in which the Veep appeared too docile. "And he'd had it with this idea there were no differences and this was about who's a nice guy. He wanted to show that there were differences and they were serious." Without someone in the public arena slugging and scratching for them, Gore insists, Americans will be overtaken by the HMOs, prescription-drug companies and Big Oil. "You've got a lot at stake in this election," he boomed at a rally in Flint, Mich., to a screaming crowd of several thousand. "I ask for your support so I can fight for you, so I can fight for your families, so I can fight for your future." The evil that Gore will fight hardest against in the final weeks? Bush's Social Security and tax-cut plans.

For Bush, the bogeymen are just as scary--a large and intrusive Federal Government, a sickly military and moral collapse. But rather than wrestle these problems to the ground, as Gore does, the Texas Governor proposes to hug them into submission. In La Crosse, Wis., last Wednesday he was in the groove, having long ago replaced the snarly candidate of the South Carolina primaries who had trouble hiding the coiled tensions within. Displayed instead was a sunny persona, a peaceful, easy feelin', complete with dropped g's, that crowds and cameras were soaking up. Promising to end "finger-pointin' and partisan bickerin'" the way Bush believes he has in Texas, the candidate wove his message of unity throughout. "If you get to decidin' who's the right people and the wrong people, you're pittin' people against each other," he said of Gore's tax plan. "We need a uniter, not a divider."