No love lost in Round 2 of debates

The candidates came out swinging for their second debate last night, with the occasional bare fist peeking out from around the table. Yesterday's debate -- held at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C., and moderated by PBS' Jim Lehrer -- started out smoothly but grew tenser during the second half when the discussion shifted from foreign policy to domestic affairs. In addressing Texas Gov. George W. Bush's healthcare record, Vice President Al Gore offered perhaps his most biting attack of the campaign thus far. "Texas ranks 49th out of the 50 states in children with heath care, 49th for women with health care and 50th for families with health care," Gore said. But Bush hit back, noting that the state spends $4.7 billion trying to expand insurance coverage. "Our rate of uninsured in Texas has gone down, while the percentage of uninsured in America has gone up," he said. "You can quote all the numbers you want, but I'm telling you we care about our people in Texas." And Gore was forced to address the criticism he's faced since last week's debate in Boston that he tends to embellish his stories and misrepresent facts -- something the Bush campaign has come down on hard. Gore fessed up in a way to the charges. "I got some of the details wrong," he responded softly to a question from Lehrer at the end of the debate. "I'm sorry about that and I'm going to try to do better." Neck and neck in the daily tracking polls, the candidates are fighting to move ahead. But with mixed responses so far, it is hard to tell if the second debate did the trick. Still, Bush may have come out slightly ahead. In three snap polls taken immediately after the debate, Bush was chosen as the winner. Bush was victorious by large margins in two. In an ABC News snap poll, Bush fared better, 46 percent to Gore's 30, and in a CNN-USA Today-Gallup poll, Bush won 49 to 36. In the area of foreign policy -- where Bush's knowledge is consistently questioned -- the candidates spent nearly half the debate discussing the latest developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the recent ousting of Yugoslavian strongman Slobodan Milosevic and U.S. military involvement in the Balkans, Haiti and Africa. And on these topics there was little difference between the two. Both said they support the U.S.'s current position as an "honest broker" in the negotiations in the Middle East. "Our nation stands alone right now in the world in terms of power," Bush said. "That's why we've got to be humble and yet project strength in a way that promotes freedom." Gore agreed, but added his own twist on Bush's assertion. "I think that the idea of humility is an important one," Gore said. "But I think that we also have to have a sense of mission in the world." The candidates did disagree slightly on when it would be appropriate to send U.S. troops abroad, particularly with regard to "nation-building," which Bush said he was against and Gore said he was for. But all was not the "love fest" that Bush described the debate as at one point. Gore, in a reprise of his healthcare attack, repeated a previous allegation that Bush pushed through a tax cut for the wealthy, rather than health-care funding, in Texas. "If you were the governor of a state that was dead last in health care for families, and all of a sudden you found yourself with the biggest surplus your state had ever had in its history, wouldn't you want to maybe use some of it to climb from 50th to say 45, or 40 or something?" Gore asked rhetorically. Bush had attacks of his own. Toward the end of the debate he questioned Gore's credibility in light of some recent white lies. "I think credibility's important," Bush said. "I think it's something that people need to consider." Gore also tried to appear less aggressive than he did last week, when he seemed to always ask for the final word and audibly sighed at several of Bush's responses. This time, when Lehrer wanted to move on from a foreign policy question after a particularly biting attack from Bush, Gore began to ask for time to respond and then stopped himself. "Far be it from me to suggest otherwise," he said. Other issues held minor spotlights. Race relations and the candidates' opinions on gay marriage were addressed briefly. When it came to race, the divisive issue was hate crimes legislation. "We got [a hate crimes law] in Texas, and guess what?" Bush said. "The three men who murdered James Byrd... they're going to be put to death." Bush was referring to the gruesome 1998 murder of a black man who was dragged to death behind a pick-up truck by white supremacists last year. Gore criticized the Texas legislation, telling Bush that it was not sufficient. "I had thought that there was a controversy at the end of the legislative session where the hate crimes law in Texas failed and that the Byrd family, among others, asked you to support it, Governor," Gore said to Bush. Bush was vehement in his reply. "Well, what the vice president must not understand is we [have] a hate crimes bill in Texas," he said. "And secondly, the people [who] murdered Mr. Byrd got the ultimate punishment." With election day less than a month away, Gore and Bush will face off one more time at Washington University at St. Louis Tuesday night.