Debate plows little new ground

The presidential contenders last night provided a prime-time rerun of their previous encounters, trading scripted barbs, citing competing statistics and basically calling one another a liar in their third and final debate.

Both men relied on the time-tested rhetoric of their respective parties as they sought to rally their political bases heading into the three-week homestretch to Election Day.

President Bush portrayed Sen. John Kerry as a tax-and-spend liberal who offers plans that will fall on taxpayers’ backs and who won’t take action to protect the country unless it passes a “global test” of foreign leaders.

“There’s a mainstream in American politics,” Mr. Bush told Mr. Kerry “and you’re sitting on the far left bank.” He also repeatedly said Mr. Kerry voted to increase taxes 98 times during his Senate tenure.

Mr. Kerry painted the president as a man unconcerned about the struggles of most voters, calling the president’s economic policies failures that cater to the rich and said his plans to expand health care coverage leaves too many people uninsured.

“Children across our country don’t have health care. We’re the richest country on the face of the planet, the only industrialized nation in the world not to do it,” Mr. Kerry said.

When following Mr. Bush’s response to a question about jobs, Mr. Kerry offered up a zinger that also showed his knowledge of pop-culture by referencing the lead character from HBO’s mafia drama.

“Being lectured by President Bush about fiscal responsibility is like Tony Soprano talking about law and order,” Mr. Kerry said.

The president also spoke of his desire to promote a “culture of life,” exemplified by his opposition to partial-birth abortion, and reiterated that he would not back down from his doctrine of fighting terrorists on their turf, regardless of which foreign countries might oppose him.

Mr. Kerry, conversely, touched issues close to his liberal Democratic base ? raising the minimum wage, reinstating the ban on some assault-style firearms, standing up for abortion rights, and rolling back the Bush tax cuts to the levels of the Clinton years.

By and large, however, the two men treated each other with more comity — at least considering the stakes and tightness of the race — than they had in the past. Neither candidate directly called the other a liar, but both referenced their opponents’ penchant for inaccuracies.

Mr. Kerry was most aggressive in the beginning of the debate, criticizing Mr. Bush for not doing enough to protect the homeland, claiming he would be a president “deadly focused on the real war on terror.”

And when it comes to a stubborn 5.5 percent unemployment rate, Mr. Kerry said the president “just walks on by” that problem.

No line from either man is likely to resonate in debate history, though Mr. Bush can be expected on the campaign trail to trot out the mocking of Mr. Kerry’s numerous citations of “a plan” to fix current problems.

“A plan is not a litany of complaints,” Mr. Bush said. “And a plan is not to lay out programs you can’t pay for.”

He also noted a statistic frequently used in Republican campaign ads — that Mr. Kerry “voted to raise taxes 98 times and to bust the budget 277 times.”

And when Mr. Kerry criticized the president for taking money that could be used for education and “giving it to the wealthy” in the form of tax cuts, Mr. Bush fired back.

“Only a liberal senator from Massachusetts would say that a 49 percent increase in education funding isn’t enough,” Mr. Bush said.

Mr. Bush was most effective, and unscripted, when he was asked by moderator Bob Schieffer of CBS what role his strong Christian faith plays in his life and policy decisions.

The president, his voice lowered, did not hesitate to say: “My faith plays a big part in my life.”

“I pray a lot,” he said. “I pray for truth. I pray for wisdom. I pray for our troops. I pray for our girls.”

Karl Rove, the president’s senior political adviser, has conceded that the 2000 election was so close because as many as 4 million evangelical Christians stayed home rather than voting for perhaps the most religious candidate in a generation.

Mr. Bush’s extended explanation of how much “prayer and religion sustain me” might ensure that doesn’t happen this year.

Though Mr. Bush made it clear that “you’re equally American if you choose to worship an Almighty or if you choose not to,” rarely has a president, or any prominent political figure, spoken so directly about his faith.

“I love the fact that people pray for me and my family all around the country,” Mr. Bush said. “They ask me, ’How do you know?’ I just feel it.”