Slugfest in a Houston Alley

They started with smiles and Senator Robert Dole saying that he hoped it would be a "fun evening. "They ended with bitter exchanges and Senator Walter Mondale calling his opponent a "hatchet man." The debate last week between the two vice-presidential candidates--the first such session in the nation's history--turned out to be a tart and often engrossing display of political theater, a duel between two evenly matched men whose debating skills had been sharply honed during the wars on Capitol Hill. Both Mondale and Dole sometimes articulated the views of their top bananas more concisely and with better effect than Jimmy Carter and Jerry Ford had been able to do during their debates.

As expected, the exchanges in Houston's starkly modern Alley Theater introduced no new themes into the campaign. But the strongly liberal Democrat and the strongly conservative Republican did deal sharply, if too simplistically, with the basic issues of the election. There were even touches of humor as Dole got off some typical one-liners. He was induced to run for the vice presidency, he deadpanned at the start, because the job involved "indoor work and no heavy lifting."

Mondale overcame his initial nervousness and stiffness as the 75-minute session wore on, emphasized the Democrats' main domestic issues. "The question," he said, "is what will we do to deal with the human problems of America?" His answer, delivered with few explanatory details: Attack unemployment (while still fighting inflation); reform taxes to "bring relief to the average income earner"; improve health care, housing, education and programs for the elderly. It was a more or less standard liberal Democratic shopping list. In reply, Dole said that the American people were turned off by "promises and promises and bigger and bigger spending programs and more and more inflation," which he called "the crudest tax."

The Bunny Vote. On foreign policy, Dole stoutly defended Republican policies and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a villain to the G.O.P. right wing and a man Carter has criticized for his "Lone Ranger" brand of statesmanship. Mondale argued vaguely for a more open foreign policy consistent with American democratic principles. He dragged in Ford's blooper about Eastern Europe's being free of Soviet domination. It was, he said, "probably one of the most outrageous statements made by a President in recent political history."

As the evening went on, the exchanges grew more and more acrimonious. "My opponent voted against Medicare--can you imagine?" asked Mondale. He also charged that Dole had tried to remove TV cameras from the Ervin committee hearings on Watergate. Dole, in turn, said that Mondale "wants to spend your money and tax and tax and spend and spend." Mondale, Dole wisecracked, was so completely under labor's thumb that AFL-CIO President George Meany was probably his makeup man. As for Carter, Dole said that the Democratic nominee had three positions on every issue, which was why he had to have three debates with Ford. The Republican also brought up Carter's Playboy interview, noting, "We'll give him the bunny vote."

Probably the greatest gaffe of the evening--one that might have given Mondale an ultimate edge--was Dole's ill-considered remark that World War I, World War II, the Korean War and Viet Nam were all "Democrat wars" that killed 1.6 million Americans. Retorted Mondale: "I think Senator Dole has richly earned his reputation as a hatchet man tonight. Does he really mean to suggest that there was a partisan difference over our involvement... to fight Nazi Germany?"

The two most vitally interested viewers of the televised debate, not surprisingly, came to quite different conclusions about the outcome. President Ford phoned Dole to say "You were superb. You were confident. You hit hard but hit fairly." Jimmy Carter told Mondale: "Fritz, you did great, man ... You didn't get small, you didn't get mean, you didn't get twisted in your approach."

Campaign Gofers. As the debate showed, Dole and Mondale are a bright pair of second bananas--hard-working, tough, loyal, reasonably reconciled to their status as glorified campaign gofers. They make an interesting contrast--old colleagues and old opponents from the Senate, Dole to the right of Ford, Mondale to the left of Carter.

Soldiering on, Dole has hit 36 states, Mondale 40. They bend the ear of everyone who will listen, undismayed by the fact that a Harris poll released earlier this month showed that many voters did not really know what they stood for--45% in the case of Mondale, 50% in the case of Dole.

Dole has managed to remain unruffled despite occasionally haphazard scheduling. Once he was stranded at a Kentucky horse farm for an hour, talking to a single man--the manager. The candidate tries to shrug it off. Asked if he had a campaign plan, Dole once said, "No, I just have an airplane."

Indeed, Dole's greatest asset on the stump has turned out to be his humor. But Ford did not select Dole as his running mate just for the laughs he might bring. A former G.O.P. national chairman, Dole can peel skin as well as tickle ribs. Dole accuses Carter of vaulting ambition and questions his "weird performance, his judgment" in the wake of the Playboy interview.

For all his wit, Dole can be a crashing bore when delivering prepared remarks. Speaking to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco about the evils of entrusting the economy to Carter, Dole put the master of ceremonies to sleep, right at the head table. While the Senator can be charming in a small group, he has little rapport with the 20 or so reporters who ride in the back of the red, white and blue jet called the "Bob Dole Campaign Express."

In contrast, Mondale runs a much more relaxed operation. Having abandoned his own fling for the presidency in 1974 because, as he frankly admitted, he lacked the "overwhelming desire" to fight for the office, he is at ease as Carter's lieutenant. Both men are from small-town backgrounds; both are populists with an instinctive aversion to power elites.

Mondale's job is to build bridges between the Georgian and the main bastions of the party--the unions, the ethnics, the big-city liberals of the North. With his impeccable liberal credentials (an approval rating of 94% in 1975 from the Americans for Democratic Action), Mondale is waging an issues-oriented campaign, attacking Ford for mishandling the economy, ignoring social problems and doing the farmer dirt.

"Minnesota Fritz." Mondale's schedule is mapped out by the headquarters in Atlanta and his jet--known as the "Minnesota Fritz"--is in constant communication with Carter's "Peanut One." Even so, Mondale, as he emphasized in the debate, is free to differ with Carter on key issues. A case in point occurred in September when the Georgian criticized the Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren for going "too far" in protecting the accused--an attempt by Carter to woo Middle America. Mondale, a former attorney general of Minnesota, promptly praised the Warren Court for guarding the "constitutional rights of defendants."

As the campaign has proceeded, Mondale has become more relaxed. He has also displayed a sense of humor of his own. To labor audiences, Mondale says: "A working person who would vote Republican is like a chicken who would vote for Colonel Sanders." After Ford made his blunder about Eastern Europe, Mondale had a story for the occasion. "When I was in Poland, a cab driver explained to me how the system worked. 'We have a fifty-fifty deal with the Russians: we send them coal and they send us snow.' "

Unlike Dole, Mondale is at ease with correspondents. After a long day, he sometimes strolls--in his stocking feet--to the back of his jet to chat with the reporters stowed there. Earlier this month, he walked jauntily down the aisle with a copy of a Harris poll stuck ostentatiously in his dark blue vest. "Poll? What poll?" he asked with elaborate innocence, obviously delighted that the voters surveyed by Harris preferred him over Dole, 48% to 36%. Even in the South, where Mondale's liberal record had been expected to be an albatross, he outrated Dole, 48% to 37%.

Both Dole and Mondale boned up diligently for last week's debate. The Kansan spent seven or eight hours a day poring over a 1 1/2-ft.-high stack of black-bound briefing books. Dole, who was fighting a cold, readily admitted that he was edgy, though once the cameras blinked on, it was he who seemed the more relaxed of the two. "Conservatives get a little nervous before the battle," he cracked. "Liberals never get nervous. They always vote yes." Appearing before a Tennessee audience, Dole downplayed the coming debate. "If you're not otherwise occupied," he said, "tune in. There'll be no commercial interruptions. No interruptions for anything. Probably nothing, period."

Dole was wrong: in its own way, the debate helped to enliven--and even to focus more sharply--the 1976 presidential campaign.

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