from:

Our man braves the post-debate den of spin

By Frank Pellegrini

(TIME.com) -- At that Cinderella midnight of debate's end, when the press room turns to the spin room, you looked up and suddenly the Bush people were everywhere, out of the woodwork. The professional flacks -- Karl Rove, Karen Hughes, Ari Fleische, and Mark McKinnon. The drafted ones: swing-state governors John Engler and Tom Ridge, congressman Ed Gillespie and RNC honch Jim Nicholson. And the hired guns like Larry Lindsey and Condi Rice, and many more. Behind them all trailed college kids, holding picket signs with the spinners' names.

And man, were they ever in a good mood.

"Exquisite," raved Ridge. "Terrific -- really very good," said Rice. "We're definitely happy," beamed Hughes (and Sunday-talk fans know this is not a perky, Molinari-esque woman). Lindsey, the campaign's economics guru, wanted to talk about foreign policy. "He really impressed on the foreign-policy side -- really showed he mastered the subject." Hughes' young son was quoting insta-poll numbers. These people run a negative campaign with the best of them, but Wednesday night the first words out of everybody's mouth was how darn well their man had acquitted himself: Forty-five minutes of foreign policy debate with Al Gore, argued to a statistical dead heat. They sounded like proud parents.

During the debate, Gore's cute young volunteers had won the paper war, scuttling in to drop off "Reality Check" mimeos that far outnumbered the Bush handouts. (Most were reasonable, though one Gore offering was headed with what was presumably a typo: "Rhetoric: Bush said he supports hate crimes.") The Bush people may have been slower on the draw, or they may have figured out that nobody reads those things, but when it was time for the humans to show up they had the numbers.

Gore's draftees -- Tom Harkin, Rodney Slater, Harold Ford Jr., and a few others -- were outnumbered, and most of their signs were handwritten in black marker, in contrast with the Bush camp's smartly produced placards. His pros, like the courtly Mark Fabiani, were often without signs and harder to find in the crush of schmoozing/quote-getting. One journalist complained about the Gore deployment: "There's no one to talk to." (Well, what about Gore "Mountain Guide" Jim Frush, who'd spent "three days on a storm-tossed mountain with the man" climbing Mt. Rainier and could also talk environmental issues?)

Of course, it's much more fun to be flacking when your man has apparently cleared the foreign-policy bar than when he's merely cleared the no-sighing bar. So Gore's people focused on the other half of the debate, the domestic-policy half, where Gore had sharpened up and Bush had been at his smirking, drifting weakest. They outlined the new line of attack "Taxes and Texas. Texas and Taxes" and happily dished scheduling details of Joe Lieberman's upcoming eye-poke tour through the Lone Star State. They expressed confidence that Bush's record on health care, the environment, and gun control would be his undoing, and they were credible. But their hearts didn't seem to be in their obligatory crowing. It just hadn't been that kind of night for the veep.

In a room like this, though, with elbow room scarce and the spin as thick as pea soup, the best moments were the ones of self-awareness:

*DNC chairman Ed Rendell grabbing fellow Pennsylvanian Ridge's sign and mugging behind him until Ridge finally turned around; the two guffawing and slapping hands.

*Gore campaign head Bill Daley, running past a colleague, yelling "Not now! I'm spinning."

*Lindsey having just the slightest glint in his eye (or did I imagine it?) when he declared the primary cause of the stock market's current malaise to be the possibility of a President Al Gore.

*Rice, the kind of bluster-free pro who after five minutes you want to drag off into a corner and a have a real foreign-policy discussion with, laughing abashedly at the reminder that a few days ago she'd been teaching Bush to pronounce Balkan last names.

*And Ridge, who stayed until midnight, musing about the need for spin, about localizing the message, about his days on Capitol Hill and the way that after a big vote, the two parties of Congress file out, part like the Red Sea and do their duty for the microphones. Asked for his own best debate-night shot, Ridge paused. "Two very competent men engaged in a civil debate. One was far more presidential than the other." After another pause, Ridge eased into a big I-know-you-know-but-I'll-finish-it-anyway smile.

"Of course it was Governor Bush."

Said Ridge's sign-carrier: "It's a long day."

Messages received.

Copyright © 2000 Time Inc.