AVOIDING A KNOCKOUT IN THE CLOSING ROUNDS

Like two wary prizefighters, each convinced that he will win by a decision if only he can avoid being kayoed, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter last week feinted and jabbed, bobbed and weaved. If either had a knockout punch, he kept it under wraps. That was true throughout the week, but most emphatically during the third and final presidential debate.

The reason for the candidates' caution was clear: although the polls continue to give Carter an edge, it is extremely narrow. A new TIME-Yankelovich survey for Oct. 16 to 19, updated after the debate, showed Carter leading the incumbent by 4%--48% to 44%, with 8% still undecided. Before the debate, the figures had been 45% for Carter, 42% for Ford, with 13% undecided. The Harris/ABC poll had precisely the same pre-debate spread between the two major candidates--45% to 42% for Carter, with 5% for Independent Candidate Eugene McCarthy, 1% for Lester Maddox and 7% undecided. An earlier Gallup sounding gave Carter 47%, Ford 41%, with the rest for other candidates or undecided.

The first round of two respected polls in crucial states also favored Carter. The New York Daily News gave the Democrat 53% to Ford's 44%--but Ford's strength is in the suburbs and upstate, where voter turnout is generally heavier than in New York City, where Carter is far ahead. The Chicago Sun-Times shows Carter ahead 51.1% to 47.5% in Illinois, but Ford appears to be gaining. Since the prize is still anybody's, neither candidate seems willing to try for a haymaker that could miss--and leave his own jaw fully exposed.

Nowhere was such zero-hour caution more conspicuous than in the Phi Beta Kappa Hall at William and Mary College in Williamsburg, Va. Before the debate, a White House aide told the President, "The name of the game is not blowing it." Both Ford and Carter did their best to avoid a gaffe, but the result was something less than inspiring. "It was another case of Mr. Ready v. Mr. Steady," said California's Republican vice chairman Mike Montgomery. "I score it a negative draw--zero to zero."

The debate probably did not persuade many voters to switch from one candidate to the other. Most surveys, however, gave Carter the edge in the final confrontation. In a snap poll by Yankelovich, 33% rated Carter the winner, 26% Ford, and 41% called it a tossup. A Roper survey for the Public Broadcast Service showed Carter the clear winner by 40% to 29%, with 31% viewing the encounter as a standoff. On the other hand, an Associated Press telephone sample of 1,027 voters gave Ford the victory, 35.5% to 33%. The A.P. sample also gave Ford the edge over Carter in the overall race for the first time, 49% to 45%--though the wire service conceded that there had been problems with its sample that might have distorted the results.

On balance the last debate looked like a marginal victory for Carter, at best. The University of Chicago's Norman Nie found both men "extremely careful not to step on a single toe and not to make a single error, and I don't think people are particularly attracted to that." Marquette University's Wayne Youngquist lamented that neither came out with anything new, making it "even harder for voters to make up their minds." But Stanford Sociologist Seymour Martin Lipset thought the debate ''will serve to confirm people in their choices. If they haven't made choices, it will probably confirm them in their confusion." University of California Political Scientist Aaron Wildavsky faulted Carter for "overpromising" and noted: "For a second, I thought he was going to promise a cure for cancer."

A number of observers complained about the three-member panel of newsmen who questioned the candidates. Said Tom Williams, president of a San Francisco executive search firm: "I thought the reporters were somewhat biased in their questions, favoring Carter. The questions to Ford seemed much tougher." Los Angeles Political Consultant Joe Cerrell, a Democrat, agreed. He feared that viewer sympathies would go to Ford as a result.

The candidates, on the other hand, were for the most part exceptionally polite to each other. Before the debate began, Betty Ford added a grace note by leaving a penciled message on Carter's podium. Wrote the First Lady. "Dear Mr. Carter: May I wish you the best tonight? I am sure the best man will win. I happen to have a favorite candidate--my husband, President Ford. Best of luck, Betty Ford."

Carter adopted a new, casual air of modesty. He even managed to address his opponent as "President Ford" instead of "Mr. Ford." Carter vowed that he would focus on the issues and not on the character of his opponent--whom he at one point conceded to be a "good and decent man."

Whether this cordiality will extend into the final days of what has been a tough, acerbic campaign remains to be seen. The Ford Committee plans to spend some $10 million--40% of the total for the President's entire campaign--on a closing media blitz that will continue to include spots focusing on Carter's record as Governor of Georgia and his supposed tendency to waffle on the issues. During the debate Ford attributed the narrowing of Carter's lead in the polls to the fact that the Georgian "is inconsistent" and "tends to distort" the truth. Ford's suggestion that Democrats have kept unemployment low mainly by getting the U.S. into wars was the kind of statement that could persuade Carter to reassess the wisdom of traveling the high road.

In another head-to-head encounter between the two camps last week, the Carter side scored a clear victory. At the Los Angeles Civic Center, snacking bystanders at an International Chili Society contest chose Rosalynn Carter's tangy recipe by a 4-to-1 margin over Betty Ford's. The Ford offering was rejected as too bland.

For the rest of the week, the two campaigners kept their distance. Even at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner in New York, the two managed to avoid each other. Carter had been hoping to pass up the dinner and spend the time preparing for the final debate. When he belatedly accepted the invitation from Terence Cardinal Cooke, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of New York, the Democrat was penciled in to speak between the main course and dessert. Ford's remarks came right after the Star-Spangled Banner and before the soup and salad. While Carter was still en route, the President departed. Both provoked laughter with self-deprecating quips. But Carter also scored points by reminding the largely Catholic audience that his native Georgia had supported Catholics Al Smith and John Kennedy --a hardly veiled suggestion that New York should return the favor.

As the campaign dwindled down to its final days, Carter seemed to have hit upon a tone for the windup--dropping no-holds-barred attacks on Ford to focus on issues and his vision of the nation's future. While outwardly exuding confidence, Carter made no attempt to conceal his main concern: a low voter turnout that could deny him the victory he believes will be his if only his supporters go to the polls. In a working-class neighborhood in Tampa, Fla., Carter cried, "There are indications that over half the American people are not going to vote! They are saying, 'I'm a coward. I'm afraid of the future. I'm giving up on my nation.' If we don't participate, the Republicans will be there four more years."

Neither Carter nor Ford has been able to arouse and excite the U.S. electorate. Confessed Carter: "I'm worried. I'm really worried." Indications are that he has every right to be. Says Carter's New York State cochairman, William vanden Heuvel: "This year there is something completely unpollable out there. There is something that none of us is picking up." In California, where Governor Jerry Brown's lieutenants have been given belated control of the Carter operation, Campaign Aide Tom Quinn moaned, "When you see apathy and low interest this close to an election, it's bad for Democrats." The Democratic National Committee's executive director, Mark Siegel, observed at week's end, "Right now, it looks like Carter is going to win an impressive electoral victory. But a week from now, who knows?"

Even professional oddsmakers were wavering. East Coast bookies were still listing Carter as a 7-to-5 favorite, down from 3-to-1 a month ago. In London the equivalent of $10 bet on Carter will return only $14.44 should he win. A similar $10 bet on Ford will pay $25 if the President is elected.

For his part, Ford discovered last week that he can no longer automatically command free television time. When he summoned reporters to his second press conference in six days, there was no live coverage: highlights were excerpted for news programs, as is always the case with Carter.

Asked to square his determination to elevate the tone of the campaign with his recent harsh attack on Carter as one who "wavers, wanders, wiggles and waffles," Ford insisted that the description of his opponent was both "graphic and accurate." He derided Carter as "naive" for vowing to end the Arab boycott of U.S. firms with ties to Israel, something four U.S. Presidents, he said, had been unable to do. In an apparent contradiction, Ford then added that he was really the first President to do anything (in fact, he has done very little).

In the campaign's waning days, both Carter and Ford (or their forces) will be concentrating on the same vote-heavy territory: New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, all now leaning slightly to Carter, plus three critical states that are now rated as tossups: Ohio, Illinois and California. Both face hectic, grueling schedules. Ford, for example, will hit nine states in one five-day stretch and does not plan to return to Washington until after he has cast his ballot in Grand Rapids on Election Day.

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