Cautious Confrontation

Seven G. O.P. debaters circle warily and draw no blood

"It's like the Romans at the Colosseum waiting to see which gladiator survives," cracked Gerald Carmen, Ronald Reagan's campaign manager in New Hampshire. Carmen and assistants to Reagan's rivals were huddled in a small room beneath the stage where seven G.O.P. hopefuls were debating last week in a Manchester high school auditorium. As the candidates spoke, the nervous aides winced, grimaced, paled and finally relaxed. All the gladiators survived, and none was bloodied. The League of Women Voters' first 1980 presidential forum was considered pretty much of a draw. No candidate particularly shone; none faded away.

A draw, however, was not good enough for Reagan, who had skipped the first G.O.P. debate in Iowa because he thought that as the front runner, he should not present a target to his opponents. After coming in second in Iowa's caucuses, Reagan decided to get into the arena with his adversaries. For a seasoned performer, he got off to a rather halting start in Manchester. He made his points, but pallidly. Because of an unlucky draw, he was the last of the candidates to speak, following John Anderson, John Connally, Philip Crane, George Bush, Howard Baker and Robert Dole. "I kept hearing my own answers coming back," he said. But he adroitly fielded an unwelcome question from the audience about why he had told an ethnic joke a few days earlier. Claiming that he had been on the right side "long before there was anything called civil rights," Reagan said that he was doublecrossed by a reporter. Said the candidate: "I was stiffed." But he assured the audience that he does not like telling ethnic jokes. He added: "From now on, I'm going to look over both shoulders, and then I'm only going to tell stories about Irishmen, because I'm Irish."

To keep up the politics of joy he displays on the campaign trail, Bush tried to look confident and exuberant, and he largely succeeded. Afraid of making a mistake that "might blow our momentum," he said as little as possible. Even so, he came close to one of those dread bloopers when he described Social Security, a sacrosanct subject if there ever was one, as "largely a welfare program." But then he hastily made clear that he was really talking only about supplementary benefits like Medicare--not Social Security pensions.

Aside from Odd Man Out Anderson, who once again called for a 50-c--per-gal. tax on gasoline to cut consumption and chided his rivals for failing to take specific stands, the candidates mostly agreed on the issues. Some of them differed over whether personal income taxes should be indexed to keep Americans from being pushed into higher brackets by inflation and whether the Constitution should be amended to require a balanced federal budget.

Decorous and restrained, the debaters scarcely laid a glove on one another, not even on Bush, who, on the eve of this week's New Hampshire primary, seemed to be making headway. "We were surprised that they didn't go after our guy more than they did," said Bush Staffer David Keene. The candidates could not even bring themselves to attack U.S. Treasury Secretary G. William Miller, who is under fire in his own party for the bribes that Textron paid overseas when he headed the company. Reagan suggested that such payments were a normal way of doing business in most of the world. Said Baker, perhaps the smoothest of the panelists: "I think there's a terrible temptation in American politics these days to be righteous. I sat on the Watergate Committee for months and watched the Republican Administration devoured before my very eyes. There's a natural temptation to say, 'Miller's a Democrat and I'm going to get him.' But you can't. One thing we have to do in politics is try to recivilize it."

Reagan's lackluster performance in the debate was followed by some better news elsewhere. He won 58% of the vote in last week's Alaska caucuses, a state he lost to President Ford in 1976. Bush was second with 26%. Reagan also came in first in Arkansas, where Republicans completed the selection of their delegates, giving him seven; five were uncommitted, and the remainder were scattered among Baker, Bush and Connally. In Puerto Rico's primary, meanwhile, Bush swamped his opponents, winning 65% of the vote to Runner-Up Baker's 32%. But Reagan had decided not to campaign in Puerto Rico, largely for financial reasons.

At two appearances last week, Reagan tried to ignite some of the fire of four years ago by making blatant appeals to single-issue interest groups. Before gun owners in Concord, N.H., he delivered an opening statement that his rivals could not match: "Thank you for your warm welcome, my fellow members of the National Rifle Association." With the exception of Anderson, however, all the other candidates were just as gung-ho for guns.

At a press conference in Birmingham, Ala., Reagan ripped into the U.S. Supreme Court for allowing federal funding of abortions for poor women to resume until the Justices make a final decision later this year. "Time and again," said Reagan, "we have seen the Supreme Court override public opinion concerning school prayer, forced busing, the treatment of criminals. But this time, the court's majority has gone too far. Its grasp for judicial power over the Federal Treasury must be blocked." He promised to appoint Justices who "reflect the values and morals of the American majority."

By week's end Reagan and Bush had reversed roles. Now it was Reagan who was anxious to debate Bush, and Bush who was hanging back because he did not want to risk a last-minute bumble. The other Republicans, moreover, were angry at being excluded and some even threatened to stage a "counter-debate." Reagan relented, saying: "I can see no fair alternative but to extend an invitation to the other candidates." His eagerness was quite a departure for the detached, confident front runner of two months ago. The investment might well prove worthwhile for Reagan. In a sometimes acrimonious session, he clearly outperformed Bush.

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