Of all the information that al Gore's team has collected in preparing for its candidate's first face-to-face confrontation with George W. Bush next week, nothing has been more sobering than the account of the last person who made the mistake of underestimating Bush's talents as a debater. Back when he was running for Texas Governor in 1994, the sharp and salty incumbent, Ann Richards, thought she had scored a knockout in their only debate. Her giddy campaign staff, keeping score in the audience of a Dallas hotel ballroom, figured she had made 10 good points to his every one. "I thought I'd kicked his [rhymes with crabgrass]. Everyone around me thought I'd kicked his [rhymes with striped bass]," Richards told a Gore strategist recently. But the voters were keeping a tally sheet of their own, Richards recalled, and "it turned out he had kicked my [rhymes with bus pass]."
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