That's because while most instant polls showed Gore won the first debate with Texas Gov. George W. Bush, as the week progressed the vice president found himself caught up in an undercurrent powered by political opponents and skeptics in the press who claimed three key debate exaggerations had cost him.

"The vice president has consistently and repeatedly made up things, exaggerated, embellished facts," Bush communications director Karen Hughes told the hosts of "Fox News Sunday." He is "a serial exaggerator."

It all added up to a troubling "pattern of embellishments," according to the Sunday Page 1 piece in the Washington Post, which warned, "The attack on Gore's credibility is resonating."

That drumbeat continues, with Newsweek's "Al Gore and the Fib Factor" story now on newsstands. The Bush campaign uses examples of Gore's past exaggerations as a convenient shorthand when painting the candidate's portrait, and an amenable press corps is now on red alert, searching for any new Gore discrepancies. Of course some may be searching a bit too hard. Matt Drudge posted an exclusive Monday, reporting Gore once boasted that he raised 10,000 chickens on a Tennessee farm, which he may or may not have done. When did Gore's supposed chicken fibbing take place? During the Carter administration.

The alleged debate-fibbing trifecta featured Gore suggesting he had visited Texas forest fires in 1998 with Federal Emergency Management Agency chief James Witt; that he hasn't questioned Gov. George W. Bush's experience; and that a student at wealthy Sarasota (Fla.) High School was forced to stand in class due to overcrowding.

The morning after the debate Gore apologized on "Good Morning America" for misspeaking about Witt, suggesting he'd met with some of the director's deputies on that trip, not Witt himself. The quip about not questioning Bush's experience (Gore had in fact) seemed like nothing more than an innocuous way for Gore to take the high road and try to set the debate's tone.

That left the student-standing story, which conjured up a memorable mental picture for voters. Upon closer inspection, though, the accusation that it's a fabrication doesn't hold up. And even more telling, any reporter or columnist who spent 15 minutes making a few phone calls or reading recent clips from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune would have realized as much.

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