Asked about prescription drugs for seniors, Bush said he supported some uncontroversial plans and then gave a whole lot of bipartisan platitudes.

"Now look," Gore said when Bush was done, "if you want someone who will spend a lot of words describing a whole convoluted process and then end up supporting legislation that is supported by the big drug companies, this is your man," he said, pointing to Bush. "If you want someone who will fight for you and who will fight for the middle-class families and working men and women who are sick and tired of having their parents and grandparents pay higher prices for prescription drugs than anybody else, then I want to fight for you."

Bam! Bam! Bam! Gore, with his typically hammer-fisted touch, drove his points home. "Governor Bush is for vouchers," he said. On Hollywood's marketing "garbage" to children, Gore swore to "do something about this" and Bush failed to even bring up Gore's multimillion-dollar Tinseltown fundraisers. Gore claimed that under his watch, government got smaller, shrinking by hundreds of thousands of jobs, conveniently neglecting to mention that most of those jobs came from the Department of Defense, while Texas' government under Bush got larger. Bush put up nary a defense, not unlike the rhetorically emasculated Gore of the second debate.

Bush on his tax cut largely benefiting the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans: "Of course it does," Bush finally said. He went on to explain how, since they pay the most now, they would naturally reap the biggest benefit from a tax cut.

A member of the audience -- the purple-shirted Leo Anderson -- asked Bush a question that many of us in the Fourth Estate haven't had either the opportunity or the guts to ask him about: that creepy smile that falls upon his lips whenever he discusses the death penalty. "You seem overly joyed and proud that Texas leads the execution of prisoners," the questioner asked. "Did I misread your response and are you proud that Texas is No. 1 in executions?"

"No, I'm not proud of that," Bush said. "The death penalty is a very serious business, Leo."

Another Texas record -- the state's abysmal rate of health insurance, No. 50 out of 50, according to Census figures -- came up, and Bush defended Texas as having a "safety net," meaning that if someone is dying they can be taken to the emergency room.

"Insurance -- that's a Washington term," Bush said. And I cannot believe he did.

One of the more telling moments about the free ride Bush has gotten thus far came when Bush again tried to avoid answering whether he supported affirmative action.

"In our state of Texas I worked with the Legislature, both Republicans and Democrats, to pass a law that says if you come in the top 10 percent of your high school class you're automatically admitted to one of our higher institutions of learning," Bush said, calling it "affirmative access."

In actuality, Democratic state Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, the sponsor of that bill -- which Bush did, indeed, sign -- told Salon in August that he "developed that plan with the help of some university professors. And I passed it through the Senate. [Bush] never called me, he never wrote about it, he never had any press conferences to testify about the bill. So for him to take credit for it like it was his idea, that's just not right."

Gore hit Bush on another point, however, which again exposed how Bush sure doesn't like answering direct questions that might remove the first word from his "compassionate conservative" label.

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