(beginning with the 7th paragraph)

"In February he said the best economy in 30 years," the president said in rebuttal, quickly turning an old Ronald Reagan line against Dole in a direct appeal to the audience: " If you believe better in 1992 than today, you should vote for Bob Dole."

Both politicians, standing on a red-carpeted debating stage with their political careers on the line, tangled over an array of issues from Medicare to fighting nicotine addiction. The setting of a town hall forum was designed to offer audience interaction, and not merely one-on-one confrontation.

As expected, the president moved ever closer to the audience during the debate, as if he were the host of the evening's program. Dole preferred more of a debater's center-stage stance as he denounced the Clinton record.

The former senator had to finesse the amiability of the setting to keep Clinton in the crosshairs of his attack strategy. He labored to move quickly from the questions' specific subject matter back to his attack on the president.

Asked "going down hill," Dole responded by denouncing "the national health care system President Clinton wanted to give us" in 1993. "If that isn't a liberal idea, I don't know ," he said.

As the evening wore on, Dole, despite his strategy, seemed to ease deeper at times into the details of questions on health, the economy, jobs and welfare posed by members of the audience. A more congenial mood prevailed and the ethics attacks faded somewhat from center stage, although nettlesome moments flared.

"I don't think too old to be president," Clinton answered one questioner. "It's the age of his ideas that I question."

Dole shot back: "When you don't have any ideas, I guess you say old." This, he said, was "the liberal philosophy."

At the heart of the debate before tens of millions of watching Americans was the Republicans' running frustration that Clinton's lead in the polls has remained firmly in the double digits despite the Democrats' surprising loss of Congress in 1994 and a veritable fusillade of Republican-encouraged investigations and allegations of White House affairs for the past two years.

While Dole sought to remind voters of the latter, he was put on the defensive by the president on such major issues as rising Medicare costs.

"We'll work it out," Dole said, accusing Clinton of playing politics with the issue. "If all you have is fear, that's all you can use."

The president countered Medicare. "We need to reform it, not wreck it," he said while complimenting Dole as acting responsibly in the 1983 bipartisan compromise that bolstered Social Security.

Throughout the confrontation, the president led with the economy and his promise of that "bridge to the 21st century."

"We worked hard to bring the deficit down," Clinton said, pointedly reminding the audience for "shutting down the government" in budget disputes earlier this year.

"It's important that we go beyond these old partisan arguments," he said in deflecting Dole's criticisms, while once again denouncing the challenger's proposed 15 percent tax cut as a "scheme that will blow a huge hole in the deficit."

Dole's ethics attacks ranged from "the 30-some in your administration" dismissed, resigned or under investigation, by the former senator's count, to the alleged abuse of hundreds of personnel files by White House investigators. He generally avoided, however, references to the tangle of charges, inquiries and felony convictions known as Whitewater.

"The president of the United States has a public trust," said Dole. "I know

Dole tried to be brief on his earlier controversy over whether nicotine is addictive: "Don't smoke. Don't drink. Don't use drugs."

But Clinton described the issue as one of their biggest differences. "No president had ever taken on the tobacco lobby before," he said. "I did. Senator Dole opposed me. "

When a cardiologist asked to fix the health system, Dole quickly seized the opportunity to lambast Clinton on Medicare.

"Let me say, there you go again, Mr. President," Dole said, charging the Republicans of cutting the Medicare program for the elderly, when in fact they were only reducing its rate of growth.

"Let's stop talking about cutting Medicare," he said. "If I were a senior citizen, I'd be fed up with all these ads scaring them."

Clinton responded to have the poorest Americans pay more." He added, "We need to reform it, not wreck it."

Dole also used the question to remind people of Clinton's proposed overhaul of the health care system, an "extreme" plan that he said would have closed 700 hospitals and created 50 new bureaucracies.

Clinton defended his efforts, saying, "We've worked hard to promote more competition to bring down inflation" and declaring a million more kids to Medicaid coverage, 25 million people, health insurance portable from job to job, and 48 hour minimum stays for new mothers. "That's a good start," he said.

After hearing complaints from a health care worker about managed care programs, Dole said a federal commission to study the issue. "When we take away choices," Dole said, "then I think a giant step backward."

Clinton responded managed-care plans that allow people "three choices and have a right to get out once a year." The president also said of care plans just because they tell patients ".

Responding to a question about the looming problems in Social Security and how to help people save more for their retirements, the candidates found themselves in near total agreement. Both of them advocated changing the rules for Individual Retirement Accounts to allow money saved in them to be used for health care, education and the purchase of a first home. And both said a bipartisan agreement to fix the Social Security system when it runs short of cash as the baby boom generation retires.

"We'll work it out," Dole said, noting a member of a nonpartisan commission that rescued the system originally in 1983.

When Dole was asked to young people, Dole responded with a lighthearted argument.

"Wisdom comes from age, experience and intelligence," he said. "I have some age, some experience and some intelligence. That adds up to wisdom."

On the CNN program "Larry King Live" Wednesday night in Atlanta, Ross Perot, the Reform Party presidential candidate, fielded questions from a cable audience in much the same way that the President and Dole did in San Diego earlier in the evening.

His answers to audience questions reiterated Reform Party positions, including his belief in the need for deficit reduction and a tightening of campaign finance laws.

In his closing remarks, however, Perot urged four groups to vote for him on Nov. 5. He singled out Americans in the military and their families, owners of small businesses, adults between the ages of 18 and 34 and those of voting age who are unlikely to vote.

The noun clauses above are all functioning as the direct objects of verbs:

Complete these noun clauses, and identify their functions in the sentences:

Clinton, while avoiding an agressive posture, did not hesitate to challenge some of the former Senate majority leader's assertions on matters of public policy, particularly his contention the worst in this century.

At the heart of the debate before tens of millions of watching Americans was the Republicans' running frustration firmly in the double digits despite the Democrats' surprising loss of Congress in 1994 and a veritable fusillade of Republican-encouraged investigations and allegations of White House affairs for the past two years.

"It's important beyond these old partisan arguments," he said in deflecting Dole's criticisms, while once again denouncing the challenger's proposed 15 percent tax cut as a "scheme that will blow a huge hole in the deficit."

Dole tried to be brief on his earlier controversy over addictive: "Don't smoke. Don't drink. Don't use drugs."

NOW TRY THIS:

Ann Salzmann
Intensive English Institute
University of Illinois