Inside The Debate Strategies

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There are some obvious traps for each candidate. Even as Bush's team was congratulating itself for rearranging the debate order to put foreign policy first, there were forces at work that might undercut that advantage. Kerry finally seems to be finding his voice on the Iraq war, just as the news from that country is being dominated anew by beheadings and car bombings. In TIME's poll, taken a week after Kerry launched his broadside that Bush was "living in a fantasy world of spin" about the real outlook in Iraq, only 37% of voters say Bush has been truthful in describing the situation there, whereas 55% say the situation is worse than the President says. And 51% echo Kerry's contention that the U.S. action in Iraq has made the world more dangerous, up from 46% in early September.

For Kerry, the contests are a badly needed opportunity to reintroduce himself to the electorate. About 1 in 5 voters, according to the TIME poll, still don't know enough about him to have an opinion. That segment of the population has actually grown in recent weeks. One perception that has taken root is that Kerry is a flip-flopper. Only 37% of voters say they believe he sticks to his positions; 84% say that about Bush. So it could be all but fatal for Kerry to do or say anything in the debates that might reinforce that image.

With so much on the line, Bush started prepping this summer and has had occasional full-length dress rehearsals, but the pace picked up last weekend at his Crawford, Texas, ranch. New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg, who played Al Gore in the 2000 drill, stood in for Kerry, and admaker Mark McKinnon assumed the role of the first debate moderator. It all took place in a one-story building known as the Conference Center, where Bush practiced behind a lectern and aides flashed cue cards that told him how much time he had left, just as officials will at the debate. Sessions were scheduled for 9 p.m. E.T. so that the early-to-bed Bush could set his body clock to the precise time of the real thing.

Aides have given Bush audiocassettes of Kerry's favorite attack lines, which the President listens to as he flies between campaign events on Air Force One and sometimes as he works out. The political team started preparing for this phase of the campaign more than six months ago, during the Democratic primaries. Gathering in the Montana West conference room at the Bush-Cheney headquarters in Arlington, Va., Bush aides and members of the Republican National Committee huddled around the television to watch the Democratic candidates debate, waiting to respond to any attack the major candidates made on the President. Some of the talking points, e-mails and press releases they generated were issued then, but a lot of the other material disappeared into a computer network accessible only to officials of the campaign. The network was set up to test the rapid-response reflexes of the Bush team and perfect a system of information sharing that the President's spinners will use this week to highlight Kerry's misses and Bush's hits on the debate stage.

All those Democratic-primary debates also kept Kerry in practice, his advisers say. And windsurfing wasn't the only thing he was doing in Nantucket, Mass., during the Republican Convention. His campaign has guarded his debate preparation as closely as they did his selection of a running mate, making sure that only a handful of advisers are in the room when he drills. Among them: campaign manager Cahill; admaker and speechwriter Bob Shrum, who helped get Kerry in fighting shape back in 1996; and former top Gore aide Ron Klain. Kerry's longtime adviser Jonathan Winer is charged with making sure the candidate is prepared on every issue. Bush is being played by Greg Craig, who was White House special counsel during Bill Clinton's impeachment trial. Wife Teresa is often on hand for the prep sessions, but one source said she has little to say, at least in front of the others.

Considering that Kerry has vacation homes in Nantucket and Sun Valley, Idaho, and his wife owns an estate near Pittsburgh, Pa., his choice of debate boot camp is downright modest. He has encamped in Wisconsin, 40 miles outside Madison, at the House on the Rock Resort, where a two-room suite goes for $199 a night. The facility provides ample biking and hiking trails for a candidate who aides say doesn't like to do more than about two hours of debate practice in a row without taking a break. It doesn't hurt that House on the Rock is smack in the middle of a crucial swing state where recent polls have shown Kerry struggling.

Past performances suggest that both sides have plenty to fear in their three engagements. "You will never see a more personable John Kerry than in these debates," predicts Weld, who in June met at Bush headquarters with imagemaker Karen Hughes and White House communications director Dan Bartlett and since then has been offering tips to campaign manager Ken Mehlman. His warning to them, Weld told TIME, is this: "Watch out for this guy. He is incredibly quick and well versed on substance. Don't expect him to make a mistake or to come across as aloof. This is his turf." Kerry, after all, founded a debating society at his prep school. Bush's chief strategist, Matthew Dowd, says he knows Kerry's record and is not spinning when he describes the challenger as "the best debater ever to run for President" and even "better than Cicero." But Weld's advice apparently has yet to seep in. Bush's top advisers believe it is unlikely that Kerry will be able to make the personal connection with voters that can be so important in presidential debates. "The biggest test for Kerry," says a senior Bush adviser, "is whether anyone wants him in their living room."