GOP uneasy about 3rd debate

WASHINGTON — President Bush and Sen. John Kerry will meet in their final presidential debate on Wednesday night after two encounters that polls suggest weakened Bush and fortified Kerry, leaving some Republicans concerned that the final 20 days of the contest would be far more competitive than they had expected.

Republicans who had been confident of victory before the debates said they were uneasy as Bush returns to a format — 90 minutes of questions from one moderator — that has seemed to play to the strength of Kerry, a 20-year senator and former prosecutor. Kerry burnished his credentials in the first two debates, averting an early collapse that Republicans had sought, and Bush has lost some or all of the lead he had before their first debate in Florida on Sept. 30, a series of recent polls suggests.

Republicans are also concerned that the debate is the only one devoted to domestic policy, and polls show Kerry has an edge on many of those issues.

"By any objective measure — if Republicans are going to be intellectually honest with ourselves — prior to the first debate, we were pretty comfortable," said Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster. "It was a chance for the president to lay him out and just lock it. In the past two weeks, that's been turned on its head."

Gary Bauer, a conservative who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 2000, said that Bush's performance had improved markedly in the second meeting and that he was confident Bush could take advantage of what he said were openings Kerry provided in the first two debates. But, he said, "I don't mean to be disloyal to my friends, but I think the Kerry people are feeling pretty good about things."

Bush's aides, expressing confidence, pointed to polls finding that voters were uncomfortable with the idea of Kerry as a wartime president, and some show Bush holding a slight edge over his rival.

Still, some Democrats argued this contest was comparable to the election of 1980, when President Jimmy Carter saw his standing plummet after two debates in which Ronald Reagan — who had been belittled by Carter throughout the fall — was widely viewed as winning the debates, and perhaps the election, simply by exceeding the low expectations that Carter had established for him. That has been a historical parallel that Bush's aides have resisted, saying a more apt comparison was Franklin D. Roosevelt's re-election campaigns during World War II.