JIM LEHRER: Robin, both candidates and their respective camps have their public side, from which the routine "We won the debate, our man did great" statements flow; but in the back seats of limousines and in hotel corridors and elsewhere, the private talk among Ford advisors and among their Carter counterparts was considerably more frank: "Our man blew it here, he should have been better prepared there, we've got to get him to do such and such next time," and so on. It is this kind of inside critiquing of last night's debate that we want to try and get a glimpse of tonight. We have a Ford insider and a Carter insider with us, as well as an experienced campaign consultant; and we've asked each to select some excerpts from last night's debate which show a few of each man's hits and misses.

ROBERT MacNEIL: Governor Carter's staff coordinator for foreign policy and defense matters is Richard Holbrooke, managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine. Mr. Holbrooke was intimately involved in preparing Governor Carter for the second debate. We asked him to pick out what he thought the best moment his candidate had during the debate. Mr. Holbrooke, you chose the moment where Carter challenged Ford's claims on nuclear proliferation policy and progress toward a new SALT agreement.

PAULINE FREDERICKS: Governor Carter?

JIMMY CARTER: Mr. Ford acts like he's running for President for the first time; he's been in office two years, and there has been absolutely no progress made toward a new SALT agreement. He has learned the date of the expiration of SALT I, apparently. We've seen, in this world, a development of a tremendous threat to us. As a nuclear engineer myself, I know the limitations and capabilities of atomic power. I also know that, as far as the human beings on this Earth are concerned, the non-proliferation of atomic weapons is number one. Only in the last few days, with the election approaching, has Mr. Ford taken any interest in a nonproliferation movement. I advocated last May in a speech at the United Nations that we move immediately as a nation to declare a complete moratorium on the testing of all nuclear devices, both weapons and peaceful.

ROBERT MacNEIL: Mr. Holbrooke, why Carter's best moment?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE, Carter Staff: Well, Robin, it wasn't easy to choose, because I thought there were many very good moments in the show. I picked it because I knew that Governor Carter has a deep interest in this area; and he felt, as many of his advisors did that President Ford had recently been making noises in an attempt to take that issue a way from Governor Carter, but we felt that it was an issue that Governor Carter really owned and that in this way he had demonstrated a) his great competence in this field, his expertise and his experience, b) he connected that expertise to his larger vision of America's role in the world today.

ROBERT MacNEIL: Were they saying afterwards, back at the Carter headquarters, "Hey, we scored on that one"?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Not particularly. I picked it almost idiosyncratically because it appealed to me; other people might have picked other moments that were better.

ROBERT MacNEIL: I see. I wonder, because some people, including people we had on our program of the debate last night, thought that Carter might have crossed the bounds of propriety in challenging an incumbent President by that little quip about "apparently he's learned the date of the expiration of the SALT agreement."

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Why would anyone say that?

ROBERT MacNEIL: I don't know why; I'm saying they did feel it -- that it was beyond the bounds of what they considered appropriate for somebody addressing an incumbent President to say.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Well, that's their problem. It didn't seem to me to have crossed any bounds at all; it was a debate between two men seeking the same job for the first time, and I think each one of them had a right to say or do whatever they wanted in that respect. And it didn't offend me.

ROBERT MacNEIL: Have, in fact, you all who have been advising Carter been advising him to be a might less respectful of the incumbency this time around?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: It never came up in the discussions I had with them, no. I read in the newspapers that he was going to be more aggressive in this debate, and he certainly was. But we never sat around talking about "how respectful" we should be towards the President.

ROBERT MacNEIL: I see. Now, your choice of the moment where you thought Carter was weakest. It turns out to be what you considered President Ford's best moment -- their comments about the report on the Mayaguez incident that had just been released by the government Accounting Office.

GERALD FORD: I was very disappointed in the fact that the GAO released that report, because I think it interjected political partisan politics at the present time. But let me come in on the report. Somebody who sits in Washington, D.C. 18 months after the Mayaguez incident can be a very good grandstand quarterback. And let me make another observation: this morning I got a call from the skipper of the Mayaguez; he was furious because he told me that it was the action of me, President Ford, that saved the lives of the crew of the Mayaguez. And I can assure you that if we had not taken the strong and forceful action that we did, we would have been criticized very, very severely for sitting back and not moving.

JIMMY CARTER: Well, I'm reluctant to comment on the recent report. I haven't read it. I think the American people have only one requirement -- that the facts about Mayaguez be given to them accurately and completely. Mr. Ford has been there for 18 months; he had the facts for at least a day immediately after the Mayaguez incident. I understand that the report today is accurate. Mr. Ford has said -- I believe that it was accurate -- that the White House made no attempt to block the issuing of that report. I don't know if that's exactly accurate or not.

ROBERT MacNEIL: Why Mr. Carter's worst moment, Mr. Holbrooke?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: I think it was a very tough position for him, in fact, in a recent interview he gave he had been quoted on the Mayaguez as saying he believed roughly the same things as the GAO report showed. But with the emotion attached to the report, the imputation of misconduct and bad judgment by the President and the tragedy that it involved 4l American dead, I think Governor Carter was genuinely unsure of how to proceed last night, and I think it showed in his answer.

ROBERT MacNEIL: Had you given him any advice yourself, or others, on how to take it, because presumably it must have been discussed yesterday since the news was just out.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: It had come up during the discussions.

ROBERT MacNEIL: Did he take it along the lines you wanted him to take it?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: No, I honestly had no idea what he was going to do on it until the question came up.

ROBERT MacNEIL: Do you think he perhaps feared that the whole incident was going to recall the fact that it was the very height of Mr. Ford's popularity, the Mayaguez incident?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: No. I don't think that was his concern. I think his concern was very genuine concern over the mixed emotions that Americans have when they find out a year and a half later that something which was almost unanimously approved of at the time appears to have been mishandled to some extent in retrospect.

ROBERT MacNEIL: And very briefly, why was it Mr. Ford's best moment?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Because I think he was in an impossibly difficult spot -- the GAO report showed him as having perhaps taken unnecessary action; I thought he was extremely skillful in evading what the question actually was and substituting for it an attack on Monday morning quarterbacking by the GAO.

ROBERT MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee is a leading Republican who is very involved in President Ford's campaign. He flew to San Francisco yesterday in time for the debate and he consulted with Mr. Ford afterward. Senator Baker, you don't agree with Mr. Holbrooke on President Ford's best moment; you chose a segment on the defense budget -- the President's answer to Carter's claims that budget cuts could be made without damaging our defense capability.

GERALD FORD: Let me just tell you a little story: about late October of 1975 I asked the then Secretary of Defense, Mr. Schlesinger, to tell me what had to be done if we were going to reduce the defense budget by $3-S billion. A few days later Mr. Schlesinger came back and said, "If we cut the defense budget by $3-S billion we will have to cut military personnel by 250,000, civilian personnel by 100,000, jobs in America by 100,000; we would have to stretch out our aircraft procurement, we would have to reduce our naval construction program, we would have to reduce the research and development for the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and Marines by eight percent, we would have to close 20 military bases in the United States immediately. That's the kind of a defense program that Mr. Carter wants. Let me tell you this straight from the shoulder: You don't negotiate with Mr. Brezhnev from weakness, and the kind of a defense program that Mr. Carter wants will mean a weaker defense and a poorer negotiating position.

JIM LEHRER: Why this one, Senator?

SEN. HOWARD BAKER, (R-TN): I think this is the strongest issue in the whole Presidential campaign now, and it intertwines, of course, with other issues such as detente, such as our foreign policy structure throughout Europe and Asia -- the whole question of how much military strength the United States must have. And I think the President made his point very forcefully, and at the same time I think he did two or three other important and politically significant things. I think that he used the Schlesinger example to good advantage -- he told a little story, as he said, and Schlesinger had just come from a visit to Plains, Georgia, so maybe it blunted the impact of that public encounter a little. He's in California, where much defense work goes on, and I'm sure that had an appeal to the sensibilities of many people, particularly in Southern California, when he reiterated his requirement for a strong defense and his opposition to a cut in our defense forces. So altogether I think he made a lot of points in this single segment and did it very well.

JIM LEHRER: What about the question of Schlesinger going to Plains and what Schlesinger stands for as a symbol -- within the Republican Party, now, not so much the Democratic Party. That was kind of a slick move on Carter's part in the first place, wasn't it?

SEN. HOWARD BAKER: It could be looked at that way, but I really don't look at it that way. I think that Governor Carter is genuinely concerned about the foreign policy structure of the United States and our defense requirements, and I would expect the Democratic nominee -- just like I expect the Republican nominee: -- to get the best advice in the field he can, and to get contrary and differing opinions; and Schles-inger is that sort of person. He was relieved of his responsibilities as Secretary of Defense under controversial circumstances, and I would expect Carter to do that; but I would not expect that he would gain much comfort from the Schlesinger advice, because the Schlesinger view, it seems to me, is much closer to the Ford position than it is to the Carter position.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Now your darkest moment during the debate. You chose, for the low mark on Ford's side, his statement about the freedom of Eastern Europe, the same statement that Governor Carter is using to make political hay today. It came in answer to a question on Helsinki from New York Times editor Max Frankel.

GERALD FORD: There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.

MAX FRANKEL, New York Times: I'm sorry; could I just follow... Did I understand you to say, Sir, that the Russians are not using Eastern Europe as their own sphere of influence and occupying most of the countries there and making sure, with their troops, that it's a communist zone, whereas on our side of the line, the Italians and the French are still flirting with the possibility of communism?

GERALD FORD: I don't believe, Mr. Frankel, that the Yugoslavians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Romanians consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union. I don't believe that the Poles consider themselves dominated by the Soviet Union....

JIM LEHRER: The President blew it, didn't he, Senator?

SEN. HOWARD BAKER: You know, he didn't... That was not his finest moment, I'm afraid, and I talked to the President a little about it after the debates and at that time it did not seem to be a flap of the proportions that it now obviously is.

JIM LEHRER: He didn't realize that he had said...

SEN. HOWARD BAKER: If he did, he didn't share it with me; and it's my judgment that he did not fully realize the impact that it would have today and probably for days to come in the campaign. You know, there's an interesting thing that occurred to me today. Maybe that difficulty that President Ford had with that subject points up an inherent difficulty that an incumbent, sitting President has in campaigning. For instance, it's incredible to think that a sitting President would conceive that Eastern Europe is permanently dominated and subjugated by the Soviet Union; clearly they are communist, but as a tenet of American foreign policy it would be unwise for our chief of state to conceive of that. And that may have been what President Ford had in mind; I rather suspect that it was, but clearly it went beyond that in terms of the incompleteness of his statement. I think that his statement was further completed in his remarks in Southern California today, where he indicated that America would not abide the domination and subjugation of Eastern European countries permanently, and that we supported the aspirations of those countries to be free. But, any way you slice it, that was not one of the President's finest moments in this or the previous debate.

JIM LEHRER: Is it a serious unfine moment?

SEN. HOWARD BAKER: No, I think not. I think it ranks, probably, with the ethnic purity remark that Governor Carter made early on. I think Carter handled that very well, I think Ford is going to handle this very well; I don't think either of them will be a determinative issue in this campaign.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Mr. Holbrooke told us what he thought was Mr. Ford's number one moment; Senator, you thought Mr. Carter's best blows were his opening and closing remarks, and we've chosen a small clip from his opening:

JIMMY CARTER: Well, I think this Republican administration has been almost all style and spectacular and not substance. We've got a chance tonight to talk about, first of all, leadership, the character of our country and a vision of the future. And in every one of these instances the Ford administration has failed; and I hope tonight that I and Mr. Ford will have a chance to discuss the reason for those failures. Our country is not strong anymore, we're not respected any more. We can only be strong overseas if we're strong at home....

JIM LEHRER: Why do you think Carter scored so high on that?

SEN. HOWARD BAKER: I think that Governor Carter has a tough challenge to make a case in foreign policy against President Ford and this administration when the country is at peace, when we do, in fact, have at least the beginnings of a disarmament agreement with the Soviet Union, when nobody is fighting overseas, as he pointed out. But I think he did a very good job of playing on the allegation and the concern of many that the Kissinger personal diplomacy may be a little too personal; that the style of the Secretary of State and the maneuver in China, in the Middle East, in other areas has been a little too spectacular, in the view of some. And I think that Governor Carter phrased that very well. I think he did one other thing that is to his credit as a campaigner: I think he had just the right edge and blend -- the right blend and point to make against the administration. I think it was a good allegation and charge, and didn't get over that boundary where it might be offensive to some as ungentlemanly or unseemly as an allegation against a sitting President -- we spoke of that a few minutes ago in the other remark. But I think altogether it was good campaigning, it was a good point and he made a lot out of the material he had.

JIM LEHRER: Let's bring Mr. Holbrooke into it for a moment and let's go back to the Poland thing. Let me ask you, Mr. Holbrooke, are you folks planning to make this a major issue? Your man was out today raising Cain about it; are we going to hear about it a lot more?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: This morning, at about 8:15, Governor Carter met with the labor leaders of California; and I was in the room listening and the first man who got up to introduce him said "We want a President who knows the difference between slavery and freedom." So I think the answer to your question, in a word, is, it's inevitable that it's going to be a campaign issue, and it will be because of the substance of the remark and because it raises about the President the question that has been raised previously about Governor Carter -- his competence, experience and knowledge in this field.

JIM LEHRER: How do you combat that, Senator? What would you tell the President? "Hey, Mr. President, you'd better do something about this -- it's going to get rough" -- what would you tell him?

SEN. HOWARD BAKER: I have not talked to the President in those terms, but I have discussed it with his staff today; and I have an idea that we ought to keep something else in mind. Both Jimmy Carter and Jerry Ford are strong personalities, and they're going to do this thing pretty much the way they want to do it, not the way Howard Baker tells them to do it, or any of their other advisors, but both of them are sensitive to the political importance of this and my guess is -- and my advice was -- that President Ford use every opportunity to point out that for many months he has been in the vanguard and a champion of the rights of subjugated people in Eastern Europe. It was July 2, 1975 that he signed the strongest statement ever made by an American chief of state to support the aspirations of Eastern Europeans -- he's just got to hammer on that point till the country fully understands what he meant last night.

JIM LEHRER: Gentlemen, thank you. Robin?

ROBERT MacNEIL: Clem Whitaker is president of Whitaker and Baxter, a public relations consulting firm founded in 1950. Through the firm's subdivision, Campaigns Incorporated, Mr. Whitaker has directed more than 100 national, state and local political campaigns. When we asked him, he agreed with Mr. Holbrooke that Mayaguez was Ford's best moment, and Carter's worst. He also agreed with Senator Baker that the remarks about Poland were Ford's worst moment; but he chose a different segment for Carter's best effort -- the section on the Arab boycott.

JIMMY CARTER: I believe that the boycott of American businesses by the Arab countries because those businesses trade with Israel or because they have American Jews who are owners or directors in the company is an absolute disgrace. This is the first time that I remember in the history of our country when we've had a foreign country circumvent or change our Bill of Rights.

I'll do everything I can as President to stop the boycott of American businesses by the Arab countries. It's not a matter of diplomacy or trade, with me; it's a matter of morality. And I don't believe that Arab countries will pursue it when we have a strong President who will protect the integrity of our country, the commitment of Constitution and Bill of Rights, and protect people in this country who happen to be Jews that may later be Catholics, that may later be Baptists, who are threatened by some foreign country. For we ought to stand staunch, and I think it's a disgrace that so far Mr. Ford's administration has blocked the positive legislation that would have revealed, by law, every instance of the boycott and it would have prevented the boycott from continuing.

ROBERT MacNEIL: Mr. Whitaker, why was that Carter's best moment?

CLEM WHITAKER, Public Relations Consultant: I felt that he handled the subject very well; he showed extreme sensitivity to a major political issue in this country, a thought of great concern to the so-called average person, as you look through big business and big labor and the rest. People just won't tolerate that kind of thing in their own thinking. I believe Governor Carter stated it well.

ROBERT MacNEIL: Coming to you now as the campaign professional, a man who has given advice to many candidates, what, if you were asked, would be your advice to President Ford for the last debate? How should he amend his performance, do you think, to come across better?

CLEM WHITAKER: I have the extreme good fortune not to have to advise either man as they go into the third debate. Seriously, neither man has a sense of humor, and I think that is something that shows. There is not a warmth, a human touch that comes through. They're both approaching the discussions, not the debates; as a sitting-room operation where...

ROBERT MacNEIL: You mean, forgetting that their audience is sitting in a living room?

CLEM WHITAKER: They forget that it's out there and that the American public likes good theater; no matter how you put it, they aren't giving good theater.

ROBERT MacNEIL: Would it be better if they weren't produced in a hall, with an audience watching, but produced like we are now, in a television studio, where the thing is bounded just by the cameras?

CLEM WHITAKER: I think it would give them a sense of their audience, a much better sense.

ROBERT MacNEIL: And you apply that advice to both of them?

CLEM WHITAKER: Oh, yes; it shows equally, even to the point of voice inflection; each candidate is sort of in a monotone as he goes along. Governor Carter perhaps has a little more voice inflection problem than President Ford, but when you're doing something with people you've got to come through as a human being, not as a lecturer. And there's too much lecture in this, and too little humanness.

ROBERT MacNEIL: Is it important from just the technical point of view? Would your advice be that they are neither of them appearing to answer a question? They almost never refer to the actual question.

CLEM WHITAKER: Yes, and I think that's a problem of the interviewers, too. Time after time last night -- and it may be in the format -- it would have been fun to pursue either candidate. Mr. Frankel tried to do that at one point, but it was lost in the subsequent question.

JIM LEHRER: Let me ask Senator Baker a question. Just removing yourself from the partisan standpoint and just watching these debates -- taking the point of Mr. Whitaker -- do you find yourself, as I did, at least, last night, longing for somebody to say "Yes!" "No!" "I'm for this, I'm against that"?

ROBERT MacNEIL: Carter did once in the first debate". he answered the question, "Yes," and then repeated the....

SEN. HOWARD BAKER: And as I recall, it didn't serve him very well. Yeah, it really would. Last night my first instinct on the question by one of the reporters about how you negotiate with the, Russians on a particular point, I would have a terrible desire to say, "Well, look, I'm President and I'm not going to tell you." And you can't do that; obviously, that's one of the penalties of the debate. But let me make one quick and gratuitous point, just for the sake of candor and honesty for you and our audience. I think the debates are a mistake; and I said that before they began, and I fervently hope they do not become a permanent fixture in the American political framework. I don't think they are a debate; I think they're a glorified press conference that is conducted in the most rigid and unsatisfying way. Now, if we can find a different way to bring a suitable confrontation to the candidates that will produce useful information for the country, that's great. But I haven't seen that, and I hope that doesn't occur in the future.

ROBERT MacNEIL: I'd like to challenge that by asking this: doesn't it reveal something about the men? Thinking, as I was last night --this occurred to me, and I'd like to know your reaction to it, Senator -- I was thinking if Richard Nixon had been standing there, the Richard Nixon before Watergate, would he not have skated circles around both those men intellectually and in the grasp of foreign policy? And doesn't that say something about the quality of these two men?

SEN. HOWARD BAKER: One of the points that argues against debate, though, is that they put a premium on style and on technique. And style and technique may, but need not, have some bearing on the competence of a man to be the chief magistrate of this country, to be the President.

JIM LEHRER: But Senator...

SEN. HOWARD BAKER: I really don't think that this sheds a lot of light on that issue. I think we'd be much better served to have a good grilling of each of them separately.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree with that, Mr. Holbrooke?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: I think the debates would be more interesting for the viewer, and we'd learn more along the lines which Robin suggested if they were able to talk directly to each other.

JIM LEHRER: Robin mentioned it today, as he and I were talking about it -- why couldn't one of those men jump in, and say, "You're wrong"?

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: It's against the rules.

JIM LEHRER: I know it's against the rules.

ROBERT MacNEIL: One of them is the President of the United States.

RICHARD HOLBROOKE: Supposing the debate was held under classic debate rules? I think it would be more interesting, and it would test them more.

SEN. HOWARD BAKER: Suppose it occurred like we're doing here? I think this would be infinitely preferable to the format we had then.

ROBERT MacNEIL: Of course, it's the candidates who ask for the reporters.

SEN. HOWARD BAKER: I know, and I was about to say I think the League of Women Voters is to be commended for making this initiative, and this offer, in coordinating this, but I think the format is lousy.

ROBERT MacNEIL: On that, we must end this format for tonight. Thank you all very much. Jim Lehrer and I will be back tomorrow night. I'm Robert MacNeil. Good night