JIM LEHRER: And as usual here, to wrap things up, we get the perspective of our regular team of Gergen & Shields, that's David Gergen, Editor at Large of U.S. News & World Report, and Mark Shields, Syndicated Political Columnist for the Washington Post. Mark is with us tonight from Phoenix, Arizona. David, 24 hours later how does it look to you?

DAVID GERGEN, U.S. News & World Report: I think that we discussed this last night and I think they had a good debate and I think you are to be congratulated, you and your panel. It was a better debate frankly than many of us thought it would be. I think we got a pretty good sense of the candidates. It was obviously very close and you see there are a lot of reports out overnight, focus groups such as the one that we just saw and others, that indicate that the public was pretty evenly divided perhaps a slight edge to Dukakis. My own feeling continues to be that Dukakis was a better debater. I think he's a better salesman for himself and his product than Bush is. But I also happen to think that Bush has got a better product to sell right now in terms of where the country is politically and so it comes out more of a wash. I think Dukakis was better in making his points but I thought that he came across -- he has a problem -- and I think Bush continues to be successful at drawing a distinction between the conservative and the liberal approach and putting Dukakis over on the liberal side and I think that Dukakis hasn't gotten out of that box yet fully. I think Dukakis --

JIM LEHRER: Do you think he has to get out of that box?

MR. GERGEN: Yes, I do. I think the country still has a hangup about the great society liberalism; they do not want to go back either to the great society or in particular to Jimmy Carter Democrat. They don't want to elect another person like that. But I think to win this election Dukakis has to show not only that he's sympathetic to the problems of the middle class and others that are being hurt -- I think he did that well last night -- but I also think he has to show that he has new kinds of solutions and new approaches. I did not think he did that quite as well.

JIM LEHRER: Mark, what your 24 hours later reassessment, if there is such a thing?

MARK SHIELDS, Washington Post: The reassessment is that Dukakis won.

JIM LEHRER: Just like that, he won?

MR. SHIELDS: He won, he won. He was well served by the fact that he was the lesser known of the two and history was born out just as it helped Jack Kennedy in '60 as the challenger against the better known Vice President. It helped Jimmy Carter in '76 against President Ford. It helped challenger Ronald Reagan in 1980 and challenger Walter Mondale in 1984. Any time you go toe to toe, and he did, and I think he put George Bush scarcely in the defensive.

JIM LEHRER: But, Mark, the expectations going in were just the opposite, certainly Dukakis would win the debate, he's a better debater, and so why is that such a plus for him?

MR. SHIELDS: I don't think those expectations were universally held. I think obviously there were people in the press and others in the political world who thought that but I don't think American voters had given a lot of consideration to who was the better debater. If it comes down to who had hosted a PBS show then Louis Ruekeyser might run for President some time and I wouldn't exactly stake the farm on him. But the fact is that in last night's debate, Michael Dukakis succeeded in doing -- David is absolutely right. The tag of liberal is a liability and it's a negative. But instead of responding to the nomenclature that Bush tagged on to him, he took it issue by issue, and it comes back to that point of the American people are philosophically conservative. We are in the abstract. We don't like liberal programs, we don't like government, we don't like the federal regulation or involvement in our lives, but when it comes down to affordable housing and affordable education and quality education and health care for elderly parents and doing something about drugs, those are specific questions where people want a more energetic public involvement. They want a more energetic government.

JIM LEHRER: David, when we talked here Friday night, you made a big point of the fact that the thing to really watch after this is about like now, 24 hours later, and what people in the press are saying and what is said about this debate. Mark just said Dukakis won. Now everybody who's watching this program right now heard him say that. Does that mean now that they're going to say Dukakis won because Shields said it? Is that what we're talking about?

MR. GERGEN: I think it means you're going to get a lot of angry letters.

JIM LEHRER: Where are we as we sit here tonight on that phenomena that you explained so well on Friday night?

MR. GERGEN: I think the press is divided. If you look at the reviews overnight, I think they tend to run between people who say it was a draw to people in the press who say Dukakis got a slight edge on it. So I don't think it's a clear cut victory. I think Dukakis helped himself in this debate. I think he got back in the game and I think the press commentary such as Mark's and others have made it clear that this is going to be a more competitive race now. I don't Dukakis did all he needed to do to win an election. I don't think he's anywhere close to that. I do think he helped himself, but I think he's still got a problem with what he's selling.

JIM LEHRER: My question is how do you read the impact of the press commentary up till now? In other words, what is that effect going to be do you think?

MR. GERGEN: I don't think the press commentary has been heavy one way or the other. I don't think it's going to have a heavy influence. Let me tell you one other thing I think that's happening in the press and that is the story is changing rapidly. You know, one of the things I think that may help George Bush in all of this is, let's say that a third of the press says that Dukakis won and the rest say it's a draw. The fact is the subject is going to change very quickly because the shuttle is going to go up supposedly on Thursday. That's when it's scheduled to go up and the subject is going to change. I think that helps George Bush.

JIM LEHRER: What do you mean?

MR. GERGEN: The way we discuss things in public life in this country is something rises to the top of the agenda and you put it on your show, you give it a lot of discussion and people think about it, they talk about it a lot and then if something else rises to the top and shoves that aside, people stop talking about what they were just talking about and talk about the new subject and I think that if we had a clean news plate here for a while now and nothing else was going to come on the agenda, I think that would help the Dukakis campaign. With the shuttle going up in just a couple of days, I frankly think that's going to put an end to this story and people are going to move on.

JIM LEHRER: What do you think of that theory, Mark?

MR. SHIELDS: All of David's theories are fascinating and I think if anything it is a theory --

MR. GERGEN: Some are right actually, Mark, once or twice.

JIM LEHRER: He didn't say that, David.

MR. GERGEN: I know but I'm fishing for it.

MR. SHIELDS: It's a theory that reinforces my point that it's going to work to Bush's advantage to get the debate off the discussion. I mean, the fact of the matter is we had a total roll reversal last night. Michael Dukakis suffers from a passion gap. He continues to. His close was far more eloquent than George Bush's which was rambling and rather unstructured. The fact of the matter is that Dukakis last night did establish, which he has rarely done his public career, an emotional connection with people on real issues that people talk about. By contrast, George Bush sounded without the appeal that liberals have made in the past to their core constituencies, those identifiable, blatant, specific, groveling appeals, the liberal candidates so often have made to left-handed unitarians, or transvestites or whoever else. He didn't do that last night and George Bush, by contrast, fell into the nomenclature of Washington. It was his jargon. He was talking about WIC and DIVAD and using all this sort of Washington jargon that made him the government candidate, sort of a GS-102.

JIM LEHRER: Let me ask you both this question. Do you think, David, starting with you, do you believe that that 90 minutes last night, was a fair and accurate representation of the two men, how they act as human beings and what they believe as candidates for President of the United States?

MR. GERGEN: I thought that was one of the best things about the debate. The debate accomplished two things. It got the whole dialogue on a higher level so we actually started getting to some issues and hopefully that will set the pace and the tone for the rest of the campaign. I think we may now get away from the pledge and we may get away from some of these other issues that are subterranean that frankly are unimportant and secondly, I do think he gave us a glimpse of how each man, what each man is like personally. I do think we saw the Michael Dukakis who is smoother. I think he has well organized thoughts. He is colder. He seems more removed. I think George Bush is more passionate. I think he tends to be a little rambling sometimes in his thoughts, but he has strongly held views and I think that came through.

JIM LEHRER: Do you agree, Mark, that what we saw last night is what there is?

MR. SHIELDS: I think it was a faithful reflection and I think again without belaboring the point, it wasn't the same George Bush we had seen since the Republican Convention. The Republican Convention George Bush, the post Republican Convention George Bush was an assertive, confident, well spoken, emphatic aggressive candidate. He was not that last night.

JIM LEHRER: The piece from Chicago that Elizabeth Brackett did that we just saw, I noticed the people, most of the, said something about all the cheap shots and all of that and they thought that wasn't, they didn't use the term, but wasn't terribly Presidential and wasn't becoming of these candidates. Do you think that that was a, do you think that other people feel that way and do you expect a lot of that stuff to stop now? Mark.

MR. SHIELDS: If that's the case in Chicago, we're in trouble. Chicago is politics of sharp elbows and knees. If they're getting that sensitive there -- I thought there were good natured needles exchanged. I didn't see any really.

JIM LEHRER: But do you think anything is going to change? My question is whether or not you think as a pro looking at it they were or were not, do you think the perception of the public may be that either George Bush or Michael Dukakis might back off a little bit in their personal attacks?

MR. SHIELDS: I honestly don't know, Jim. I think it comes down to what's working for the campaign.

MR. GERGEN: My sense of it is you will see both candidates backing off a bit. I think you are going to have more attention to issues and you know for a while. We'll have to see. I think should the Bush campaign suddenly see itself falling as it backs off, then I think we'll go back on the attack, but I would think that for a while, you're going to see a very issue oriented campaign and both of them making a big effort to get a lot of crowds out and now both working towards the Vice Presidential debate.

JIM LEHRER: Mark.

MR. SHIELDS: There was one very bright light for the Republicans last night and that was Dan Quayle. I say it in this sense. He came up. Obviously it was a question. It was a negative. Bush didn't handle it well. And all the polls have shown that Dan Quayle is a negative liability. But you talk about lowered expectations for that October 5th today. I mean, Dan Quayle goes into that debate now against Lloyd Bentsen as the distinct underdog, the expectations are that Lloyd Bentsen will blow him out of the ballpark. He won't and Dan Quayle may come out of that looking damn good.

MR. GERGEN: Well, if he shows up, he'll beat the expectations point, but I have to come back to this.

JIM LEHRER: Come back quickly, please.

MR. GERGEN: I still think that while Dukakis won the debate, he has got to figure out a way to bring this message to people and convince them it's going to cost them a lot of money, it's not going to raise their taxes and that's still a major challenge for him in the next debate.

JIM LEHRER: David Gergen, Mark Shields, again, thank you, gentlemen.