JIM LEHRER: All right. Let's bring in Gergen and Shields. They are here, as usual, to wrap it all up. They are our regular analysts, David Gergen, Editor at Large of U.S. News & World Report, and Mark Shields, Syndicated Political Columnist for the Washington Post. David, how do you feel about the way this election is being covered, the polls? You've heard what we've just been talking about. What's your comment?

DAVID GERGEN, U.S. News & World Report: Well, in some countries, France is an example, they prohibit polls in the last two weeks in order to stop and then to let the voters make a free choice, uninfluenced by the polling numbers and all the commentary. In the American experience, of course, we've never done that. And frankly, there's a lot of literature that people have looked at, polls to determine whether they have a bandwagon effect or not, if they declare someone has a clear lead. And the history is that polls do not influence the outcome of the election.

JIM LEHRER: What about Lee's point that Texans like winners and the polls are showing Bush is the winner, and it just helps the bandwagon?

MR. GERGEN: Well, we all know that at this time in 1968, many Democrats are talking about this today by the way, that Hubert Humphrey was farther behind than Michael Dukakis was and he almost caught Richard Nixon. Gerald Ford came from 30 points back of Jimmy Carter. Polls were showing him that far back at the time of the Republican Convention. He almost caught Jimmy Carter. There have been comebacks. It's still possible. The reason I think that people find yesterday's event so decisive it was the last obvious opportunity for Michael Dukakis to address a national audience, and to change the dynamics, to have a real jolt in this campaign and put himself back in serious contention. The fact that he did not do that, there was a lost opportunity for him, I think is bringing a lot of this commentary. Can Dukakis still win? Yes, Dukakis can still win. Is it difficult? It's extremely difficult at this point.

JIM LEHRER: What kind of jolt could he come up with, Mark?

MARK SHIELDS, Washington Post: Well, the race is not over. I agree totally with David. I don't think it's over by any means. I don't think there is such a thing as a winner by a bandwagon psychology, even in Texas. At the Alamo if that had been the case, they would have all tossed in with Santa Ana long before they did.

JIM LEHRER: Lee, you're going to get to respond to this in a minute. Take notes, okay?

MR. SHIELDS: The fact of the matter is that even in the big blowout elections, the losing party gets 2 out of 5 votes. And if the other case operated and people knew that George McGovern didn't have a chance, Barry Goldwater didn't have a chance, then we would have had elections end up 5 or 6 to 1. So I don't think that is at work. I think David is right on the Humprhey analogy. What is missing, of course, is the Humphrey dynamic. Last night was the chance when the two of them were on the same stage, the intersection, the time when the nation's attention was riveted, so what does Dukakis do? He's got to do something in an equally dramatic fashion. I mean, it comes down now to buying time, to roadblocking all three networks, four if you can, get Nunn and maybe you and Bentsen doing something that raises what you didn't raise last night. What Dukakis lacked last night, you could see it, it was almost the drifting off of interest and enthusiasm, it was like the crowd leaving the ball game in the eighth inning when you're four runs behind. I mean, they were going to beat the traffic and get out to their cars, and that's what happened. He didn't do it last night.

MR. GERGEN: I agree with that. He was flat last night, and George Bush had a terrific night.

JIM LEHRER: You really thought he was flat?

MR. GERGEN: I thought he was pretty flat. I thought--

JIM LEHRER: Was he flat in his own right, or was he flat because Bush was so unflat or unflatter than he was before?

MR. GERGEN: Well, Bush I think had the finest night he's ever had in political debating. I thought he was strong. He seemed relaxed, in control, and he knew, and he stood his ground. He was a man of conviction last night. He didn't pussy foot around on some of the issues. He said this is what I believe, I'm sorry if you don't like it, but this is where I am. And I thought that was good. And I thought Dukakis seemed to lack fire in the belly, which is so important in his campaign. He didn't look like a man who's hungry for the Presidency, and I think he had to do that last night, and in that sense, I think it was a major lost opportunity. But if I could go on from that, it seems to me, Jim, there's a ripple effect from a debate like this. A major event in a campaign, there are consequences when you lose, as I think Dukakis did last night. One consequence is he's getting buried in press today. He lost the press.

JIM LEHRER: And were doing it again tonight.

MR. GERGEN: And we're doing it again tonight. And you find if you look at the newspapers across the nation today, even in the Boston Globe, they really knocked him. So I think he lost that constituency.

MR. SHIELDS: They feel let down. They were going to be the paper of record. They were going to be the next President's paper.

JIM LEHRER: They were going to be on every street corner on Wall Street.

MR. SHIELDS: Sure. They had a lot of books and contracts --

MR. GERGEN: Mark, you've talked to a lot of Democrats today. My sense of it was the second ripple effect was there are a lot of depressed Democrats today. Was that what you found?

MR. SHIELDS: Sure there were. There really were, and there was a sense of deja vu, oh, my God, here we go again, are we going to get somebody at the top of the ticket that's going to do that badly? Missing last night was a lack of spontaneity. Last Saturday at Bates College in Maine, Michael Dukakis talked movingly about victims of crime and his own personal experience with it, and when his father then an aging physician was attacked and brutally robbed and assaulted in his own medical office, how his own brother had been killed in a hit and run driver, and he spoke movingly about it. Last night in the opening question, Bernie Shaw gave to him a hypothetical about Kitty Dukakis being raped and murdered and he didn't, I mean, his answer was an impersonal abstraction, instead of saying, look, sure, I know vengeance, and I know it boils up in all of us, and we want vengeance, but, you know, this is my feeling about capital punishment.

MR. GERGEN: Do you think that question threw him off last night?

MR. SHIELDS: I think it probably did but the other lack of spontaneity was George Bush. America has not fallen in love with George Bush. I mean, let's get that straight. It really, it really hasn't. I mean, the support is soft. George Bush's close last night was again unspontaneous. George Bush had a closing statement that had been memorized in anticipation that Michael Dukakis was going to come in and kick him in the groin and every place else, and he says, I'm against, I'm for the chair for cop killers, I'm against taxes. That was the opportunity, if George Bush had the spontaneity, for a preamble to his inaugural address.

MR. GERGEN: It's true that they haven't fallen in love, but it's also true that George Bush's favorable ratings have gone from 40 percent a few weeks ago to about 60 percent, whereas, Dukakis's unfavorable ratings have gone from about 20 percent to over 40, and it's hurting him. We just heard from Texas, 50 percent.

JIM LEHRER: Yeah. Let's go back to Ed, Lee, and Gerry. Beginning with you, Ed, could you conceive of anything that Dukakis could do now to pull this thing out?

MR. BAUMEISTER: Well, I think if the Dukakis that Mark saw were more visible -- I covered his first campaign for Governor in 1974 and part of his administration. He is not entirely the man we see on national television either in the debates or in the little sound bites we get at night, if he could do that, the people I talk to who are negative about him, divide into two camps, first, the people who think he is a capital "L" and dangerous liberal and people who say, yeah, I might vote for him, because I sort of go along with him, but, you know, where is that man's humanity? Is he an automaton? I think if he could do that, he could then perhaps dissuade some of these people who feel that the cap "L" dangerous liberal is a problem, but we haven't seen that, what Mark saw. We just have not seen it.

JIM LEHRER: Lee, what are your feelings about what he might do, not only in Texas, but elsewhere to try to pull this out, or is it just impossible?

MS. CULLUM: Jim, I think that Dukakis suffers from a lack of self-definition. He needs to tell us how he would go about forming a government. We look at Bush and we see that the latest Reagan appointments, Dick Thornburgh at Attorney General, Nicholas Brady at Treasury, Lauro Cavasos of Texas at the Department of Education, and we assume Jim Baker, also of Texas, as Secretary of State, would remain. So there's the makings of the government. I think if Dukakis would do the same, it would help a great deal.

JIM LEHRER: Gerry Warren.

MR. WARREN: I don't think he has time, Jim. I agree with David. He had an opportunity last night to reach a national audience and he failed in that opportunity. And there's something we're forgetting here too. I think the stand on the issues is very important, and I think it's very clear where George Bush stands, I think it's very clear where Gov. Dukakis stands, and I think the American people are making up their minds on the basis of those positions.

JIM LEHRER: And all the humanity in the world wouldn't change that?

MR. WARREN: I don't think he has enough time to reach everybody that he has to reach in this nation.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Well, Jerry, Lee, Ed, David, and Mark, thank you all.

MR. SHIELDS: And Jim.

JIM LEHRER: Thank you very much.