Bush's counterpunches may have been limp compared with Gore's sometimes overbearing force, but they were there. Gore's attack on Bush as a tool of HMO's and insurance companies was met with Bush slamming Gore as the more partisan of the two candidates. Thus Bush "can get it done" -- "it" being any HMO reform -- regardless of his Texas record. Gore's attack on the lagging rate of Texans with healthcare insurance was countered with Bush's genially expressed difference with Gore: "I remember what the administration tried to do in 1993," Bush said. "They tried to have a national healthcare plan. And fortunately it failed. I trust people, I don't trust the federal government."

Untouched during the debate, in the spin room, on TV and in the myriad responses e-mailed to reporters from the Bush campaign, however, was Gore's veiled snap at Bush's military service during the Vietnam War. Bush served in what was known as "the champagne brigade" of the Texas Air National Guard, where the sons of other powerful Texans as well as several Dallas Cowboys fulfilled their military duty.

"When I was a young man, my father was a senator opposed to the Vietnam War," Gore said Tuesday. "When I graduated from college, there were plenty of fancy ways of getting out and being a part of that. I volunteered and I went to Vietnam."

It was one of four mentions of Vietnam that Gore made during the 90-minute debate. By way of comparison, Gore mentioned his wife Tipper three times, his running mate Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., once, and President Clinton not at all.

He was trying to make a point, one might fairly surmise.

And what is the point? That he served in the military -- as an Army journalist in Vietnam -- and Bush didn't? Maybe, though Gore has denied this. But quite possibly, Gore was also trying to subtly (or as subtly as Gore is able) raise a point that some in his campaign have long argued is a potential point of vulnerability for the governor: his "missing" year.

About a month after he graduated from Yale, in June 1968, Bush -- whose father was then a congressman -- leapfrogged ahead of a waiting list of 500 to be accepted into the Texas Air National Guard. Finishing up basic training on Aug. 25, Bush was trained to fly planes like the T-31, T-37, T-39 and the F-102 fighter-interceptors. Despite a 25 percent score on a pilot aptitude test taken before he began flight school, 2nd Lt. Bush was eventually regarded as a good pilot. On Aug. 24, 1970, Bush was promoted to first lieutenant.

In 1972, however, as first reported in the Boston Globe, a whole bunch of weirdness began to take hold in Bush's military transcript.

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