Lazio has evidently realized that there's no way he'll win this race without being aggressive. While someone who's never been to Washington might've been too intimidated to attack the First Lady, or diluted attacks with a certain level of respect, Lazio avoided any such temptations.
And neither did host Tim Russert, who was right out of the gate with questions about Mrs. Clinton's infamous health-care plan of 1993-94 and its budget cuts for New York's teaching hospitals. Russert even quoted his old boss, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who also happens to be the man both Clinton and Lazio want to replace, about how devastating those cuts would have been for the state. All Hillary could do was dance, and it gave Lazio the perfect opening.
"No New Yorker would ever have made such a proposal," said Lazio. The first words out of his mouth, and he'd already scored the first point. His criticism was non-ideological, and throughout the rest of the debate, the Long Island Congressman blasted Mrs. Clinton for 1) not being from New York, 2) not having a record, and 3) not having a history of standing up for New York.
Even on ideological issues, Lazio wasn't backing down. When Clinton denounced school vouchers, saying that we "cannot afford to siphon dollars from our underfunded public schools" and should concentrate on "what we know works." Lazio responded by quoting Al Gore's comment about being able to understand why some parents would want to have the choice to pull their children out of failing schools, then cited polls showing that many blacks and Hispanics felt the same way.
Clinton was also clearly caught off-guard when Russert played back clips from an interview that Clinton gave early in the Lewinsky scandal where she defended the president. In retrospect, Russert asked, was she sorry to have labeled her husband's critics as part of a "vast right-wing conspiracy?"
"That was a very, very painful time for me, for my family and for our country," she answered. "I've tried to be as forthcoming as I could, given the circumstances that I faced. Obviously I didn't mislead anyone. I didn't know the truth. And there's a great deal of pain associated with that. And my husband has certainly acknowledged that and made it clear that he did mislead the country, as well as his family."
She then slipped in her third of five Newt Gingrich references, intending to cast Congressman Lazio as a tool of the House Republican leadership.
"Newt Gingrich isn't running," Lazio fired back. "If you had a record, I suppose, you wouldn't need to use Newt Gingrich. I'm running."
This sort of response will probably work for Lazio; the anti-Newt strategy never played as well as many Democrats think, and isn't likely to work any better now that Gingrich is out of office and out of mind. Lazio also laughed off the accusation that he's a pawn of New York Gov. George Pataki, who light-years above Gingrich in the polls.
Lazio's performance wasn't perfect, of course -- for all his scrappiness on the podium, he has a habit of letting his answers taper off unimpressively, a trait which showed itself several times tonight. But he never pulled a punch, and ended their debate with a bang-a performance that makes one wonder whether Lazio has the time to fly down to Austin and coach George W. Bush.
In the last exchange of the night, Lazio challenged Mrs. Clinton to forswear soft money and independent expenditures on her behalf -- noting that he, unlike her, had neither raised nor spent any soft money himself. She had a decent response, demanding that he deliver signed pledges from all his allies, including the RNC, agreeing not to run attack ads against her.
But where another candidate might've left the argument at that, Lazio pressed on, demanding that she sign a pledge he had brought. He walked across the stage and into her personal space to present it to her, laying it down on her lectern. Clinton pointed out the theatricality of his challenge, saying that she admired his performance -- but Lazio's comeback was perfection: "I want your signature, not your admiration," he said.
Clinton threw her hands into the air, in a gesture that looked hauntingly like surrender.
Click here to see the debate on Realplayer.
