The two topics that attracted the greatest interest from audience questioners were campaign finance reform and health care reform, bread-and-butter issues for Democrats in the 2000 race.

Gore said he supported the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, which would ban "soft-money" contributions to political parties, and he trumpeted his refusal to accept money from political action committees.

But Bradley hinted that the Clinton-Gore administration had not pressed hard enough to pass campaign finance measures. "You need a president who is going to make campaign finance reform one of the top three, four, five issues," he said, drawing applause from the audience.

The candidates sparred over their competing proposals to overhaul the health care system. Gore claimed Bradley's proposal would coast $1.2 trillion, larger than the projected federal budget surplus, a figure Bradley later disputed.

"We have to save some of this surplus for Medicare," Gore said.

Asked about the "essence of leadership," Gore expressed a view of the presidency championed by Andrew Jackson in 1828. "A president is the only person in our constitutional system who has the responsibility to fight for the welfare...of all of our people," Gore said.

For Bradley, the most important leadership quality is "absolutely integrity. Honesty and integrity. Second, I think that a leader has got to have the ability to see around the corner, to see the future before it's here," Bradley said.