The Democratic primary race is starting to heat up. Last week, Vice President Al Gore '69 abruptly moved his campaign headquarters from Washington to Tennessee and challenged opponent Bill Bradley, whom the frontrunner had been ignoring for months, to a series of biweekly debates. Bradley has not responded to Gore's proposal yet, but the two have agreed to an appearance together this week in Iowa, and another a few weeks from now in New Hampshire.

After a summer in which Gore barely acknowledged Bradley's existence, it is good to see he's now ready to take the primary seriously. And it's heartening that Bradley isn't shying away from taking on an opponent renowned for his debating skills.

Indeed, Bradley and Gore have a lot to talk about. The two compiled a remarkably similar voting record in the Senate, and seem to differ on few substantial policy issues. But they stress very different sets of priorities. Bradley has emphasized a commitment to enact campaign finance reform, fight child poverty and improve race relations. Gore's campaign touts the vice president's plans for improving the education and health care systems.

Both candidates are intelligent and articulate, and if they can restrain themselves from resorting to mean-spirited attacks and sound-byte politics, the one-on-one debates between the two could be something refreshingly different in American politics. Too often, real political debate is passed over for water-downed platitudes in front of the television cameras. We're hopeful that in this primary, with these candidates, that will not be the case.

Of course, there will also be a lot missing from these debates. Both candidates support the death penalty. Both supported the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that prohibited the federal government from recognizing gay weddings. A substantial part of the Democratic Party--maybe the majority--oppose both, and it is a shame that part of the party is not represented in the primary field.

Still, these debates will tell us a lot, and give Democratic voters a good chance to judge which agenda is more important for the country. Bradley is understandably cautious about taking Gore up on his biweekly debate proposal--no candidate wants to let an opponent set the campaign schedule--but the more debates the two have, the better.

The single smartest move the planners of the New Hampshire debate made was to have citizens ask questions instead of journalists, who can be counted on to trot out Beltway buzzwords like "Clinton fatigue" and harp on fundraising statistics that are meaningless to most voters but have dominated primary coverage nonetheless. We're hopeful that these can be debates of substance and ideas, not of image and spin.