Where was George?

Days after his foreign policy lecture at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, GOP front-runner George W. Bush misses debate class at Arizona State University.

By Anthony York

Nov 22, 1999 | In what was undoubtedly the biggest event on the Arizona State University campus all year, the Arizona Cardinals came from behind to defeat their division rivals, the Dallas Cowboys, at Sun Devil Stadium Sunday to keep their slim NFC East playoff hopes alive. In what may have been the second biggest event of the day, the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination met at ASU's Grady Gammage Memorial Auditorium for the third GOP presidential debate of the year.

Like the Cardinals-Cowboys game, the event was without its star attraction. Both starting quarterbacks -- the Cardinals' Jake Plummer and the Cowboys' Troy Aikman -- were not on the field Sunday. Also noticeably absent Sunday night was GOP marquee attraction George W. Bush, apparently still recovering from a rough weekend in California, sketching out his foreign policy at the Reagan Library and heavy-duty fund-raising. "Where's Bush?" screamed a member of the audience, as the crowd erupted in applause. Former Reagan policy advisor Gary Bauer was also absent, though not as many people seemed to notice.

Hometown favorite John McCain, who has represented Arizona in Congress since 1982, finds himself in a predicament similar to that of his hometown football team. Both need to have a month of great performances to make sure they're still in the hunt come January. While McCain has enjoyed a recent surge in polls in New Hampshire and even Iowa, where he's not even competing, the next six weeks are pivotal to the McCain campaign.

Asked to articulate what winning the Arizona primary means to the campaign, the senator's communications director Dan Schnur joked, "It means we won New Hampshire and South Carolina." Indeed, the primary comes at a pivotal juncture in the schedule, nestled between South Carolina, a state with a large veterans population where McCain has campaigned aggressively -- and the March 7 sweepstakes, a day in which voters in New York, California, Pennsylvania and other key states will flock to the polls en masse. Arizona is one of only three states where McCain has campaign offices up and running -- South Carolina and New Hampshire are the others. Schnur said offices are on the way in Michigan and Washington, and a California campaign manager has just been hired.

Arizona will also be key for Forbes, who beat Sen. Bob Dole here in 1996. "After 1996, I truly view Arizona as my second home," Forbes told the crowd, pockmarked with orange-shirted Forbes supporters.

But the home field advantage Sunday belonged to McCain, who routinely received the most vigorous applause from the audience, and had the most T-shirt advertising among the 2,000-plus people in attendance.

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