Republican George W Bush and Democrat Al Gore on Wednesday took their presidential debate messages to crucial battleground states hoping to build on what both saw as strong television performances. With the first of their three 90-minute face-to-face confrontations out of the way, the Republican Texas governor and the Democratic vice president were both clearly buoyed by the response to their appearance in Boston on Tuesday night. A CBS network official said that preliminary estimates showed 35 million viewers watched the face-off between the two candidates -- similar to the audience ratings of four years ago but much lower than presidential debates of the past quarter century. The first quick television surveys taken shortly after the debate gave Gore a slight advantage but both camps claimed their candidates did what they had to do -- Gore showing his command of the issues and Bush showing that he was worthy of being considered as a legitimate candidate.
''I felt good about it,'' Gore said on NBC's 'Today' show. ''I had a chance to tell the American people about my proposals.'' ''I enjoyed that debate because it gave me a chance, it gave Americans from all walks of life a chance to see us directly, it didn't have to go through some filter, to be able to share our philosophies,'' Bush said at a Pennsylvania rally. The Bush campaign on Wednesday pointed out what they said were misstatements or embellishments in Gore's debate comments, especially one where he said he had visited Texas during a natural disaster in 1998 with the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) but in fact had not been with the official that day. Bureau Report