Things left unsaid.

As the saying goes, be careful what you pray for. For years observers of American politics have deplored its lack of civility. In their first televised debate earlier this month, President Bill Clinton and his Republican challenger Bob Dole appeared to take that criticism to heart. Ideas and issues took center stage. As a result, the American public got ninety somnolent minutes of remarkably civil thrust and parry.

Despite the wholly predictable, and let's face it, somewhat tedious course of the debate, Americans can still be grateful that both men avoided cheap shots and lurid accusations. Dole, who carried the burden of what appears to be a foundering campaign, made a few cyanide-tipped comments. But none broke the skin. As a result, a clear picture emerged (at least for those who stayed awake) of the differences and, perhaps even more revealing, the striking similarities in the views of these two life-long politicians.

Dole tried to make the antigovernment case espoused so vociferously by Newt Gingrich and the Republican House majority, but his heart wasn't in it. He defended his 15-percent tax cut proposal as well, but again without much in the way of passion or conviction. As a wounded veteran and respected congressional legislator, Dole knows, and to his credit acknowledges, that government has a vital role to play in helping to secure opportunity and meet basic human needs. Noting that his own mother had relied on Social Security and Medicare, and that he himself had benefited from the GI Bill, Dole said, "I've had the best health care in government hospitals, Army hospitals, and I know its importance, but we've got to fix it." Later, concurring in the need for food stamp and W.I.C. programs, he added, "I'm no extremist....I care about people."

Though eager to boast of efficiencies brought to government under his administration, Clinton went a step further than his opponent, stressing not just the need for government but the good it can do. "I believe that the purpose of politics is to give people the tools to make the most of their own lives, to reinforce the values of opportunity and responsibility, and to build a sense of community."

Clinton cited the Family Leave and Brady bills along with environmental protection laws, student loans, and other education spending as examples of where government can make a difference for the better. He criticized Dole and the Republican party for proposed cuts in Medicare funding, and reminded listeners that Dole voted against the founding Medicare legislation in 1965. Conceding the need for restructuring entitlement spending - something his campaign ads are far from honest about - Clinton argued that "we need someone who believes in [Medicare] to reform it."

How either candidate might actually act on the issues once in office is uncertain. Still, some things are clear. In contrast with Republican true believers who preach the devolution if not the dismantling of the federal government, Dole gave no encouragement to such dangerous nonsense. Dole, in a word, is not Gingrich. Still, the differences between the two candidates are instructive. Dole advocates a further retrenchment of government's role. Clinton envisions, if tentatively, a more active federal hand in helping Americans cope with economic and social change.

Both men agreed that campaign-finance reform and the growth of entitlement spending were so fraught with political boobytraps that neither party, was likely to tackle them. Encouragingly, both conceded that an independent commission might be able to diffuse the political costs of reform in these areas. Yes, God and balanced budgets are all in the details, but at least both candidates hinted at what lies ahead: means-testing and cost-containment for Medicare and perhaps even Social Security.

Dole's criticism of Clinton's foreign policy was as scattershot and ad hoc as the administration's own actions abroad. Here is another problem whose intrinsic difficulty is at least tacitly recognized by all. Neither Republicans nor Democrats have yet formulated a cogent response to the post-cold war world. U.S. leadership in Bosnia has brought about a measure of peace, but it took too long for Clinton to act and the eventual resolution of the conflict remains opaque. Even Clinton's "success" in Haiti is clouded by questions about U.S. motives (was it principally to curtail illegal immigration?) and the moribund state of democracy in that violent and near-destitute island republic.

There were, of course, crucial issues that went largely unremarked. Nothing was said about immigration law or about abortion, and very, little about welfare reform. It was scandalous, even eerie, that the perilous economic condition of the poor, and especially the millions of supposedly "able" men and women who may soon find themselves without either welfare benefits or jobs, was passed over in silence. Ending the sixty-year federal welfare guarantee is, as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) has eloquently warned, a reckless leap into the unknown. If the states are able to administer successful workfare programs, that's all to the good. But if jobs for the unskilled do not materialize, those jobs will have to be created by government, either at the state or federal levels. Yes, dignity and self-reliance are the fruits of work. But where there is no private-sector work, the community has a moral obligation to meet the basic needs of the poor.

There appears to be little enthusiasm for either candidate within their own parties or in the population at large. For Republicans, Dole lacks Ronald Reagan's hard-core beliefs and charisma. Democrats, still reeling from their own ineptitude and the almost nihilistic assault on government by the Gingrich Congress, feel themselves continually betrayed by Clinton's willingness to cut, so to speak, deal after deal with the devil. "American politics, especially now, does not offer us a choice between a party that favors the rich and one that favors the poor," Garry Wills wrote recently in the New York Review of Books (October 3). "Clinton cannot be called to account by an electorally nonexistent Left. We must choose between a party that neglects the poor and one that savages them, between a party that defers to the rich and one that deifies them, between a party that abjectly apologizes for government and one the demonizes it."

That is a fair description of the public discourse of the past decade, and especially the past two years. But, curiously, that was not the face Bob Dole revealed in debate. Of course, Dole may have been play-acting. Then again, maybe Dole's refusal to rail against the public institutions to which he has devoted his life suggests that he recognizes the Washington-bashing tide has crested, and the people have rallied to the defense of what is, after all, their own government.

If that is the case, this election could be not only the end of an ugly period of confrontation, but the beginning of a more realistic and generous consensus about what Americans owe one another.