PRESIDENT Clinton and the Republican contender, Mr Dole, clashed repeatedly their final debate over tax cuts, the budget deficit, military spending and reform of the health system.
The tone of the debate was sharper than in the first one 10 days ago as Mr Dole repeatedly tried to raise "ethical" questions about White House scandals.
President Clinton tried to ignore these attempts and made no effort to reply to them.
The debate early today (Irish time) in the San Diego University was attended by 113 citizens chosen by the Gallup organisation to represent a cross section of the whole population. They had declared themselves to be "undecided" voters.
The wives and families of both contenders were in a special section to enable them to watch the debate. Mrs Hillary Clinton was sitting beside Mr George Mitchell who had been coaching the President for the debate.
The questions which were not disclosed in advance were asked by members of the audience.
Mr Dole had promised to raise the so called issues such as FBI files improperly obtained by the White House, the sacking of the travel office staff and contributions to the Democratic campaign by Indonesian bankers.
Several times Mr Dole tried to provoke Mr Clinton into defending himself against "scandals" in the White House but without success in the early stages of the 90 minute debate.
A young girl asked Mr Dole directly about his age which is 73 and was he not too old to be President.
Mr Dole said that age can be an advantage as he could draw on experience to help economic growth.
Mr Clinton said that he did not think Mr Dole was too old to be president but it was his ideas that were too old. This drew a retort from Mr Dole that "when you don't have ideas of your own, you say others' ideas are too old".
President Clinton was asked would he respond to the call for American troops to serve as peacekeepers on the West Bank made by the Palestinian president, Mr Arafat, earlier this week. Mr Clinton clearly found this a very delicate question to have to treat before an audience across the country of about 100 million.
He avoided a direct response by saying that he did not believe that Mr Arafat was asking for US troops to be sent to the West Bank as peacekeepers. If Mr Arafat meant a "monitoring force" then he would have to think about it.
Mr Dole said that he had not heard what Mr Arafat said. But he warned against letting the Middle East situation getting involved in domestic politics during the election campaign.
A question about Mr Dole's posit ion on smoking from the audience put him on the defensive. He was asked if he wanted to "recant" his statement that nicotine was not addictive.
Mr Dole said he had been asked a "technical question" but he insisted that people should not smoke, drink or use drugs. On several occasions he accused the President of being lax on enforcing laws against drugs.
The presence of an audience seemed to inhibit Mr Dole from making stronger attacks on Mr Clinton as he had promised.