Not on the gridiron, on tax policy: The face-off at Stanford between the university’s Michael Boskin, an architect of the Bush tax cuts, and Berkeley’s Alan Auerbach, an adviser to Democratic challenger John Kerry, previewed some of the themes likely to be heard in Friday’s presidential debate. It also personified a cross-bay campus competition that extends from the gridiron to the policy arena. Points to Auerbach for hitting Bush on ballooning budgets: “The president has a proven record of being the opposite of a deficit hawk,” Auerbach said. “I’m not sure what that is. Maybe it’s a deficit chicken.” And to Boskin for defending outsourcing: The two also differed over outsourcing. Auerbach said Kerry would remove corporate incentives to ship jobs abroad. Boskin said that while job losses hurt some in the short term, in the long run, the more open the U.S. economy, the faster it would create new jobs.