AUSTIN, Texas - George W. Bush planned to relax, maybe even nap, in the hours before Tuesday night's presidential debate after boning up on foreign policy and rehearsing with a stand-in for Al Gore over the weekend, campaign officials said.

The campaign continued to try to lower expectations Monday, with Bush spokeswoman Karen Hughes calling Gore "the best debater in politics today."

But she also tried to undercut Gore's performance in advance, calling his style "almost robotic."

"He clearly memorizes and scripts his statements. That is a test of memorization, not the free-flowing exchange that a debate is intended to be," Hughes told reporters as the campaign plane flew from Austin to Bush's single appearance Monday, a rally in traditionally Democratic West Virginia, where polls show a close race.

Hughes said Bush would showcase his integrity and trustworthiness -- a veiled swipe at Gore -- while predicting Gore would "attack, attack, attack."

At his ranch in Crawford, Texas, a two-hour drive from Austin, the Republican presidential nominee and Texas governor said over the weekend that he sees the rest of the election campaign as a sprint.

"We've got five weeks to go," Bush said. "Three weeks of debates and two weeks of turning out the vote. I like to come here to this place to get my batteries recharged. It helps clear my mind."

Bush's debate preparation Sunday included dinner with foreign policy adviser Condoleezza Rice and conversations and e-mail exchanges with other aides, Hughes said. New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg played the vice president in rehearsals.

As for Tuesday in Boston, "We've pretty much left the day open for him to relax and collect his thoughts," Hughes said, probably with a nap and a jog.

Gore's wife, Tipper, acknowledged on Monday that Bush was "a likable, engaging fellow" and said Gore's goal was to focus on issues that matter to working people and stay relaxed.

"My husband is going to work very hard to just be himself and to talk about what he feels is important to do for the country," Mrs. Gore told ABC's "Good Morning America."

The Bush campaign also was touting polls in West Virginia and in Gore's native Tennessee showing the two tied, as they are nationwide.

"No matter how you cut it, that's good news for Governor Bush," said spokesman Ari Fleischer. "The vice president is struggling to even be in the race in places where he should have sewn up along time ago."

That's true for Bush, too, in Florida, where his brother Jeb is governor and the legislature is Republican-run. Gore, who is being outspent by Bush there, spent the weekend practicing for debates in Sarasota.

Bush's campaign still had not been updated Sunday by the FBI on reports that it had intensified its probe into who sent a package of the GOP nominee's debate preparation material to Gore's campaign last month, Fleischer said. Agents interviewed Bush's chief strategist, Karl Rove, on Saturday.

A Gore spokesman confirmed on Sunday that the package arrived with a typed, unsigned note indicating the Bush rehearsal videotape might be helpful and saying the sender would call the Gore campaign shortly to offer more help.

Lowering expectations, doing well in the debate and winning the game of electoral math is the key to the candidates' strategy, five weeks before Election Day.

Bush was going for symbolism Monday by attending a rally with West Virginia Gov. Cecil Underwood in Huntington, W.Va. The state, whose economy his heavily dependent on coal mining, also complements Bush's speech Friday on energy policy.

Democrats outnumber Republicans 2-1 in West Virginia, and the state has voted for Republican presidential candidates only three times since the 1920s. Every time, it involved an incumbent re-elected in a national landslide: Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, Richard Nixon in 1972 and Ronald Reagan in 1984.

This year, recent polls show the candidates tied or Gore slightly ahead for West Virginia's five electoral votes.

An American Research Group poll conducted Sept. 12-15 gave Gore 48 percent to Bush's 40 percent, with a margin of error of 4 percentage points.

A more recent poll, conducted Sept. 18-26 for The Charleston Gazette by the West Virginia Research Center, put support for Bush at 39 percent and for Gore at 37. It had a margin of error of plus or minus 6 percentage points.

In Tennessee, a poll conducted last week for The Tennessean of Nashville and the Chattanooga Times/Chattanooga Free Press showed Bush statistically tied with Gore, 46 percent to 43 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 points.