ASHINGTON - The instant analysis of the looming fall matchup between Al Gore and George W. Bush sounds so familiar. The son of the former president takes on the vice president who helped retire his father. Call it 1992 redux: The grudge match.
But this is far from a replay of President Bush vs. Bill Clinton. Indeed, as the candidates yesterday began formulating their general election strategies, with both racing to the fertile middle ground of American politics, some of the roles from eight years ago have been reversed.
In 1992, it was President Bush, the establishment candidate with vast foreign policy experience, taking on not just Clinton, but also the challenger's home state of Arkansas. Today, it is Gore, the Washington establishment politician, who is taking on not just Bush, but also Texas, lambasting its environmental and health care record.
Bush, meanwhile, is continuing his father's failed campaign against ''Clintonism'' even as he borrows a page from the Clinton playbook to cast himself the centrist-seeking reformer who will shake up Washington. Bush replaces Clinton's ''New Democrat'' tag with ''compassionate conservatism,'' but the idea is the same: Capture the middle in November.
''It's going to be a tough campaign, but ultimately what's going to decide the campaign is the message of reform and message of renewal,'' Bush said yesterday. Foreshadowing major themes of the fall campaign, Bush called Gore an ''agent of Washington,'' while Gore blasted Bush's ''risky tax scheme.''
Barely catching a breath after all but wrapping up their party's nominations, the candidates aimed their sights on disaffected voters who supported Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, and, to a lesser degree, former New Jersey Senator Bill Bradley, the Democrat. But they plan to court those voters in very different ways.
The Bush campaign believes it can't win moderates unless it gains strong support from women. The Texas governor did very well with women voters in some Super Tuesday states, winning among Republican women in California by a 2-to-1 ratio. But the majority of women who vote in the general election are Democrats and independents, and Bush is vulnerable on some issues important to women. For example, Bush, unlike Gore, has gone through the the bulk of the primaries without unveiling any major plans for health care or environmental protection. Also, Bush's position against abortion rights might hurt him with some women in the general election.
So Bush is appealing to the McCain supporters and moderates by highlighting his plans for education and attacking Gore on McCain's central issue, campaign finance. Yesterday, Bush once again mocked Gore for going to a Buddhist temple during the 1996 campaign to collect donations.
Gore, meanwhile, is also going after McCain voters by asserting that he is the candidate interested in overhauling campaign finance. Gore said he would be willing to ban unlimited ''soft money'' donations to the political parties. But, as Bush noted yesterday, Gore is making this proposal even as Clinton is raising millions of dollars for the Democratic Party, which plans to use the unregulated cash to help elect Gore.
For those voters who recently tuned in to the primary campaign, it may have seemed like the biggest voter concerns were Bob Jones University, anti-Catholic bias and fund-raising at a Buddhist temple. But what plays during the primaries as wedge issues often have no relevance in the fall. Barring a war or a rapid decline in the economy, the general election is likely to focus on education, health care, and maintaining prosperity, analysts said.
But as much as the public may want the candidates to talk about the future, they are also likely to focus on the past. Bush would like to make the general election about morality, highlighting the Clinton-Gore administration's ethical lapses, which included Clinton's impeachment trial. For Bush, this is the ''I told you so'' issue, a reminder that his father warned voters that Clinton couldn't be trusted in the Oval Office.
Gore, meanwhile, wants voters to look farther back, linking the Texas governor with his father's administration, a period when the economy was much less robust.
Ron Kaufman, the former political director of President Bush's White House, said the governor could win the presidency with a message that sounds largely moderate. ''It is going to be getting back to the basic core message that governors make a difference, that he is a uniter, not a divider, that he can talk to Hispanics, blacks, and women, who aren't traditional groups in the Republican Party,'' Kaufman said.
As for winning over the McCain voters, Kaufman, a GOP national committeeman from Massachusetts, said Bush must push his message that he is an outsider, while Gore is the Washington insider.
Political analyst Stu Rothenberg yesterday summed up the coming race this way: ''You will see Bush moving back to the center, stressing his success with Hispanics and African Americans, education, and the issues he talked about earlier ... You will see more talk about character and ethics and the president as moral leader. And you will see Gore talking much more about risky Republican tax cuts, health care, minimum wage and a Republican Congress. Those will be the fault lines.''
The importance of winning the middle was underscored in the popular vote in California. While Bush easily beat McCain among Republicans, the all-voter nature of the ''beauty contest'' in that state provides an insight into what may happen in the fall campaign. Gore won the California popular vote mainly with support from moderates. The popular vote broke down this way: 27 percent said they were liberal, 40 percent moderate, and 33 percent conservative.
While Bush easily beat Gore among conservatives by a 6-to-1 margin, and Gore easily won liberals by a similar amount, the race was decided by moderates, who went for Gore by 2-to-1. Gore's goal is to build on that moderate strength in the fall.
In another bright spot for Gore, he easily beat Bush among California Hispanics, 56 percent to 18 percent, and among blacks, 73 percent to 9 percent. Bush for months has said he can appeal to both groups, which could be decisive voting blocs in several key states.
In the primaries, McCain was unable to win sizable support among Republicans. Now the question is whether Bush can win large support outside the Republican Party. The answer is likely to determine the outcome in November.
