PADUCAH, Ky.
OUT HERE, in the presidential campaign that most Americans don't see, the bombing starts before dawn and extends past midnight. This is the campaign the rest of the country has experienced only in fits and starts and that has failed to produce a leader in either sense of the word. Tonight, from two podiums in Boston, the country as a whole gets to see the players first hand.
On the ''Today'' show last Friday the first packaged junk from the Olympics had barely ended when the first packaged junk from the presidential campaign intruded on the local NBC outlet here in the form of the dreaded specter of Texas. Its governor, it seems, is in league with big oil and big pollution. The result is the third worst water in the country and the second worst air (Houston). Al Gore, the viewers are told, will fight the big polluters, unlike Texas's pliant governor. Otherwise, the 30 seconds concludes, the country faces the same hideous fate as Texas.
Technically, the message says it comes from the Democratic Party in Missouri, across the Mississippi from this river town. But the fact that this is Gore's campaign talking is obvious.
You wouldn't expect George W. Bush to take this silently, and he doesn't. After the next bit of taped drivel from Sydney, the taped drivel from the Republican nominee starts. Gore, the busy commercial on Bush's direct dime states, would force old people into that most terrifying of institutions, a ''government HMO,'' while he will offer them choices; the permissive Gore will never bring ''accountability'' to public schools; and the governor offers major tax cuts to boot - ''real plans for real people.''
And so it goes for another 17 hours, framing dozens of TV ads that saturate what political pros in both parties consider possibly the most ''efficient'' market in the country for their trade - and for five very good reasons: They are known as Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee. You can probably tilt the first one to Bush and the second to Gore, but the fact is that all five are in serious play and will produce a combined 58 electoral college votes next month, four more than mighty California.
With the Mississippi River as the common reference point, Paducah is much more than the key to western Kentucky. It is also an ideal way as well to reach voters in southern Illinois as far north as Carbondale, in Missouri's rural southeast up toward Cape Girardeau, in Arkansas' even more rural northeast, and in a good chunk of rural western Tennessee that lies just north of Memphis.
And so they come, not just the commercials, but candidates and surrogates as well to feed off the local TV and print coverage. Dick Cheney came through a few weeks ago, and Tipper Gore drew a large crowd in front of city hall the day I arrived, and full coverage through that day and into next, as Cheney had.
Naturally, Mrs. Gore filled the next day's Paducah Sun with her speech as well as an interview, in which she acknowledged the major reasons for Bush's advantage in the state (tobacco and coal mining) and urged voters not to forget education, health care, and Social Security. But her in-person work was not the only example of how the campaigns bombard a market like this.
The afternoon and evening after Mrs. Gore's visit, her husband showed up on the NBC affiliate being interviewed by anchor Amy Watson. In fact, however, he was in Iowa, linked to Watson by a satellite hookup that candidates use several times a week to keep their messages before audiences in battleground states even when they're not there. Gore was able to jump on a national story (the admission by Hollywood executives that they have been marketing some of their raunchier fare to minors), and a local one (the plight of nearby nuclear industry workers exposed to health hazards).
But the overwhelming reality here is the ads. In general, the Gore message is split: positive about him and his ideas with his campaign's direct money, very rough on Bush in the stuff paid for by his party. With Bush, the approach is relentlessly comparative, focused in both the campaign and GOP ads on health care, education, and taxes.
From 48 hours of intense exposure to battleground campaigning, the good news is that in addition to the news coverage the campaigns generate in person, local television is at least embarrassed enough by their swollen revenues from endless commercials to devote about 90 seconds per program to outline-form accounts of the contest, which is more than you get in big-city markets.
This year the good news is also that the ad barrage in the battleground states has produced a stalemate. For a change the debates really do matter.
Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is t-oliphant@globe.com.
