ASHINGTON - Now, as the drive for the White House moves into a new phase, the campaign is moving to a rhythm that none of the contenders' high-priced pollsters and handlers even remotely anticipated. Whether by the Tennessee reel or the Texas two-step, Al Gore and George W. Bush have swapped places.
Months ago, Bush's personality was his biggest asset. Now Gore's personality is a bigger asset than Bush's. Months ago, Bush's leadership style was a big plus for him. Now Gore's leadership style is a bigger asset. Months ago, Bush was considered the candidate most likely to appeal to independents. Now, Gore is, according to a new study by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
This change in dynamic is one of the most astonishing alterations in a political campaign in history. Indeed, not since 1988, when Governor Bush's father, George H. W. Bush, transformed himself from one of the weakest nominees in modern politics into a ferocious campaigner who decisively defeated Governor Michael S. Dukakis of Massachusetts, has a campaign changed so dramatically and so thoroughly.
Change of pace
Now the whip hand of reform belongs to Gore, whose speech in Milwaukee yesterday outlining a political endowment fund to underwrite House and Senate elections puts him firmly on the side of change - a remarkable achievement for a vice president with real enthusiasm for old-style fund-raising, big-money contributors, and innovative accounting dodges. Only two months ago, Bush strategists believed Gore's own fund-raising record made the issue a liability for the Democrats.
Now the momentum in the campaign belongs to Gore, whose surge in recent weeks has raised the prospect of a nasty, brutish (but certainly not short) general election campaign - a remarkable turnaround from the sense of mystery and awe that surrounded the Texas governor's movement toward the presidential campaign only a year ago. Only four months ago, GOP strategists (and, privately, most Democratic strategists, too) believed Bush would move effortlessly from the governor's mansion in Austin to the executive mansion in Washington. Now no one is quite so sure.
Now the premium in the presidential election is on familiarity if not fluency with the issues - a remarkable transformation from the time when Gore's show-off mastery of the fine print of legislation and regulation was the subject of cabaret comedians and late-night television wisecracks. Now the wisecracks go the other way. Just this weekend, former Democratic National Committee chairman Robert Strauss brought the house down at Washington's annual Gridiron dinner by remarking that the Texas governor believes Fettuccine Alfredo is the prime minister of Italy.
Personality contested
But the biggest change is the transformation in the public's view of the two candidates' personalities. On the surface, political personality seems like a trivial matter, one of the guilty pleasures of political life. But the presidency holds a special place in American culture, and an individual's vote for president is the most intimate civic act in political life. Americans vote with the head occasionally; they vote with the heart almost always. And that is why voters' doubts about Bush's personality are so important.
Poll findings deep in the latest Pew survey are a matter of grave concern to the Bush team. Last October, only 19 percent of Gore supporters identified Bush's personality as his most unappealing characteristic. This month, 33 percent of Gore supporters feel that way. Meanwhile, the percentage of people who oppose Gore on the basis of his personality has slipped to 29 percent from 38 percent.
A year ago, only one American in eight volunteered a negative word to describe Bush. Now one American in three volunteers a negative word. The words ''good'' and ''OK'' still are volunteered most, but, according to the Pew researchers, the word ''arrogant'' is a close third.
All these shifts have not gone unnoticed by independents, who often hold the balance in presidential elections. Just before the primaries, Bush, who won considerable Democratic and independent support in Texas, held a margin of 20 percentage points over Gore among independents nationwide. Since then, there's been a huge swing. The advantage now rests with Gore, and by a dozen points.
That's one reason Gore, who would have lost by 15 points had the election been held in December, now is in a competitive race with Bush. In most polls, the margin is thin if not infinitesimal. In American politics, if not in life, the more things change, the more they... well, the more they change. In this election, nothing is remaining the same, for long.
