ASHINGTON - Under discussion in the Gore camp: an effort to defy the physics of politics.
Vice President Al Gore's aides are examining a plan to try to limit George W. Bush's convention bounce, which is at once one of the most persistent sports metaphors - and one of the most persistent phenomena - in politics.
The bounce is the predictable jump in the polls that follows a national political convention. Former governor Michael S. Dukakis got such a big bounce out of his Atlanta convention in 1988 that he picked up an extra 8 percentage points, enough to lift his lead over the original George Bush to 17 points. Richard M. Nixon won a bounce in 1968 that gave him an additional 14 percentage points.
No respite for Gore
Most presidential candidates simply cease campaigning during their rivals' conventions; indeed, Gore may do just that. But the campaign - worried about Gore's serious deficit in the polls - is also considering an audacious plan to minimize, perhaps even eliminate, his opponent's convention bounce.
Under this plan, Gore would unveil a major policy initiative in the middle of the GOP convention, getting one day's worth of coverage with carefully targeted news leaks, winning a second with the announcement itself, and reaping a third with analyses and comparisons.
The Democrats have been agonizing for more than a year over how to limit the benefit the Republicans will reap from their national convention in Philadelphia later this month. The party deliberately decided to schedule the opening of its convention in Los Angeles only 11 days after the GOP ends its conclave rather than the customary longer period. The thinking: By opening the convention just as the GOP's bounce is growing, the Democratic nominee has a good chance to squelch it.
That would be a remarkable achievement. The convention bounce is usually around 6 percentage points, with Republicans often faring a few percentage points better than Democrats.
Only once has there been a negative bounce (a phenomenon that defies the metaphor mongers of both sports and politics). It turned out that the 1972 Democratic convention was such a bust that the longer it went on, the worse Senator George S. McGovern of South Dakota looked. In the end, his convention (and his speech, delivered hours after most people had turned in for the night) actually cut 2 percentage points' worth of support.
Nobody is expecting that to happen to Bush in Philadelphia. And some elements of Team Gore are not satisfied with depending entirely on the calendar. They'd like to open an offensive of their own at the very time the Republicans are holding their roll calls and rolling out their featured speakers.
Advantage on schedule
This plan is a reflection of the changes in presidential politics, in national party conventions - and in the news media.
Although national party conventions long ago relinquished their role as settings for choosing a presidential nominee, they retained their value to the parties as a four-day television blitz, an opportunity to broadcast the Republican or Democratic message directly into almost every home in the nation. These stage-managed affairs - the art form reached its apotheosis with Nixon's completely scripted event in 1972 - were unavoidable when the networks prided themselves on gavel-to-gavel coverage and when there was no ESPN, Weather Channel, and other such alternatives.
This year the draw of the Red Sox on television may be greater than the draw of the Republicans on television. Meanwhile, the phrase ''gavel-to-gavel'' has an antiquarian air to it; the Republicans are scrambling to squeeze Colin Powell into halftime of a televised football game between the New England Patriots and the San Francisco 49ers on Monday, July 31, for example. ABC News is planning only an hour of convention coverage for the Tuesday and Wednesday nights of the convention and then two hours for Thursday night, when Bush is to give his acceptance speech.
The combination of television alternatives and the networks' minimalist coverage plans could give Gore the opening he's looking for. ''In the old days you took the week off, sitting out the week of the other guy's convention not because of courtesy, but because you couldn't get attention,'' says a top Gore strategist. ''But the network schedule has changed that. And besides, we're in a position where we can't afford to give Bush a free week.''
So Gore's strategists may keep the vice president in the air - and thus on the air - during the Philadelphia convention. They calculate that the Republicans will win three to four minutes at the top of the network news broadcasts; their goal is to make sufficient news to claim 90 seconds. That's enough to cut into the Republicans' event - and, if the Democrats are lucky, to cut into the Republicans' bounce, too.
