Where Does Dubya Go From Here?

These days, George W. Bush's campaign for the White House might easily be summed up with one four-letter word: "rats."

That's the word Democrats say was sneaked subliminally into a TV ad criticizing Vice President Al Gore's health care plan. "Rats" may be the tamest expletive that Bush campaign operatives utter when they see yet another media story like this one suggesting their candidate is drifting off course.

They probably use language more akin to that which the Texas governor chose recently to describe New York Times reporter Adam Clymer. But I digress. Which is the point. Stories like the ones generated by the "bureaucRATS" ad are a campaign trail distraction that forces Republican Bush off his message when he desperately needs to solidify his stands on the issues to voters.

Instead of doing that, Bush in recent weeks has started and lost a debate over the fall debates with Democrat Gore, has defended himself on the "rats" ad by the Republican National Committee and has had to deny claims by a national magazine that he suffers from dyslexia.

"In the long run, voters won't vote according to any of these … silly distractions," said Republican strategist Dan Schnur, who was communications director for John McCain's campaign. "But it's time taken away from a candidate's ability to get his message out."

Schnur also believes the Bush campaign spent too much time at the end of the summer talking about Gore's character, instead of issues like education and Social Security. He said the same mistake was made before the GOP primaries, when McCain was the opponent.

"Now they need to make the same adjustment against Gore they made against us last year. Bush showed last spring (after McCain won New Hampshire) that he was capable of it … and finished us off," Schnur said.

Most analysts agree that the worst aspect of the Bush campaign's stumbles is the bad media coverage it has generated.

Stephen Wayne, a political scientist at Georgetown University, said the "feeding frenzy by the media" has framed the coverage of the campaign in terms of Bush's mistakes. Thus, Bush's vagueness on policy specifics and his tendency to mangle words have attracted renewed attention.

"He talked funny at the beginning of the campaign," said Wayne, "but it wasn't an issue before. He's the same guy."

"In the big picture, Bush was due for a thorough going over by the press," said Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia. "The clothes were taken off the king. The polls took the clothes off."

As a result, "their confidence was badly shaken," said Sabato, referring to the Bush campaign - which, he added, had "lost its balance."

But Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, stresses the danger of putting too much emphasis on polls, which can be unrliable and which reinforce the perception that a campaign is not going well.

"The dynamic works insidiously against the person who has fallen behind in the polls," said Jamieson.

For example, she postulated that if Bush was currently ahead in the polls, his insistence on a different debate schedule might have been construed as the "confidence of a front-runner."

While Jamieson concedes the Bush campaign has made a series of mistakes, she notes it has succeeded at getting its message across on the state level via local TV. "That may explain why three weeks of not-great national news hasn't pushed him down even further."

"I'm not sure they're in as much disarray as it seems," observes Bruce Buchanan, head of the government department at the University of Texas at Austin. He notes that the Bush campaign is already making adjustments by placing the governor in more intimate settings and in photo-ops with voters it calls "real people." But the campaign is "not maximizing their strength." he added.

That strength is this: even in polls that give Gore a slight lead, voters still see Bush as the stronger leader. "His likability can be turned to his advantage," said Buchanan, if Bush highlights his ability to lead in a bipartisan way as he has in Texas.

Buchanan also feels the Bush campaign should decrease the use of attack ads which are targeted at local audiences, but are broadcast nationally - and that the governor should debate as often as possible.

Larry Sabato also views Bush's initial refusal to agree to the debate schedule as a mistake, as was his off-color remark about the Times reporter before an open mike at a campaign rally. But he sees carelessness - not missteps - in the GOP nominee's overall strategy.

Still, said Sabato, "Bush has to reinstall discipline in his campaign and in himself. He has run out of days to screw up."