A Bush Victory Would Be an Epic Comeback : Politics: While polls paint a grim outlook, the GOP, invoking spirit of Harry Truman, has not given up.

Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton has built up such a large and sustained lead in opinion polls that if President Bush wins reelection in November, it could rank among the greatest comebacks in the history of American politics.

Never in the 56 years of polling in presidential campaigns has a candidate lagged so far behind at this stage of the race and come back to win. And while the contest is far from over, even some Republicans think time is beginning to run down for the President.

The Bush camp contends that in the five weeks before the election, the President will surge to victory by emphasizing his own accomplishments and unleashing a furious assault that will undermine his Democratic opponent’s credibility and erode his support.

For Bush to win, says Republican Chairman Richard N. Bond, he “just has to continue to strike a credible tone and tear the bark off Bill Clinton. We are within striking distance. Are we behind? You bet. Is anybody sending up a white flag? Hell no! We’ll fight!”

Modern methods of mass communication make it possible for an underdog to reach voters and possibly turn them around far later in a race than was possible in earlier times. Clinton built his lead during a period when the Bush campaign was in disarray, and he remains potentially vulnerable on such personal issues as the draft, an exposure the President does not appear to have.

Nonetheless, the state of the nation’s economy, the troubling loss of white collar jobs and the soaring federal deficit, along with festering problems in education, health care and race relations apparently have created an extraordinary depth of voter dissatisfaction.

Publicly, Clinton campaign officials stress that they do not believe victory is in the bag. “We’re not saying the race is over,” one senior aide said. “Far from it. It’s foolish in American politics ever to say the race is over until it’s over.”

Privately, however, whether justified or not, confidence is building within the Clinton camp.

Some campaign officials have even begun to shift their focus beyond mere victory to the quest for a mandate. Their goal now is not merely to win, but to win by such a margin that Congress would hesitate to rebuff Clinton’s programs for change.

Senior Clinton aides contend their own polls show the Democratic nominee leads in all but a few states, a finding paralleled by many independent surveys. And Clinton’s support is holding solid, aides say--mostly by percentages in the high teens or low twenties--in about 20 states with 250 electoral votes, with 270 electoral votes needed for election.

“The hourglass is almost empty,” concedes John Deardourff, a top Republican consultant who thinks Bush’s chances of coming back and winning are slim at best. Bush, he said, might be helped if he debates Clinton and wins big before 80 million to 100 million television viewers.

Short of that, or a major scandal involving Clinton or a foreign policy crisis where Bush might seem “extraordinarily in control,” Deardourff sees little hope.

Bush loyalists challenge that assessment. “I look at it from the overall party situation,” Bond said, “and the Clinton lead may not be that great because the gap may be larger in California and New York than it is in the average battleground.”

Similarly, Vice President Dan Quayle said in a television interview with David Frost, “We are the underdog. There is no doubt about that. The President is not ahead of Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton is ahead of the President. The President was behind in 1988 as well. But he came on strong.

“And I have no doubt in my mind that when the American people focus on a couple of things . . . one, who has the agenda for the future . . . and who do you trust . . . that on both counts the President scores much better than Bill Clinton.”

Mary Matalin, political director for the Bush campaign, said: “This is an incredibly volatile electorate, and those who are sitting there with Clinton are unhappy and uncomfortable. They don’t trust the guy, and more important, they don’t like his policies.”

In addition, she said, the electoral map “will likely return to its natural contours,” meaning areas of previous Republican support will return to the Bush fold.

One Bush campaign official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, acknowledged the deficit in the polls--which has varied widely from one poll to the next--but said “the whole year is bizarre. If you try to ascribe conventional thinking to this race, you’re going to go astray.”

Bush began his final drive for reelection this weekend with a two-day whistle-stop campaign through the battleground states of Michigan and Ohio, vowing to match President Harry S. Truman’s dramatic comeback victory in 1948 over New York Gov. Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican nominee.

A Bush victory would be even greater than the win by Truman, who never lagged as far behind Dewey as Bush trails Clinton. Dewey’s largest lead, in the Gallup Poll, was 13 percentage points. By mid-September Truman had shaved it to eight points: 47% to 39%. And by late September, Dewey’s margin was down to six points: 46% to 40%.

On the day before the election, Gallup reported Dewey still held a five-percentage-point lead--49.5% to 44.5%--but in those days there were not computers and the other technology needed to record a late surge in support for Truman.

If Bush still lags as the election draws near, he might remember Truman’s admonition in 1948, when he compared that year’s polls with the Literary Digest poll of 1936 that indicated Republican Alf Landon would defeat then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt. F.D.R. wound up winning every state except Maine and Vermont.

“These polls that the Republican candidate is putting out are like sleeping pills, designed to lull the voters into sleeping on election day,” Truman said. “You might call them sleeping polls. . . . My friends, we are going to win this election.”

Clinton has consistently held double-digit leads in practically all independent polls since the Democratic convention in mid-July.

Bush has not risen above 42% in most polls since January and for the most part has been stuck at 40% or below since mid-July.

Political analysts say that means about 60% of the voters have pretty well made up their minds they do not want to vote for Bush and he faces a difficult time persuading them to change.

The possible candidacy of independent Ross Perot, who says he will announce whether he will run in a few days, could affect the dynamics of the race. Perot would have little or no chance of winning and no one knows for sure whether his candidacy would hurt Bush or Clinton.

However, independent polls and those of the Clinton campaign indicate that today, even with Perot in the race, Clinton could be elected by a wide margin.

The Clinton campaign claims that Bush has lost the West Coast, and that the numbers are getting “even worse” for the President in California. Polls have shown him losing California by more than 20 percentage points and many Republicans, including former President Richard M. Nixon, have said Bush should not waste resources there.

A Clinton campaign official says Clinton’s leads in state polls are “remarkably stable” and that it is “astonishing” that the President is so far behind in New England and the mid-Atlantic states.

Despite the potential volatility of the electorate, he said, Clinton’s poll numbers “are continually solidifying.”

Clinton campaign officials concede the race is bound to get closer. For one thing, polls have shown Clinton drawing 16% to 25% of the Republican vote, depending upon the state, and the Clinton camp expects that to shrink. In California, Clinton is polling 20% to 25% of the GOP vote, they say.

Even in the South, the base for Bush and other Republican presidential candidates in recent decades, Bush is behind in most states.

Clinton aides say his best chance of winning Southern states in addition to Arkansas and Tennessee (the home state of his running mate, Sen. Al Gore) are Georgia, Texas, Florida, Louisiana and North Carolina.

Political analyst Bill Shipp of Atlanta, publisher of a political newsletter, said Friday that Clinton may carry Georgia by 15 to 20 points. Another veteran analyst, Georgia Public Service Commissioner Bobby Rowen, predicted a “blow-out” in the state for Clinton.

Despite the huge poll leads, a Clinton campaign official said, the governor intends to campaign so intensely for the next 40 days that “reporters covering him will have their tongues hanging out.”