NEWS ANALYSIS : Last Debate Crystallizes Dilemma Facing Bush : Campaign: No matter how much he assails Clinton, race turns mainly on President’s record as incumbent.

The final debate among the three presidential contenders here Monday night crystallized the dilemma President Bush has confronted from the outset of his reelection campaign.

After performances in the first two debates so lethargic that some Republican leaders wondered if he had lost the will to fight, Bush on Monday night sprayed the stage with accusations about the record and character of his Democratic rival, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton.

And yet before the evening was over, the President was forced to spend much of his time fending off attacks on his economic and foreign policy record from not only Clinton, but from independent Ross Perot as well.

Bush came out of the box determined to talk about Arkansas, Jimmy Carter and taxes; but before long he was forced to discuss breaking of his “Read my lips, no new taxes” pledge, his handling of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in the years leading up to the Gulf War, and his response to the economic recession.

In that respect, the 90-minute encounter on the stage at Michigan State University compressed a full year on the campaign trail.

In its ebb and flow, the debate reaffirmed the fundamental dynamic of this election year: No matter how sharply Bush criticizes Clinton, elections involving an incumbent President turn primarily on his record, not his challenger’s. And, at a time when three-fourths of Americans are dissatisfied with the nation’s direction, that inevitable focus creates an enormous head wind facing the President.

Few pollsters in either party dispute that Americans still have considerable doubts about Clinton; even some Democrats acknowledged Bush probably deepened those doubts with his forceful and insistent attacks Monday night on the governor’s veracity and Arkansas record. But, at least since the Democratic National Convention in July, voters have put much less weight on their concerns about Clinton than their doubts about Bush’s ability to revive the economy.

“There are only two issues in this campaign,” said Al Tuchfarber, a pollster at the University of Cincinnati. “The first issue is the economy, which is just an enormous millstone around George Bush’s neck. The second issue is character, which is a smaller millstone around Clinton’s neck.”

In the immediate aftermath of Monday’s showdown, there was no evidence that the last nine days of debates--three featuring the presidential contenders, one their running mates--changed that basic equation. In an instant poll of registered voters conducted after Monday’s debate, ABC News found 39% thought Clinton won, 25% gave the nod to Perot, and 19% considered Bush the victor; a CNN/Gallup/USA Today survey placed Perot on top, with Bush and Clinton tied.

Such results suggest that Perot’s strong performance Monday might gives him a boost above the 13% to 15% he now draws in national polls. But the numbers also suggest that Clinton has almost certainly emerged from the gantlet of debates maintaining a substantial lead over Bush. In some recent surveys, Clinton’s lead has even widened--to up to 19 percentage points--since the debates began. No candidate has ever overcome such a gulf to win a presidential campaign--much less in its final two weeks.

On Monday, all three men appeared primed for their final opportunity to make their case before a mass television audience; after earlier debates that had been at times listless and diffuse, the candidates fenced with intensity.

Bush, in particular, gave the performance his supporters had yearned for in the first two debates. “He really made the case,” said GOP consultant David M. Carmen. “I think Bush gave as close to a flawless performance as you can get.”

The President came out firing live rounds. He told middle-class voters to “watch your wallet” when Clinton talks about raising taxes on the rich. He reviled Clinton’s record in Arkansas: “In almost every category, (the state is) lagging.”

On the economy, Bush tried to shift the comparison in voters’ minds from the past four years to the past 12, arguing that Clinton would lead a return to the economic stagflation of the late 1970s under the last Democratic President, Jimmy Carter. Above all, he hammered over and over at Clinton’s trustworthiness, repeatedly accusing him of a “pattern” of evasion and flip-flops on key issues.

Perot successfully positioned himself at the center of this cross-fire--delivering solid blows to both of his foes and striking a resolutely populist pose.

In brisk, sometimes angry language, Perot condemned “gridlock” in Washington, the congressional pay raise and the presence in both the Clinton and Bush campaigns of aides who also lobby for foreign governments. He moved so effectively to rope both Bush and Clinton in the same corral that Clinton felt compelled to somewhat defensively declare his own credentials as an outsider.

As throughout the campaign, Perot was entirely unpredictable. Neither of his rivals could be sure when he was going to lash out at them. At one point, he ridiculed the relevance of Clinton’s experience in Arkansas to running the nation; later, he defended the governor from Bush’s attack on his attempts to avoid service in Vietnam. Then he subjected Bush to a sustained attack on the Administration’s policies toward Saddam Hussein in the years leading up to the Gulf War.