At convention time, Bush was ebbing.

Presidential races tend to "flow," according to John Weaver, a GOP consultant who was chief political strategist for Senator John McCain's failed presidential bid this year.

Appearing on an NCEW convention panel at a time when Texas Governor George W. Bush had committed a flurry of flubs and was watching his poll numbers dive, Weaver described the Republican's presidential campaign as "in an ebb situation."

No one on the panel disagreed.

The lively Friday morning session featured, in addition to Weaver: Frank Greer, a veteran Democratic consultant and president of Greer Margolis Mitchell Burns and Associates, and Thomas Cronin, a political scholar and president of Whitman College. Syndicated columnist Matthew Miller moderated.

None of the discussion could have heartened Bush supporters, or employees of Bush supporters, among the editorial writers in attendance.

The governor's proposal for a very large tax cut, his criticisms of military readiness and his efforts to question Vice President Al Gore's character had proved unsuccessful, said Weaver grimly. Thus, Republicans found themselves "trapped having to win on issues that have been predominantly Democratic in the past."

These issues, such as prescription drug coverage for Medicare, received some attention during the session. But the panelists evidently wanted to talk more about who was ahead and who behind, and why. The audience, for all the policy wonks in its midst, seemed inclined to oblige them.

Weaver compared the Bush campaign to a frustrated Wiley Coyote, eternally unable to capture his prey.

Greer drew an equally unflattering comparison. "George Bush is Michael Dukakis," he said, referring to the Massachusetts governor who stumbled in his 1988 campaign, blew a lead in opinion polls, and lost to a sitting vice president.

The Democratic advertising consultant was visibly cheerful as discussion proceeded from Bush's choice of Richard Cheney as running mate, to his use of a vulgarity in reference to a New York Times reporter, to his fumbling of inquiries about the appearance of "RATS" in a campaign commercial.

But Gore still could lose, said Weaver. The vice president could blunder on the stump or disappoint expectations in the debates. (At the time of the convention, the Republicans' declaration of victory notwithstanding, Bush had just agreed to three presidential-commission debates that closely resembled the debates he had earlier refused to join.)

Cronin, a presidential historian, reminded the audience to pause and celebrate the larger context in which this campaign was happening. Every four years, he observed, Americans hold their presidential balloting as scheduled. And, if the people so will it, power is peaceably transferred.

Cronin speculated that in the final few days before the election, the electoral tide might shift again -- toward Gore. But the flow of the race, he seemed to suggest, matters more than its direction.

NCEW member Alan Sorensen is editorial page editor of The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk.