CANDIDATES CRAFT FINAL STRATEGIES : ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN IN 8 WEEKS.

Byline: Scott Shepard Cox News Service

As Bill Clinton left here with a post-convention boost of his own Friday, both the Democratic and Republican camps began the serious work of plotting their strategies for the November election.

Both the president and former Sen. Bob Dole each have eight weeks and $62 million to corral 270 electoral votes, the basic minimum needed to win.

If the election were held today, Clinton would be re-elected in a landslide. Polls show him leading Dole by as much as 20 points nationally as he and Vice President Al Gore reprise their 1992 bus trip by riding from Chicago to Memphis.

In addition, the president currently enjoys a solid or comfortable lead in enough states to give him nearly 400 electoral votes.

But the election isn't for another two months. And Clinton and Dole both hold some advantages as they try to checkmate one another in a state-by-state game of electoral chess.

The race will tighten. How much? ``It may narrow to three or five points,'' said Joe Lockhart, spokesman for the Clinton-Gore campaign.

Clinton's double-digit lead over Dole is ``written on wet sand on the water's edge,'' veteran Democratic pollster Peter Hart told Democratic National Convention delegates last week.

Indeed, while Clinton's job approval rating is currently 53 percent - rivaling Ronald Reagan's 54 percent during his re-election campaign - roughly half of the American electorate has consistently felt throughout Clinton's presidency that the country is ``on the wrong track.''

Consequently, Clinton's pre-convention activities, chiefly his four-day, pre-convention train trip from West Virginia to Indiana, sent the message that the president's economic policies had put the country ``on the right track'' since the 1991-92 recession.

Nevertheless, the Dole campaign will stress the job anxiety American workers feel, despite a robust economy. And it will argue that the economy can be even stronger and Americans better off with Dole's proposed 15 percent tax cut.

At one point, Dole cut Clinton's poll lead in half with one stroke - naming former New York congressman Jack Kemp, one of the chief architects of Reaganomics, as his running mate.

``We're going to be talking about the economy,'' said Dole-Kemp campaign manager Scott Reed. ``And we've got two salesmen instead of one.''

The model for the Dole-Kemp campaign is the come-from-behind victory of Republican Christine Todd Whitman in New Jersey's 1993 gubernatorial race. Trailing Democratic incumbent Jim Florio by more than 20 points a month before the balloting, she promised an across-the-board tax cut, and swept Florio away.

But the Clinton campaign also has a model: the unexpected victory of Democrat Paul Patton in Kentucky's 1995 gubernatorial race. Patton made House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia and his assault on government programs a major issue in his campaign.

And ever since Dole nailed down the GOP nomination last spring, White House officials and Democratic Party leaders have constantly referred to the ``Dole-Gingrich'' team.

``That's the ticket,'' said Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut, general chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

But beyond the models of Whitman and Patton, and beyond the themes of tax cuts and portraying opponents as extremists, both campaigns will be guided primarily by polling data in deciding where to send their candidates and spend the millions of dollars they hold in public financing.

Dole is counting on Western and Southern states remaining solidly Republican, leaving him free to battle it out with Clinton in the Midwest and, perhaps, challenge the president in California, a must-win state for Clinton.

Dole has the advantage of relying on the organizations of popular Republican governors in the battleground states of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin.

And he plans to dispatch Kemp, whose stint in President Bush's Cabinet as housing secretary made him popular with minorities, to campaign in such traditional Democratic strongholds as Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago and Philadelphia.

But there are signs that even the South, where the Republican Party reigns, remains less than solidly for Dole. Some polls show Clinton leading in Florida, a must-win state for Dole. And Clinton is now competitive in Texas, another Dole must-win state.

While much attention has been given to the political shift from Democratic to Republican dominance in the South, little notice has been taken of the fact that the Northeast is now solidly Democratic.

That means Clinton, instead of having to spend money in the New York area, the nation's most costly media market, can marshal his resources in the contested Midwest. Likewise, his 20-point lead in California, a diverse expensive media market, frees up money for, say, delegate-rich Florida, where Clinton plans to campaign next weekend.

In a pre-convention interview with The Wall Street Journal, Clinton said, ``I've worked very, very hard on any number of issues that specifically relate to them.'' They include Medicare, the government-run health care system for the elderly.

Every major speech at the Democratic National Convention emphasized Medicare and how Clinton had withstood efforts by the Gingrich-led Congress to ``cut'' - actually, slow the growth - of the program.

If Dole's tax-cut message does not whittle away Clinton's lead in the Midwest, California and Florida, the GOP is likely to shift gears, dusting off its family values issues and raising questions about Clinton's personal character. At least, that is what Democrats expect.

``Between now and the first Tuesday in November, you're going to see the most relentless, negative, hateful, malicious, deceitful attacks that you have ever seen in your life,'' said James Carville, an unofficial Clinton adviser and chief strategist in the 1992 campaign.

The sudden resignation of Clinton's chief strategist for the 1996 campaign, Dick Morris, amid tabloid stories of a longtime relationship with a prostitute, could play into the hands of the GOP.

Another key to the election is the series of debates between Clinton and Dole. If both sides approve, they will occur on Wednesday nights: Sept. 25, Oct. 9 and Oct. 16. A debate between Gore and Kemp is scheduled for Oct. 2.

Although Dole is not the polished speaker that the president is - and, at 73, he appears much older than the 50-year-old Clinton - his campaign appeared enthusiastic about getting the president into a debate.

``They have a bigger challenge than we do,'' said Dole spokesman Nelson Warfield. ``They have to explain how Bill Clinton has been on two sides of so many issues.''

Still to be decided, however, is whether Reform Party candidate Ross Perot will get into the nationally televised fray.

Clinton strategists appear willing to let Perot participate, since the Texas billionaire, who ran an independent campaign for president in 1992, is likely to criticize Dole's tax cut as a budget buster that will add to the deficit - a theme the president has also sounded.

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1) President Clinton and first lady Hillary Rodh am Clinton greet supporters in Missouri on Friday

(2) Republican presidential hopeful Bob Dole and his wife, Elizabeth, wave to supporters at a Dole-Kemp rally at the Orange County Fairgrounds.

Associated Press