How Juicy - It’S Not Cut And Dried

Darned if we aren’t having a grand presidential campaign. On the Republican side, at least, it feels like the good old days - before all the millions, the polls and the 30-second spots - when candidates had to go out, state by state, and hustle for the vote. And when, best of all, you actually didn’t know at the outset what the election results would be.

Just months ago, everyone thought they did know. George W. Bush, a Texas governor with distinguished lineage and little else known about him, was anointed. Money gushed into his campaign chest. Power brokers frequented Austin to persuade him to accept the title. There was no doubt about it. Dubya was the man.

For the Democrats, it was pretty much the same. Al Gore was the veep and Clinton’s heir apparent. He had organizational strength, he had IOUs, he had delegates lined up across the nation. Gore was the pick. Indeed, GOP bigwigs chose Bush precisely because he, his backers thought, could beat the inevitable Gore and take the White House back after eight long years in Democratic hands.

The race was set: Bush vs. Gore. Only the outcome of the general election remained to be seen.

But an unpredicted thing happened on the way to the denouement: John McCain won big in New Hampshire. It turned out the game wasn’t rigged. All the talk about the die being cast, about anyone but Bush being just a whimsical dream, screeched to a halt.

Dubya had been trounced: He was not inevitable!

Then Bush won South Carolina - won it handsomely - and the pendulum swung wildly back. Of course Bush won. We all knew he would. McCain was destined from the start to be only a blip.

And then came Michigan and Arizona. And with McCain’s victories there, the evident truth emerged: Nobody knows what’s going to happen.

The fix, after all, isn’t in.

For this one sweet interlude, anyway, we are having a real, live, rousing, anything-is-possible presidential campaign. This kind of campaign does a wonderful thing to The People: It engages them. In our politically soured and nonvoting land, people are flocking to the polls. In both the Michigan and South Carolina GOP primaries, twice as many voters cast ballots as in 1996. All the prescriptions from all the agonizing studies on how we could get ourselves to participate in our democracy are as naught compared to this: A wide-open, interesting race.

Speculation, of course, is rampant. To win in South Carolina, Bush had to turn right and go nasty. Both will hurt him in the general election. But McCain’s victory in Michigan came thanks to independents and Democrats voting in the primary. The big states just ahead, including California and New York, limit their primaries to Republicans. And the South, where much of the next action takes place, looks distinctly like Bush territory.

Still, McCain, in his victory speech after Michigan and Arizona, called himself “Al Gore’s worst nightmare” with some reason: All those Democrats and independents roused themselves to go vote for him. Presumably, their ilk nationwide might do the same in a general election against Gore - which means Republican voters just might conclude pretty soon that he’s their best shot at the White House after all, powerbrokers notwithstanding.

For their part, the Democrats have been looking less engaging. The latest encounter between Gore and Bill Bradley - a debate in Harlem - had the candidates snipping and snarling and taking turns looking each more righteous than the other: an Apollo Theater talent show gone bad.

But even among the Democrats, there is some hope of liveliness. Federal Election Commission filings show that the two candidates have raised about the same amount to fund their campaigns between now and the big March 7 primaries. If Bradley strikes a spark somehow, the Democrats too could end up with some action.

After all, the old rules seem pretty well up in the air. The Internet is changing some of them; McCain is using it especially well, raising money in small increments from first-time donors. Also, the swings in fortune engender pronouncements first one way, then the other: Negative campaigning has become a clear no-no, the conventional wisdom concludes - until the next week, when the CW says that you’re dead if you don’t fight back when attacked.

Meanwhile, candidates are being seen, issues are aired, campuses are politically energized. People are paying attention, citizens are voting, and all things seem possible.

All because - for this one fine moment in February - we’re having a real election.