BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Nothing better illustrates the upside down world of the 1996 campaign than the scheduled appearances in Alabama today of President Clinton and Republican Bob Dole.
Alabama hasn't voted for a Democratic nominee since supporting fellow Southerner Jimmy Carter in 1976, and before that you have to go back to John F. Kennedy's victory here in 1960. By this time in a normal presidential year, the Democratic candidate has given up the state for lost and the Republican nominee has stopping worrying about it.
So it is hard to know which is more remarkable, that Clinton has decided to tempt fate and stop here to help boost the chances of Democratic congressional candidates, or that Dole suddenly felt the need to schedule a quick visit of his own to make sure he doesn't lost Alabama two weeks from now.
But there's more than Alabama to this year's unconventional script. The electoral map has been rewritten, Clinton has captured what normally are Republican issues and now there's even talk of reverse presidential coattails.
A decade ago, Republicans built their majorities by locking down three of the biggest states in the country - California, Texas and Florida - worth 111 electoral votes and then swinging out of that Sunbelt base to the Rocky Mountains for their core support. That left the Midwest as the principal battleground and gave the Republicans plenty of options on where to force the Democrats to fight.
This year Clinton has created a map that began with his own trio of megastates - California, Illinois and traditionally Democratic New York - which together account for 109 electoral votes and that have appeared solidly in the president's column all fall. Beyond that, Clinton has managed to keep a variety of Southern states in play to the very end of the election, something no Democrat since Carter in his first campaign 20 years ago has been able to do.
Dole's schedule this week tells the tale of the Southern states that remain competitive. In addition to Alabama, he is campaigning in Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas, and of those only Texas appears a near certainty to support the Republican nominee, with Alabama also likely for Dole.
Clinton also has broken up for now, at least, the Republican dominance of the Rocky Mountain states. Dole will stop in Arizona this week, a state that hasn't supported a Democratic presidential nominee since 1948. And he has created a solid wall of his own in the Northeast.
But geography is only part of the story. Clinton and his advisers made no secret earlier this year about their intention to steal Republican themes and issues, and the degree to which that has been successful can be told in part by the advertising both sides are now airing.
Who would have guessed, one White House aide said yesterday, that in the final weeks of a presidential campaign, the Democratic nominee would be running more crime ads than the Republican nominee?
Dole is running one ad critical of Clinton on rising drug use, but the president is running two spots - both controversial - on crime, including one featuring James Brady, the Republican who was press secretary to President Reagan before being shot in the assassination attempt on Reagan.
The other Clinton crime ad is a testimonial from the father of the 12-year-old murder victim Polly Klaas.
Here in Alabama on today, the president is expected to talk about welfare and values, two other issues that he has successfully coopted from the GOP.
In contrast, Dole's effort to make tax cuts the centerpiece of his campaign message has fallen flat, the victim of public skepticism that he can fulfill his twin promises to cut taxes and balance the budget. Dole's effort to strip a page from the campaign plan of Reagan and other Republicans from the late 1970s and 1980s has run into the reality of the 1990s and the heightened interest in the deficit.
These unusual factors are now producing talk of another inversion of presidential campaigns, the possibility of reverse coattails.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., long ago warned his troops in the House that potential weakness at the top of the ticket might mean they, not their presidential candidate, would have to deliver the GOP message in their districts in the final weeks of the campaign and to raise and husband their money accordingly. Now many candidates appear to be ready to do just that.
The congressional campaigns have been driven to an extraordinary extent by the early money spent by labor unions attacking Republican incumbents. Even in a year in which the public appears to be less angry toward incumbent politicians, that has put the GOP on the defensive.
Few Republicans have said they disagree with Dole on the issues this fall; instead they are burdened down by what they see as lack of energy at the top of the ticket and their fear that that could drain the enthusiasm from many of their voters.
Bill McInturff, a Republican pollster who worked for Dole during the early primaries, said it is a testament to the respect with which Republicans hold Dole that they have remained as loyal as they have, given Clinton's big lead in the polls and GOP fears about losing control of the House or Senate.
The one card Republicans still have to play, however, could finally force them into a posture of using Dole's plight to boost their own campaigns: raising the specter of Clinton having the freedom to govern with Democrats in control of Congress.
McInturff said one of his polls showed that 43 percent of the American people believe Clinton would govern as a liberal if the Democrats control Congress, while only 23 percent think he would govern as a liberal if the Republicans maintain control.