FOR DUBYA, ITS THE ROLE OF A LIFETIME: THE GIPPER IN 1980

"I don't know if Gore is going to beat Dubya. If I knew how to beat Dubya, I would have done it myself." -- Former Texas Gov. Ann Richards, an upset loser to George W. Bush in 1994, as quoted in The Washington Post.

A little more than four months to go, and predictions are, as always, iffy. As spring gives way to summer, this much is in focus: The election is Governor Bush's to lose. As Paul Gigot quipped in Friday's Wall Street Journal, the high command of the Bush campaign will need to hide the polls from the candidate.

It was the morning after the 1980 election. Ronald Reagan had ended the bizarre, depressing interlude that was Jimmy Carter's presidency, 44 states to six. The GOP awakened to 33 new House seats, including one that had been a graveyard for Republican hopes every two years since 1928: Missouri's old 10th District. It went to some fellow derided as a "carpetbagger" by the name of Emerson. (The new congressman ran a couple of thousand votes ahead of the Gipper that year in the 10th). Coast to coast, so strong was the tidal wave that almost out of nowhere, Republicans captured a majority in the U.S. Senate for the first time since their last two-year cup of coffee in 1952. A bunch of moderate GOP senators, ingrates who preferred Gerald Ford and had fought Reagan tooth and toenail, so certain were they he'd lead to a Goldwater-esque debacle, suddenly awakened to find themselves committee chairmen.

Old Reagan hand John Sears, who had managed the Gipper's insurgent 1976 campaign before being toppled in a Bill Casey-led coup in the snows of New Hampshire in 1980, was the guest on NBC's "Today" show. (From New Hampshire on, Casey ran the brilliant 1980 campaign before going to Reagan's CIA. There he wrote his name into the history books as one of the prime movers in toppling the Evil Empire. More than any other in the Gipper's stable, it was Casey the Roman Catholic who understood the historic, simultaneous convergence on the world stage of the Gipper and the incomparable Polish Pope John Paul II, plus the Iron Lady of Great Britain. In a few short years the 1970s gloom lifted, and it was game, set and match to the good guys.)

Asked by a "Today" host to comment on the largely unforeseen Senate takeover that November, John Sears offered this priceless quip: "If we had known we were going to do this well, we would have run better candidates." Sears proved prophetic, as the relatively weak GOP Senate Class of 1980 was swept from majority status in 1986.

Back to Ann Richards. Like so much else, it echoes 1980. The many defeated Reagan foes could have warned Carter-Mondale about wanting so desperately to run against him.

The media-Democratic coalition holds Dubya in similar contempt, a "lightweight," like the Gipper.

A little more than four months out, the year looks more like 1980 than most dared guess last winter.

Among the differences is that the Clinton crowd will outperform the hapless Carter White House on politics. But they're stuck with a stiff for a candidate they just can't sell.

Poor Mr. Gore. For years he's demanded higher gas prices. Now he has 'em. Stressing his experience, he must answer for Bill Richardson. Some guy over at Reno-Justice has said the words "special prosecutor." Life, as JFK told us, just isn't fair.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau, Mo.