"THIS is the most arid, perfunctory presidential campaign in living memory," moaned the author of Primary Colours, the book which turned the 1992 Clinton campaign into a political thriller. Not much chance of Joe Klein making a thriller out of President Clinton's amble back to the White House. He should not have had it so easy.

For the past two years, scandals have washed around the White House and down the corridors as the President and First Lady tried to keep afloat.

When the voters last expressed their views on the Clinton administration in 1994, they swept the Democrats from their congressional power bases and gave the Republicans control of the House and the Senate for the first time in 40 years.

This year the President's head was to be on the block to complete the clean sweep. But this was to underestimate Bill Clinton, who will be remembered as one of the century's shrewdest politicians as he reinvented himself by poring over opinion polls with adviser Dick Morris.

Morris is in disgrace after his affair with a prostitute was revealed last August by a tabloid, but by then the work had been done and Clinton was on track to his "bridge to the 21st century", the slogan of his campaign.

What made it easier was that Bob Dole, wounded war hero and Washington insider par excellence, conducted a dreadful campaign. On his third shot at the White House, time had run out for Dole at 73. What was a man of second World War vintage doing trying to wrestle the White House from a 50 year old baby boomer even if he had dodged serving in Vietnam and was distrusted by most voters?

Dote never could give a satisfactory answer to what he would do with the presidency. "I'm willing to be a Ronald Reagan if that's what you want," he told his supporters pathetically at one stage.

With all his faults, Clinton knew how to occupy the centre ground and reassure the voters, even if he could not enthuse them. And he was lucky. The economy had turned good and people were not looking for change. He was also lucky that no heavyweight Democrat made him battle through the primaries the way Ted Kennedy took on the last Democratic president, Jimmy Carter, in 1980.

THE Clinton machine was superb and the President was a fast learner after the tribulations of his first two years. By the time Dole had emerged victorious from the Republicans in sullen mood, Clinton was well ahead in the opinion polls and never looked back.

Whitewater, Travelgate, Filegate. Indonesian money, the allegations of scandal made headlines all summer, but only the media and the Republican campaign seemed to take notice.

The voters refused to tune into the "sleaze" story while the Clinton campaign focused on the concerns of the "soccer moms", the vogue name for the middle class mothers whose votes are supposed to decide this election.

Dole found it impossible to close the "gender gap" which showed Clinton twice as popular with women voters. This advantage was partly neutralised by the popularity of Elizabeth Dole compared with the low rating for Hillary Clinton, a record low for a presidential spouse. But Hillary was kept largely out of sight following revelations that she communed with the long dead Eleanor Roosevelt.

Abortion was supposed to damage Clinton as he refused to sign a bill which would have outlawed the "partial birth" abortion process, described as "infanticide" even by some Democrats. The Catholic Church mounted a nationwide lobbying campaign and Cardinal O'Connor of New York would not invite the President to the annual Al Smith dinner as a sign of the hierarchy's disapproval.

But Catholics, many of whom are Irish Americans, do not see this as a "single issue" election and can vote for Clinton while deploring this stand. Dole supported his party's formal anti abortion policy but not strongly enough to convince the influential Christian Coalition his heart was in it.

Clinton dismissed talk of scandals and stuck to his formula of MMEE (Medicare, Medicaid, Education and Environment) where he campaigned as the defender of ordinary people against the cutbacks identified with the demonised Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, and his conservative colleagues on Capitol Hill.

Gingrich, who led the Republicans to their sweep of the House and Senate two years ago, is the most unpopular politician in the country for his role in shutting down government services last year. Democratic TV ads delight in showing him alongside a grim Dole in black and white.

The Dole campaign complained loudly that these "negative" ads were a travesty of the facts, but the damage was done. Dole struggled for an issue which would sum up his campaign and appeal to voters but it was here that he and his advisers fell down badly. They became fixated on that favourite Republican ploy of a tax cut. After much agonising, they settled on 5 per cent and waited for the voters to clap their hands.

BUT they had reckoned without the renowned White House "war room" re the brightest political operators have perfected the science of "prebuttal" and have a quick devastating response to whatever their opponents put out.

Dole once complained Clinton had given the speech on education that he was planning to give but had hinted at beforehand. Dole's tax cut would cost 5540 billion over six years but he had also promised to eliminate the budget deficit in that period. How could he do this without cutting into medical benefits and who had derided this "supply side economics" when his running mate, Jack Kemp, had preached it?

The voters got the message. Dole's poll ratings stayed stuck in the low 30s while Clinton coasted in the 50s. Dole was urged by Republicans to go after Clinton's "character", a tactic he found distasteful, as did Kemp.

In the first of the two presidential debates. Dole stayed away from personal attacks or raising scandals. In the second debate, he tried unsuccessfully to raise the FBI files issue, the eventual pardoning of former Whitewater friends of the President and campaign funding. The audience was not interested.

As a landslide in the presidential election seemed inescapable, Dole grew desperate. He sent his campaign director to plead secretly with Reform Party candidate Ross Perot to drop out of the race and endorse Dole. But Dole had enraged Perot by preventing him from taking part in the presidential debates.

Now Dole was humiliating himself to no avail and, of course, it was leaked to the press. The leak came from the Dole camp, which was thrown into even more disarray by this desperate move. After an earlier crisis over the failed tax cut, Dole had fired his media strategist, Don Sipple.

Sipple this week went public on what he says many in the Dole camp feel but cannot say: "This is a very good, very decent man. Noble. But my inescapable conclusion is that his clock stopped in the late 1950s or early 1960s. He is a man not of this time."

Bill Clinton could not have put it better.