REPUBLICAN officials who drew up the party's strategy for the 1996 presidential election a year ago have seen everything falling into place.
The Senate Majority leader, Mr Bob Dole has won the party nomination, pitching war heroism against draft dodging. Republicans in the US Congress have forced President Clinton to use his veto, seeming obstructive. The Whitewater hearings, remind the public of the Clintons dubious financial past.
But opinion polls refuse to cooperate. They show that, despite everything, public opinion is firmly behind President Clinton, and that Americans are disenchanted with the Republican Congress, have little enthusiasm for Mr Dole and no longer care about Whitewater.
If the presidential election were held today, Mr Clinton would beat Senator Dole by 55 to 37 per cent in a head to head contest, according to a Los Angeles Times poll this weekend. If the potential independent candidates, Mr Ross Perot and Mr Ralph Nader, entered the race, Mr Clinton would still win by 45 to 32, with the two outsiders taking 13 and 6 per cent respectively.
A year ago this week, Republicans were celebrating 100 days of frantic law making, and the House Majority leader, Mr Dick Armey, was telling the nation "you ain't seen nothing yet". In truth, the 104th Congress failed to live up to its revolutionary promise, and its impact was blunted when President Clinton moved rapidly to the centre in response to the conservative Contract with America.
Many freshmen Republicans are now acutely aware that the national mood is swinging against and with elections less than six months away, their legislative zeal is evaporating. The turnabout came with the two shutdowns of the US government in a budget standoff between Congress and the White House during the winter, for which most people blamed the Republicans.
The Democratic Party, under the chairmanship of Senator Chris Dodd, has also been very successful in portraying its opponents as uncaring about the poor and the sick in their quest to curb the two major federal health programmes, Medicare and Medicaid.
Only 37 per cent of electors now say they support the agenda of the Congressional Republicans whom they swept into office in November 1994, while 55 per cent approve of Mr Clinton's performance as President.
The abrasive Republican agenda has also driven a majority of the nation's women voters towards the Democrats. A New York Times/CBS poll yesterday showed that women support Mr Clinton over his challenger by a margin of 52 to 34. They disapprove of the performance of Republican House Speaker, Mr Newt Gingich, by two to one, while men divided Dole narrowly.
The highest ranking Republican Congress woman, Ms Susan Molinari of Staten Island (New York) admitted. We were trying to do so much that we didn't have time to communicate." The case they should have put was that Republican proposals to lower taxes and balance the budget would help the average American family.
Part of the Republican strategy to regain the White House has been to set a legislative agenda in the Senate which would allow Mr Dole to promote himself as leader and to package his election themes. But the Republican candidate has been stumbling badly in the Senate in recent days, exposing the limitations of his decision to hold on to the Senate leadership while running for President.
Last week he suffered a bipartisan setback on health care and had to do an about turn on his opposition to increase the minimum wage when it became clear that the Democrats had enough Republican support to vote it through.
The legislative agenda for the coming month now looks like a minefield for the 72 year old Republican candidate. This week the Senate will debate term limits, part of the Republican party's platform for the 1996 election, but one with which the Senate Majority leader is distinctly unhappy. It is likely to fail, raising more questions about Mr Dole's authority.
This has already been dented by the 37 vote failure last week of a Republican attempt to pass an amendment to the constitution requiring a two thirds majority in Congress to raise taxes.
Mr Dole stumbled when he sought to regain the initiative on Friday by attacking President Clinton for stacking courts "liberal" judges, saying their rulings had undermined "the legal safeguards that protect our society". In a scathing reply from Moscow where he was attending a nuclear summit, the President replied "I like the old fashioned position that used to prevail that people didn't attack the President when he was on a foreign mission for the good of the country." He added that Mr Dole had voted approve 182 of the 195 judges had nominated.
The Senate has agreed to continue Whitewater hearings for other two months, but the shows little interest in the affairs now, and criticism is growing of the time and money spent on what looks increasingly like a vendetta by the committee chairman, Senator Alfonse D'Amato, against Mr Clinton. Critical media attention is now also focused on the integrity of the Whitewater prosecutor, Mr Kenneth Starr.
Mr Starr, a Republican appointed by a federal court in August 1944 to probe Whitewater allegations, did not give up his law. practice, and is now accused by the President's allies of continuing to work for clients who are hostile to the Clinton administration.
While he has not violated any ethics rules, the conclusions Mr Starr reaches in the coming months on Whitewater will now be clouded with debate over his motivation.
Mr Clinton's recovery, in the opinion of many observers, began with his reaction to the Oklahoma bombing in April last year when he calmed the nation and joined in the grief of the victims. He has since been able to portray himself as tougher on crime than the Republicans in Congress, who refused to endorsed proposals for tough measures against the country's fringe armed militias in last week's anti terrorism bill.
The National Rifle Association at its convention in Dallas this weekend has vowed to turn Mr Clinton out of office in the autumn. But membership has fallen by 450,000 from a peak of 3.5 million because of its association with extreme groups.