THERE are few more grisly tasks in politics than the post mortem that follows a presidential defeat. Yesterday morning the Republicans - who just two years ago were toasting a landslide congressional victory are asking themselves that single, painful question: What went wrong?
"This election was over nine months ago," said the presidential adviser, Mr George Stephanopoulos.
Like many others, he believes the outcome was preordained during last winter's battle of the budget when the Republican led Congress clashed with the White House over spending cuts, forcing the partial shutdown of the federal government. Americans blamed the Republicans for the closures. Mr Clinton went ahead in the polls and never lost his lead.
According to this logic, Tuesday's election was less a defeat for Mr Bob Dole than a referendum on the House Speaker, Mr Newt Gingrich. The government shutdown sparked a public backlash against Mr Gingrich's Republican revolution, enabling the White House to cast its opponents as "extremists".
In that climate it was always hard to see how any Republican candidate could have beaten Mr Clinton. The President was able to boast both peace and prosperity and merely had to tie his challenger to Mr Gingrich - the most unpopular US politician since Richard Nixon.
With Mr Dole that was all too easy. As Senate Majority Leader, he was the Speaker's partner in the Republican takeover, allowing Democrats to rail against the "Dole Gingrich Congress". Mr Clintons most successful TV advertisements showed footage of the two men together: that's all they needed to do.
But Mr Dote had plenty of his own problems. He was left battered by a bruising primary campaign for the Republican nomination. As the frontrunner he was the target for multi million dollar negative advertising campaigns by all eight of his rivals, most of the hostile fire coming from the publishing magnate, Mr Steve Forbes. Mr Dole saw his disapproval ratings soar and was forced to drain his war chest. Once he had bagged the nomination, he had little cash left for the fight against President Clinton.
Famously averse to taking advice or being handled, he did not assemble the kind of stellar campaign team that made the Republicans an election winning machine under Mr Ronald Reagan and Mr George Bush. Instead he acted as his own campaign manager, refusing to delegate and often keeping his own aides in the dark.
The result was a series of self inflicted wounds. In May, he said cigarettes were not necessarily addictive and were probably no more dangerous than drinking milk: he seemed out of touch and in the pay of the tobacco lobby. In September, he gave ammunition to those who said that, at 73, he was too old for the job: in a single day he mistakenly referred to the Brooklyn Dodgers - even: though they had been in Los Angeles since 1957 - and then fell off a platform into a crowd.
Even when his boldest strokes grabbed headlines they failed to ignite his campaign. He tearfully resigned his seat in the Senate in June. He named an old rival, Mr Jack Kemp, as his running mate, and embraced Mr Kemp's supply side doctrine by proposing a 5 per cent across the board tax cut - directly contradicting a lifetime record of fiscal rectitude.
Just last week, almost on a whim, he staged an unprecedented campaign marathon, electioneering for 96 hours nonstop, finishing at noon on Tuesday.
But none of these grand gestures budged the polls, chiefly because they seemed like random acts rather than illustrations of any broader theme. Countless voters said that, despite a 36 year national career, they still did not know why Mr Dole wanted to be President.
When he attacked President Clinton on his flood of scandals, voters said Mr Dole looked mean, snarly and too negative. The candidate's insistence that "character does count" washed over a nation that now cares much less about integrity and ethics. After Watergate and Iran contra, Americans tell pollsters they expect much less of their leaders. Mr Dole faced a Teflon Electorate: no matter how much mud he flung, none of it stuck.
Worst of all, he faced a consummate campaigner who had stolen all the Republicans best positions - from balancing the budget to tough sentencing for criminals. For the war wounded Mr Dole, who always says nothing has come to him except "in the hard way", Tuesday was just one more proof that easy victories come to others.