President George Bush got a substantial bounce from his Republican Party convention in this week's polls, confirming the impression that this remains his election to lose. Mr John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, has failed to make a decisive breakthrough in the campaign, which has divided US citizens into stable and virtually equal camps.
A small number of undecided and swing voters in a few closely contested states look set to decide the outcome, barring major events between now and then. The three setpiece television debates will decisively expose the two men's policies and personalities for these voters.
If Mr Kerry does not manage to reinvent his campaign before then his chances of winning look bleak. He has shaken up his staff and hired new advisers, a sure sign of dissatisfaction with their performance. But he needs to look to his own role as well. Following a fluent and well-defined speech at the Democratic convention in July he has not managed to take the initiative against Mr Bush. Instead the Bush camp has successfully stereotyped Mr Kerry as an indecisive left-liberal leader not to be trusted on national security. His record in Vietnam has been cynically turned against him, deflecting attention from the Iraq war. So instead of being a referendum on Mr Bush's incumbency much of the campaign has revolved around Mr Kerry's supposed unsuitability to be president. If he is to win the election Mr Kerry will have to break out of this vicious circle by decisively rebutting the inaccuracies and redefining the campaign issues in his own favour.
There is certainly much material he can draw upon to do so. The US economy has recovered somewhat but employment growth lags, incomes are stagnant and job insecurity is widespread. Ballooning budgetary and international trade deficits have replaced the surpluses inherited by Mr Bush from the Clinton years. Cuts in health, education and social expenditure affect core Democratic voters. Many Americans are worried about their declining international influence and loss of goodwill, which Mr Kerry has pledged to reverse. His positions on the Iraq war, which most voters now believe was a mistake, are ambiguous largely because he has not had the courage to say he should have voted against it.
Mr Kerry's patrician image and wooden personality turn off significant numbers of those he should have on his side - a trend which is reinforced by Mr Bush's studied populist profile as an ordinary patriot with clear-cut answers to oversimplified political choices.
In such a close and dirty contest Mr Bush's campaign has so far been much superior to Mr Kerry's, much more alert to opportunities and focused on slip-ups like yesterday's apparently forged documents on Mr Bush's record in the National Guard, which the Kerry camp took up. It is of little use to complain about the Bush campaign's ruthless half-truths and distortions. Those who oppose Mr Bush's policies and values must hope Mr Kerry can change these dynamics in the closing weeks of the campaign.