Washington Week . Election '04 . Reporter's Notebook . Michael Duffy

Michael Duffy is TIME's Washington Bureau chief and has been at the center of the magazine's coverage of politics and presidents for ten years.
Read Michael Duffy's bio

Q: The President enjoyed a big increase in the poll numbers this week. What does history tell us about the staying power of convention bounces?

Our poll (TIME poll), which came out last Friday after three nights of interviews, showed that President Bush had gone from 2 points over John Kerry a week ago to 11 points up the morning after the convention. That's a big bounce in this particular race, though a normal-sized bump by historic standards. He showed renewed strength among white males and women across the board, two areas where he was under-performing compared to his 2000 showing. What we don't know yet is whether this is just a bounce -- and Bush's rating comes back down -- or sign of real momentum with fewer than 60 days to go before the election. If so, it's a significant turning point.

Convention bounces have come in both disguises -- real and imagined. Michael Dukakis got a 17 point bounce in 1988 after his convention in Atlanta -- and then proceeded to watch it evaporate when Bush's father's own convention reversed the effect. Dukakis also suffered from shrewd attacks by Bush senior but it was Dukakis' strange and risky reluctance to fight back that I've been thinking about this week. Kerry has displayed a bit too much of the same habit in recent days. I'm astonished Kerry didn't fight back immediately on the critical "Swift boat" ads. Could he have forgotten the chief lesson of the 1988 campaign? It's hard to imagine, if you recall who was the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts when Dukakis was the governor-turned-nominee: John Kerry himself.

Q: Does it seem that the Republican convention speakers were effective in their attempts to define Kerry? What's Kerry's plan for the next few weeks to catch up a few points?

I think different convention speakers had many goals -- some, like Zell Miller, were assigned to rough up Kerry; some, like Laura Bush, were sent in to soften Bush's image. And some were dispatched to remind voters that you don't have to agree with everything Bush thinks to vote for him. That was the goal of Arizona Senator John McCain and Former NYC Mayor Rudi Giuliani and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Kerry was taking on water before New York, but the convention certainly made his situation worse.

What is Kerry's plan? He has gone back on the offensive in the last few days, realizing that he let too many attacks go unanswered. He needs to take back the arguments about character and national security, raising questions about the character of Bush's own foreign policy -- and he is doing that. My own view is that Kerry missed a huge post-convention opportunity, when he had the nation's attention, to change the subject from national security and talk about the economy and domestic issues and security writ much larger. It was a powerful convention theme, but he seemed to drop it and just repeat his greatest hit lines from that Boston speech. That' won't get him elected.

Q: The nation is unusually polarized and John McCain has said he can not remember an angrier presidential race. What has your reporting shown might be at the root of the noticeable division between the parties and between "Blue America" and "Red America"?

There are a lot of imperfect cracks you can talk about when discussing what divides America, and everyone knows them: Whether you are single or married. Whether you go to church regularly or not. Whether you own a gun. And where you live is another indicator -- Blue states tend to be really Democratic and Red states are lopsidedly Republican.

But the question may not be about what divides us, but who? George W. Bush -- and whether you like him or not -- is sort of a human dividing line. People have very, very strong feelings about him. His policies and his speech and his manner and his methods really do sort of cleave the country in two in a way that we haven't seen before, well, at least not in my memory. It is obvious that the President knows this -- he sought to blur those lines Thursday night in his speech. I also think that he regards this divide as the biggest personal disappointment of his presidency to date -- and if he is re-elected, a top goal will be to change that.

Q: Besides the President, what is the hardest political interview to get? What person would you like to question whom you haven't been able to secure for an interview? What would your first question be?

Former presidents are even more difficult than sitting presidents, chiefly because they have the private-citizen clause working in their favor -- even though they go public all the time when they deem it necessary. But I think the two people I would most like to spend the day with are Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton. Each takes a little time to open up and an hour-long interview wouldn't be enough time to learn anything too revealing. Both are intelligent, savvy and a little mysterious. They'd be formidable and fascinating. I think they are both worth keeping an eye on for 2008, no matter what people say about the Vice President's health or the Senator's vulnerabilities.

Next week on Reporter's Notebook: John Harwood, political editor of the Wall Street Journal, talks about the election and the war on terrorism. Read the article.