(FORTUNE Magazine) – Though George Bush got only a momentary bounce in opinion polls after the ! Republican convention, GOP strategists hoped to narrow Bill Clinton's lead to single digits by Labor Day, and from there pull off a come-from-behind win. The wild cards: Saddam Hussein and Ross Perot. Bush's strategy is to hammer away at the so-called five C's: -- Character, or whom do you trust? -- Communism, as in we won the Cold War; -- Carter-Clinton, a reminder of the costs of a tax-and-spend agenda; -- Congress, that is, Democratic, liberal, gridlocked, and responsible for most of Bush's failures; -- Culpa, as in mea, for raising taxes. Senior Bush strategist Charles Black predicts the race will be won or lost in the big industrial Middle Atlantic and Midwestern states -- New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Missouri. He's also dreaming about California, but Bush has been far behind in the polls. Democrats are expected to capture most of the Northeast and Northwest. Republicans expect to own the South (except Arkansas and Tennessee), Southwest, Rocky Mountains (though Colorado is up for grabs), and Central Plains. The President's men believe his promise of smaller government and lower taxes will woo tax-averse suburbanites in key states. You can also expect an emphasis on school choice -- for both public and private schools -- which sells particularly well among Northern ethnic Catholics, a key subset of the so-called Reagan Democrats. In the Rust Belt, Bush will attack Clinton's call for higher fuel-economy standards as a threat to the auto industry -- and jobs. Meanwhile, the President will portray his just-negotiated North American free-trade agreement as a boon to exports -- and jobs. Of course, a week is a lifetime in politics. A U.S. attack on Iraq, which Republican insiders in Washington give a better than fifty-fifty chance before election day, could change the political calculus dramatically. Then there's Perot. He hates the President, blaming him for mismanaging the economy and mishandling the MIA controversy. Particularly in Texas, where Perot is on the ballot, he could divert enough votes to give Clinton the President's home state.

In sum, as of early September, it appeared that the President has to win just about all the tough and narrow ones -- and have more than a little luck -- to score a Truman-like win.