The Democratic and Republican conventions are over, and the non-stop presidential campaign has already begun. Major party nominees George W. Bush and Al Gore both “jumped the gun” on the traditional Labor Day start, Bush starting his campaign in Gore’s home state of Tennessee, and Gore cruising down the upper Mississippi River through some of the battleground Midwestern states.

While the polls show the post-convention “bounces” balancing each other out, other developments show that this fall’s contest is being played on Bush’s home turf, thanks in no small part to Gore.

Gore’s choice of Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman as his vice-presidential nominee puts in play the moral record of the Clinton-Gore administration. One cannot look at and listen to the Democrat’s number two and not immediately think of him as the anti-Clinton; thus reminding oneself of the current President’s negative attributes from which the Gore-Lieberman ticket is running away. While Lieberman is certainly qualified to be a national Democratic leader even apart from the Clinton factor, there is no question that without Clinton, the Connecticut senator would not be on the ticket.

Gore’s second gift to the Bush campaign was his Thursday night acceptance speech. His rushed delivery packed one and one-half hours of autobiography and policy promises into fifty-five minutes. He delivered what should have been the emotional parts of his autobiography without emotion, and the details of his policy proposals without context or vision. And it is perplexing why he identified campaign finance reform as his top legislative priority, pledging to make it the first legislation he would send to Congress. Does he not remember the “donor maintenance event” at the Buddhist temple?

The rest of the Democratic convention week was also very much a mixed bag. While Gore presented himself reasonably well as a good family man and reasonably effective orator, the general impression was of a party still trying, often too publicly, to solidify the most offensive segments of its liberal base instead of reaching out to the swing voters who will decide the contest. While mostly fawning media coverage limited the damage somewhat, it could not change the underlying truth of a still-fractious party.

Meanwhile, the afterglow of the Republican convention generally helped the GOP. Vice-presidential choice Dick Cheney easily quelled sharp but brief liberal attacks on his voting record, which ended as the critics digested the Lieberman vice-presidential selection. And the GOP convention’s emphasis on diversity, however artificial and overplayed it may have been, seems to have made a significant fraction of the public more open to Republican appeals.

So, even as the polls tighten with the post-Democratic convention bounce, the Bush campaign must be quietly rejoicing. The campaign is starting out on its turf, its home field. But it’s still a long game through November, and even home teams can lose.

Douglas Koopman teaches political science at Calvin College and is an adjunct fellow at the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University.