PRESIDENT Bill Clinton has spent the past year gearing up and redefining for his last election campaign and at this stage he is a shoo in.

Having established in the budget fight with Newt Gingrich that he stands for something, Clinton has put his presidency into rhetorical overdrive.

The Democratic President has bounced back after appearing irrelevant 15 months ago. He has succeeded in preventing the overzealous Republican Congress from dismantling wholesale the social programmes so precious to Democrats.

More important, the former Arkansas governor has managed to convince much of the electorate that only he stands between them and extreme Republicans who would lead the country into uncharted and shark infested waters.

The situation raises the intriguing prospect that it may not be in Clinton's interests to campaign hard to restore a Democratic Congress. It works to his advantage if the electorate is convinced the Grand Old Party (GOP) will hold on to power on Capitol Hill. The 1994 election results showed that people were genuinely fed up with the Democratic Congress.

But the Republicans are in a period of letdown and struggling to develop a new strategy for 1996. Public opinion blamed them for causing the government shutdown by tagging unacceptable conditions to their spending bills.

They are shivering because Clinton has blatantly stolen some of their clothes. In his State of the Union Message, Republicans had to grit their teeth as the President, advised by a former Republican strategist, Dick Morris, brazenly repeated their mantra that "the era of big government is over".

The daily sniping at Steve Forbes's flat tax plan by fellow Republicans is also damaging a party which actually thinks a flat tax, with some deductions, is a good thing. Many leading Republicans are now knocking it as a get rich scheme for the wealthy, but in the process reinforcing class suspicions that the Republican Party is concerned with cooking up schemes to benefit the wealthy.

The flat tax plan proposed by House Majority Leader, Dick Armey, last year is much the same as Mr Forbes's, although no one accused Mr Armey then of trying to rob the poor to benefit the rich.

The Democrats have already convinced many voters that the reforms in the medical scheme for the elderly which Republicans wanted to steamroller through in the budget stand off were to pay for tax cuts for the rich.

The White House code for winning in 1996 is MMF - Medicare, Medicaid and Education - all allegedly threatened by the Gingrich revolution.

The wind behind Forbes among Republicans has also torn the most precious banner of the Gingrich revolution, a balanced budget in seven years, a standard to which the whole party paid obeisance. Supply side and trickle down economics were discredited by the threefold increase in the national debt during the Reagan years.

Yet here again is a Republican candidate pushing supply side fiscal policies, blithely claiming that tax cuts raise revenues, and getting support from party people who are not, after all, losing sleep over the unbalanced budget.

The main beneficiary of the Republican in fighting is President Clinton. It makes him look good. The Clinton re election campaign is rolling in cash, having raised $25.5 million (£15.9 million) last year, and does not have to engage in mud slinging with other Democratic candidates.

The President's strategists would like to see Dole emerge as the Republican candidate. He is a known quality whom they regard as beatable. But they are taking no chances. Already the White House is preoccupied with targeting voting groups, from women to ethnic communities.

But all is not plain sailing.

There is currently a row between strategist Dick Morris and key political adviser George Stephanopoulos over the leaking of a Democratic campaign poll by Morris to Senator Dole. This reflects internal tension over Morris's role in pushing the President to the right.

The unpredictable element in this is Whitewater. There is no way of forecasting if it will be a hot issue in November. The committee to reelect Clinton is planning to put Mrs Hillary Rodham Clinton out in front as an advocate of children and care, countering her growing image of a too sharp lawyer.

but Republican desperation could make this a dirty election. The GOP will be tempted to return to the character issue. The only problem is that, as a Senate race in Oregon indicated last week, people are being turned off by negative advertising. Someone should tell the voters in Iowa and New Hampshire.