Lawrence Jackson, Associated Press President Bush greets the crowd at Parkersburg (W.Va.) High School football stadium yesterday. Click photo for larger image. More on Campaign 2004 Kerry 'going on attack' Graphic: Election 2004 / The money race President Bush, in W. Va., pushes bid for flat tax Catholic Bishops discuss integrity, permissible election activities More pictures from the campaign trail

What you've seen is what you're going to get.

Expect the Bush-Cheney campaign and its allies to continue their aggressive portrayal of John F. Kerry, highlighted last week at the Republican convention in New York, as a shifty, irresolute liberal, inadequate to the challenge of serving as commander-in-chief in a dangerous world.

In working to keep Kerry on the defensive -- as polls and the behavior of the candidates suggest they have through the month of August -- the Bush strategists have succeeded in working against the expected dynamic of an election involving a sitting president. Rather than a referendum on the incumbent, the Bush camp, abetted by groups such as Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, has had significant success over the past few weeks in turning the election into a referendum on the challenger.

With their goading, aggressive characterizations, the Bush forces hope to dictate the terms of debate over the next 60 days, keeping Kerry off balance, forcing him to respond to their attacks rather than set the campaign agenda himself.

"We're not playing Coach [Dean] Smith, passing the ball into the four corners," Bush chief strategist Karl Rove told reporters last week, suggesting they will continue to attempt to score against Kerry rather than run out the clock at a time when post-convention polls appear to be shifting their way.

This combative strategy will be pursued through millions of dollars in television advertising and high visibility campaigning in the shrinking minority of states considered up for grabs. Those same states will see an ambitious tactical effort to bring every conceivable Republican vote to the polls through grass roots personal networks.

President Bush has governed as the spiritual heir of Ronald Reagan, but recent months have shown that, when it comes to campaigning, he has learned a thing or two from his father as well.

In 1988, a chief strain of the George H.W. Bush's campaign was reflected in his visit to a flag factory, with the implicit message that Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis, the Democratic nominee, was somehow less patriotic, less worthy of identification with the flag.

Analogous assaults on Kerry, Dukakis' former lieutenant governor, filled Madison Square Garden last week, reaching their most corrosive with the fire-breathing keynote address of Sen. Zell Miller, the Georgia Democrat. Similarly withering caricatures of Kerry's leadership credentials were sketched outside the hall, concentrating on the war against terrorism, an area in which, polls suggest, Bush has enjoyed a consistent advantage over Kerry among voters.

"John Kerry ... has said that he'd outsource defending America and give certain members of the United Nations Security Council veto power over whether our commander-in-chief stood up for our country," Ken Mehlman, Bush's campaign manager, told a group of delegates at one Republican breakfast.

The Kerry camp argues that such rhetoric is a willful mischaracterization of Kerry's promise to enlist greater international support in Iraq and in the broader war against terrorism. But even if the Kerry campaign can win such specific arguments over time, they risk losing in a tactical sense, in that they will have been distracted for precious news cycles from discussing issues that polls suggest have greater potential benefit to the Democrats, such as the economy or the dangerous conditions on the ground in Iraq.

Rove and other Bush strategists have repeatedly denied any connection with the Swift boat offensive against Kerry, but it clearly dovetails with their strategy of keeping the Democrat on the defensive while reinforcing the image of Kerry that they want to project. While holding the group and its charges at arms length, Bush aides are happy to speculate on their political effect.

"The flip-flop issues really have taken root, said Leslie Gromis Baker, a senior Bush strategist who was the campaign manager for former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge. "With the Swift boaters, who knows what the truth there is, but the point is not questioning his service, it's were there exaggerations, is this just a sort of pattern?"

The Bush campaign could supply more distractions for the Democrats in a potential debate on debates. Kerry has agreed to a proposal for one vice presidential and three presidential debates crafted by a bipartisan commission and has even called for weekly debates. The Bush campaign, however, in another approach that echoes 1988, has so far refused to commit to any debate schedule. Last week, Rove would say only that the format and number of the debates -- one of few foreseeable events with the potential to have a transforming impact on the race -- would be the subject of negotiations.

The high profile battle of campaign advertisements and candidate visits coincides with the less glamorous competition of get-out-the-vote organizational efforts. Rove and Mehlman, in appearances before GOP delegations last week, repeatedly emphasized that while the election is roughly 60 days away, one of its most crucial deadlines was only a month off -- the last day for voter registration in most states.

Rove cited GOP research showing that the roughly one in three adults who are not registered have similar demographic profiles to those who are. Thus, one of the campaign's more immediate tasks is to try to boost registration in areas and among groups that history suggests will favor Republicans.

In Pennsylvania as in other targeted states, that effort started in late winter, with each county organized at the grass roots to recruit new voters and volunteers for the nuts and bolts of generating turnout.

"Our volunteers have goals to meet, it's measured," said Gromis. "When you sign them up, you ask them to find five more voters, man phone banks, help ID voters, write a letter to the editor to help our echo chamber out there in your county."

Rove said the campaign had already identified more than 57,000 key voters in Pennsylvania alone. Gromis said the ambitious effort was spurred in part in reaction to the Democrat's highly successful turnout operation in the 2000.

"There are so many different messages out there from so many different groups in so many different mediums; there's so much clutter out there that people don't know what to believe," said Gromis. "So who are they likely to believe? They're going to believe their relatives, people they go to church with, their co-workers."

To that end, the GOP is well into organizing volunteers for as many as possible of the state's real precincts, but also for "virtual precincts," networks of personal church and work-based associations in which a "virtual precinct captain," is charged with prodding people to register and vote either on Election Day or by absentee ballot, or in some states, through early voting. The National Annenberg Election Survey found that roughly 15 percent of votes cast in 2000 were registered by such methods.

The Bush campaign, like its Democratic counterpart, is making a major push to expand their absentee totals this year. Many Pennsylvania voters, for example, have already received automated calls with a recording of Bush's voice telling them that they will soon receive an absentee ballot request in the mail and urging them to return it when they do.

On Election Day, Gromis said, the GOP will have workers at as many polling places as possible, distributing literature, but, more importantly, scrutinizing voter rolls through the day. "We'll be finding out who hasn't voted yet; we'll be calling them up, saying, "You only have four more hours, please get out there."

These combined efforts of television advertising, candidate time and grass roots networking are now spread among the 19 or so states not already locked up by one campaign or the other. Gromis said to expect the GOP to engage in some political triage by the end of the month, narrowing the targeted focus.

"It will be solidifying pretty soon; a few are going to fall off," said Gromis. "I think you'll go into October with up to maybe 10 states," still considered genuine battlegrounds. She said Pennsylvania is certain to be among them.

"It'll be close here to the end," she predicted. She suggested that the states where the race will be competitive until the final days were likely also to include Ohio, West Virginia, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Oregon, Missouri and New Hampshire.

Until Bush 41 and 43 came along, the only other family to produce father and son presidents were the Adams, sending John and John Quincy Adams to the White House. Both served only one term.

From now until Nov. 2, the Republicans and their allies will devote millions of dollars and countless campaign working hours to ensure that the Bush family doesn't share that legacy.