Bob Kolasky is the managing editor of IntellectualCapital.com. His e-mail address is bob@voxcap.com

PHILADELPHIA -- Republican loyalists have come to the City of Brotherly Love to nominate a popular big-state governor as the party's choice for president. The nominee, who withstood a more difficult than expected primary challenge from an energetic upstart reformer, is the odds-on favorite to be elected in November, despite the fact that he is running against an administration that has led the country through a period of economic good times. One x-factor is what role prominent third- and fourth-party challenges -- from both the right and left -- will play in the election. Also, adding some excitement is the maturation of a popular new media, looking toward the GOP convention as a prime opportunity to gain legitimacy for its news coverage.

Sounds like a pretty accurate description of what to expect this week in Philadelphia, right? But to political historians that scenario sounds familiar, as well. On the surface, there are more than a few similarities between the 2000 campaign and that of 1948, which was the last time the Republican Party convened in Philadelphia to nominate its candidate for president. Rep. Amo Houghton (R-NY), who is the only current member of Congress who attended the 1948 Republican convention remembers a "cocky" party in Philadelphia.

The 1948 example

The President told the crowd: "That is one for the books!"

Back then it was Thomas Dewey, popular governor of New York, who had withstood a rough primary fight against young Minnesotan Harold Stassen to earn the right to challenge incumbent President Harry S. Truman in November. Dewey presided over an optimistic Republican convention -- the first to have significant television coverage -- that ended with a party united firmly in the belief that it had just endorsed the next president. The existence of the unorthodox candidacies of the Progressive Party's Henry Wallace and the Dixiecrat's Strom Thurmond only added to the confidence of Dewey supporters. As Zachary Karabell writes in his new book about the 1948 election, The Last Campaign, "the mood during the 1948 convention had been triumphant."

There is no better word to describe the mood this week in Philadelphia than "triumphant." Everywhere you go, everyone you talk to seems to express the same sentiment. George W. Bush is a winning candidate. One of the challenges for reporters covering political conventions is to not be too consumed by what you are seeing and hearing -- there are, after all, thousands of quite partisan Republicans who have converged on Philadelphia this week, and it is not surprising that they would be optimistic about their party's chances. Still, this feels like a party that expects to win, and in that regard it must feel similar to how the Republican convention felt back in 1948.

In that year, Dewey had a double-digit lead in the polls in mid-summer and Truman's approval ratings were well less than 50%. Among the political elite -- elected officials, newspaper reporters and the nascent class of media pundits -- there was no question that Dewey would be elected in November. The major polling firms of the day -- Gallup, Roper and Crossley -- all predicted that Dewey would win by 5% or more. Elmo Roper, the head of Roper's polling operation, famously announced in early September that Roper was discontinuing presidential polling because the election already was decided.

Roper and all the rest were forced to eat crow. Truman came back and won by more than 2.5 million votes and 100 electoral votes. Neither Wallace nor Thurmond managed to crack the 3% mark. In his book The Loneliest Campaign, Irwin Ross quotes Time magazine's apology for its own poor prediction, as well as the media as a whole's.

The press was morally guilty on several counts. It was guilty of pride: It had assumed that it knew allthe important facts without sufficiently checking them. It was guilty of laziness and wishful thinking: It had failed to do its own doorbell-ringing and bush-beating; it had delegated its journalist's job to the pollsters.

The real comeback kid

Historical records of the 1948 election show that Dewey -- worn out after a tough battle to secure the nomination and believing that he had a commanding lead -- played defense between the Republican convention and Election Day. He spent much of his time and energy, both rhetorically and practically, mapping out how he planned to govern. His basic message was honed and perfected but not necessarily elaborated upon. He ran a campaign that largely ignored his opponent, almost as if he was an incumbent seeking re-election.

In the meantime, Truman found his groove as the summer came to an end and the fall began. Railing against a "do-nothing" Congress, the incumbent president assumed a populist tone as he tacked to the left to demonstrate to the frayed New Deal coalition that he would fight for them.

The record shows that sometime after Labor Day, the voters began to respond, and the crowds and energy surrounding Truman picked up considerably. Karabell said in an interview with IC that there were plenty of signs that Truman had captured the momentum but that professional political observers largely ignored them. Thus the post-election picture of a grinning Truman holding a copy of the now-famously incorrect Chicago Tribune headline, "Dewey Defeats Truman."

'Give 'em Heck'

So could 2000 be 1948 all over again? Probably not.

For one thing, the art of political polling has improved considerably. Frank Newport, Gallup's current editor, says what went wrong in 1948 is that Gallup and other polling companies did not allow for voters who were changing their minds. Today, Newport says any change in voter opinion would be noted quickly. This more accurate, and more frequent, polling means that presidential campaigns are constantly refining their strategy -- something the Dewey campaign failed to do.

Still, there are lessons for Bush in Dewey's experience. Bush is a packaged candidate, Karabell says, "in the mold that was established by Dewey." The Bush campaign's devotion to message control is reminiscent of the Dewey campaign's and might hold a risk for the Texas governor.

In his book, Karabell describes the Dewey campaign. "Dewey perfected the art of the managed campaign," wrote Karabell. "In his view, the stakes were so high that he would leave as little as he could to chance and fate. That meant minimizing risk and avoiding sharp edges." Those labels aptly describe the Bush campaign thus far; there likely will not be many "sharp edges" this week from the First Union Center podium.

Bush's post-convention challenge will be to keep his momentum going and not the send the message that he is overconfident. "Complacency is a risk for Bush," Karabell says. Already, the Texas governor has sent some signals that he is confident he will be elected president. The choice of Dick Cheney as his running mate -- one that has been labeled by many political observers as a "governing" choice rather than a "campaigning" one -- is evidence that Bush is feeling politically secure.

The lesson from the Dewey campaign is that no presidential candidate can afford to focus on serving at the expense of getting elected. Bush, who is going to spend all week basking in the glory of being the unanticipated Prodigal Son, needs to remember that campaigns are fought in September and October, not August. He might not be running against "Give 'em Hell" Harry Truman, but he can be sure that Gore's campaign advisers have spent some time studying the 1948 election, and that Al Gore will be prepared to "give 'em heck" come this fall.