MIAMI – So now, following the first presidential debate, the battle for the White House is looking very retro. It’s the election of 1980 versus the election of 1988.

John Kerry’s camp is hoping to emulate the success of Ronald Reagan by engineering a rerun of 1980, when the challenger – widely suspected by voters as lacking the right stuff to be commander in chief – sought to topple incumbent Jimmy Carter, who was plagued by the seemingly intractable Iranian hostage crisis. Reagan used his debate with Carter to successfully raise his commander profile, and Friday’s initial polls indicate that Kerry’s debate performance may have boosted his standing among skeptical voters.

But President Bush’s camp is still driving the 1988 campaign model, seeking to undercut the commander credentials of this year’s Massachusetts Democrat in the same manner that the senior George Bush impugned the last Massachusetts Democrat, Michael Dukakis – with visual ridicule (the Kerry wind-surfing TV ad is this year’s version of the Dukakis military tank ad) and with the argument, invoked often in Thursday’s debate, that the opponent is too weak to fight America’s enemies.

So which model will ultimately prevail? The outcome may well hinge on unforeseen events – and future duels. Kerry and Bush will meet again, Friday night in St. Louis, where voters in a “town hall” setting can ask about the domestic issues that are generally viewed as Democratic staples. Still, there is ample historical evidence to suggest that first debates, which generally draw the largest audiences, also leave the strongest impressions.

And, at least among the professional observers, those first impressions are kind to Kerry, in much the same way that Reagan earned praise in the wake of the 1980 debate for presenting himself as a prospective leader.

Norman Ornstein, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, says: “Kerry crossed an important bar. More people can now see him as president. Go back to that 1980 debate. Before that event, Reagan was widely seen as a nut case who was too dangerous to deal with the Soviet Union. The election seemed like it was a referendum on the challenger. But he stood up there with Carter and he didn’t seem like he was a lesser figure. He held his own, he didn’t falter, didn’t look nervous. He turned the race back to being a referendum on the incumbent.

“Kerry looked like he belonged up there, and that could be enough for a lot of people to say, “He looks like he knows what he’s talking about.’ If a challenger can convince voters that he’s a safe harbor, it puts the scrutiny back on the incumbent. Persuadable voters will now take a second look at this race. This debate put Kerry back in the game. That’s the best he could’ve done.”

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Back in 1980, President Carter repeatedly used two adjectives to describe Reagan – “dangerous” and “disturbing” – and at times he seemed annoyed that he was sharing the same stage with a pretender. But television is an impressionistic medium, and Reagan’s demeanor and delivery didn’t match those harsh descriptions. Similarly, on Thursday night, even though Kerry was repeatedly painted by Bush as too irresolute for the job, Kerry’s comportment – as well as his success in controlling the flow of debate – has struck even some of his harshest critics as commanding.

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It’s significant that former pollster Dick Morris, a foreign-policy hawk who generally praises Bush and castigates Kerry, offered this assessment in the aftermath of Thursday’s debate: “Kerry looked presidential, collected and, above all, strong and confident. If you’d seen the two men without knowing which was the president and which the candidate, you’d have guessed wrong. Kerry looked like the guy in charge.”

The Kerry camp, clearly satisfied on Friday that their man had passed the commander test, were putting out the word that Bush seemed “childish,” “agitated” and “annoyed” by the unfriendly questions. Maybe that’s just Democratic spin – but Morris agrees with it: “Bush seemed disengaged, distracted and, at times, even bored.”

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In a debate, however, cosmetics aren’t everything. It’s not enough for a successful candidate to exude an air of command; the imagery has to be buttressed by an argument that resonates with viewers.

Reagan’s effective contention, in 1980, was that Carter had not sufficiently battled the nation’s enemies (the Iranians and Soviets); Kerry’s contention, which undoubtedly will be heard again in St. Louis, is that Bush’s war in Iraq has weakened America by diverting attention from the nation’s worst enemies. Bush failed to fully refute the charge; he didn’t dispute Kerry’s assertion that as many as 40 nations had more nuclear weapon capability than Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. And he failed to dispute Kerry’s repeated charge that he allowed Osama bin Laden to escape from Tora Bora by “outsourcing” that battle to Afghan troops – even though Kerry was exaggerating, because there’s no irrefutable evidence that bin Laden was actually on site.

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Indeed, Kerry’s performance was hardly flawless, and it’s clear that, during the post-debate spin phase and the pre-St. Louis debate spin phase, Republicans will stick with their 1988 model and contend that Dukakis’ former lieutenant governor lacks the credibility to command. (In 1988, the senior Bush was referring to Dukakis when he said that America’s enemies don’t respect “weakness.” The other night, the younger Bush said that, unlike Kerry, he would not show “weakness.”)

In 1988 and again this year, says independent pollster John Zogby, the Bush game plan has been simple: “You try and make the Republican candidate more salable by undercutting and ridiculing the Democratic opponent.”

That’s what happened in August 1988, when the GOP and its allies ran TV ads painting Dukakis as an unpatriotic wimp (charges that Dukakis was slow to refute); and in August of this year, when anti-Kerry Vietnam vets, using seed money from Texas Republicans, painted Kerry as an unpatriotic liar (charges that Kerry was slow to refute).

The GOP will continue to argue that Kerry’s penchant for nuance is a symptom of weakness and a disqualifier for the presidency. Early Friday morning, Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman – shrugging off an instant Gallup Poll that showed a strong Kerry victory in the debate – insisted that the plan remains the same: “Kerry came into the debate with a credibility gap, and now it’s a credibility chasm.”

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Mehlman sees opportunity on several fronts. On the one hand, Kerry didn’t back away from his recent assertion that Iraq is “the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time”; referring to Iraq during the debate, he said it was “a mistake of judgment to go there.” On the other hand, when Kerry was later asked whether U.S. troops are dying for a mistake (as Kerry said in 1971 about the troops in Vietnam), the candidate replied, “No.”

Mehlman sees that as fresh evidence of Kerry’s irresolution. And he highlighted another Kerry line that might be grist for new Republican attacks: “I’ve never wilted in my life. And I’ve never wavered in my life.” That line, he believes, doesn’t square with the nuanced Kerry record that Bush will continue to denounce.

Meanwhile, the Bush team hasn’t indicated whether Bush will retool his performance; they’re sticking with the same adjectives, saying that Bush appeared resolute, strong and steadfast, and will look that way in St. Louis.

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The risk for Bush in St. Louis, however, is that domestic issues will dominate – and, on that turf, Kerry is less vulnerable to the GOP’s “flip-flop” tag. Moreover, if more voters are now willing to vet Kerry as an acceptable commander in chief, they may be more receptive to his domestic proposals anyway. That’s one reason pollster Zogby says that the 1980 model is now alive and well for the Kerry camp.

“Undecided voters had made up their minds about the incumbent; in my last poll, a majority was willing to look at someone new. But their thinking was, “Who is this tall guy, anyway?’ But now Kerry has set the table for getting back to parity,” Zogby said, and undecideds generally break for the challenger. They broke for Reagan late in the 1980 campaign.

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But either model is still possible, he says, because so many swing voters are still torn. Case in point: Zogby was on a plane the other day, sitting beside a law-enforcement officer, and they talked politics. Zogby asked for a candidate preference, and the man said, “I honestly don’t know.”

Zogby said, “I have a gun at your head, and you have 10 seconds to answer.”

The officer said, “Then you’re going to have to kill me.”

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