TO OUR READERS

By BRUCE HALLETT PRESIDENT

The 1996 presidential campaign--the 19th TIME has covered--was not your typical race for the White House. There was no overarching issue, no sharp ideological division. The outcome, it seemed, was determined less by what Bill Clinton and Bob Dole said than by how they said it, and when.

So this year, rather than reconstruct the entire campaign from New Hampshire to the polling booth, we took a focused look at it through the eyes of the men and women who shaped each candidate's message: the political consultants and pollsters who tested and retested every word, every nuance before it passed either candidate's lips.

The result is a fascinating and somewhat chilling tale, produced in extraordinary collaboration by two of our savviest political analysts, senior writer Richard Stengel and senior correspondent Eric Pooley. "With Rick and Eric, you know you're going to get the story behind the story," says senior editor Priscilla Painton, who along with assistant managing editor Steve Koepp oversaw our election-issue package. "Eric burrows into a story and doesn't come back until he has every detail. Rick never loses sight of the big picture."

Collaboration is getting to be second nature for senior editor Nancy Gibbs and national political correspondent Michael Duffy, who co-wrote the preview of Clinton's second term that opens the package. This was the 11th political cover story in the past 18 months co-authored by Gibbs and Duffy (who, coincidentally, joined TIME on the same day in 1985). Other highlights of this week's issue include some familiar names and some unfamiliar juxtapositions: Jay Leno and Gloria Steinem offer the President some free advice; fallen campaign strategist Dick Morris urges Clinton to stick to the center in his second term; playwright Wendy Wasserstein has some light-hearted tips for the First Lady; Slate editor Michael Kinsley puts Clinton's victory in historical per-spective; and investigative reporter James Stewart explores how scandal could derail Clinton's second term.

On Election Day, the entire TIME staff was mobilized to rush these and all the other stories into print, working through Tuesday night and into Wednesday morning. If luck, distribution and the gods of technology are with us, this special issue of TIME, which would normally come out on Monday, will be on some newsstands as early as Wednesday night, less than 24 hours after the polls close.