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WHILE THE GETTING'S GOOD The President looks and sounds like a loser, so his Administration is in disarray: the CIA is quarreling with Justice, the State Department is accused of dirty tricks, and James Baker is missing in action. No wonder Bush aides are preparing to flee like rats from a sinking ship.

THERE COMES A MOMENT IN ALL losing campaigns when the energy evaporates. Political operatives function primarily on adrenaline, carry-out food and the hope that "two more weeks of this and I'll have an office in the White House and clean underwear." But when the President goes to the Debate of His Life and keeps looking at his watch as if he had a much more important engagement elsewhere, there is no way for his minions not to lose heart. Trickle-down doom is inevitable when the candidate is physically present at the debates but is already mentally off at the Bush Library in Texas or on the links in Kennebunkport.

The White House is not the only place infected by fin de regime gloom. It looks as if much of the government has been left Home Alone, without an adult in sight, making do at best, wreaking havoc at worst and squabbling like children over who is to blame. FBI Director William Sessions finds himself under investigation for ethical violations -- the victim, says his wife, of a smear campaign by his enemies within the bureau. Meanwhile the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Justice are engaged in an unseemly fight over which one of them issued misleading information about an investigation of $4 billion in illegal loans to Saddam Hussein.

Over at the State Department, officials initially insisted that there was nothing unusual about their efforts to speed up Freedom of Information Act requests for records of Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton's youthful travels to Oslo and London -- even though such requests routinely take many months to process. Last week department spokesman Richard Boucher reversed himself, admitting that deviating from standard procedure was "clearly a mistake." But he blamed it on several unidentified "low-level people" and denied that political pressure had anything to do with the requests. That claim would be more convincing had it not followed another incident involving Clinton's State Department records. Two weeks ago, the Bush campaign spread rumors about alleged deletions from the Governor's passport file. An investigation by the FBI found no evidence of tampering.

Even the President's attempt to focus on the economy sends a mixed message: 1) The economy is doing far better than the Democrats say it is; 2) My economic team is working hard to make it better still; 3) But I'm firing all of them anyway, effective the day after the election. Not only has Bush let it be known that Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady, budget director Richard Darman and economic adviser Michael Boskin will be shown the door; he has also asked all presidential appointees to prepare letters of resignation.