The most extraordinary campaign that it wasn’t

The two candidates for president, their boosters and detractors have spent more than $1.5 billion in the White House contest, a record sum. The attack advertising began in March and never let up. And it is Democrats, not Republicans, who have sought to exploit pictures of the president’s flight-suit promenade—as a symbol, in their view, of miscalculation rather than triumph in the Iraq war.

Even Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political adviser, has expressed second thoughts about the ‘‘Mission Accomplished’’ banner strung overhead. But that should be no surprise by now. This most unpredictable of campaigns has demolished any number of truths the political cognoscenti once held to be self-evident:

• The candidate in each major party who raises the most money in the year leading up to an election invariably wins the nomination. Tell that to Howard Dean, who easily outpaced his Democratic foes in cash contributions but won only one primary—in his home state of Vermont.

• Incumbent presidents win re-election—or lose—by substantial margins. Maybe. But that would mean a huge shift in sentiments one way or the other virtually overnight.

• Negative campaigning turns people off and drives down voter participation. Not judging by the long lines at early-voting sites and forecasts of the biggest turnout in more than a decade.

• The Democratic nominee will be buried in an avalanche of Republican dollars. In fact, Kerry has been awash in money, both the record-shattering sum he amassed and the many tens of millions raised by sympathetic groups.

• Big events—the conventions, the debates—will turn the race decidedly in favor of one candidate or another. ‘‘This has been a dead heat on a merry-go-round,’’ Democratic pollster Peter S. Hart said.

Few would have guessed that Republicans would see last-minute opportunity in traditionally Democratic Hawaii, or that Democrats would make a serious play for GOP-leaning Nevada and Colorado. How did the political intelligentsia get so much so wrong? ‘‘We’ve just never before seen such depth of emotion, such strongly held views on both sides that can override conventional rules of thumb,’’ said Charles Cook, publisher of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.

‘‘There is an exception to every rule, and this is an exceptional year.’’ But some things don’t change. Like, negative advertising. Many surmised that a new law requiring candidates to take responsibility for ad content—‘‘I’m George W. Bush, and I approve this message’’—would shame candidates into running fewer attack spots. But repeated studies have shown that voters have a high tolerance for negative advertising, as long as a candidate avoids what they see as ‘‘cheap shots’’. — LAT-WP