It is Labor Day, 1995. The GOP candidates are loping along, droopy and uninspired. Bob Dole, still the front runner, seems tired and crotchety; he’s sick of bouncing around in small planes, sick of the never-ending effort to appear younger, and more conservative, than he actually is. Phil Gramm has offended just about everybody; Lamar Alexander has impressed just about nobody. California’s Pete Wilson remains a more attractive concept than a political reality; Colin Powell is having too much fun selling his autobiography to seriously consider politics. The other declared candidates are podium fodder. The party faithful are restless, dissatisfied. No one seems to be making the arguments that won the 1994 election – at least, not with any passion or conviction. Ohhhh, the faithful sigh, if only someone like Newt were running. “If that’s the scenario,” says GOP strategist William Kristol, “it’s hard to imagine why Newt wouldn’t.”

This is a widely held belief. Newt Gingrich won’t be able to resist temptation. He will run for president in 1996. It may be the second most widely held belief among Republican cognoscenti. Most still think Bob Dole will gather enough steam to deter all comers and stagger to the nomination. And he may well, though no one seems very thrilled about it. Dole has been making all the right moves. His campaign seems organized, for once. His recent announcement tour was a success where it counted – among the believers, especially the family-values folks, who were surprised and thrilled that he decided to trash Hollywood and cultural rot. No one actually thinks Dole cares about “values” issues; nor do supply-siders – the GOP’s other radioactive cluster-think he really wants to cut taxes. But he’s making an effort to please, which is more than can be said of, say, Phil Gramm, who has had a series of disastrous private sessions with religious conservatives: “Come-to-Jesus meetings where he didn’t come,” according to one activist.

So it’s Dole by default, for the moment – a candidate of pragmatism, dignity and experience in a party that desperately wants a tent show. “There’s a real feeling that this is our time, we have the intellectual and political and social momentum – and then you look at our candidates and not one of them can make both the economic and social sides of the argument in a way that would really please party activists,” says an unaffiliated Republican.

Newt could. Even people who don’t like him think so. Yes, his “negatives” are high in the polls, but that will only endear him to the carnivores who vote in Republican primaries. And yes, he does tend to be mouthy, undisciplined and mercurial – which can be disastrous in the intense scrutiny of a presidential campaign, a nightmare for the political technicians who dominate the process and demand that their candidates remain “on message.” But this has not been a good decade for political technicians. Tactical, niche-seeking candidates seem transparent nowadays. Gingrich comes across as impassioned and unfettered, even when he’s marching to a pollster’s drum – as he was with the “Contract With America.” He seems a leader.

In a way, it would be a shock if Gingrich didn’t run. He has owned America politics for the past six months. “Newt Gingrich has been acting more like the president of the United States than the president himself,” Lamar Alexander said before Oklahoma City. And it was true. Gingrich’s prime-time speech at the end of the hundred days prepared with the help of old Reagan hands like Ken Duberstein, Mike Deaver and speechwriter Landon Parvin – seemed far more convincing than anything Clinton had done since the election. Even the attacks Gingrich has suffered since the bombing – DID NEWT DO IT? was a New Republic headline last week – have only served to reinforce his position as leader of his party, the most likely candidate to make the case against Bill Clinton. “This may be a false spring for liberals,” he said last week. “Oklahoma City doesn’t mean Americans are suddenly going to want big government.”

Will he do it? Sitting in his Georgia congressional office, Gingrich was his usual egregious self. He talked about “Rob Roy” (which he compared, unfavorably, to “The Last of the Mohicans”). He talked about Wellington’s Peninsula campaign (the model for Newt’s next hundred days). He talked about balancing the budget, which he intends to do between now and Labor Day. “It will be the most horrendous summer of my life,” he said. “It’ll be a miracle if I’m still standing come Labor Day,” He did not talk about the presidency.

But he is, clearly, not uninterested – even though he formally removed himself from the race a month ago. He can unremove himself; and will, I suspect . . . if he can move a drastic seven-year budget-balancing plan through the House; and if, come fall, Bob Dole is vulnerable. The speaker doesn’t have to be told that a Clinton-Gingrich tussle would be the most entertaining presidential campaign imaginable. He doesn’t have to be told that it would offer the American public a clear, compelling – and perhaps necessary – debate over the future of the country. He doesn’t have to be told that when you’re hot in American politics, you go. He’ll go. My guess is. he’ll be in Iowa by Thanksgiving.