Oftentimes in politics, the name of the game is expectations, a time-honored strategy of boosting your opponent’s momentum, whether real or imagined, while downplaying your own chances. You hope to frighten your supporters into working hard for you, encourage your foes to sit on their laurels and set the stage for a stunning comeback on the eve of Election Day.

When it comes to gaming expectations for the coming congressional elections, President Bush and his party could be winning by losing. It’s like a roller coaster speeding downhill to gain enough force to get back on top. Oddly, Republican operatives do not dispute dire predictions of the party’s fate in November, forsaking their usual display of the skill, which well serves any good politician, to boldly assert confidence whether or not it is justified.

Such acquiescence in the prevailing view of a GOP meltdown suggests that there is a strategy afoot — one that, in the end, could sandbag overconfident Democrats and those in the news media who foresee dramatic change in the making. Still, the Republicans do not have much choice. They are doing what they can to make the best of a truly bad situation.

The hallmark of successfully playing the expectations game is knowing when to make the turn from the negative to the positive, finding that sweet spot where the roller coaster has gained just enough momentum going down to carry you all the way back up.

Right after Labor Day, Bush sounded the charge, and, not surprisingly, this week’s five-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 al Qaeda attacks could be the sweet spot he was looking for.

Knowing that the news media would swarm the airwaves and front pages with Sept. 11 remembrances, the White House prepared the way with a series of presidential speeches again seeking to redefine the unpopular war in Iraq as an extension of the fight against those who killed American citizens. And knowing that this effort to connect Iraq and Sept. 11 has failed in the past, the Bush team upped the ante with the president’s surprising Sept. 6 announcement of a plan to put some of those responsible for the attacks on trial.

Bush also acknowledged the existence of secret CIA interrogation prisons abroad, seemingly baiting Democratic opponents to criticize him for tough treatment of terrorists — a sure loser with most voters. While most Democrats wisely shied away, Bush managed to showcase a dramatic reminder of the hard-edged choices he makes to protect the country. Playing the underdog may be an old ruse for crafty politicians who are in much better shape than they want to let on, but for the White House and GOP lawmakers it is a tactic of necessity. By any objective measure — in the polls, on the issues or by the word on the street — they are in real danger of losing total control of Capitol Hill. Bush is giving them a last-ditch way of surviving the onslaught and staying in power.

Throughout the summer, the president’s political advisers and their Republican counterparts in Congress did little to discourage excited talk of a Democratic rebound in November, even allowing the possibility of a power shift. Such talk reached a fever pitch by Labor Day, as campaign trackers in the news media began heralding the probability, if not yet the certainty, of Republicans losing control of at least the House of Representatives.

If downplaying expectations is the strategy, then the GOP deployed it brilliantly. Either way, by design or happenstance, the party bought into the idea that this election favors the Democrats. In part, the lack of resistance from the Republican camp was a tacit recognition that its conservative base needed a scare.

In the eyes of many social and fiscal conservatives, the GOP-controlled Congress has not done enough to earn their enthusiasm for a positive message about what continued Republican rule will do for them — all the more reason, then, to get those voters hot and bothered about the prospects of things getting much worse with Democrats in power. Hence the frequent warnings about “San Francisco values” sweeping the nation if San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi were to become Speaker of the House.

Sept. 11 is a fitting time for this president to try to revive the popularity he enjoyed five years ago and convince voters that only he and his party should be trusted to take the fight to our enemies. And two months before the midterm election is a fitting time to signal a transition from trashing your own prospects to boldly asserting your credentials, with enough campaigning days left for the turnaround that a well-played game of expectations can produce.

The Republican predicament invokes a worthy maxim for politics, as well as for the rest of life: When you know you are heading for the bottom, hurry up and get there. The sooner you do, the more quickly you can push back up.

Contributing Editor Craig Crawford is a news analyst for MSNBC, CNBC and “The Early Show” on CBS. He can be reached at ccrawford@cq.com.