AT MONDAY STAFF MEETINGS of the Dole presidential campaign, no one tells Bob Dole any bad news. It’s like politiburo meetings in the dying days of the Soviet Union, says a Dole strategist, with aides chiming in with reports that “tractor production is up 400 percent.” One prominent Republican now refers to the Dole effort as “the Brezhnev campaign.” That’s kinder than the public criticism of Dole by his Republican allies — Jack Kemp, Sen. Al D’Amato of New York, Gen. Colin Powell, and Gov. George Voinovich of Ohio. Worse, Republicans insist they haven’t the foggiest idea what Dole’s strategy is. Only David Letterman professes to know: “Screwing up. . . . That’s it, that’s Bob Dole’s strategy. He’s acting presidential.”
That’s not it. But there really is a strategy, and Dole has been pursuing it with some success. Of course, he’s been extraordinarily clumsy. But Dole has gotten roughly to where he wants to be anyway. The strategy, aimed particularly at giving the GOP a moderate tinge, is to take troublesome social issues off the table prior to the Republican national convention in August — assault weapons, abortion, the notion underpinning the gender gap that Dole is indifferent to women’s interests. And Dole has largely accomplished this, though neither famously nor well.
