THE DAY AFTER BOB DOLE RESIGNED his Senate seat, he made his first post- resurrection campaign appearance, at a rally in Chicago. That evening in Washington I happened to be at a gathering of Republicans who could barely contain their delight. Conversations went like so:
“Did you see Dole in Chicago? It was terrific?
Really? What did he say?
“He took off his tie! He looked great — relaxed, totally in command. An open-necked shirt!”
Great. What did he say?
“Oh, the usual. He looked great. He took off his tie!”
After the long, depressive slumber of spring, the removal of a tie was more than enough to launch a weary Dole supporter into rapture. But the worries resurfaced quickly — especially the worry that the candidate might find himself at last with the attention of American voters but nothing to say.
The weekend after the resignation, Dole said he looked forward to a series of speeches on the road: “I can go out and define who Bob Dole really is, what his ideas are and his agenda and his so-called vision for America.” He delivered his first major address on Tuesday, May 21, before a group of business leaders in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. The subject was welfare reform, and perhaps owing to its gravity he wore a tie. Fond du Lac is the site of one of Gov. Tommy Thompson’s pilot programs to move welfare recipients off the rolls and into the job market, offering them subsidized child care and job training in the bargain.
It was a day trip, meaning Dole left Washington in the morning and returned by nightfall. Day trips are cheaper than overnighters — an important consideration for the cash-strapped campaign. They also guarantee a large turnout of reporters, who would much rather file a story in the afternoon and be home in time for cocktails. Dole’s trip to Wisconsin was thus especially well covered by press hounds eager to see evidence of the transformed campaigner.
From last summer on, the beef against Dole the candidate has been comprehensive. Not only did he have nothing to say — no vision, so-called or otherwise — but he probably couldn’t say it even if he did. His speeches during the primary were for the most part long, extemporaneous rambles, sometimes bordering on incoherence. His staff began furnishing him with ” talking points,” little outlines with turns of phrase and relevant bits of information meant to channel his improvisations into a coherent sequence. It didn’t work. From one event to the next, he moved about in a bodyguard of elected officials, an advance guard of august fellow-senators, a cadre of commissioners to the rear. The symbolism was disastrous: Dole as the anointed candidate of the dread establishment, removed from the common folk — a government guy in an anti-government age.
When Dole’s plane landed in Wisconsin, however, he descended the gangway in the company only of Tommy Thompson. He had lunch at the Brenner Tank Company in Fond du Lac, where several of the beneficiaries of Thompson’s program are now employed. He mingled easily and ate the ham and cheese sandwiches without complaint. When a woman on the shop floor told him he “smelled nice,” Dole replied: “It’s good clean Republican aftershave.”
Dole has always been good at working through a crowd one by one; he is genuinely witty and self-deprecating and at ease. It is in his public presentations that he can now prove himself to be a stronger, more disciplined campaigner, and if his speech in Fond du Lac is an indication, the transformation has begun. Dole’s speech summarized his party’s already- familiar ideas about welfare — an attack on the Great Society as ” liberalism’s greatest shame” and a call for wholesale devolution of power and money to the states, with federal encouragement for freewheeling experimentation. But the speech was spare and economical, alternately tough, sensitive, and on occasion funny. He had, in other words, something to say — a vision! — and he said it with some skill, and minimum clutter, as he had in his much-praised resignation speech the week before.
Skeptics will credit the speechwriters and his use of a TelePrompTer for what might be merely a superficial and temporary change in the candidate’s style. The prompter, a device rarely used on the campaign trail, is proving unusually helpful to Dole, whose disability makes it almost impossible for him to handle the 4-by-6 cards politicians generally use when speaking on the stump.
The prompter has another virtue — it attaches Dole to the text and discourages his ad libs. And the ad libs are still a problem. They sometimes threaten to lead him up that same California highway President Reagan took in his alarming first debate with Walter Mondale in 1984.
At one point, for example, Dole’s prepared text read: “We must do everything possible to ensure that child support payments go to those who deserve them.” After speaking the words, the government guy began winging it. “And it ought to be done,” he said. “We’ve been working on it for, oh, 10, 15, 20 years. Started out a long time ago — with Sen. Long in the Senate Finance Committee.” The first hints of puzzlement stirred through the audience. “Sen. Long, when he was chairman, from the great state of Louisiana. ”
Three months ago, Dole would have continued in this vein: “Good friend of mine. Democrat, but . . . he brought up the motion to recommit. A great idea. Trying to get it done. That’s what it’s about in Congress. Getting things done . . .” and on and depressingly on.
In Fond du Lac, though, Dole restrained himself and returned to the text — to his message. His willingness to use a prompter regularly after so many years, and to respect the offerings of speechwriters, may indeed signal nothing more profound than a momentary shift in technique. But it just as likely demonstrates a new realism on Dole’s part, to repeat a message over and over, as often as necessary, to discipline himself against his own deficiencies, to defer to advisers when deference is the best way to advance his own interests. Maybe. He got good stories out of it in the next day’s press.
After the speech, back on the plane, there was a delay in takeoff. As reporters milled restlessly about, word spread that Dole had appeared from the front of the plane and was standing on the gangway. An impromptu press availability? Photographers scurried out the back of the plane and around to the front. Dole stood on the stairs in his bright blue shirt, smiling, arms folded, head tilted back to catch the sun. There was no press availability; no reason to step on his own story. He just waved at the hacks, looking relaxed — tanned, God knows, and rested, and maybe, at long last, ready too.
