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.
“We couldn’t go into the convention with those things ill-defined,” says Scott Reed, Dole’s campaign manager. “We couldn’t go to San Diego without the abortion plank settled.” Now, Dole strategists believe they’ll avert a floor fight at the convention over abortion. More broadly, another Dole strategist says, “we want there to be a clear stage [at the convention] without a lot of underbrush. So we’re trying to put our house in order prior to San Diego.”
The trouble is that Dole, as a presidential candidate, doesn’t do anything crisply and cleanly. Take the ban on assault weapons. Dole regarded his opposition to the ban as a political liability in the race against President Clinton. But when he was supposed to announce he wouldn’t seek to repeal the ban, Dole balked. Instead, he declared in a July 9 speech in Richmond, Virginia, “We’ve moved beyond the debate over banning assault weapons.” The next day, it was left to Dole spokesman Nelson Warfield to clarify Dole’s statement. Repealing the ban, he said, “is no longer on [Dole’s] agenda.” Dole didn’t finally put the issue to rest until he told CNN’s Larry King on July 15 that he won’t challenge the ban.
On abortion, Dole announced a compromise, then backed away from it, then returned to it. “It’s one thing if Dole had made a smooth, seamless move to avoid a civil war over abortion,” says a Dole adviser. “But this was klutzy.” Dole first announced that language declaring the GOP’s “tolerance” of dissenting views would be included in the party platform. This received a favorable reaction, even from pro-choice Republicans like Gov. Christine Whitman of New Jersey. But Dole soon said the tolerance language must be placed in the abortion plank itself. Pro-lifers erupted. So Dole settled for a separate tolerance plank. This time, pro-choice Republicans weren’t as happy, and neither were pro-lifers. The phrase “personal conscience” in the new plank suggested to some pro-lifers that Dole was diluting the anti- abortion plank. So, should pro-lifers muster strong opposition, the Dole campaign will eliminate the phrase. “It’s no big deal,” says a senior campaign official.
On coping with the gender gap, Dole is obsessive. “He’s terrified by the huge gender-gap numbers,” says an adviser. “It’s not the usual gendergap numbers.” Dole aides peg the permanent, structural gap at 10 to 12 percentage points. In other words, if 40 percent of American men identify as Republicans, only 28 to 30 percent of women do. But by late July, after Dole bickered with Katie Couric on the Today show and quibbled over whether tobacco is addictive, the gap for Dole’s candidacy had reached 25 to 30 points.
Dole almost botched his first stab at shrinking the gap: his naming of Rep. Susan Molinari of New York as the convention keynote speaker. Dole and his staff had talked over the possibility. In fact, the campaign’s convention team had pinpointed her as the top choice by late June. But naming her was only an “option” when Dole showed up for a TV interview with Larry King. Dole announced the selection of Molinari anyway. She hadn’t been told, but Republican officials tracked her down in Buffalo, New York, by contacting the beeper of her husband, Rep. Bill Paxon of New York. Thus, she was summoned to the phone in time to be heard on CNN bailing out Dole. “Thank heavens for beepers,” says a Dole aide. This prompted another aide to call the Dole Campaign “a conspiracy of one.”
The tapping of Molinari drew praise from Republican moderates, but not as much as the naming of a centrist as Dole’s vice-presidential running mate would. In discussions with advisers, Dole has talked up Powell, Whitman, and Gov. Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania. But Dole aides insist he’s given up on Powell and won’t under any circumstances pick Whitman. Her endorsement of President Clinton’s veto of the ban on partial-birth abortion makes selecting her too risky. “Partial-birth is going to be a big [Dole] issue this fall,” says a top Dole adviser.
With the abortion plank and Dole’s stand on assault weapons settled, and with Molinari set as keynoter and Powell as a speaker on the convention’s opening night, the Dole camp thinks it’s ready for a smooth, effective convention, one dramatically different from the 1992 convention in Houston. Dole’s acceptance speech, drafted with considerable help from novelist Mark Helprin, is already written. And Dole aides have a scheme for keeping TV cameras from dwelling on shots of wild-eyed, frothing Republicans on the convention floor. Speakers will not drone on. Rather, there’ll be short speeches, often followed by video presentations and interviews with voters and Dole supporters. The idea is to keep the cameras riveted on ever-changing activity on the podium. Who knows? It may work.
by Fred Barnes
