‘Hatchet Man’ Image Must Stay Buried : Dole Walks Fine Line in Attacking Bush

Now that George Bush isn’t behaving like a wimp, can Bob Dole keep from acting like a bully?

In a Republican presidential race that had fewer thrills than a luncheon of bond attorneys, the GOP version of the Democrats’ “character” question has acquired great weight.

The occasion is the vice president’s abrupt shift last week to the political offensive, in apparent reaction to the Kansas senator’s growing support in the crucial early primary states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

Bush’s attacks have ranged from verbal pokes at the press to jibes at Dole’s Senate record to demands that his rivals release their tax returns. They seem tailored to counter Dole’s claim that he is the strong Republican who is “one of us” average Americans--and that, by implication, Bush is not.

The ticklish question is how Dole, until now the owner of the GOP franchise on street toughness, will respond.

Careful Campaign Strategy

“I think there’s a danger,” former Labor Secretary William E. Brock III, Dole’s campaign chairman, said Friday before the GOP candidates’ debate in Des Moines. “We have to be very careful, very factual, very accurate” in openly criticizing Bush.

To be tame would be to abandon a clever campaign strategy that polls indicate has already wrested the lead from Bush in Iowa, where caucuses take place Feb. 8.

But to strike back hard would risk reviving the image of Dole as hatchet man--the mean-spirited vice presidential candidate who nearly became a drag on Gerald R. Ford’s failed bid for the White House in 1976.

The dilemma is aggravated by poll results showing that many undecided Republicans like both candidates. They suggest that Dole somehow must knock down his rival without inspiring sympathy for him.

For Dole, who has spent recent years training his nimble but sometimes brutal wit, that is a thankless task. He seemed undecided how to respond when Bush took the first jabs at his leadership record last week.

“He’s got his agents out attacking me,” Dole said at one stop, speaking to New Hampshire Kiwanis, “and I try to be a nice guy, as I normally am.” But in the next breath he labeled Bush’s White House job “indoor work, no heavy lifting,” and compared him with “that Maytag repairman who sits there waiting, year after year, for the phone to ring.”

“We’re not sniping,” he said, tongue plainly in cheek. “We’re actually really good friends.”

Homespun Image Promoted

In races where the proportion of undecided voters is as high as 40%, Dole has scored heavily with a stock speech, dubbed “rural, roots and Russell,” that sculpts him as the common man’s Republican.

Almost every sentence implies an unfavorable parallel with Bush: Dole grew up in rural Russell, Kan. (not on a Connecticut estate). Dole went to public (not private) schools. He entered politics by accident (not because his father was a U.S. senator). He was wounded in World War II and had to struggle with a disability (rather than emerging from the war with a guaranteed job and money).

“Not many of us started at the top and stayed there,” Dole told an Ankeny, Iowa, crowd on Friday, in a typical performance. “Most everyone in this audience had to come up the hard way. . . . That’s where the real America is, and that’s where the real Americans are.”

In the view of Dole’s aides, the scene this winter has been helped by Bush’s tendency to say the wrong thing, or to say the right thing awkwardly, in critical situations.

Bush’s Weak Spot

Bush’s inability to explain his role in the Iran-Contra scandal, including his office’s belated revisions of the chronology of his meetings with key figures in the affair, seems likely to dog him for months to come.

Even the vice president’s offensive of last week sputtered at the start, when he served notice to Dole that he was firing verbal “silk worms” (a Communist Chinese-made missile) across his bow.

“I wish he’d buy American,” Dole retorted.

But Bush was well prepared for his assault on his critics during the GOP debate Friday in Des Moines, and his campaign aides were elated at his performance.

His demand during the debate that Dole and others make public their tax returns was clearly a no-lose gamble for Bush, since he is required by law to do so, but Dole has not replied.

In Dallas on Saturday to address a hall filled with Texas conservatives, Dole was forced to answer questions about a minor scandal over forged signatures on petitions supporting his candidacy. He also dodged questions about his tax returns, and for the first time last week, if only momentarily, he seemed to be on the defensive.

He is unlikely to remain so, if only because Dole is said to like a good brawl. Press Secretary Mari Maseng said that Bush’s attacks make him “fair game” for Dole.

Shift on Contra Issue

In fact, Dole shifted last week from a bona fide no-comment stand on Bush’s Iran-Contra travails to a demand that the vice president release all his documents on the affair except those covered by national security.

Other campaign officials said Dole is likely to continue questioning Bush’s Iran-Contra dealings, his stance on the federal deficit and other matters where Bush is viewed as weak.

“Feeling is, he’s going to run the kind of campaign he wants to run, not what some consultant or guru tells him to,” said Tom Rath, one of Dole’s New Hampshire advisers.

Aides said that a shift in Dole’s tactics was inevitable as the first primaries approached and voters began to pay serious attention to the differences between candidates instead of relying on impressions.

Still, in a two-man race in which even Brock allows that “there are not a lot of philosophical differences,” the days of easy pickings for Dole may be ending.

“We can’t count on stumbles; you can’t do that in a campaign,” Brock said. “You’ve got to run the campaign to sell the candidate on his own merits.”