Politics 88 : New Hampshire Turnabout: Bush, Dole in Role Reversal

Photographers and television crews pressed against the restraining ropes at George Bush’s headquarters here the other day as the vice president sidled into the telephone bank to call and woo some voters.

He picked up the receiver, dialed a number and, a few rings later, the phone was answered--by a machine. The man who not long ago was clearly the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination left a message after the beep.

Some days--and in some campaigns--things just never go right. Ever since he was trounced last week in the Iowa caucuses, Bush has seemed like the man who ran over the cat and wrecked his car on the way to work, then spilled coffee on his suit.

If Bush looks hapless, Sen. Bob Dole, his main challenger, is batting 1.000. Dole’s big victory in Iowa, a surprise endorsement from Republican dropout Alexander M. Haig Jr. and a sizable improvement of his standing in the polls both here and nationwide have propelled the Kansas senator and his supporters on an emotional high.

‘Electricity in the Air’

“It’s a shot of Adrenalin, it puts electricity in the air,” said former Labor Secretary William E. Brock III, Dole’s national campaign chairman. “You come into town and people rush across the street to shake hands. The motivation of your workers goes sky high.”

Headliners on the political stage here all week, Dole and Bush visibly swapped roles as they crisscrossed New Hampshire stumping for votes in today’s primary. Bush, long the front-running prince of the GOP Establishment, became something of a pauper, desperately fumbling for a new identity and to regain the aura of invincibility he once enjoyed. Meanwhile, Dole the underdog was transformed into the man to beat, the candidate who tried to stay above the fray.

The road to the nomination and the White House, of course, is littered with the hopes of overconfident candidates dashed by surprise results in New Hampshire. Just ask Bush, who won in Iowa in 1980 and then lost his front-runner status by the time the New Hampshire primary rolled around.

For the last several days, at least, the breaks have been going Dole’s way, and it shows. There is a new timbre in his voice and a lilt to his step. His rallies have grown more vibrant as they have also grown in size. His speeches sizzle and his droll punch lines click.

Bigger Crowds for Dole

Nearly 1,200 people turned out for a Dole rally in Concord last week. That is more than twice the number of votes he received in the entire state back in 1980, when he first ran for President and finished last in the GOP primary.

For the first time in a long year of campaigning, the ever-cautious Dole on Monday grudgingly acknowledged that he might be pulling ahead of Bush, a somewhat risky bit of bravado should results fall short of expectations. “It feels good,” Dole told backers at a Moose Lodge in Dover. “Sometimes you can just tell by the feel.”

Bush’s feeling has to be a bit queasy these days. His once commanding lead of the Republican field has vanished and his once vaunted political organization seems in disarray.

On caucus night in Iowa, he dismissed the experience as a bad nightmare in an atypical state and said he looked forward to New Hampshire as “friendly territory.” Yet, by the weekend, he had stopped talking about what would happen “when” he won New Hampshire and was substituting the word if .

The Bush campaign, usually as regimented as a Marine Corps drill team, suddenly took on an impromptu air more akin to the cavalier crusade of Democrat Gary Hart.

A Hasty Image Transplant

Panicky Bush consultants tried to perform nothing short of an emergency identity transplant on the vice president’s Eastern Establishment image.

He shed his well-tailored suits in favor of slacks and a royal blue Windbreaker. Not a country club stop was booked on his schedule. He hung out at lumberyards and truck stops. He mingled often with voters and even made a habit of talking to reporters, things he had seemed loath to try before. His motorcade shrunk and on Thursday, the vice president’s limousine did the unthinkable: It stopped at a red light.

Bush jettisoned many of the trappings of incumbency in which he once luxuriated as he tried to shake the rigidity from his schedule and style in what one official of his organization described as a “touch me, see me, feel me” campaign.

There was Bush driving a forklift, Bush behind the wheel of a semi-trailer truck, Bush steering a snowplow, Bush pumping hands in a shopping mall. Good TV. Just a regular guy trying to do regular things--for the cameras.

Old Optimism Faded

Just as jarring as the visual change was the startling emotional departure from the brimming optimism long peddled by the candidate and his staff.

He tinkered with his message, too. He acknowledged a lack of eloquence and grace but insisted that it only masked a caring, subtly passionate persona.

By then it seemed too late to staunch the erosion of Bush’s once commanding lead in New Hampshire, and both the candidate and his aides began to consider publicly that they might lose a state they once considered to be in the bag.

“The way this is shaping up right now, it’s going to be a battle until June, and we’re prepared for that,” said Peter Teeley, a Bush spokesman. “If we don’t beat them sooner we’re going to beat them later.”

While Bush has been pressing, Dole has been loosey-goosey. Often gruff and razor-tongued, Dole’s mood has soared over the last week and a new sense of optimism has rippled through his campaign, aides say. Like a child in a candy store, Dole cannot sit still and fidgets nervously when he unexpectedly finds himself with slack time, as he did last Friday when a blizzard knocked his schedule for a loop.

“He’s joking, lighthearted, very upbeat,” said Mari Maseng of the Dole campaign.

From Snarls to Smiles

More importantly, perhaps, Dole has managed to contain the brooding, dark side of his character in the face of sharp assaults on his record and his integrity. On Capitol Hill, his slashing barbs and icy glares at opponents long ago prompted Senate staffers and reporters to characterize him as “Darth Vader” when he was in an ugly mood.

Darth, these days, has been replaced by a one-man quipping machine that turns back tough questions with a smile. Asked how he would deal with the plethora of state and local party officials across the country who had endorsed Bush, Dole said: “We have an amnesty plan.”

Bush, indeed, had drawn most of the big party names into his corner, yet in another reversal of roles, key endorsements of recent days--first Haig’s and then former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld’s--have gone to Dole.

Flanked by both men at a press conference Saturday, Dole beamed as they described him as far better suited to deal with tough foreign policy questions than Bush. Foreign affairs is considered the vice president’s long suit.

In fact, Dole has been smiling so much of late that he wondered aloud last week whether audiences might start asking: “Who is that babbling idiot up there?”