Bob Dole

Re “Dole Gives Challengers Opening They Wanted,” Aug. 21:

It is not Sen. Bob Dole who gave the challengers the opening, nor is it the challengers who took the challenge that deserve attention. The whole system is in free fall--a deserving consequence of a laxity of those who care, mixed with what inevitably happens when a void in history is created by circumstances. Today’s void is the middle.

As a major contributor to the burgeoning new party of ABC (“Anyone but Clinton”) in the U.S., I speak to the good that Iowa’s straw vote did for all of us in the middle. With the President’s frenetic floppings in search of who best to imitate on the left, mixed with the rush-to-the-right as extolled by the not surprising Phil Gramm-Pat Buchanan strength in Iowa, it is the middle that becomes more open and more important each day. And it is the middle that is sending the strongest message: Bill Bradley, Colin Powell, Christine Todd Whitman, even Ross Perot. If ever there was one, now’s the time!

LAWRENCE R. GORDON

Santa Monica

*

* As Pat Buchanan supporters, we cheered right away when we heard the report on television about the results from the Iowa straw poll. The big-money campaigns of the rich and powerful Sens. Gramm and Dole tied for first--just as expected. There was no mention of any other candidate other than Gov. Pete Wilson, who finished a distant eighth. Why, then, did we cheer? Well, since they had failed to report the third-place finisher, we knew that it had to be Pat Buchanan.

The real news is that a candidate with little money, no public office--and no favorable press coverage--picked off no less than five media darlings.

HAIG ADOMIAN

Los Angeles