THE CAMPAIGN : Does Dole Know Just Who He Is?

For those other Republican candidates for President, the performance of Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas last week must have provided a ray of hope. Inside the Beltway, it is difficult to find anyone who doesn’t believe that Dole has the nomination wrapped up. After last week, however, it is obvious Dole doesn’t think so. As long as he exhibits a lack of confidence on this, there are plenty of ways for him to lose.

A couple of weeks ago, Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas tied Dole in a straw ballot in Iowa. The whispers in Washington were that Gramm probably won narrowly, but with the vast majority of influential Republicans in the state aligned behind Dole, those counting the votes called it a tie.

Straw ballots don’t mean anything in the real world. In this one, everyone paid $25 to vote, and people from out of state were allowed to participate, so any sane reading of the results would have indicated to Dole there was no cause for alarm.

But Dole’s fear of the Christian coalition knows no bounds. Earlier this year, he and his wife changed their church affiliation to a more fundamentalist congregation; more recently, Dole denounced Time Warner for the ungodly nature of some records it produced. So none of us should have been surprised when, reflecting on the results of the straw poll, he returned a contribution he had received from a gay political-action committee, declared himself an advocate of making English the official language of the United States and switched from deficit hawk to supply-side booster. The “third senator from Iowa,” as he likes to be referred to, doesn’t seem convinced he is well-regarded there.

None of this would matter much except that now that summer has past, voters in the primary states will begin to get serious about what they should do next year. Last week, Dole went out of his way to tell them they should at least take a look at the others in the race.

Perceptions are more important than facts in politics, and the perception that Dole created was that he overreacts. This is not a helpful perception about a possible President, since we want our Presidents to be strong men who see a clear picture and are not distracted by minutiae.

Dole, in a magazine article early this year, claimed it was Richard M. Nixon who taught him his talent for handling issues. “Run to the right until you are nominated,” Nixon had presumably said, “and then move to the center.” Not bad advice in its day, but if Dole thinks he is implementing this advice by what he is doing, he’s crazy.

What Nixon meant (and what he did) was to emphasize during the nomination process those issues he and conservatives agreed on, then, as the election unfolded, move to those on which there was disagreement. Then there were those matters he did not have strong feelings about, that could be used to fine-tune his position in the center, or right of center, of the political spectrum. Nixon used to refer to these issues as the “paint- our- backsides- white- and- run- with- the antelopes” issues.

But everything Nixon said was something he was willing to stand behind. He was for dealing from strength with the Russians, against the busing of children to achieve racial equality, for putting more conservative judges on the U.S. Supreme Court. He was also for open housing, for black capitalism, for creating a new agency to deal with the environment. Dole flits back and forth about what he’s for until the conclusion is hard to escape that he doesn’t know what he’s for.

Earlier this year, at a GOP gathering, Dole said, “I’ll be anything you want me to be; I’ll be Ronald Reagan if that’s what you want.” Certainly, Nixon would never have told him to make such a statement. He may have wished he could be Dwight D. Eisenhower, but he also knew he’d just have to be himself.

Reagan, incidentally, never had any of these problems. He was for you, or against you, and you could count on it. But even if he was against you, he found ways to make you feel comfortable. Certainly no advocate of the gay agenda in the late 1970s, he campaigned against an initiative on the California ballot that would have denied gays and lesbians the right to teach in the California education system. Certainly no advocate of organized labor’s agenda, he received the votes of millions of working-class Democrats who felt he cared about them. Certainly no fan of the Soviet Union, Reagan politely accepted its surrender.

Reagan never gave back any contributions or apologized for any support. It was always, “They’re supporting me, I’m not supporting them” as far as Reagan was concerned. And this was true.

The Constitution doesn’t put it this way but the real power of the presidency is that the President is the representative of all the people. He is the only governmental leader that everyone gets to vote for. He is individual “numero uno” in the land of individuals.

We want our President to have strong beliefs but we want him to care about all of us. We want him to have preferences but we don’t want him to play favorites. We want him to fight hard but remain above the battle, since we expect him to make the whole thing work. We want him to be a better human being than we are, someone from whom we can gain confidence. And we want him to set goals for us, goals that come from his mind and experience, not something he read in a poll or decided in an attempt to emulate someone else.

I don’t mean to be tough on Dole; he is a man who has given greatly to his country and to the U.S. Congress. He is a decent man who means well and is sympathetic to people in need.

But if he is to be President, he will have to start showing his better side. Nixon used to say, “They don’t have to like you if they respect you.” Reagan demonstrated that the people would trust you if they like you, even if you weren’t on top of all the issues.

It would be nice if we could both like and respect our next President, but looking at all the Republicans running, and at President Bill Clinton, I wonder whether we can expect either.*