Dole’s Rivals Seek to Exploit Bosnia Stance

When Patrick J. Buchanan arrived here, $1,000 filing fee in hand, to formally place himself on the ballot for the New Hampshire presidential primary, the first words out of his mouth were not about taxes or trade policy, abortion or family values.

Instead, Buchanan stepped up to the antique desk in the secretary of state’s office and threw down the Bosnia gauntlet, deriding Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) for supporting President Clinton’s decision to deploy troops to keep peace in the war-torn Balkans.

“His record is not the record of a conservative,” Buchanan said of Dole. “It’s the record of a practitioner of the politics of compromise.”

The next day, when Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas showed up to file his papers, he had the same topic uppermost in his mind. “I am opposed to sending troops to Bosnia,” he said from the historic state Capitol. “It has everything to do with my conscience about putting Americans in the line of fire . . . for people who have violated every cease-fire for 500 years.”

And so it went throughout the state, throughout the week along the presidential campaign trail. What Dole strategists have feared came true with a vengeance: Dole’s support for Clinton’s decision to send American troops to Bosnia has turned foreign policy into a lead issue in the GOP campaign.

How primary voters will judge the issue will not be known until February. But for now, Republican challengers--who for months have struggled to distinguish themselves from front-runner Dole--think they have hit pay dirt. And the rhetoric taking place in New Hampshire is already having an impact in Washington, where Dole has had to postpone a planned Senate vote on Bosnia until this week because of lack of support from fellow Republicans.

An early indication of the issue’s impact came from a newly released poll of likely Republican voters. The poll, conducted last week by the American Research Group, showed that a solid majority of the likely voters oppose sending American troops to Bosnia-Herzegovina. Moreover, while the poll shows that Dole is still in front here, his lead declined noticeably when voters were told that he supports the Bosnia deployment.

Before being reminded of how the candidates stand on Bosnia, 30% of those surveyed said they would vote for Dole, followed by Buchanan with 13%, publishing magnate Malcolm S. “Steve” Forbes Jr. with 9%, former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander with 5% and Gramm with 3%. When voters were told that Dole supports the Bosnia deployment, his support dropped to 24%.

“Where you have such ideological parity between the Republican contenders, here’s an issue with clear delineation,” said Tom Rath, senior advisor to Alexander and a longtime New Hampshire political strategist. But it’s also an issue, he acknowledges, that candidates must take great care in exploiting.

“It’s a fine line you walk when you do this,” he said. “Bob Dole is a distinguished American, a legitimate hero. No one needs to attack him for that. You don’t have to make it personal.”

Exploiting Bosnia and Dole’s controversial stance requires the other Republican candidates to dance carefully around the question of how to define patriotism when American forces operate in a foreign land as ordered by a Democratic commander in chief.

Those dance steps will get only more complicated as the deployment of 20,000 U.S. troops moves from theory to reality--which could happen as early as this week.

Some expect the political use of the issue to fade once the troops are in place, and already some candidates are moving away from it. Forbes, for example, said last week during a radio talk show interview here that while sending troops was “an unnecessary step to take. . . . Now that the troops are going over, I think that we have to rally ‘round them. The time for debate is coming to a close.”

Others, however, doubt the issue will go away, particularly if there is loss of American life.

“Why should [the candidates] shut up about it?” asked Kevin Phillips, publisher of the American Political Report and a leading Republican analyst. “If you could write a one-sentence description of what not to do in American politics, it would be to slash Medicare and send troops to Bosnia. Dole is playing footsie with both of them.”

For now, the issue has caused divisions in several of the major candidates’ camps. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), for example, is chairman of Gramm’s campaign, but he has publicly stated that he agrees with Dole’s decision to support the Clinton administration.

Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) was one of the first to throw his support behind Dole’s presidential bid, but he has long opposed American involvement in Bosnia and has consistently voted against Dole-drafted resolutions to end American sanctions there.

Gregg said he is not likely to vote for Dole’s resolution for the U.S. military mission in the Balkans, a measure that is running into trouble in the Senate.

On one hand, Gregg said, once the troops arrive, “everyone’s going to support them. You can’t pull the rug out from under them.” On the other hand, the debate is here to stay, and Dole’s position is quite precarious, dependent as it is on the fate of the American soldiers in the difficult terrain of the former Yugoslav federation.

“It’s definitely not going to go away,” Gregg said. “It’s the premier issue of foreign policy right now. If the situation does not deteriorate, people won’t vote this. They’ll vote the domestic agenda. . . . If we have another Somalia situation [the debate] will intensify dramatically.”

Already, it is the rare political event here in which Bosnia is not a major concern.

Clinton advisor James Carville opened the president’s campaign office in Manchester and praised Dole for assisting the administration’s position--a compliment that is not expected to help Dole among GOP voters. “I hate giving my opponents a compliment but in this case I’ve got to,” Carville said.

But three of the four Republican candidates present at the recent Holiday Presidential Convention and Charity Auction railed against sending troops to police the Bosnian peace agreement and targeted Dole for his controversial stance.

“I say to Bob Dole, my old friend: ‘Bob, lead this fight to keep us out of Bosnia,’ ” Buchanan told the cheering crowd of several hundred in Manchester. “If you can’t, Bob, stand aside and I will.”

“I think that President Clinton’s decision is ill-advised,” said former State Department official Alan Keyes, as he signed autographs before his convention/auction address. “He hasn’t made a case to the U.S. that our leadership is justified.”

And Dole, said Keyes to those clustered around him, “is acting as Bill Clinton’s henchman” by drafting a resolution in support of the deployment. As Keyes headed off to give his speech, a young man with a military haircut reached out to shake his hand. “May I thank you for what you said? I’m a Navy lieutenant, and I’m probably going over,” he told the candidate.

While Buchanan and Keyes have taken blunt stands, others, such as Alexander, have taken carefully nuanced positions. If Americans are to be involved in foreign civil wars, Alexander said, there must be a vital American stake in having one side or the other succeed.

“If there is, we should be prepared to intervene with sufficient force to have that side prevail,” Rath said. “In this instance, he [Alexander] does not find that interest, and he would not send troops.”

Although he has to some extent become Clinton’s Bosnia point man in the Senate--at some personal political peril--Dole himself is walking a fine rhetorical line.

“The fact is that President Clinton has decided to send U.S. forces to Bosnia,” he said. “The fact is that these troops will be sent, and indeed some are already there . . . the president has the constitutional power as the commander in chief to send these forces. The Congress cannot stop this troop deployment from happening.”

Dole and his supporters also hope they can turn the issue to their own advantage. Dole has given his position a lot of thought, said Steve Edwards, chief of staff to Gov. Steve Merrill, who heads Dole’s campaign in New Hampshire. Those candidates who attack Dole could see their strategies backfire, Edwards said.

“I think people will question Phil Gramm’s sincerity and whether he’s making something political that shouldn’t be political in a presidential campaign,” he said.

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Dole and His Rivals on Bosnia

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole’s endorsement of sending U.S. troops to Bosnia has given rivals for the Republican presidential nomination something they have been looking for: an issue that sets them apart from the front-runner.

FOR

“We have a responsibility to the American forces there, and it shouldn’t be political.”

--Sen. Bob Dole

AGAINST

“America has limited national interests in Bosnia and no reason to believe that our intervention will be decisive in promoting those interests.”

--Sen. Phil Gramm

*****

“Bosnia is Beirut all over again. A bloody, religious, ethnic and civil war, in which all sides have perpetrated horrors and all sides have been victims of horrors.”

--Patrick J. Buchanan

*****

“The U.S. should not be peacekeeping in an area where peace does not exist and where the conditions for getting out remain unstated.”

--Lamar Alexander