Auras Collide as Dole Pursues Presidency

Bob Dole is beaming. Dapper and morning fresh in a dark pinstriped suit, he sits on a stage before several hundred GOP faithful, awaiting his turn to speak.

At the lectern, Sen. William V. Roth Jr. (R-Del.) is winding up his introduction with a vivid account of the battle in the Italian Alps 51 years ago that left Army 2nd Lt. Bob Dole, then 21, with near-fatal injuries, a crippled right arm and only partial use of his left one.

As the raspy-voiced Roth summons Dole forward with a flourish, the throng of placard-waving Delaware Republicans leaps to its feet, chanting: “Go, Bob, Go!”

“A hero from America’s heartland,” Roth shouts as the band strikes up.

In the springtime of his final quest for the presidency, conflicting auras are taking hold as Dole pursues his dream while leading a double life--as the Senate majority leader and the party’s standard-bearer in November.

During the week, the Kansas Republican prowls the halls of the Senate, jousting with Democrats who are determined to thwart his will--and who seem increasingly adept at doing just that. His failure to deliver on priority issues lately threatens to saddle him with the image of an ineffectual, scowling politician who, at the end of the day, can only fulminate about “labor bosses” and “the liberal media” that refuse to tell America about how Democrats are deliberately “holding things up.”

No wonder that by most Friday afternoons, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, is only too happy to escape Capitol Hill and leave Washington behind altogether. His smile and the spring in his step tell all as he bounds up the steps of “Leader’s Ship,” his chartered jet emblazoned with “DOLE FOR PRESIDENT 1996” on the fuselage.

As Dole made appearances this past weekend here and in Omaha and Louisville, Ky., he could put aside his legislative frustrations and the disputatious Republicans in Congress who, staring at abysmal poll ratings, have been publicly attacking one another as much as they have the opposition.

Buoyed by GOP loyalists who revel at the war hero candidate fighting the political battle of his life, Dole finds solace on the campaign stump, hitting a better rhythm with a clearer message than he has before.

“This is one of his better speeches I’ve heard him give lately,” Sue Matz, a longtime Wilmington, Del., GOP activist, said after Dole’s remarks here attacking President Clinton’s record on domestic and foreign policy and offering a competing one of his own.

*

In Louisville on Saturday afternoon, Dole gave an address that contrasted markedly with the choppy and meandering efforts that dominated much of his primary campaign. It was well-organized, thematic and rarely strayed from the dual goal of turning the election into a referendum on Clinton while laying out his own approach.

“Discipline, discipline, discipline,” said a pleased Nelson Warfield, Dole’s campaign spokesman.

Dole’s showing at public rallies suggest that his campaign is making some strides in what had been one of its weakest areas--the candidate’s ability to sell himself and his ideas.

But his serious problems in Washington underscore his continuing inability to pull everything together into a winning combination. With months to go, there is still time, but the gap in the polls is substantial--as much as 20 percentage points at times.

Dole the orator still stumbles from time to time, mangling words and phrases or missing seemingly easy opportunities to make his case. Still, the weekend campaign swing seemed to boost his spirits, which will soon be tested.

Today, he is back in the Senate, struggling to bring to a vote his proposal to repeal the 1993 federal gas tax increase of 4.3-cents-per-gallon.

*

Democrats are raising questions about how Dole proposes to pay for the repeal, which would reduce federal revenue about $6 billion a year, and how to ensure that the savings go to consumers and not to the oil companies.

Dole also must face anew the Democratic clamor for a vote to raise the minimum wage. He has contributed to the gridlock in Congress by rejecting demands that the gas-tax repeal and the minimum-wage increase each be given a separate vote.

He has further complicated matters by linking those votes to a once-obscure GOP initiative called the TEAM measure. The bill would enable companies to set up worker “teams” outside the collective-bargaining process--a move strongly opposed by Democrats and organized labor.

The Senate impasse is prompting many of Dole’s GOP colleagues to urge him, with a new sense of urgency, to extricate himself from the quagmire by stepping down as majority leader and get out more on the campaign trail.

“They may be” right, Dole allowed last week.

But such troubles seemed remote over the weekend as “Leader’s Ship” delivered him to his campaign stops and the warmth of his supporters’ welcome.