At Last, Some Vigor in the Dole Campaign

He wanted to get the nation’s attention. He got it. Bob Dole made a dramatic move Wednesday in not only relinquishing his job as Senate majority leader, as widely expected, but in giving up his Senate seat altogether in his quest for the presidency.

The resignation was a potent reminder that presidential races have a way of producing surprises. Even the most traditional and predictable Washington politicians can have a few good moves left--and that’s what Dole demonstrated. It’s the stuff that makes politics fun, the first action Dole the presidential candidate has taken that really shook the trees in Washington. Now, will it shake the trees outside the Beltway? Will voters buy the ultimate political insider, 35 years on Capitol Hill, as Mr. Outsider? What’s more important in the long run of the campaign is that, finally, Dole firmly established a theme, if not a full-blown message: Bob Dole. Kansas, not Washington. Hard times. Beat ‘em. Can do it again.

The senator delivered an emotion-laden speech at Wednesday’s Capitol Hill press conference and in so doing attempted to energize his flagging campaign. The reason the announcement of his resignation, effective by June 11, so stunned Washington is because everyone knows how much the veteran legislator enjoys the work of Capitol Hill, hammering out the deals and forging the compromises. But at age 72 and looking at his last chance to run for president, he obviously wants to be chief executive above everything else.

In recent months, Dole appeared to be presiding over one legislative stalemate after another; just Tuesday he was reduced to blaming Democrats again for holding “hostage” his attempt to repeal the gas surtax and was forced to pull the measure from the Senate floor. Earlier he’d been caught in a nasty internecine battle with other leading, more conservative Republicans over how to handle a vote on increasing the minimum wage. In the meantime, an above-the-fray Bill Clinton was reaping the benefits in the public opinion polls.

On Wednesday, in marked contrast to earlier stiff, partisan speeches bashing “liberal judges” and others, Dole got personal. His wounded-war-hero background, always seen as his greatest asset against the character-challenged president, has come front and center in recent days as Dole has talked more about his hardscrabble Kansas background and the loss of the use of his right hand in World War II. He alluded to that injury Wednesday: “ . . . [A] long time ago .J.J. I arose from my hospital bed and was permitted by the grace of God to walk again in the world. And I trust in the hard way, for little has come to me except in the hard way, which is good because we have a hard task ahead of us.”

At this point in his campaign, the hard way is the only way for Dole; the easy way hasn’t been working. Nothing like a little drama and pathos to enliven a presidential race in sore need of giving voters a reason to care.