Need for a Dole Policy Agenda Is Taking on Greater Urgency

As Bob Dole departed Tuesday from the Congress in which he has served for 35 years, his presidential campaign continues to struggle with its most central difficulty: the need to frame a set of policies that would serve to justify his presidential candidacy and provide a compelling rationale for Americans to vote for him.

Indeed, analysts say, with Dole’s leave-taking now accomplished, the task has taken on even greater urgency.

Tuesday’s departure speech provided Dole a potential platform for laying out such a program. But Dole passed it up, saying he did not want to deliver a partisan address. Instead, he dwelt extensively on his Senate experiences and on senators he has known--references that touched his fellow legislators but probably were incomprehensible to a large number of potential voters.

Dole’s evident show of emotion and the references in his speech to compassionate programs he has supported--disability rights efforts, for example--pleased some of his advisors. But, as one aide conceded, the Republican presidential hopeful has yet to explain to voters how his experiences connect to a broader agenda for the country.

Short on Dividends

Three weeks ago, when Dole announced his plan to resign, aides touted the move as a bold step that would begin to solve those problems plaguing his candidacy. But so far, the resignation decision has not paid political dividends.

Publicly, Dole insists he still has plenty of time. “We’re not in any hurry to start putting out our agenda,” he declared at a recent campaign stop in the New Jersey town of Holmdel. “If we did it now, there wouldn’t be anything left for the convention or afterward.”

Privately, however, Dole strategists concede that by the time the summer political conventions open--a little less than nine weeks from now--they must have succeeded in moving their candidate from his current standing, about 15 points or more behind President Clinton in public opinion polls, to a position right on the president’s heels. Historically, whichever candidate leads on Labor Day almost invariably wins the presidency, and Dole aides, mindful of that fact, hope to see their candidate ahead by the time the Republican convention ends on Aug. 16.

Right now, to Dole’s detriment, the race seems frozen. Clinton’s lead has remained more or less impervious to events most of this year.

In trying to change that situation, Dole faces the most formidable challenge of his career. In the Senate, his role as Republican leader allowed him to use the legislative docket as a template for his beliefs. Dole at one time had hoped to use this spring as a period for pushing legislation that would both demonstrate his leadership skills and draw sharp distinctions between himself and Clinton.

That strategy foundered. Now, citizen Dole must try to promote himself by relying only on his own imagination and rhetorical gifts--traits which have never been his strengths as a politician.

Stress on Swing Vote

The presumptive GOP nominee’s central task is to differentiate himself from Clinton without scaring off the swing voters whose allegiance will decide the election.

This is no simple job. Republicans argue that Clinton has been successful because he changes course on policies whenever he senses a shift in the political winds. But if Clinton often seems to co-opt GOP positions, Republicans themselves must bear much of the blame.

The hard-line rhetoric and tactics of the congressional GOP leadership alarmed Clinton’s core Democratic supporters so much that the president has been able to lean rightward on issues from the balanced budget to curfews for teenagers without fearing loss of support among liberals. For these voters, “the alternative to Clinton is terrifying,” said Johns Hopkins University political scientist Ben Ginsberg.

“Clinton has morphed into a liberal Republican, which is what he always was,” said University of Texas professor Walter Dean Burnham, an authority on national elections. “That leaves the Republicans the nasty job of trying to find issues on which they disagree with him on.”

Beyond that, Dole has seemed hamstrung by a conundrum in which cause-and-effect are hard to separate. His party is sharply divided over such issues as fiscal policy and abortion, in part, because Dole has been unable to provide a unifying message. In turn, Dole has had difficulty supplying a unifying theme, in part because Republicans are divided.

“There are three or four different kinds of Republicans out there and no one of them has been able to articulate an effective story for the whole Republican Party,” said John Petrocik, a UCLA professor and sometime advisor to the GOP who specializes in the dynamics of political parties. “Because Bob Dole can’t provide a rationale for his candidacy, it’s too easy for these groups not to be concerned about his candidacy but to focus on the differences that separate them.”

On economic policy, for example, Dole’s own thinking has seemed fissured. Dole has been “getting very conflicting recommendations from eager supply siders who want a tax cut and from budget balancers, worried about the deficit,” said UC San Diego political analyst Gary Jacobson.

“Dole’s heart is probably with the budget balancers,” said Jacobson. “But he knows that Republicans for the past 15 years have made great political hay with tax cutting.”

Instead of resolving the dispute, Dole has chosen to put if off, telling aides he will not make an announcement on his economic policy until the convention.

Bickering on Abortion

On another sensitive issue--abortion--Dole late last week sought to head off a potentially embarrassing convention confrontation by suggesting additional language to the platform making clear that the party recognizes differing views on this and other issues. But while Dole’s initial statement drew support from all sides of the party, he sparked renewed bickering this week by saying his proposed “declaration of tolerance” should be placed specifically in the abortion plank. Those opposing abortion rights object to that and the prospect of a convention fight remains.

Before departing the Senate, Dole had hoped to draw distinctions with legislation. But the measures he hoped to push--from a proposal to reduce the gasoline tax to legislation that would establish tax-sheltered “medical savings accounts” as a new means of financing health care--seem dead for the year.

Lacking a thematic appeal, Republicans have sought to turn this year’s battle for the White House into a rerun of the 1988 campaign against Democratic nominee Michael S. Dukakis.

In 1988, seizing on actions Dukakis took as governor of Massachusetts, Republicans depicted him as lax on crime, insufficiently respectful of the flag and generally outside the mainstream of American culture and politics.

Dole aides have searched for similar symbolic issues to use against Clinton--pressing, for example, his veto of a bill to ban some late-term abortions and attacking judicial appointees who, they claimed, showed Clinton to be soft on crime.

But on several such symbolic issues--most notably on crime--Clinton has moved aggressively to preempt Republican attacks.

Minimal Impact

Aside from forcing one Clinton judicial appointee to resign and one nominee to withdraw before his name was voted on by the Senate, the GOP thrust has so far had little impact on Clinton. On the abortion veto, Clinton has proved ready, as Dukakis seldom was, to strenuously defend his actions.

Moreover, Clinton’s team learned the lesson from 1988--don’t simply take punishment, as Dukakis did, but strike back with the same abandon that Republicans often show.

Thus, last month, after a series of GOP salvos targeting Clinton’s character and issue positions, the president’s campaign put out a television commercial lambasting Dole for resigning his Senate seat. “He told us he could do his job and run for president,” the ad said. “Then he told us he was quitting, giving up, leaving behind the gridlock he helped create.”

The aggressiveness of the Democratic campaign has made some Republicans cautious about trying to exploit the Whitewater imbroglio, despite the recent convictions of three business associates of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton, including the president’s replacement as Arkansas’ governor. GOP national chairman Haley Barbour cautioned party leaders that on this issue, they would be better off holding their tongues, lest they give credence to Democratic claims that Whitewater “is some partisan political deal.”

Dole himself seemed to accept the advice. “I don’t talk about Whitewater,” he said during his New Jersey visit. With the midday June sun blazing down on him, he added that he would prefer to talk about “ice water, not Whitewater.”