‘Citizen’ Dole Plucks Heartland’s Strings

In a poignant swing through the Midwest on Wednesday, Bob Dole wore his altered status like a new suit of clothes that almost fits.

He pointed out the glossy paint job on the nose cone of his campaign plane--it says “Citizen’s Ship” now, not “Leader’s Ship”--and he talked about what it’s like to be “unemployed”--sort of.

“My father told me you can only sweep the walk and empty the garbage so many times a day in retirement,” he told 500 attentive diners at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Toledo in his first campaign appearance as a regular guy running for president. “And it is sort of an empty feeling.”

On the first morning in 35 years that he woke up and wasn’t a legislator, Dole called his office and got a recording. “It said nobody’s here,” Dole recounted. “I know I wasn’t there. But that chapter in my life is closed, and another chapter is opened.”

On the first page of this new chapter as citizen not senator, the presumed Republican presidential nominee set about to define the differences between himself and Bill Clinton, between his own vision and what he called the president’s “me-too . . . stolen agenda.”

“This election is a contest between the great liberal pretender and the party of principle,” he said here and again in Overland Park, Kan., “between the rear guard of the welfare state and a vision for America’s future. We have a contest between the champions of the Great Society status quo and the champions of growth, opportunity and family.”

Toledo was the first stop of a furious fling through Middle America, what Dole aides hope will be the kickoff to Dole II--The Real Campaign--eight humid cities in eight hot states over three seemingly endless days. For fuel, there was Tuesday’s emotional parting from the Senate chambers that had been Dole’s home; for background music, recorded George Strait: “Sing a song about the heartland. Sing a song about the heart.”

Wednesday was a celebration of new beginnings, visual and symbolic, as such days often are. Dole himself joked that the swing would be low on substance. When asked how much news he’d make this day, he held up up the universal just-a-little-bit sign, thumb and forefinger an inch apart.

“We’re trying to get good pictures,” he cracked. “Don’t worry very much about what I say.”

There were motorcade rides in light spring rain past newly sprouted agricultural fields. A Kansas rally at a construction site, where the big blue banner read, “The Heartland: Building America’s Leadership.” And an appearance at the Toledo Express Airport with a clutch of just-naturalized American citizens, a counterpoint to Dole’s own new status--”just a man,” as he likes to say.

Elizabeth Hanford Dole was at his side on the Toledo tarmac, in bright Republican red against an overcast sky, handing out tiny American flags from a bristling red, white and blue bouquet. Dole pointed to the nose of his plane, to its brand-new name, his brand-new life. And he smiled a lot.

His response to his very first standing ovation as a civilian on the campaign trail? “Holy Toledo. Isn’t that what they say?” he told the lunch crowd in Ohio. “Well, I’m going around the country to see where they have the best unemployment benefits. I’ll check out Ohio, then I’m going to Kansas and Missouri today.”

In a rambling address to an appreciative audience, Dole’s occasional oratorical slips were perhaps as telling as the times he stayed on target, underscoring as they did his novice status as a private man in the world at large. “I’m very proud to be--have been--a member of the Senate. . . . The government’s too big. We’re spending too much of your money.”

Dole continued his struggle to paint a bright line between his own life and the actions of the man he hopes to beat: He’s a copycat, this U.S. president, a man who doesn’t own his own ideas. “We don’t release advance copies of our speeches because we’re afraid he’ll find one and make it,” Dole said over and over throughout the day.

And then there are all those pesky promises, Dole warned, the ones that self-destruct come November. “You hear all these phrases like, ‘The check’s in the mail,’ ” Dole cataloged. “ ‘I’ll start my diet in the morning.’ ‘Let’s do lunch sometime.’ Or how about this one: ‘I’m Bill Clinton, I’m running for reelection, and I’m going to cut your taxes?’ ”

Dole did admit that he was trailing Clinton--by something like 12 or 13 percentage points in the polls, he said, although many polls show the gap larger. Right about now, the gap “isn’t bad,” he insisted. He acknowledged that he’d had a “tough primary,” said the campaign had spent “all of our money.”

But the day’s theme was reinvention, about who’s allowed to do it and who is not. The former senator from the great state of Kansas quits his day job and becomes, in the words of Kansas Gov. Bill Graves, “America’s greatest private citizen.” Thirty-five years in Washington washed off overnight.

Bill Clinton is another story, if you ask Bob Dole: “They’ve got all these wizards back there trying to reinvent Clinton,” Dole said Wednesday. “They know they can’t elect him if people find out he’s a liberal, so they say, ‘Oh, he’s really sort of a Republican.’

“But don’t reinvent me,” Dole continued. “I want to be like I am. I want to be that Midwestern senator who never forgot where he’s from, who never forgot the people, tried his best to be of service whenever he was called, whether it was World War II or any other time. And that’s what America’s all about.”