Dole Pared Vice President List to 15, New Book Says

Bob Dole has begun his search for a vice presidential running mate with orders to his staff to send him a candidate who won’t anger Republican conservatives and a list of 15 names that included three old Washington hands: former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Defense Secretaries Dick Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, according to a new book.

“The Choice,” by Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward, quotes Dole as saying he wants a running mate who will be “a 10” in the eyes of the public, with the candidate telling the head of his search team, Robert F. Ellsworth, “Don’t give me someone who would send up [anger] the conservatives.”

At the top of the list of 15 names, assembled in the late spring by Ellsworth and Dole campaign manager Scott Reed, was retired Gen. Colin L. Powell. But Dole recently said he doubts Powell can be lured onto the ticket. Also included were numerous Republican governors, but most were discounted as not up to the job. Pennsylvania Gov. Thomas J. Ridge, however, is described in the book as “a sleeper” choice. The list also included two senators: Richard G. Lugar of Indiana and Connie Mack of Florida.

The Woodward book provides an insider’s look at the Republican presidential contest and the Clinton White House over the last 18 months. The book describes:

* The president’s anguish and resentment toward “traitors on my staff” and “the Washington crowd” as he attempted to regain his footing after the Republican sweep of Congress in 1994.

* First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton’s deepening relationship with Jean Houston, the co-director of the Foundation for Mind Research, which studies “psychic experiences and altered and expanded consciousness.” Houston and Hillary Clinton met at the White House and elsewhere for a series of sessions that proved to be therapeutic to the first lady, according to the book.

* The fierce battles within the Dole campaign as the former Senate majority leader sought the Republican nomination, and the candidate’s discomfort with his party’s most conservative wing. The book portrays Dole’s top advisors as almost in despair over their candidate’s inability to formulate or deliver a campaign message without a prepared script.

Woodward, who two years ago published an inside look at the White House during the first year of Clinton’s presidency, began work on the book shortly before the 1994 elections and writes that he interviewed hundreds of people. He spent 12 hours with Dole but writes that Clinton declined a request for an interview.

Woodward says most interviews were conducted on ground rules that prevent him from directly identifying his sources, but he notes that quotations and dialogue come from one of the participants directly or from notes, memos or diaries written immediately after the conversations took place.