Is Candidate Bob Dole of Old Returning?

Is the “old” Bob Dole--the one who loses his cool under the intense pressure of high-stakes political campaigns--reemerging?

In the wake of the Republican presidential candidate’s flare-up at Katie Couric on NBC’s “Today” show and his insistence on repeating his statement that tobacco is not necessarily addictive, that worry is now once again troubling Dole’s supporters and advisors.

For the record, Dole’s campaign said the candidate’s performance, which aired Tuesday, was nothing more than an aggressive response to a pointed question by Couric about tobacco.

“I don’t think that’s a serious concern,” Kenneth Khachigian, Dole’s California strategist, said when asked if the candidate’s evident testiness in the interview disturbed him.

“When you have a candidate who responds to criticism in an aggressive, spirited way, it doesn’t mean it’s bad. He has every right to defend his position. I don’t think we should read something into it that’s not there.”

But some advisors saw signs that their candidate remained alarmingly capable of reverting to the Bob Dole of old, the one who, when asked to say a few words after losing the New Hampshire primary in 1988, declined to utter the usual gracious losers’ platitude and instead growled that George Bush should “stop lying about my record.”

Earlier, as Gerald R. Ford’s running mate in 1976, Dole drew widespread condemnation when, during a campaign debate, he angrily labeled World War II and the Korean War as “Democrat wars.”

An advisor and major fund-raiser who declined to be identified termed Dole’s persistence in debating the tobacco issue “inexplicable,” adding, “He’s stubborn and he’s loyal to folks who support him, but this is ridiculous.”

Lyn Nofziger, a senior aide in both of Ronald Reagan’s successful presidential campaigns, stressed Dole’s determination to talk about tobacco even as his wife, Elizabeth Hanford Dole, was trying to steer the conversation back to their joint autobiography.

“Some people are just like that, and I don’t know what the hell you do about it,” Nofziger said. “It’s hard for Bob Dole to change.”

That, of course, is precisely the concern for Republican strategists, who worry that voters will reject a candidate who seems ill-tempered. A successful presidential candidate, they note, must be able to brush off aggravations much more serious than a reporter asking about a past statement and stick to his intended message. Dole instead allowed the tobacco issue to take up virtually the entire Tuesday interview.

Nofziger, for example, said he found nothing wrong with Dole’s statements on tobacco. But he “ought to change the subject. Tobacco won’t win or lose this election but it can be a terrible distraction, and that’s what you’ve got to avoid.”

White House officials, delighted with the current turn of events, made much the same point. “For all the public can see, all his campaign has been about for the last few weeks has been tobacco and abortion,” chortled one senior advisor to President Clinton.

Dole aides grumble that it is the press that has focused on abortion and tobacco, not Dole. But, in fact, the candidate has deliberately avoided laying out his own agenda on matters such as economic policy that might have driven the other issues out of the headlines.

Clinton strategists believe the tobacco issue can help the president, and they point to polls that teenage smoking is a major concern for many middle-class parents--an audience that both Dole and Clinton have been trying to win over.

More to the point, however, they note that Dole, after being handed a clear shot at a forum that most politicians would consider a gift--two back-to-back interviews on a network morning program--proved unable or unwilling to stick to his intended message.

How much damage the event may cause will depend in large part on whether Dole restrains himself in the future, some Republican analysts argued.

“Any day you get bogged down talking about tobacco, you’re not having a good day,” said Robert M. Teeter, a pollster who was a presidential advisor to both Reagan and Bush.

Similarly, Peter Teeley, a longtime Bush advisor and former ambassador, said that “the tobacco thing is an aggravation, not a real issue, but he ought not to talk about it any more.”

And Frank Fahrenkopf, the former Republican Party chairman, who recently returned from two days on the campaign trail with Dole, conceded that “tobacco set us back a little because the Clinton White House is very effective with their rapid response team on issues like that.”

“But Dole looks as good as I’ve seen him. He’s campaigning energetically, and we’re very bullish.”

Others were less charitable. Former Sen. Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.), a longtime Dole advisor, said he was “totally baffled” at his friend’s heated debate with Couric and disagreed with Dole’s claim that tobacco may not be addictive.

Interviewed on C-SPAN, Rudman was asked to respond to a viewer’s comment that “Sen. Dole’s almost pathetic claim concerning tobacco addiction is alienating many of us who generally support the Republican ideals.”

Rudman responded: “I think your viewer expresses something that I believe.”

Times staff writer Maria L. La Ganga contributed to this story.

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