Dole Gathers Steam as Buchanan Vows Unity

SAN DIEGO — A beaming Bob Dole, aboard a bunting-draped excursion boat, steamed Sunday into San Diego Bay toward the first Republican convention at which he is the man of the hour as his erstwhile rival, Patrick J. Buchanan, finally declared a truce within the Republican Party.

Buoyed by the cheers of an affectionate crowd, perhaps his largest and most varied to date, Dole unequivocally promised his party--from the lowliest delegates to Republican royalty--that he would cut taxes and balance the budget--a simple act of “presidential will,” he declared.

“If you have it, you can do it,” he said, repeating what has fast become his new mantra. “I have it, and I will do it . . . I give you my word. I promise you that it will happen,” he declared.

With parachutists plunging from the sky, fireworks bursting heavenward, scores of pleasure craft providing a watery escort and the presumptive presidential candidate’s plane buzzing overhead, Dole’s entrance here provided telegenic pomp and ceremony designed to boost enthusiasm among Republican troops for their ticket.

But Buchanan’s words--with their promise of unity at least on the conservative side of the GOP--may have provided an equal lift.

“Let us, at least for the next 10 weeks, nobles and knights, and yes, even the peasants with pitchforks, suspend our battles with one another and join together in common cause to defeat Bill Clinton and Prince Albert [Gore] and dispossess them of all their holdings east of the Potomac River,” Buchanan said in a speech delivered Sunday night on the floor of his very own mini-convention in Escondido, about 30 miles north of San Diego.

“Today, this disputatious and yes, divided, party of ours needs such a truce, a temporary truce, the Truce of San Diego,” Buchanan declared.

But he made clear that he believes the truce has been struck at least partially on his terms. “Because the Buchanan Brigades would not compromise, and because we would not quit, the Republican Party remains tonight a pro-life party,” he declared.

Citing last week’s successes in retaining the strongly conservative flavor of the party platform, especially on the abortion issue, he argued that “before our eyes, this party is becoming a Buchanan Party.”

Dole Goes Unmentioned

Nor did Buchahan formally embrace Dole. Indeed, he did not mention Dole’s name at all. Nonetheless, the not-quite-endorsement removes one of the last serious worries that Dole’s aides have had about restiveness on their right flank.

The speech also validated the strategy adopted after the end of the primary season by Dole’s aides. Unlike George Bush’s advisors, who sought to avert a battle with Buchanan four years ago by placating him at every turn--finally giving him a prominent prime-time slot to deliver a speech that remains controversial even now--Dole’s aides essentially stiffed his one-time rival. The only speaking assignment they offered Buchanan was the chance to appear in a videotape that would have been edited by Dole aides before being aired at the convention. Buchanan declined the offer.

Dole’s aides calculated that in the end, Buchanan would be unwilling to bolt the party in which he grew up and would stay loyal, particularly if they gave Buchanan’s allies in the party’s conservative wing most of what they asked for in the party platform. The resulting platform debate this past week, in which Dole acquiesced in the removal of language advocating “tolerance” within the party on abortion, alienated party moderates but left Dole’s standing among conservatives strong enough that Buchanan had little choice but to come aboard.

Dole’s triumphant journey to San Diego, where he will be anointed this week as his party’s official candidate for president, began before dawn in his heartland hometown of Russell, Kan., with a visit to the Dole family burial site.

It ended some eight hours later in a flash of fireworks as a blue curtain behind his podium dropped and a mock-up of the White House, bristling with sparklers, rose up behind the candidate, his running mate, Jack Kemp, and their wives.

A 73-Year Journey

The trip from Russell to the spotlight of the Republican convention took just a few hours on this sunny Sunday. But Dole went out of his way at the afternoon rally to remind both running mate and supporters that his actual journey had taken 73 years.

“Yesterday I took Joanne and Jack [Kemp] down to the basement of where I grew up in Russell, Kan.,” Dole told the crowd of several thousand supporters. “And I said it’s a long way from that basement apartment--where six of us lived for a long time--to San Diego. And we’re proud to be in San Diego, and we’re going to win this election on Nov. 5, 1996.”

The Dole campaign pulled out all the symbolic stops Sunday, with flags and fireworks and football allusions, talk of the Olympics and of winning teams. Dole and Kemp used every rhetorical weapon in their campaign arsenal in twinned speeches that often seemed to echo each other.

“Bob and I were talking about the great Olympic Games that made all of us as Americans very proud,” Kemp told the spirited dockside rally. “I don’t know how it feels to win a silver medal,” Kemp said. “But it really feels great to win a silver medal in presidential politics 1996 . . . and with Bob Dole, America can win the gold.”

Said Dole, No. 2 in the rally’s speaking order if not on the ticket: “Everything before has been a warmup lap, a trial heat. But here in San Diego the real race begins. . . . We’re gonna go for the gold. And we’re gonna win the gold on Nov. 5.”

Dole seemed especially buoyant as his boat, the Silvergate, slowly navigated across San Diego Bay from Coronado Island, where his plane, filled with relatives from Russell, had landed shortly before noon at the Naval Air Station.

Dole said he will promote “a healthy, vigorous strong economy where everybody participates and no one, no one, is left behind. . . . “ He again made a strong pitch for his 15% across-the-board cut in tax rates, unveiled but a week ago as the centerpiece of his economic agenda.

The plan has been criticized by Democrats--and by some Republican deficit hawks--as a proposal that would worsen the federal deficit. But Dole and Kemp both rejected such predictions, arguing that it is merely a matter of presidential will to both cut taxes and balance the budget.

“A long time ago, I had to learn to take the phrase ‘It can’t be done,’ and toss it right out of my vocabulary and put it out of my mind completely,” Dole said, a clear reference to severe wounds he suffered in World War II. “If I hadn’t done that I would not be here today. So it can be done. And as president I will do it. I give you my word.”

Long a proponent of supply-side economics who has felt in the past that Dole stressed deficit-cutting too heavily, Kemp also pushed his candidate’s plan Sunday, warming up for his No. 2 duties in the heavy campaign months to come. Dole’s vision, he said, is to “start with a blank slate, create a fairer, flatter, simpler tax code” that will “carry us into the next century.”

But Kemp’s most spirited comments came early in his speech, when he took the nation’s media to task for focusing on the question of how he and Dole--strong-minded men and longtime rivals--would navigate their relationship in the months ahead.

“Some of our friends in the media have reported that Bob Dole is gonna have a problem perhaps choosing a quarterback for his running mate,” Kemp said as the crowd booed. “Let me just tell you here today, unambiguously, Bob, you’re the quarterback and I’m your blocker, and we’re going all the way.”

Peripatetic Kemp

By day’s end, Kemp had clearly lived up to his reputation as a peripatetic campaigner. From the waterside rally with Dole, he headed to a series of receptions around the city. In the evening, he attended a gathering hosted by the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Washington-based pro-Israel lobbying organization.

Kemp, who has long enjoyed considerable support among Jewish Republicans, drew enthusiastic cheers from the crowd by declaring that he felt “among my mishpachah”--the Hebrew word for family. He also said he had received a congratulatory call earlier in the day from Benjamin Netanyahu, the recently elected prime minister of Israel who has long been close to Kemp.

In a breakfast with reporters, House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) predicted that Kemp would not be satisfied with the figurehead role that vice presidents traditionally have played. “I don’t think you recruit a Jack Kemp for vice president on the premise that after the election you’re going to put him on a shelf somewhere,” Gingrich said.

Sunday afternoon, a reception for abortion-rights supporters gave an enthusiastic ovation to their advocates in elected office--most notably Gov. Pete Wilson and Massachusetts Gov. William F. Weld.

A crowd of about 600 supporters waved placards saying “Thank you” to the two governors for their efforts to change the Republican platform’s strong language against abortion rights.

Weld referred briefly to the controversy that followed their efforts in which both governors were dropped from the list of evening speakers for the convention.

Both governors declined to charge that the speaking change was retribution for their work on abortion rights. But Wilson suggested that any intent to silence the governors was probably thwarted by the publicity given to the speaking controversy.

Further off in political exile, the GOP’s most prominent gay organization remained on the sidelines.

Rep. Steve Gunderson (R-Wis.), one of two openly gay Republican members of Congress, said after giving a speech to the Log Cabin Republicans that Kemp’s reputation for the “politics of inclusion” in the GOP was “helpful.”

But about the best Gunderson felt he could ask of the party was: “If you can’t be for us, at least be silent. Don’t go out of your way to target us.”

Last year, Dole’s campaign publicly returned a contribution from the Log Cabin organization--a move Dole later said was made by his staff without telling him. But the group, which claims 10,000 members in 32 states, still feels alienated from the party. Sunday, at its convention, the organization voted to withhold any endorsement of Dole and Kemp for at least a week.

Times staff writers Edwin Chen, Dave Lesher and Gebe Martinez contributed to this story.

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