Missteps, Lost Opportunities Taking Their Toll on Dole

Bob Dole didn’t dig the deep, deep hole in which his campaign has struggled--frustrated, star-crossed, terminally tongue-tied--for the better part of a painful year.

The Republican candidate for the office of the president inherited his rut from the party that claims him--and now often blames him. But he has made it deeper all by himself with a host of verbal missteps and lost opportunities.

The race is not yet over, of course. Dole still has seven weeks left in which to persuade voters to change their minds about reelecting President Clinton. But unlike campaigns for Congress or even governor, which rarely set firmly into place before October, the key points in presidential campaigns, particularly when an incumbent is involved, usually happen early.

With Dole substantially behind in all recent national polls, an account of key moments in his ordeal is in order.

A review of the record shows clearly the bad breaks that have hindered Dole--a bitter primary season that bled money, a growing economy that benefits his opponent and, above all, his association with a Republican Congress that for most of the campaign year has been unpopular with most voters.

But after falling into a hole not of his own making, the candidate got out his shovel and began to excavate a string of personal potholes in the rocky road to the Oval Office.

Angry Response

January in Washington: A grim, wooden Dole delivers an angry and deeply conservative response to the president State of the Union address. The move may have helped him with conservative voters in the Republican primaries, but it turned off millions of moderates Dole would need later.

February in New Hampshire: Dole tells supporters on the eve of the state’s primary voting, “I didn’t realize that jobs and trade and what makes America work would become a big issue in the last few days of this campaign.”

May in Chicago: In a highly publicized round-table discussion, Dole says that welfare causes domestic violence.

Late May in Washington: Dole resigns from the Senate, but fails to tell his staff in advance, leaving his campaign unprepared to capitalize on the move.

June in Louisville: “We know it’s not good for kids,” Dole says of tobacco use, “but a lot of other things aren’t good. . . . Some would say milk’s not good.” And so the tobacco flap begins; Buttman--the anthropomorphous cigarette protester planted by the Democratic National Committee--soon follows.

Dole has taken several effective campaign steps, Republican pollster Ed Goeas notes, saying that “three very bold moves” that Dole has made “keep my confidence level high” that the Republican can still win.

“One, stepping down from the Senate. Two, his tax cut plan. Three, picking [Jack] Kemp” to be vice president.

But, Goeas says, seemingly smaller actions, such as Dole’s tobacco comments--which echoed for days on the campaign trail and kept him from getting his message across--have hurt the candidate badly.

Younger voters “overwhelmingly believe that tobacco is addictive,” says Goeas. Dole’s suggestions to the contrary widened his generation gap in the polls, which is already worse than his gender gap, he says.

“They viewed that statement in much the same way that women at home viewed Bush in ’92 with the grocery scanner--out of touch,” he says, referring to a Bush campaign photo opportunity in which the then-president seemed unfamiliar with electronic checkout machines.

‘We Deal With It’

Dole “really had some bad luck,” admits Kenneth L. Khachigian, one of the candidate’s senior advisors. “But there’s no sense being a crybaby about this. I have to look at it analytically. This is what got us where we are. We deal with it. We can deal with it.”

The Kansan’s countdown to campaign crisis could start in any one of half-a-dozen places; Washington, D.C., in the fall of 1995, is probably the clearest.

It was then that his party, despite Dole’s own misgivings, engineered a partial shutdown of the federal government to gain leverage in a budget battle with Clinton.

The Republicans had already pushed their agenda further than an anxious public seemed to want, proposing such breaks with the past as major revisions in Medicare. The shutdown compounded the electorate’s fears.

Before the shutdowns, most polls had shown Dole and Clinton essentially tied. By the second government closure, in early December, Clinton was enjoying a lead of nine to 16 points.

Dole, the majority leader, eventually shut down the shutdown strategy--surprising fellow Republicans by unilaterally announcing one morning on the Senate floor that the party would no longer threaten to close government offices as part of the budget fight. By then, though, the damage was done.

At the time, Dole was focused on another rival--and a key one. And throughout the first months of the primary season, Dole abandoned several of his own past positions to keep conservatives from turning to that rival--Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas.

When the Texan bogged down, millionaire publisher Steve Forbes thrust himself into the forefront of the Republican race, running television ads in key states at 15-minute intervals and forcing Dole to spend money he otherwise would have saved for assaults on Clinton later in the spring.

Dole went on to barely beat Forbes and Patrick J. Buchanan in the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucus and to lose to Buchanan in the New Hampshire primary. It was the low point of what Dole’s pollster Bill McInturff later described as “eight weeks of terror.”

Once Dole had claimed the nomination, some said the victory had been a foregone conclusion all along. But Dole and his aides knew better. They had won by throwing everything they had into a few key contests, gambling that they could win before they went broke. The strategy took great discipline and considerable courage, but the price was steep.

Dole had spent nearly every dollar federal law allows a candidate to spend during the primary season. He was left almost completely out of money for campaign ads and travel for the rest of the spring and summer, and he looked ahead at a desert of five months with no automatic media coverage: No victories for the 5 o’clock news, no campaign statements broadcast free of charge as he took on tough rivals across the nation.

Victim of New Era

Dole essentially became the first victim of a new era in presidential campaigning, a guinea pig for a primary season cut basically in half. This compressed primary schedule created “a set of concerns that campaigns have never had to deal with,” says Tom Rath, a longtime GOP strategist who served this time as senior national advisor for former Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander’s primary bid.

“What do you do after you’ve won and before you’re nominated?” Rath asks, laying out the hurdles that faced Dole throughout the spring and summer. “How do you stay fresh? How do you stay focused? What do you do if you have no money? To be fair, those are new questions. Those are not questions that other campaigns have ever had to deal with.”

They are problems that tripped Dole up over and over again. By May, Dole was scheduling as many outdoor events as possible to save on the cost of renting a hall. And he stopped using a private aviation terminal at National Airport in Washington, saving $700 per outing in fueling and gate fees.

But most important, he had only limited resources for advertising on television.

Because Clinton was uncontested in the primaries, he had millions of dollars left for television ads. The president waited until Dole was voiceless, and then he pounced, airing ads linking Dole with House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, architect of the Republican revolution.

“When Americans were looking for the first time at Dole as president, Dole was linked with a very unpopular public figure,” Rath says.

The lack of advertising money kept Dole from having what Khachigian calls “a normal campaign, where, when the other side raised an issue we would have the complete freedom to counter that or make our own point. We never had the resources to do it.”

Add to that his difficulties in his beloved Senate. Dole had hoped to use the Senate as a launching pad--firing off a barrage of bills that would demonstrate his leadership abilities.

Instead, he became trapped. Dole could not get a balanced-budget amendment passed, saying it was his “biggest disappointment” in 27 years as a senator. He couldn’t get his colleagues to repeal the 1993 gas tax. And Democrats forced him into a lengthy debate over raising the minimum wage--a move core Republican supporters, particularly owners of small businesses, oppose, but most voters support.

Dole’s response--to break out of the trap and attract attention back to his campaign--was to quit the Senate.

Decision Hailed

Most Senate Republicans, though shocked, hailed the decision as brilliant. “Free at last,” said Sen. Connie Mack (R-Fla.). But Dole had decided on the move in great secrecy, telling almost no one of his intentions. Campaigns require planning, and Dole had not allowed any.

As a result, the day after ending his Senate career, on June 12, he began what he dubbed his Heartland Tour with the attention of the entire country but with very little that he was ready to say.

Instead of looking ahead, laying out his vision for the future of the country, Dole spent the week looking backward, reminiscing about his years as a legislator and talking about what it was like to be “unemployed.”

“My father told me you can only sweep the walk and empty the garbage so many times a day in retirement,” he told diners at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon in Toledo, Ohio. “And it is sort of an empty feeling.”

That tour became emblematic of what has become a recurring problem for Dole, an unwillingness--or inability--to explain to voters his view of the nation and the presidency in appealing and compelling terms.

In part, the problem stemmed from the vastly changed circumstances that confronted Dole. When he began his campaign in the early days of 1995, shortly after the Republicans’ overwhelming victory in the 1994 midterm elections, Dole and his rivals for the nomination each offered a simple theme--complete the “Gingrich revolution.”

But by the time Dole actually had the nomination, voters had soured badly not only on Gingrich himself, but on what he seemed to stand for. Perhaps another man could have recast his theme to accommodate what the public now seemed to want. Rhetorical glibness, however, has never been Dole’s strong suit.

“The way Bob Dole explains his view of the world is through the legislative process,” says GOP strategist Eddie Mahe. But when the 35-year veteran of the Congress was advised to table the legislative language, he was left with “no other way to express himself.”

His search for substitute metaphors has often fallen flat, like it did at one major address in New York in March. “I would say that if your faucet was leaking this morning when you left home, you’d probably want somebody with experience to fix it,” he said, struggling to explain his campaign theme. “I think that is what this is all about.”

At Mercy of Events

He is also fond of telling crowds that Clinton steals his campaign ideas, everything from tax cuts to welfare reform, a riff that often ends with a seemingly petulant “so why shouldn’t I be president?”

Dole’s lack of an argument more compelling than that has left him at the mercy of events--reacting, not setting the pace. That was never clearer than during the summer, when the party’s internal divisions over abortion, and Dole’s statements about tobacco, dominated the campaign news.

In mid-spring, the campaign’s strategists had set a key goal--bring Dole to the point where he would be tied with Clinton in polls before the summer Olympic Games absorbed voters’ attention for a month. But by the time the games began, the summer’s problems had left Dole even further behind.

His smooth-running convention led, predictably, to a rise in Dole’s fortunes. But just as predictably, Clinton’s convention soon after canceled Dole’s gains, restoring the race to where it had been and where it remains today.

Through it all, Dole’s strategists have struggled to cope with the complex forces at work in the making of American presidents.

But the candidate, himself, has seemed, at least to some of his helpers, curiously uninterested in painting any larger picture of where his effort is headed.

“What’s your overview of the campaign?” one of his top message makers asked him this summer. Dole’s answer was brief: “I’m gonna win,” he said.

And he paused.

“Maybe big.”

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Key moments in Bob Dole’s Campaign

How did Bob Dole sink into such a deep hole in his race to unseat President Clinton?

* Oct./Nov. 1995--Republican officials in Congress embark on a strategy of shutting down the government to gain leverage in the battle over the federal budget. The public reaction against that strategy pushes Bill Clinton ahead in the polls.

January 1996--In a televised response to Clinton’s State of the Union address, Dole appears wooden and delivers a set of highly conservative remarks that seem aimed largely at solidifying his support in GOP primaries. Clinton’s lead expands.

February 1996--Dole tells supporters, “I didn’t realize that jobs and trade and what makes America work would become a big issue in the last few days of this campaign.” A few days later, conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan beats Dole in the New Hampshire primaries.

February, 1996--Dole fires his pollster and deputy campaign manager.

March 1996--Dole clinches the Republican nomination for president but in the process runs through all the money federal law allows him to spend.

Spring 1996--Clinton, flush with campaign funds after an uncontested primary season, barrages the country with advertising linking Dole with the unpopular Newt Gingrich.

May 1996--Dole creates a flap by accusing the welfare system of causing domestic violence.

June 1996--Dole leaves the Senate. The next day he has more reporters than ever before on his campaign plane at the start of his Heartland Tour, which he spends talking about the past not the future.

June 1996--Dole creates another flap by saying of tobacco, “I’m not certain whether it’s addictive.”

Summer 1995--Furor rages in the Republican party over Dole’s stance on abortion and the party platform.

July 1996--Dole abandons the National Rifle Association’s cherished legislative goal of repealing the ban on assault weapons.

August 1996--Dole announces his economic plan, choses his running mate, Jack Kemp and has a successful convention.

September 1996--Labor Day comes and Dole is anywhere from 14 to 21 points down in the polls.

September 1996--Iraqui military crisis flares. Dole is forced to soften his earlier criticism of Clinton’s policies toward Iraq. News attention to Iraq crisis severely limits national exposure for Dole campaign.