Liberating the Dodgers From L.A.

So what if Bob Dole, in a slip of the lip, briefly returned the Dodgers to Brooklyn? It wasn’t like then-President Gerald Ford liberating Poland from the Soviet Union.

When Dole talked at a Los Angeles high school last week about “the Brooklyn Dodgers” ringing up a no-hitter only the night before--even though the Dodgers hadn’t played in Brooklyn in 39 years--he was just flashing back subconsciously as we all do now and then.

Every two years or so, I still find myself calling them the Brooklyn Dodgers. By the way, just where are the Raiders these days--Oakland or Los Angeles? And does Connie Mack manage the Philadelphia Athletics or the Florida Marlins?

I always thought Ford got a bum rap after a 1976 debate in which he proclaimed that “there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.” He merely had been confused by a question and gotten careless. But it may well have cost him the election. For many Americans, Ford’s fumble was a symbol of his intellect.

Similarly, many saw Dole’s little lapse as symbolic of his residing in yesteryear. “A Brooklyn Bridge to the past,” wrote the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd.

For me, it was a normal human gaffe that meant nothing.

What was disturbing, however, was the disingenuous overreaction of a nervous spokesman who immediately began spinning gibberish about Dole “trying to inject levity . . . just using the well-known Dole wit.”

Sorry, we all know the Dole wit and this wasn’t it.

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After a bad morning, Dole flew north to Chico and fell off a speakers’ platform.

Again, this really can’t be compared to Ford’s falling down airplane stairs or stumbling all over. Or was that just Chevy Chase on “Saturday Night Live?” Ford also got a bum rap on that one. He was, in fact, one of our most athletic presidents.

Dole’s tumble was the fault of his security detail. A decorative railing was left standing free, unattached to the platform. When Dole leaned on it to talk to a boy, he dropped four feet onto the ground.

More symbols: Dole’s campaign biting the dust, falling into the tank.

But the candidate may have turned it into an advantage by bouncing back, unhurt, undaunted and using--this time--the Dole wit: “Just earned my third Purple Heart. . . . I was reaching out for a vote.”

Then later the spokesman reappeared, criticizing newspapers for “using poor judgment” in running a photo of the candidate sprawled on his back. It didn’t fit the day’s campaign message.

What it did do, however, was prove Dole to be remarkably durable and agile for 73 or any age.

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My first reaction after the Dodgers slip and the Chico fall was that all this was a metaphor for Dole’s California campaign and he really should just fly off and never come back. Cancel the TV ads and go stump in states he has some chance of winning.

He’s down 17 points in California, according to a Times poll. He’s even 11 behind in the GOP-friendly Central Valley.

Most telling, a UC Irvine poll found Dole to be only four points ahead in Orange County, where Republicans must win big to carry the state. George Bush won there by 37 points in 1988 and still barely carried California by 3.6%.

Yet, on second thought, why not continue to compete here? Where else would he spend the time and money? He’s got to campaign someplace. This state is as good as any. Look around the country, it’s brutal out there for Dole.

He’s leading convincingly in only three small states with 13 electoral votes, according to The Hotline, a daily political summary. President Clinton is ahead in 29 states with 341 votes. It takes 270 to win and California has one-fifth that number.

Focus on the Great Lakes? Dole is trailing by 20 in Michigan, 19 in Wisconsin, 16 in Illinois and 14 in Ohio.

Despite rumors fed by Democrats that Dole is pulling out of California, he’s sticking to his plan of running hard here at least into October. Then he’ll reassess.

Dole has bought TV time for a tough new character ad that shows Clinton making light of marijuana to teenagers. Running mate Jack Kemp will campaign in California later this week. Dole will be back at month’s end.

“If anything, I feel better about California than I have in a long time,” state advisor Ken Khachigian insisted after a strategy session Friday in Washington. “We’re more focused.”

Certainly, based on Chico, the candidate has become more exciting on the stump.

Ford, after all, wound up carrying the state. It’s still conceivable Dole could, although the odds right now don’t look much better than the Dodgers returning to Brooklyn.