Countdown: Pulling Out All the Stops

Flanked by former Presidents Ford and Bush, Bob Dole started the clock Friday on his 96-hour “Non-Stop Victory Tour” by assailing President Clinton for alleged character lapses and campaign donation scandals.

“The president ought to be ashamed of himself,” the Republican presidential candidate declared as he called for campaign finance reform in a preemptive strike at his opponent, who planned a similar speech five hours later and 2,400 miles away. “He looks truth right in the eye and walks beyond it.”

In an event that looked more like President’s Day in deepest winter than All Saint’s Day on Nov. 1, two former heads of state came to cheer on the man who has worked for 35 years to join their ranks.

They called him a hero, they called him a legend, they lauded his honesty and legislative skills. Dole was touched, he was grateful, he was honored, he was fast on his feet.

The first words out of the 73-year-old candidate’s mouth after hearing the tag-team presidential paean:

“I’m glad I’m alive to hear all these nice things.”

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The rally, and two others like it Friday with the former tenants of the Oval Office in tow, was aswarm with Secret Service agents, tinged with nostalgia and scented with a hint of desperation. The marathon immediately began to exhibit cracks, as a Republican congressman broke ranks and a press bus broke down.

It was the first leg of a potentially painful 15-state, round-the-clock electoral odyssey, a furious final effort to woo 204 of the 270 electoral votes Dole needs to move into the White House.

The unusually cheerful candidate kicked off his grueling race to the end with an announcement on his campaign plane, about 15,000 feet above Ohio:

“It is high noon,” came the crackly voice over the public address system on Citizen’s Ship. “Ninety-six hours and counting. Ninety-six hours to victory. We’re on the way. The clock is ticking: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. We’re on the way to the White House. Hang on.”

One bank of seats away from Dole, narrating from the front of the plane, Bush held up a T-shirt, cocked his head and read the inscription: “96 Hours to Victory.”

Responded Ford, softly, with a smile: “Once you get there, is there skiing?”

Day One saw Dole tackle two Midwestern bellwether states--Ohio and Michigan, with their gray skies and flurries of snow--and eight cities big and small. Today was set to start at 1 a.m. in Detroit, then a 4:30 a.m. stop in Newark, N.J.

Campaign manager Scott Reed said that the winding sprint through bright cornfields and dark cities, on the roads and in the air, was planned by the badly trailing candidate to “create some excitement” in the final days before the election. “We’re going to visit all the battleground states, turn out the vote and create some enthusiasm,” he said.

On Friday there was talk of the Persian Gulf War, referred to as Bush’s finest hour. These hoary men of American government recalled the fall of communism and the Berlin Wall, the breakup of the Soviet Union and the shame of Watergate. Ford took the crowds back to 1976, when he lost his bid for election with a far younger Bob Dole by his side.

“The team of Ford and Dole almost won the election,” a wistful Ford recounted here and later in Ashland, Ohio, before Dole flew to Michigan for a seven-cities-in-nine-hours bus tour. “If we had carried the state of Ohio, we would have been elected . . . . We lost the state of Ohio by 11,000 votes out of 4 million.”

The two former presidents escorted Dole on his Friday kickoff as sort of walking, talking evidence of the wonders of integrity. There is, argues Reed, a “heck of a contrast” between the two former presidents and the current occupant of the White House.

Look at them and, in Reed’s words, you see “somebody American people can trust.” Listen to them--once the joking is over--and you hear testimonials to Dole’s character and indictments of the man who stands between the war hero and the White House.

In Bexley, as in history, Bush followed Ford in order of appearance. It was a circumstance that left the verbally challenged 41st president, who was long skewered by Dana Carvey on NBC-TV’s “Saturday Night Live,” in a state of gentle and laughing complaint.

“I would tell you what I really think about the batting order,” Bush cracked, “but as Dana Carvey would say: ‘Not gonna do it. Wouldn’t be prudent.’ Hey, that lazy Dana Carvey, I made millions for him, and now he’s unemployed.”

On a more serious note, however, Bush said Friday that it “breaks my heart” to see the White House currently under fire not for policy matters “but because of integrity and honor.”

“I hope history will say about Barbara and me that we [served] with honor,” he said. “I’m confident that history will say of Bob Dole after his first four years that they did it with honor, they told the truth.”

Dole also criticized Clinton’s integrity in office, pointing to a growing string of controversies involving the Democratic National Committee, the president and charges of improper donations from foreign interests.

He pushed a four-part campaign finance reform program, and he ridiculed the president--who is far ahead in the polls but under increasing fire--for speaking out Friday on finance reform issues.

While the crowds were bigger than at earlier campaign swings, the first leg of the Republican marathon fell short of being one long celebration.

As Dole was leaving Bexley, Rep. John R. Kasich (R-Ohio), head of the House Budget Committee, trashed the candidate and his running mate, Jack Kemp, for the way the two have pushed their 15% income tax rate cut, the heart of the vaunted economic plan that the team had hoped would win the hearts and wallets of America.

Explicating the tax rate cut’s economic impact “was never the way to sell it,” Kasich criticized. “It’s like this empty political promise: ‘Not only am I going to give you a 15% tax cut, but there’s going to be a chicken in every pot.’ Politicians don’t have any credibility making promises.”

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In addition, on and off throughout the day came an oddly dressed visitor to the Victory Tour. With less-than-subtle symbolism running amok, an ample female-impersonator dogged Dole through the Heartland. Wearing Viking horns and a pointy metal breastplate, with a boom box belting Wagner arias, it was a Democratic commentary on the Republican tour: The fat lady has sung.

Dole’s Democratic doppelganger may think the election is over, but the bus trip has only begun. Or as Dole said after leaving the Gerald R. Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, Mich., as dusk fell: “Awright! Ninety hours left.”

And when Dole ditched the former presidents in Grand Rapids, the autumn adventure really began--drop-by politics writ large across the Michigan landscape, with more than half a dozen campaign appearances on tap before midnight.

The first began in darkness and intermittent snow at Michigan 50 and Interstate 96 somewhere outside of Lowell. Outfitted in a casual white jacket, Dole hopped from his bus, “Asphalt One,” into a waiting 18-wheeler. He then headed down the highway to his next event, using a CB radio (his handle: Marathon Man) to chat with truckers along the way.

“What are you hauling?” he was asked before his truck left.

“Spare ballots,” he responded.

And off he went.