Dole Follows Familiar Path to a 2000 Bid

In casual style, Elizabeth Hanford Dole took a historic step Wednesday, officially forming a committee for what could be the most serious bid for the White House ever conducted by a woman.

Dole, the former head of the American Red Cross, announced the setup of her presidential exploratory committee at a rally in Des Moines, where she prowled through the crowd with a wireless microphone, seamlessly delivered her speech without a text and occasionally stopped to pat supporters on the elbow.

The unusual talk-show approach--reminiscent of her carefully scripted tour de force testimonial on behalf of her husband, Bob Dole, at the 1996 Republican convention in San Diego--underscored her effort to portray herself as an outsider who can “call America to her better nature.”

Almost like a kinder and gentler Ross Perot, Dole seemed to aim many of her remarks at voters weary of the relentless partisan conflict in Washington. She denounced “the ugliness of politics” and complained the capital is “dominated by special interests.” Implicitly separating herself from her 10 potential rivals for the GOP nomination--all men--Dole insisted: “I’m not a politician, and frankly I think that’s a plus today.”

Although she held high-level Washington jobs for five presidents (including Cabinet positions for Ronald Reagan and George Bush), the 62-year-old Dole has never sought elected office.

Even so, most early surveys of Republican preferences for the party’s next presidential nominee have shown her running second to Texas Gov. George W. Bush, who announced his own exploratory committee Sunday. In Iowa, the site of a critical early caucus, a survey released Tuesday by the marketing firm PSI found Dole drawing 16% of likely voters, second only to Bush’s 37% and double that of any other contender.

Just as Bush did Sunday, Dole signaled broad policy preferences but in most cases said she would not offer specific proposals until later. (Aides, however, insisted that she will produce specific ideas more quickly than Bush, who said he won’t offer more detailed positions on national issues until he begins traveling the country this summer.)

In general terms, Dole called for lower taxes, an increase in defense spending and measures to return more federal education dollars to local control. In one of her most specific comments, she said the country should “do everything to develop and deploy a strategic missile defense system immediately.”

In a television advertisement to be broadcast in Iowa and New Hampshire Wednesday night, she also endorsed private school vouchers for children “trapped in an unsafe, failing school.”

These are ideas that virtually all of the GOP contenders in 2000 will tout. More distinctive were the conciliatory notes Dole struck.

In what might be read as a gentle form of distancing herself from her husband, who took criticism for seeming to disparage schoolteachers during his 1996 presidential campaign, she says in her television ad: “I have refused to join those who often find it expedient to turn teachers into rhetorical punching bags.”

In the ad, Dole makes a veiled reference to the scandals swirling around President Clinton when she says Americans have “been let down--and by people we should have been able to look up to.” In her speech, she spoke often about values but in terms of the obligation “to respect . . . our fellow man” rather than polarizing social issues, such as abortion and gay rights, that are priorities for many conservatives.

She also offered an undisguised pitch to voters exhausted with Washington’s perpetual political warfare. The “overriding theme” of her public career, Dole said, “lies in placing service over politics, consensus over confrontation.”