Lack of Fire Could Dampen Dole Campaign

After listening to Bob Dole talk for 30 minutes at an Orlando Chamber of Commerce lunch last week, Louis Conti came away shaking his head.

Conti, a lawyer active in local politics, was disappointed that the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination talked mainly about his struggles on Capitol Hill to redeem the promises of the GOP’s victorious 1994 congressional campaign. “Most people here wanted to hear more about his presidential candidacy. I think he didn’t say enough to convince people who might be on the fence that they ought to get behind Bob Dole.”

Conti is not alone in his reaction. The Senate majority leader’s lackluster performance at Ross Perot’s issues conference in Dallas two weeks ago and his disappointing showing in the Iowa straw poll last weekend pushed to the forefront a question that has lingered in the background of the Republican race: Does Dole have the spark to go the distance?

As he toured several Southern states last week to drum up support, Dole dismissed as inconsequential the straw poll contest, in which Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas fought him to a dead heat. And in an interview with The Times, Dole vowed to “wipe out” Gramm in the March 2 South Carolina primary--the gateway to a string of potentially decisive delegate battles in Dixie--and insisted that he is sticking to his initial strategic blueprint. That plan relies on big money, a slew of endorsements, his own far-ranging political experience and an aura of inevitability to secure the nomination.

But critics claim, and some of Dole’s own supporters fear, that something vital is missing from this prosaic formula: a dose of passion to appeal to the activism of the party’s conservative core, and more fundamentally to the discontent with government that is pervading the broader electorate.

That point was driven home painfully to Dole a few days ago in New Hampshire, site of the nation’s first presidential primary next year, by the state’s largest newspaper, the Manchester Union Leader. The paper’s editorial assessment of the straw poll was headlined: “Man Without a Message.” Noting that Dole’s aides insisted that the Iowa results were not a rejection of the candidate’s message, the paper agreed, adding with biting sarcasm: “Voters can’t reject what is not there.”

While the Union Leader’s views are considered to have a notably rightward slant, similar criticism is heard from more objective sources. “Dole’s biggest pitch is that he is inevitable,” said Merle Black, a political scientist at Atlanta’s Emory University and a leading authority on politics in the South. “Right now, that’s not resonating. That’s a very dangerous situation for a front-runner to be in.”

For now, that danger is somewhat lessened because Gramm has been having his own trouble breaking through. Many on the political right regard his message as focused too much on economics while paying insufficient heed to the social issues that are of greater concern to many conservatives, such as opposition to abortion rights and upholding of family values. “Gramm appeals more to secular conservatives than religious conservatives,” Black said.

As for Dole’s own message, aides claim that it is still evolving. “You don’t lay everything out in your announcement [speech],” Dole told reporters on a foray into Greenville, S.C., last week. “The message will come, but not in one big sermon.”

In fact, Dole intends to flesh out his platform on two major fronts--values and economics--in talks to the American Legion convention in Chicago on Labor Day and the city’s Economic Club the following day. In the American Legion speech, billed as a follow-up to his widely publicized criticism of Hollywood, Dole is expected to challenge the trend toward multiculturalism, which conservatives view as stressing diversity for the sake of political correctness.

One likely target: the new standards for teaching history proposed by a task force at UCLA’s National Center for History in the Schools. Critics have complained that the standards would lead to neglect of the country’s mainstream historical traditions.

In the Economic Club speech, Dole, long known for his emphasis on reduction of the federal budget deficit, will attempt to spell out a broader approach that incorporates policies favoring economic growth. He is said to be considering talking up the virtues of a flat tax and endorsing proposals for a constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds congressional majority to raise taxes.

These initiatives notwithstanding, as Dole stumped through the South last week he continued his stress on cash and endorsements nearly everywhere he went. Stops in Atlanta, Orlando, Greenville and Jackson, Miss., brought in $500,000 to his campaign coffers, adding to the more than $13 million he had previously collected. Dole also returned to Washington with the public blessing of former South Carolina Gov. Carroll A. Campbell Jr., an influential figure in Southern GOP politics, and Florida Education Commissioner Frank Brogan.

But they are no substitute for enthusiasm, as the Dole forces learned in Iowa, where even the aid of Gov. Terry E. Branstad and other key GOP leaders in the state could not lead to a straw poll victory. Dole campaign manager Scott Reed blames the poor showing on a state organization that was not “up to speed.”

But an effective political organization depends not only on mechanical factors but also on a compelling message from the candidate, an area in which some believe that Dole, who spends this week in New Hampshire on a vacation spliced with campaign events, comes up short.

“A candidate cannot invent a new persona, and he can’t invent themes that don’t exist,” said David Keene, one of the leaders of Dole’s failed 1988 presidential bid and still an informal adviser to the Kansan. “What Dole can do and has to do is emphasize his values and desires and the kind of society he wants to see. He doesn’t talk about those things enough.”

Dole’s advisers stitched together his basic stump speech around a serviceable, if not inspiring, “three R’s” theme, which Dole defines as “reining in the government, reconnecting the government with people and reasserting America’s role in the world.”

But when Dole takes to a podium, the theme often becomes blurred and the speech itself turns into a monologue in which he zigs and zags from one parenthetical reference to another.

Thus, during one brief segment of his talk to a fund-raising luncheon in Greenville, Dole touched on the need for compromise in the Senate--”It always helps me to try to get a few Democrats”--President Clinton’s prospects in the South--”I don’t think he can carry a single state”--his admiration for fellow Kansan Dwight D. Eisenhower--”He sort of got me interested in politics”--and why it would be unwise to invite both himself and his wife, Elizabeth, president of the American Red Cross, to the same gathering. “It could get pretty messy,” Dole explained, noting his spouse’s professional interest in blood drives. “You’re trying to eat, she’s trying to find your vein, I’m trying to find your wallet.”

When he directly sought the support of the audience, it was a notably understated appeal, based more on his long seasoning in Washington than on any set of core beliefs. “I think I have made a lot of tough decisions. I don’t say they’ve all been right. But most have been difficult. The tough ones are tough. If you want somebody who’s been tested and somebody who can make it work, then I want to apply for the job.”

Response to the talk seemed to vary with the listener’s own ideological inclinations. Ed Menzie, a moderate, said he liked Dole’s commitment to “good government.” He added: “We want to . . . run it like a business and give everybody a chance to prosper.”

But some conservatives, for whom the phrase “good government” is a contradiction in terms, were less satisfied. David Gossett, a Greenville attorney, said he thought the speech was “long on fluff” but short of substance, particularly on economic issues.

So far, he said, he has been far more stirred by the hard-edged rhetoric of conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan. “Frankly, I would support Buchanan if he had a gnat’s hair’s chance of success.”

But if Gossett is expecting Dole to emulate Buchanan, he likely will be disappointed.

Dole says it is against his nature to dish out the anti-government red meat some conservatives want to chomp on. “You have to say our government does a lot of good things, and then go on and make your case” for shrinking it, he told The Times. “If you get out there with a sledgehammer and say, ‘I’m going to destroy this,’ people may clap a little. But on the way home they’ll say, ‘What is that guy going to do if he gets elected?’

Besides, Dole contends, his strategy from the beginning has aimed not to outpoint Republican rivals with strongly conservative GOP primary voters, but to oust Clinton.

“Let Phil [Gramm] and Pat [Buchanan] go out there and butt heads,” Dole said. “And let [former Tennessee Gov. Lamar] Alexander and [California Gov. Pete] Wilson butt heads. We’ll butt heads with Clinton.”