A Brilliant Move, Even If It Wears the Scent of Desperation

Bob Dole breathed new life into what had become an almost pointless presidential race Wednesday when he announced his resignation from the Senate, an institution with which he had become virtually synonymous. With Dole’s strategy of waging a cross-town campaign against President Clinton an abject (and predicted) failure, something very significant had to be done to alter the equation.

Being a U.S. senator can be one of the truly great jobs in the world. The office gives its holder a virtually unparalleled license to explore and to speak out on the fundamental issues of the time. Unfortunately, few senators avail themselves of these opportunities, one of the reasons why the institution has fallen into relative disrepute.

Dole has generally not availed himself either. Indeed, the Senate and the office of majority leader served as something of a mask for Dole. His public utterances have become humorous cliches of Beltway baffle-gab about subcommittee referrals and cloture votes. (If you don’t know, you don’t want to know.)

It is all too easy for legislative leaders to suffer the pitfall of tactic-think. In fact, it is most often a gift for that very thing--the ability to maneuver for short-term internal advantage, to succeed at incrementalism by splitting the difference within the existing system--that often gains high legislative office. But what is a virtue in a legislative leader is usually a serious deficiency in a candidate for high executive office. People outside the Capitol milieu, which is to say the vast majority of Americans, don’t relate to the mind-set or its language.

For Dole, the language of legislative leadership has been a way to avoid plain speaking. Now, as a politician moving among the people, to paraphrase Chairman Mao, he has the opportunity to reinvent himself at age 72. Not an easy thing to do, although “the Great Helmsman” is purported to have done it.

Is stepping away from the Senate an act of desperation on Dole’s part? Certainly. It’s the exact opposite of his plan of only two months ago. Is it authentic? It’s hard to make a case for that, given that it’s being undertaken as a direct result of his failure to make any headway against a president who remains rather unpopular in any fundamental measurement. Is it something that will work? Perhaps. Dole is a born-again populist; Clinton is a faux populist.

Freed from the incredible mental clutter that accompanies legislative leadership, Dole may find that he has something to say. His resignation speech was already a far cry from his boilerplate response to Clinton’s overrated State of the Union address.

Dole has a sense of irony that might strike a public chord, a quality that was smothered by his senatorial mask. And the sheer drama of the story will invite the country to take another look at Dole and, by extension, at the choice America was listlessly drifting into.

Bill Clinton is a very good politician, but his strength is largely a function of his positioning as prime defender against the Newt-Right Congress. Now Dole is, at least symbolically, removing himself from that equation.