The next mission - Bob Dole's presidential campaign - Editorial

THE current funk among Republicans about the Bob Dole campaign was in some ways inevitable. Dole won the Republican nomination mostly through inertia: the accumulated momentum of thirty years in public office, three national campaigns, and the chits, organizational advantages, and establishment support that come with it. So when he emerged from Florida tanned and rested it should have been no surprise that his campaign was still as ideologically unfocused as it seemed the day after New Hampshire.

Meanwhile Dole, nomination in hand, has comfortably ensconced himself in the Senate, cultivating an approach to politics exactly the opposite of what he needs to win in the 1990s. He instinctively finesses philosophical divides and blurs policy differences to make deals. He has to shake this Senate habit, and in the last few weeks it has become clear that, as one might have expected, the floor of the Senate is the last place to do so.

He will continue to think and talk like a Senate Majority Leader as long as he is one. He will continue to get caught in webs of maneuvering (witness his trouble on the minimum wage). Two other factors make it imperative for Dole to get out of Washington: a) Senate Democrats solidly united behind an agenda of embarrassing and obstructing him; b) Senate Republicans who don't have the guts to protect their leader. That Democrats have already engaged in more filibusters than in each of the last two Congresses is understandable. That Kansas Republican Nancy Kassebaum should abandon Dole on a politically crucial vote on MSAs is not. Dole must escape.

He must hit the campaign trail, engaging in the very un-Majority-Leader-like business of accentuating partisan differences. In fairness, Dole has been dealt a difficult hand. As detailed elsewhere in this issue, Bill Clinton has managed, thanks to his own savvy and to the short-sightedness of congressional Republicans, to blunt the effectiveness of three premier Republican issues: taxes, crime, and welfare. Even on the balanced budget --to which Republicans have sacrificed so much -- the President has immunized himself. Reclaiming these issues will require concentrated spadework, especially in the face of the Clinton campaign's Reaganesque TV ads on crime and welfare. Dole's crusade against liberal judges is the right idea (even if his voting record, which will be a frequent obstacle this year, blunts this particular attack). But the Dole campaign must undertake an even farther-reaching overhaul of the GOP agenda.

First, Republicans need to stop using the balanced budget as their chief political weapon. It didn't work last year and won't this year because it can easily be transmogrified into a meaningless gesture -- as Clinton demonstrated with his bogus CBO-certified plan. Instead, the Republicans should push for an across-the-board cut in tax rates. That Republicans have punted on this, historically their most effective issue, borders on the suicidal. To justify the tax cut, however, congressional Republicans will have to abandon the fiction that they can achieve a balanced budget without a Republican in the White House. In the meantime, why shouldn't the American people get some benefit from the spending cuts Republicans have already achieved? Otherwise, Clinton will continue to steal the GOP's thunder with his own package of tax credits while knocking Republicans for not caring about supposedly stagnating take-home pay.

Next, the Dole campaign must turn to cultural issues. Clinton seems to have reached an implicit compact with his liberal base whereby he can acquiesce in vague balanced-budget numbers and centrist rhetoric because they don't mean much. Not so on the core social issues. The strongest hit the President has taken all year is on the partial-birth-abortion bill, when the feminists wouldn't let him tamper with a procedure that is four-fifths infanticide. Similar opportunities abound. Some House Republicans are exploring legal routes to undercut the Hawaii strategy of gay activists to win nationwide standing for gay marriage; the Dole campaign should join this effort. The California Civil Rights Initiative will force liberals openly to support racial discrimination; the Dole campaign should run a parallel effort at the federal level. Official-English legislation would play to the common sense of a huge majority of Americans; Dole should embrace it. Reform of legal immigration alone could win California from Clinton. Voters recoil from the Democrats when they realize they are the party of feminists, gay activists, ethnic pressure groups, and minority special interests. Time to remind them.

A recent Frank Luntz poll found that 52 per cent of union members had an unfavorable impression of Bob Dole, even though sizable majorities of them support welfare reform, the balanced-budget amendment, and tax cuts. Only 27 per cent had an unfavorable impression of Clinton. Senator Dole -- a brave patriot, an effective lawmaker, and a moderate conservative as near to the mainstream of American opinion as anyone -- does not deserve these dismal numbers. But how to change them? He cannot proclaim his personal virtues; that should be left to others. The way for him to climb back is to highlight his differences with Bill Clinton on vital issues like taxes and cultural fragmentation -- and to do it out on the hustings. He may not like it, but that has never prevented Bob Dole from carrying out difficult missions.

COPYRIGHT 1996 National Review, Inc.
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