The Enigma of Bob Dole

...Since then, Dole has only infrequently wavered in loyalty to the pro-life movement, but as the radio caller suggested, he has not articulated those beliefs with the intensity of a Jack Kemp or a Pat Robertson...

...There is a sense that his relationship to the anti-abortionists is essentially politicalrather than philosophical, in repayment for past services...

...With Dole's election after the 1984 election as Republican floor leader, his positions on arms control votes changed as he began collaborating with right-wing senators...

...He is from middle-class rural roots in Kansas...

...It seems to be working...

...George McGovern on foodstamps...

...His impromptu remarks violated his anti-austerity restraint: "We have to tighten our belts a little...

...Here, too, he avoided hard positions or even the language of the right...

...111 "Now, it's easy to pick on the poor people in this country, but sometimes we find it hard to do much else...

...Dole was doing his best to fit the pattern...

...Alone among the presidential candidates, he had little to say substantively on the INF treaty...

...For good reason...

...22 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1988...

...His answer to the WHO caller—in a state crucial to his chances and where the pro-lifers are avidly sought by the Republican candidates—is remarkable in its concern for not frightening away other voters...

...This was the Watergate year of terror for Republicans, and Dole, as his party's recently deposed national chairman (in favor of George Bush), was portrayed as the essence of Nixonian excess...

...Ellsworth never was able to consolidate Sears into the operation and had his own problems with Keene...

...aid to Communist Mozambique...

...For well over a year, they have advised Dole that his opportunity in the Republican party is with the conservative majority, that the moderates are irrevocably committed to Bush...

...Just two years later, in 1976, when to his great surprise he became the Republican nominee for Vice President, he assured all that he would not raise abortion as an issue...

...I remember," Dole recalled, "Nixon saying, 'We've got to find a place for him [Bush...

...With his roots on the left, Blumenthal has devised the theory that supply-ciders and neoconservatives are the despair of the nation and orthodox mainline Republicans the hope...

...Given a chance to comment on the performance of two favorite targets of the right, Dole called Secretary of State George Shultz's "generally pretty good" and Chief-of-Staff Howard Baker's "pretty good...

...That idea was stillborn, and Dole as Finance chairman was impressed into winning enactment of the three-year bill...

...In the one set speech of the day before a Des Moines meeting of the state's electric cooperatives, Dole succumbed to the habit of a political lifetime and refused to read the text...

...the bad news, three seats were empty...

...His mention of "pre-natal care" is noteworthy when put in the context of a current mini-controversy, typical of the kind that has marked the Senator's political career...

...We're talking about tightening our belt, the government tightening up its belt...

...Such rhetoric by the late seventies drew agreement from McGovern, Robert Strauss, and the Washington Post that Dole had "grown...

...Shortly after Helms's political organization, the Congressional Club of North Carolina, endorsed Kemp for President (though Helms himself did not), Dole released the Wells nomination...

...A thoughtful student of international affairs, Ellsworth was ill suited to run a national campaign and in October was replaced as operating head of the campaign by William Brock, a former Republican national chairman who resigned as Secretary of Labor to join Dole...

...Like most conservative Republicans, he voted against the Kennedy-Johnson tax cut as a second-term House member in 1964...

...He must make clear that by "belt-tightening," he meant the government, not the people...

...I think there's some reason for that," he said, adding: "I don't know...

...Dole was just trying to please Blumenthal," an aide told us...

...That's how I got into it, on the side of RENAMO...

...In our CNN interview, he said of Bush's chances in November: "I think he would lose...

...I don't want to lose people who say I went too far in behalf of the unborn," he said...

...He was still at it in the next stop at Sioux City, saying, "We're going to have to sacrifice a little...

...Why had he never taken a "leading role" against abortion...

...A month earlier, a less than flattering portrait of Dole in the New York Times Magazine by Martin Tolchin and Jeff Gerth began with an anecdote illustrating his backroom techniques...

...Who should the U.S...

...Typically, his position was procedural: that as Republican floor leader, he could not join Bush in ready advocacy of the treaty but had to stay flexible...

...I really don't know George Bush," he replied...

...Where he comes from on the issues—what he really would do about taxes, abortion, SDI, Mozambique—remains a mystery, unlikely to be solved until he enters the Oval Office...

...Dole always has been more of a taxer than a tax-cutter...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1988 21 questions was mixed...

...Dole responded that if she were to check the views of his anti-abortion opponents for the Republican presidential nomination, "I think you'll find it's the same as mine...

...I thought we Republicans ought to keep reminding them every day that the war was already there when Nixon was elected...

...He must stop talking about "bitter medicine...

...They] don't want the party to grow, and so they kept out the blacks and those kind of folks...

...The credit card is due...

...Then he asked: "Are we going to sacrifice for our children or are they going to sacrifice for us...

...A Washington Star profile of him by Loye Miller described the freshman Senator as a "militant conservative...

...The conservatives are going to look at my record and say, 'That's my candidate.' " Dole's comments to Blumenthal seem out of line with the image he is trying to convey in Republican presidential politics...

...The consensus today on the left is that, while in quest of the Republican nomination, he has "shrunk...

...So, you've got to understand where those people are coming from...

...Or, at least, would the pro-lifers find him preferable to Vice President Bush, who as recently as 1980 was taking pro-choice positions and counts stalwarts of the Planned Parenthood Federation among his friends and supporters...

...He has cast votes against early deployment of the Strategic Defense Initiative, against imposing sanctions on the African National Congress, for invoking the War Powers Act after the invasion of Grenada, and—in 1983 and 1984—with the arms control bloc on a series of votes that found him opposing the conservatives...

...Dole never has been a controllable candidate, and at age 64 is not about to transform himself...

...Instead, he suggested that a much smaller, one-year cut sponsored by the Democrats should be passed by the lame-duck Congress before Reagan was inaugurated...

...I heard no imitation of Reaganiterhetoric about suppressing Communism or supporting free markets...

...In truth, Dole must be seen as essentially innocent of ideology and fiercely combative toward his opponent...

...After the 1984 election, he hired as personal consultants two fully accredited warriors in the conservative movement: David Keene, current chairman of the American Conservative Union, and Donald Devine, former head of the Office of Personnel Management...

...I think Mon-dale always had a point," he said...

...But what is Dole's position on Mozambique...

...But pressed during the CNN show to identify the "professional right-wingers," he named only fund-raiser Richard Viguerie: "He's not going to be for Bob Dole...

...Not with Bork...

...So, he's a Kemp fan...

...Shortly after the NBC debate in early December in which he vigorously avoided taking positions, I followed the Senator on a long day in crucial Iowa...

...But not always...

...In the Senate in the 1970s, he cast a vote or two against pro-life initiatives, though his voting on the flood of proposals in the 1980s is overwhelmingly anti-abortion...

...While Devine has been integrated into the new organization, Keene remains as a personal political adviser to the Senator...

...His relative benevolence of late toward Kemp and his fierce hostility toward Bush can be explained by Kemp's decline and his prospective showdown with the Vice President...

...But sometimes the darkness peeps through, as in calling the U.S...

...But realizing he was uttering the S-word, he quickly pulled back: "I'm not preaching austerity . . . [but] we've got to take some medicine...

...senators, Dole tells of his nonpolitical family—his grandparents on welfare, his father going to work in overalls every day, he the only family member to go to college...

...On the contrary, his anti-abortion voting record has few flaws...

...To his enemies on the right, that betrays his inner liberalism...

...There is an unintended hint of Jimmy Carter when he promises: "I'll tell you the truth, and I'll try to remember where I'm from...

...He and his staff are convinced that here is the burning issue for America...

...Roy had performed abortions ("I never performed one," Dole would tell audiences), and the Senator had an army of pro-lifers harassing his opponent and running skull-and-crossbones advertisements against him...

...Everything else is going along fine," he told Iowa audiences...

...support, the government or the rebels...

...I think Judge Bork knows who was on the firing line...

...His non-advocacy reached a peak of sorts when the select congressional committees issued their report on the Iran-contra affair...

...Actually, Dole tries not to jab Bush publicly, saying he is taking advice to be nice`for a while" at least...

...Writing in the Human Life Review in 1986, he declared that pro-lifers "have lifted the banner of life and with it, the consciousness of all who love liberty...

...I listen a lot to [Sen.] Malcolm Wallop [a leading hard-liner on arms control]," he told me...

...Robert D. Novak is a syndicated columnist, television commentator, and publisher of the Evans and Novak Political Report...

...Dole has always considered himself a conservative, and he was universally considered as such when he burst on the national scene in 1970, defiantly supportive of President Nixon...

...Their impact has not been decisive...

...By the 1974 Senate campaign, Dole was edging toward the left, allying himself with Sen...

...The Senator called Treasury Secretary James Baker, Bush's friend and former campaign manager, telling him to forget about Doles support for the budget package if the mailing went out...

...He very nearly turned against the recently agreed upon deficit-reduction package when he heardthat Bush was putting out a campaign mailing that attacked Dole as a taxer...

...In neither private conversation nor public speeches does Dole convey deep commitment to any of these issues, with one exception: the budget deficit as America's paramount problem...

...All we were trying to do," he told me, "was get the State Department to talk to the RENAMO representative in Washington...

...Henry Waxman, for expansion of Medicaid's pre-natal care (which then quietly passed...

...Dole, darling of the Washington lobbies who proposes to solve the deficit problem through appointment of an elitist commission, is selling himself as a populist—and the Republican voters are buying...

...a debtor nation" (at one stop, he caught himself and added, "at least we've got a big debt...

...Robert Dole was pulled up short by a woman asking him about abortion...

...The degree to which the presidential campaign affects his policy decisions seems pervasive...

...It didn't...

...Nor did he unleash any such verbal blasts during a private conversation...

...By November 20, when he taped the Evans and Novak program on CNN, the tone was different: "Now, I may have said 'bitter medicine.' It really shouldn't be that bad...

...That relationship is further complicated by the 1974 campaign's strident tone, a familiar characteristic of Dole's political career that he has intermittently sought to eliminate...

...When Keene and Devine made clear they could not work with Sears, Dole brought in his fellow Kansan and best man at his second wedding, Robert Ellsworth, as a non-ideological campaign chairman with the mission of fitting everybody in...

...Does he harbor animosity toward the Vice President, I asked himin airborne conversation over Iowa, expecting a quick denial...

...But Dole for the most part keeps cool and is trying to give Brock and his team a free hand in running the campaign...

...I haven't gotten into all the politics with South Africa and all that...

...But those who know him well regard this as nonsense...

...While he now pledges no raise in tax rates ("I don't find many Americans who think they're under-taxed"), he endorsed an oil import fee conditional on rebates to New England...

...The upward surge in conservative ratings of his Senate votes is punctuated by Common Cause, which used to sing the "Dole has grown" chorus...

...Don Devine long has argued that conservative Republican voters agree and never would go along with Kemp's minimizing of the deficit...

...But in our CNN interview, he said of the 1981 tax cut: "I think it's worked...

...If inside-the-Beltway right-wing activists ponder whether President Bush would give away more to the Soviets through weakness than President Dole would through deviousness, Republicans who come to hear him on the stump perceive him as a true conservative...

...That choice is not made any easier by either looking at Dole's career or examining his present posture...

...Dole denies the two events are connected...

...If his 1976 campaign is best remembered for his ill-advised assault on Democrats as the war party in the vice presidential debate with Walter Mondale, he also raised left-populist themes: "I don't see anybody out there carrying signs about [Medicare and Medicaid] abuse because many of the abusers are upper and middle income people, doctors and others...

...He resists the impulse to trade insults with heckling questioners in the audience, but occasionally succumbs...

...To Blumenthal, he said: "The professional right-wingers are not for me...

...Tolchin, a highly respected veteran reporter, responded that Waxman was his source...

...rr he abortion question reflects the 1 Dole dilemma faced by conservatives on a broader range of issues...

...Staffers, reporters, and even senators who have been at the end of Dole's barbs know what a strain it must be for him to avoid displays of temper amid the annoyances of the campaign circuit...

...Jesse Helms, who saw Wells as a symbol of the State Department's hostility to the RENAMO guerrillas fighting the Communist government of famine-ravaged Mozambique...

...For a proud man, that long-ago event still rankles when he tells of going to see Bush at the United Nations, where Bush was ambassador, to offer him his own job, which he really did not want to leave...

...As I travel around the country," Dole told Blumenthal, "people are willing to take the bitter medicine, but nobody wants to hold the spoon...

...After Robert Bork was defeated for confirmation to the Supreme Court, Dole publicly complained about Bush's absence: "In the critical days, he was in Europe getting his picture taken...

...He then related how Margaret Thatcher had briefed senators in support of the Mozambique government...

...If they've got a network that will help people who are starving, we ought to use it...

...When they finally agreed, the nomination had to go forward...

...We're not talking about Draconian measures...

...In explaining to Miller his advocacy of Nixon, he said: "I got tired of hearing people like Muskie and McGovern getting up and browbeating the President about Vietnam...

...Now the liberal lobby group organizes harassment of him on the campaign circuit for fighting its campaign reform bill...

...I always thought he probably had the call before I got there...

...He was effective, but whether his heart was in it is doubtful, to judge from his often repeated joke: the good news, a bus full of supply-siders went off the cliff...

...But he did not leave it at that...

...Warren Rudman, Dole's most important supporter in New Hampshire...

...If their choice boils down to Bush and Dole, who would be preferable...

...D evine and Keene are more than gestures to the right...

...But he went on to assert that "the conservatives are going to be for Bob Dole...

...In a field where three candidates (including Bush) are sons of U.S...

...He's already got some kind of contract with Kemp, where he sends out mail...

...One of the Republican signers of the majority report was Sen...

...He may never reveal whether he agrees with the majority Democratic report (joined by three Republican senators) slashing Reagan or the minority Republican report upbraiding the Democrats...

...But even then, his conservatism was grounded more in political tactics than philosophy...

...On November 9, the day of Dole's formal announcement for President, a profile of him written by Sidney Blumenthal appeared in the Washington Post's Style section in which Dole called Mondale "courageous" for his self-destructive 1984 campaign advocacy of higher taxes...

...He should promise not to tamper with rates set by the 1986 tax reform...

...He then recalled President Nixon's decision to replace Dole as Republican national chairman with Bush in the Watergate year of 1973...

...We need medicine, and somebody has to hold the spoon...

...Sidney Blumenthal quotes him as saying that supply-side economics was "something I've never understood" andthat "it's had its chance to work and failed...

...He has told one interviewer after another that the Republican party "must be more sensitive to the so-called vulnerable groups...

...In Washington, his new campaign organization headed by Brock was appalled...

...The overweening gloom about deep problems faced by America that in 1984 and 1985 was turning off political audiences has given way on the presidential trail to something a little closer to Reagan's Morning in America...

...But Brock is a pragmatist not fully trusted by movement conservatives...

...I think Bob just thinks the way to do it is put all these people in a box, mix them up, and let them work out their own problems," says a friend...

...What he might have added is that he owes his last twelve years in public life to them...

...He was acting at the request of Sen...

...Running for a second term in 1974, Dole encountered his only close call in seeking public office from Kansas...

...Was it possible he was not really "pro-life...

...Sacrifice" was a forbidden word...

...As the Senate leader whose style most closely resembles Lyndon Johnson's, he follows the LBJ injunction of keeping his options open as late as possible on tricky issues...

...In the midst of his deficit-reduction drive and public calls for control of burgeoning government health programs, he is described as giving a whispered green light to the powerful liberal Democrat, Rep...

...But Dr...

...A part from supply-side economics, Dole's ideological self-conception is confusing...

...Now, it's easy to pick on the poor people in this country, but sometimes we find it hard to do much else...

...But from stressing the deficit, it is not a far step toward preaching austerity, sacrifice, and higher taxes...

...When a young Democratic farmer at LeMars, Iowa, challenged him on farm policy and then Nicaragua, Dole snapped back: "You're right about everything, aren't you...

...Waxman wrote the magazine denying the conversation 20 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1988 took place...

...He wants to be number one somewhere.' And the only thing open was my job...

...Campaigning through Iowa that inaugural week for his campaign, he played on that theme: "The American people are ready for bitter medicine...

...When I later traveled with Dole through Iowa, he tried following thissame course and usually managed it in his basic campaign speech...

...He then noted that in addition to protecting the unborn there is need for "pre-natal care" and for "what we ought to be doing" for "abused and battered children...

...On the day after Reagan's landslide victory in 1980, which suddenly made Dole chairman of the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, he warned that the three-year tax cut the President-elect had promised the voters might "feed inflation...

...Nothing is quite so simple with Doleas a simple return to conservatism, as reflected by his personnel problems on his presidential campaign staff...

...If Ronald Reagan, with his fervent pro-life rhetoric, flinched from a decisive stand against abortion, could as much be expected from Bob Dole...

...Two years after its passage, he called cutting taxes without accompanying spending cuts "the highest folly...

...It was close to the response of the archetypal pro-choice senator, using the Teddy Kennedy defense of asserting his philosophical opposition to abortion and then rationalizing his practical deviation from those beliefs by describing other forms of "pro-life" activity...

...But in 1976, Dole voted against an amendment cutting off U.S...

...I said [to Nixon], 'I want to stay around and have a little fun in this job.' But I went up to visit George...

...After a long silence, Dole responded: "All I've said on that issue is that we ought to use every distribution source we can to get food to the people...

...For nearly a year, Dole as Republican leader held up the President's nomination of foreign service officer Melissa Wells to Mozambique...

...But simultaneously, Dole wanted the tactical insights of John Sears, who is an anathema to movement conservatives generally and to Dave Keene in particular...

...His opponent was an attractive and aggressive Democratic physician from Topeka named William Roy...

...From the late 1970s through as recently as 1985, Dole's voting record on foreign policy Dole always has considered himself a conservative, and he was universally considered as such when he burst on the national scene in 1970, defiantly supportive of President Nixon...

...But Dole is no Teddy Kennedy who need explain away a deviation...