THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE Republicans chose a dead-safe candidate in Robert Dole Can he make it to the finish line?

...Buchanan may get another chunk of convention prime time...

...Dionne, Jr., predicted they would...

...Ross Perot is again feeling tempted to run...

...Convinced that the burdens of change are not being fairly distributed, more and more Americans are sometimes desperate and often angry, depending on government and politics to give them an effective voice, yet not trusting established institutions to provide it...

...And regrettably, the election of 1996 has thus far not offered much to prove them wrong...

...I can be a Ronald Reagan," he told a campaign crowd, "if that's what you want...

...Clinton and the Democrats have successfully portrayed themselves as our protectors against extremists, the defenders of Medicare, education, and the environment...

...Too many of his efforts to define the issues- his appeal to the future because it's "what lies before us," or his assertion, on the "Brinkley" show, that "something Wilson Carey McWilliams is professor of political science at Rutgers University...

...Buchanan's threat is at least half bluster: He glories in the role of Republican rowdy, and he would leave the party only in the direst circumstances...

...This sentiment limits Reed's freedom of maneuver, firing an insistence that Republicans pledge government support for traditional values, most obviously, the right to life...

...He and his wife changed churches, apparently deferring to conservative Protestant sensibilities...

...Of course, it's a familiar truth that politics requires the compromise or abandonment of old allegiances and lesser principles in the hope of a greater good, a reshaping of the self that is chancy...

...Facing so many dangers and lacking magic, Dole will play it safe, waiting for his opponent to make a mistake...

...ocial conservatives in general, fobbed off with symbols during the Reagan and Bush years, have been unhappy with the low priority assigned to their favorite measures by Gingrich, Dole, and the Republican majorities in Congress...

...The Republicans need a new, unifying romance, but Bob Dole, whatever his other excellences, is not a candidate to catch hearts...

...A year ago, President Bill Clinton's fortunes were in the subbasement, and the greater part of the Republican establishment settled on Dole as a minimalist candidate, unlikely to make a mistake or confuse the party's basically negative message: beat the Clintons, vote Republican...

...It's hardly news that economic and technological changes are weakening the institutions of civil society-undermining local community, shattering trust in the workplace, intruding on and reshaping family life...

...In New Hampshire, Bob Dole was moved to denounce "corporate greed," but seems to have left it at that...

...will pop up in November"-sound like drift or an opportunism greater than Clinton's...

...More venturesome possibilities, like Christie Whitman of New Jersey, lead straight into a political minefield...

...Dole recognizes, too, that his age requires a running mate of extraordinary stature, hence his pursuit of General Colin Powell despite war drums on the right and the risk of a slate-the first since McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt in 1900-where the nominee for vice-president overshadows the head of the ticket...

...Still, Michael Dukakis taught Democrats the risk of a candidate who offers "competence" without vision, even against an opponent who lacks Bill Clinton's fluency, and voters this year have been left with the sense that Dole has no very clear goals...

...The Republican right wing is restive, and Pat Buchanan is making third-party noises...

...These days, as Robert Putnam says, Americans are increasingly apt to "bowl alone...

...but at the moment, Clinton may be forgiven a little basking...

...Since Powell isn't playing, Dole will probably turn to governors like John Engler of Michigan or Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin...

...Buchanan's followers, however, are another story...

...Back in the legislative world where he is a master, Dole hopes to build a record of achievement-and provoke vetoes-sufficient to establish him as a man who can do what the president, at best, will only say, a Kansas Machiavelli championing honest action against unreliable speech...

...But the obvious risk, that political souls will lose themselves in their own contrivances, is the sound part of the distrust of "insiders...

...So Dole is not likely to take any decisive steps toward the center, especially since he is so indebted to Reed...

...Dole upholds principles from time to time, but his public persona seems increasingly ruled by a driving ambition that leads him to attempt any role that will please, however ill-suited to his somber nature...

...Someone-the Democrats are still the best bet-needs to do better...

...Only a minority of social conservatives sees this clearly, but great numbers have an inkling, and much of the force behind Buchanan's candidacy lies in his half-articulate contention that the common good should rule rather than being subject to the logic of markets, that work and home are goods at least as important as a larger GNP...

...and barring a change of heart by Powell, conservatives may have something close to a veto on the vice-presidential nominee...

...Neither has a credible program addressing the decline of job quality and real wages, the problems attendant on "downsizing," or the increasing inequality associated with a winner-take-all society...

...Even the New York Times, not given to levity, poked fun at Dole's nine differing proclamations of "what this race is all about...

...But like voters in general, Republicans aren't happy...

...In Bosnia, things are going as well as could be expected and the president even won an award as "Irish-American of the Year...

...Things could blow up at any time, of course, and even among his supporters, millions regard the president with resigned distaste...

...Still, Democrats need more than Clinton's unction...

...Clinton has even been doing well with recent crises in foreign policy, treating Cuba and China firmly without being nutty and giving Israel decent support...

...The platform will probably stay where it is on abortion...

...Where the economy is concerned, both Clinton and Dole seem out of the loop, barely aware of the fears and resentments that underlie the latest economic statistics...

...No, he can't: at bottom, Bob Dole is too shrewd and too honorable to believe the lines that go with the part, and he delivers them without conviction, though he has every reason to envy Reagan's gift for enchantment...

...If Dole does keep to the right on social issues, moreover, it will open a lot of terrain in the center...

...The loathsome side of Buchanan's "movement," ready to enlist as storm troops for the "culture war," sees even less reason to compromise...

...So far, Ralph Reed has played a crucial, conciliating role, keeping the Christian Coalition more or less neutral during the primaries, a position that hurt Buchanan and helped Dole, especially in the decisive contests in South Carolina and Georgia...

...Now, while Clinton is still no world-beater, his standing in the polls is respectable, and to make matters worse, the antinomies of the Republican coalition are making themselves felt, as commentators Theodore Lowi and E.J...

...For Bob Dole, the price of Republicanism has increased dramatically in recent years as the party has lurched to the right...

...The dominant impression of Dole, at the moment, is that he is boring, out of touch, and possibly too old to be president...

...Dole's habit of referring to himself in the third person, for example, suggests that he sees "Bob Dole," the public person, as an artifact quite distinct from the man himself...

...his position on abortion appears to be a form of periodical literature...

...Dole's staff thinks so: two days after Super Tuesday, they had their candidate, in hard hat and French cuffs, playing to blue-collar conservatives...

...The Right, though, isn't Dole's only problem...

...this year, he took the antitax pledge he once scorned...

...He has avoided any serious primary challenge, reflecting his own skill, but also his party's embattlement...

...Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, however, has given Democrats what looks like a decent beginning...

...Dole knows, of course, the advantages of moving toward the political center, which Clinton has been treating as his personal camp ground for some months now...

...their mood is fretful, and even the optimists among them, thinking ahead to November, have moments of dread...

...About 40 percent of Buchanan voters have been saying they're not inclined to support Dole, and this threat is especially credible in the case of "Reagan Democrats," who, without a firm Republican commitment on social issues, may decide to vote their economic interests...

...This argument is almost certainly false: capitalism is anything but conservative, following the relativism of the market, and trading tradition at a discount to desire...

...Dole won, in the end, chiefly because he was not Pat Buchanan, just as his best hope lies in the fact that, especially in his military and personal virtues, he is not Bill Clinton...

...On the Democratic side, however, Bill Clinton hasn't been making many...

...Both Clinton and Dole are free traders, and protectionists will be looking for a champion...

...And if it proves impossible to enact a socially conservative agenda, Reed is willing to work with probusiness and libertarian Republicans on the basis of the view, associated with Bill Kristol, that if government can be radically scaled down and decentralized, "civil society"-churches, families, voluntary associations, and local communities-will take up the slack, restoring America's moral order and sense of personal responsibility...

...The president has held out some lures for wandering conservatives-school uniforms, tough talk on immigration, a soft-pedal on affirmative action-and Whitewater, so far, is yesterday's news...

...Democrats are a smaller flock, more coherent and-thanks to Gingrich and the election of 1994-more inclined to see their fortunes tied to those of the party...

...His inarticulateness has become proverbial, and his campaign staff was driven to the expedient of keeping him away from debates...

...THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE Dole, like Clinton, out of the loop Wilson Carey N c W i 11 i a m s Hfter an anxious month or two, the Republican party is right where most of its leaders wanted it to be: the primary season, effectively, has come to an end, and Bob Dole, bleak but dead-safe, is assured of nomination...

...Every time Bob Dole campaigns, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd observed, he seems to lose votes...

...Clinton has supported a rise in the minimum wage and has begun to talk again about "fair" trade, but apart from support for retraining, his administration has not developed an industrial policy...

...Bob Dole never had any illusions on that score: his family was Democratic, and he became a Republican to have a better chance of election...