Dole's Time in The Sun
FERGUSON, ANDREW
Dole's Time in the Sun by Andrew Ferguson Fond du Lac, Wisconsin The day after Bob Dole resigned his Senate seat, he made his first post-resurrection campaign appearance, at a rally in Chicago....
...Photographers scurried out the back of the plane and around to the front...
...Fond du Lac is the site of one of Gov...
...He took off his tie...
...Dole stood on the stairs in his bright blue shirt, smiling, arms folded, head tilted back to catch the sun...
...After speaking the words, the government guy began winging it...
...no reason to step on his own story...
...We've been working on it for, oh, 10, 15, 20 years...
...His willingness to use a prompter regularly after so many years, and to respect the offerings of speechwriters, may indeed signal nothing more profound than a momentary shift in technique...
...He just waved at the hacks, looking relaxed- tanned, God knows, and rested, and maybe, at long last, ready too...
...he is genuinely witty and self-deprecating and at ease...
...The weekend after the resignation, Dole said he looked forward to a series of speeches on the road: "I can go out and define who Bob Dole really is, what his ideas are and his agenda and his so-called vision for America...
...Long, when he was chairman, from the great state of Louisiana...
...An impromptu press availability...
...The prompter has another virtue-it attaches Dole to the text and discourages his ad libs...
...It was a day trip, meaning Dole left Washington in the morning and returned by nightfall...
...When a woman on the shop floor told him he "smelled nice," Dole replied: "It's good clean Republican aftershave...
...Getting things done . . ." and on and depressingly on...
...Not only did he have nothing to say-no vision, so-called or otherwise-but he probably couldn't say it even if he did...
...Dole's speech summarized his party's already-familiar ideas about welfare-an attack on the Great Society as "liberalism's greatest shame" and a call for wholesale devolution of power and money to the states, with federal encouragement for freewheeling experimentation...
...At one point, for example, Dole's prepared text read: "We must do everything possible to ensure that child support payments go to those who deserve them...
...Maybe...
...Skeptics will credit the speechwriters and his use of a TelePrompTer for what might be merely a superficial and temporary change in the candidate's style...
...But it just as likely demonstrates a new realism on Dole's part, to repeat a message over and over, as often as necessary, to discipline himself against his own deficiencies, to defer to advisers when deference is the best way to advance his own interests...
...It didn't work...
...Democrat, but...
...And it ought to be done," he said...
...And the ad libs are still a problem...
...He had lunch at the Brenner Tank Company in Fond du Lac, where several of the beneficiaries of Thompson's program are now employed...
...After the speech, back on the plane, there was a delay in takeoff...
...Three months ago, Dole would have continued in this vein: "Good friend of mine...
...From last summer on, the beef against Dole the candidate has been comprehensive...
...Trying to get it done...
...The first hints of puzzlement stirred through the audience...
...He got good stories out of it in the next day's press...
...It was terrific...
...The symbolism was disastrous: Dole as the anointed candidate of the dread establishment, removed from the common folk-a government guy in an anti-government age...
...As reporters milled restlessly about, word spread that Dole had appeared from the front of the plane and was standing on the gangway...
...A great idea...
...he brought up the motion to recommit...
...What did he say...
...After the long, depressive slumber of spring, the removal of a tie was more than enough to launch a weary Dole supporter into rapture...
...There was no press availability...
...His staff began furnishing him with "talking points," little outlines with turns of phrase and relevant bits of information meant to channel his improvisations into a coherent sequence...
...Dole has always been good at working through a crowd one by one...
...In Fond du Lac, though, Dole restrained himself and returned to the text-to his message...
...What did he say...
...Day trips are cheaper than overnighters-an important consideration for the cash-strapped campaign...
...He took off his tie...
...They also guarantee a large turnout of reporters, who would much rather file a story in the afternoon and be home in time for cocktails...
...He looked great...
...Long in the Senate Finance Committee...
...From one event to the next, he moved about in a bodyguard of elected officials, an advance guard of august fellow-senators, a cadre of commissioners to the rear...
...He mingled easily and ate the ham and cheese sandwiches without complaint...
...They sometimes threaten to lead him up that same California highway President Reagan took in his alarming first debate with Walter Mon-dale in 1984...
...But the worries resurfaced quickly-especially the worry that the candidate might find himself at last with the attention of American voters but nothing to say...
...The subject was welfare reform, and perhaps owing to its gravity he wore a tie...
...He looked great-relaxed, totally in command...
...Really...
...His speeches during the primary were for the most part long, extemporaneous rambles, sometimes bordering on incoherence...
...He had, in other words, something to say-a vision!-and he said it with some skill, and minimum clutter, as he had in his much-praised resignation speech the week before...
...When Dole's plane landed in Wisconsin, however, he descended the gangway in the company only of Tommy Thompson...
...It is in his public presentations that he can now prove himself to be a stronger, more disciplined campaigner, and if his speech in Fond du Lac is an indication, the transformation has begun...
...Great...
...He delivered his first major address on Tuesday, May 21, before a group of business leaders in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin...
...Dole's trip to Wisconsin was thus especially well covered by press hounds eager to see evidence of the transformed campaigner...
...An open-necked shirt...
...That's what it's about in Congress...
...Tommy Thompson's pilot programs to move welfare recipients off the rolls and into the job market, offering them subsidized child care and job training in the bargain...
...Started out a long time ago-with Sen...
...But the speech was spare and economical, alternately tough, sensitive, and on occasion funny...
...Conversations went like so: "Did you see Dole in Chicago...
...The prompter, a device rarely used on the campaign trail, is proving unusually helpful to Dole, whose disability makes it almost impossible for him to handle the 4-by-6 cards politicians generally use when speaking on the stump...
...That evening in Washington I happened to be at a gathering of Republicans who could barely contain their delight...
...Oh, the usual...
Vol. 1 • June 1996 • No. 37
