Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 19, 1995 TAG: 9502180014
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: G3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Why?
``Because the Terminator was persistent,'' Atwater cracked. But step aside, cyborg-assassin-from-the-future; make way for Bob Dole, a blast from the past who makes you look like a quitter.
How did Dole get to be so tough? Having failed in three bids for national office, he is now gunning for a fourth - and he's ahead in the polls. Dole's a survivor, literally.
So imagine what Dole must be thinking as he reads excerpts of David Maraniss' new Bill Clinton biography, ``First in His Class.'' In 1946, the year Clinton was born, Dole was back home in Russell, Kan., recovering from grievous war wounds he had suffered the year before when he was fighting the Nazis in Italy. He had just turned 23.
Twenty-three years after that, in 1969, Clinton was fighting his own war - against the Selective Service System. And so, as Dole looks at draft-scamming baby boomers such as Clinton and fellow Republican Dan Quayle, he has a right to think that maybe the World War II generation has, as he puts it, ``one more shot left'' at national leadership.
Dole seeks to cap a political epoch that began in 1961 with Jack Kennedy, the first president who saw the war as a combatant. Kennedy joined the Navy in 1941; he was 24. ``The torch has been passed,'' JFK said in his ringing inaugural, ``to a new generation.'' Among the listeners was Dole, then a freshman congressman.
The next six presidents all began life within a decade of Kennedy's birth in 1917: Lyndon Johnson in 1908; Richard Nixon, 1913; Gerald Ford, 1913; Jimmy Carter, 1924; Ronald Reagan, 1911; George Bush, 1924. For more than three decades, America's seven commanders-in-chief were united by wartime military service.
Then came Clinton, shaped by a different set of youthful experiences, such as civil-rights and anti-war protest; he was the first president in 60 years never to wear his country's uniform. For a while, it seemed as though the torch had passed yet again. So what went wrong? Why is Dole, born in 1923, gaining ground on the youthful incumbent?
Maybe Clinton is too soft; it had been too easy for him to climb the greasy pole of political success. He never fell upon the thorns of life; he never bled - at least not for his country. When it came to telling the truth and keeping commitments, the president dogged it. Clinton hadn't had to stick his neck out for anyone; why should he start now? And so, after two years in office, he is pinned down more by his own character flaws than by opposition fire.
Dole plans to announce for president on or about April 14. That would be the 50th anniversary of when he got hit trying to take Hill 913. Dole has a right to run on his long record of service, but he also has a duty to talk about the future.
In 1992, Clinton promised to overcome the ``brain-dead'' politics of right and left. But he's been a friend to the status quo, as his new budget demonstrates. We know Dole's tough enough, but is he smart enough to see that the political-bureaucratic system he grew up with is now collapsing? Or is he still, as a bitter backbencher named Newt Gingrich said a decade ago, ``the tax collector for the welfare state''?
A grateful nation remembers Dole's sacrifice a half-century ago; yet more will be at issue in 1996 than nostalgia for heroism. The voters want a new post-bureaucratic activism. If Dole is hip enough to crack jokes with David Letterman, he ought to be wise enough to think about how he would re-engineer health, education and welfare if he ever does get to the White House.
Otherwise, his prospects will sink once again. Dole should know that April 14 marks another anniversary - the night the Titanic hit the iceberg in 1912.
James P. Pinkerton, a policy adviser in the Bush administration, is a columnist for Newsday.
Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service
Keywords:
POLITICS
by CNB