ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, March 6, 1996 TAG: 9603060086
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SERIES: election '96
SOURCE: JODI ENDA KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
note: below
VOTERS LIKE WHAT THEY SEE in Bob Dole, in spite of his lack of a "new" message.
Peg Nelson was positive she wanted to vote for Bob Dole for president in Iowa's caucuses.
But she wasn't sure why.
If Nelson, a 77-year-old retired child-welfare worker, and others have trouble explaining why they back Dole, perhaps it is because the candidate himself can't quite express his reasons for running.
After 35 years in Washington, Bob Dole has emerged as the quintessential professional politician of his generation. And while he's celebrated for his political agility, his stoic Midwestern character and his raw tenacity, it's often been difficult to say what Bob Dole stands for - even for Bob Dole.
Which may be the greatest hurdle still standing between the 72-year-old candidate and his last, best hope to become president of the United States.
In an era when voters are looking outside Washington for answers, the Senate majority leader is campaigning for the Republican nomination on a theme that extols his experience and ability. As voters yearn for someone with a new vision, Dole extends an old hand.
For some, that's just fine.
``I've just always had a lot of faith that Bob Dole is sincere in the fact that he wants to do what is right for the country,'' said June Cooper, the Republican chairman in Anderson County, Kan., and a volunteer on Dole campaigns since the 1960s.
``I like his honesty. He reaches the heart of America here,'' said Don Galusha, 66, a retired farmer from Clinton, Iowa. ``He has experience, and experience is the greatest thing.''
But Dole, who faltered twice before in pursuit of the presidency, knows that is sometimes not enough. George Bush lacked what he called the ``vision thing,'' and look what happened to him.
So, as he rode past Iowa's snow-covered fields recently on a campaign bus that would carry him from a police station in Cedar Rapids to a men's prison in Anamosa to a boat club in Clinton, the candidate tried once again to give shape to his presidential desires.
Speaking softly as aides chattered on cellular phones, Dole evoked a nostalgia for the America of his youth, for a small town in Kansas where neighbors banded together to help a young man savaged by war, for the work ethic that dominated a boyhood scarred by poverty. And he noted how far the nation has strayed in the decades since.
``I've seen what's happened over the years and don't think I've been part of the problem,'' he said. The candidate spoke reflectively, dragging out some sentences, cutting others short.
``I think we're headed in the wrong direction in this country. I can see the breakdown of fundamental basic areas, values. I think there's an opportunity to rein in the government to make it more efficient. The government does a lot of good ... but I think you just need to focus on reducing, eliminating some of the agencies; fairer, flatter, simpler tax system; more money back to the people, less burdensome regulations.''
Like Republicans who swept into Congress last year on promises of reform, Dole wants to balance the budget, overhaul welfare, send money back to the states. If his platform sounds familiar, that's because it's his version of Newt Gingrich's Contract With America.
``And,'' he said, still considering what he had to offer, ``I think, frankly, strong, effective, moral leadership. ... I think that working with Congress, I have a reputation - I think it would be verified by Democrats that I reach across the aisle. I don't leave people out in the cold. I bring people together.''
Democrats and Republicans long have praised Dole's ability to forge compromise, to break through Senate gridlock and make things happen. Some see him as the most gifted legislative leader since Lyndon B. Johnson, one of the most brilliant congressional deal makers ever.
But to many voters that's hardly an endorsement.
``We still want outsiders; he is the consummate insider. We want someone who can present a vision or speak in a comprehensible sound bite, and he's practically incapable of doing that,'' said Burdett Loomis, a political science professor at the University of Kansas and student of Dole.
``He is uncomfortable with this notion of vision. In that way, he is like Bush. They lived through the Depression. They fought the war and went on with their lives,'' Loomis said. ``And now, he's being asked for a vision. He probably senses a snare there. If you don't see a vision, to articulate one is kind of phony. And he's not a phony guy.''
Bob Dole's life story reads like a movie script written with a young Jimmy Stewart in mind: the nose-to-the-grindstone kid from Russell, Kan., who helped his father at the cream-and-egg station and later at the grain elevator, who watched his mother drive all over the state peddling sewing machines to people who often gave her chickens in return, a serious kid who had a newspaper route, who was shy around girls and dreamed of playing college basketball.
The movie would start during the Depression, about the time young Bobby Joe, his brother and his two sisters had to move with their parents, Doran and Bina, into the basement so they could rent their house to others. It would follow Bobby Joe to high school, where he wrote for the school newspaper, ``The Pony Express,'' made a name for himself as an athlete and got a job jerking soda for $2 a week at Dawson's Drugstore because he was tall and handsome and funny and brought in business. It would follow him to college, where he had a basketball scholarship but still waited tables and ran a milk route to keep afloat, where he pledged a fraternity and then watched as World War II swallowed up his housemates.
It would follow him to war, to the mountains of Italy, to a farmhouse spewing German machine-gun fire.
To near-death.
And back.
He was shot in the spring of 1945 and nearly died in a foxhole waiting for medics to rescue him. Two died trying. At first, the strapping boy who was the pride of Russell was paralyzed from the neck down. He was shipped home, totally helpless - and hopeless. His parents waited for him to die. A couple of times, he came close.
His friend, G.B. ``Bub'' Dawson from the drugstore family, barely recognized this Bob Dole.
``There was all the difference in the world. He was so emaciated,'' Dawson recalled more than 50 years later. ``His shoulder blades stuck out like wings. He looked like he'd been in Dachau. He was on a stretcher.
``He never did say much, and he was so determined not to let anybody help him. If you tried to light a cigarette for him he wouldn't let you. He always said he wasn't handicapped, he was inconvenienced.''
It was months before Dole could stand. He said he consoled himself by dreaming of playing basketball again. This was not to be. ``He'd stand by the bed for a few minutes and fall down on the bed,'' Dawson recalled. Gradually, he said, Dole learned to walk to the next room. Then, he practiced pacing in front of the house. ``Then, finally, one day he walked down to the drugstore. We bought him a malt.''
But his right arm wouldn't work. His hand was screwed up like a claw, and his arm was permanently bent. He found a doctor in Chicago who agreed to operate on him for free, but Dole couldn't pay the hospital bills. So the Dawsons put a cigar box on the counter - the same one a healthy, young Bob had worked at a few years earlier - and townspeople dropped in their nickels and dimes.
His body never would be the same. But his spirit recovered and pulled him through. And after a few years and several operations, after being told by a surgeon to quit expecting miracles and to figure out how to make the best of what he has, Dole picked himself up and went back to college with his new wife in tow.
A few years later, he ran for office. And after several successful years in the U.S. Senate he decided to run for president.
After failing to win the Republican presidential nomination in 1980 and 1988, Dole resigned himself to life on Capitol Hill, friends said. But when he returned last year to the mountains of Italy, to the place he almost died, Dole decided there was one final mission for him, for his generation of fighters.
So here he is, seeking to become America's oldest president.
LENGTH: Long : 148 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: Bob Dole Trouble articulating message color KEYWORDS: POLITICS PRESIDENT PROFILEby CNB