ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 18, 1996 TAG: 9608190134
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
UNLIKE George Bush in 1992, Bob Dole got the kind of Republican National Convention he wanted - harmonious and hassle-free, with party-splitting issues like abortion relegated to the sidelines.
Less clear is whether Dole gave the convention what it wanted - a candidate who'll get to the White House.
Now that presidential nominees are selected months earlier in state primaries and caucuses, national conventions are for other purposes. To unite and energize the party troops. To set the stage for the general-election campaign with what amounts to hours of free - and, for the moment, unrebutted - TV time.
Dole's convention-eve choice of Jack Kemp as his running mate and Dole's emphasis on favorite GOP themes - above all, tax-cutting - appeared to achieve the former. And to a point, Dole's tight management of the convention appeared to achieve the latter.
But after impressive performances earlier in the week by Colin Powell and by Dole's wife Elizabeth, Dole's own moment in the spotlight - his acceptance speech on Thursday night - came across as unfocused and uneven.
In one sense, that was an admirably honest reflection of Dole, a plainspoken Midwesterner whose forte has been legislative rather than executive or oratorical leadership. But the lack of focus seemed also to derive from Dole's uncharacteristic attempt to reinvent in a few short weeks a political persona that had formed during 35 years of congressional service.
Evidently, the Dole campaign has settled on what might be called a three-R strategy for unseating President Clinton: Remember Reagan. Retake the middle. Raise the character issue.
These are classic political techniques; just as the GOP today evokes the memory of Reagan's presidency, for example, the Democrats for years evoked the memory of FDR's. But in this instance, the pursuit of the first two is undermining the aim of the third.
Dole is carrying the Reagan evocation particularly, some might say absurdly, far. His remark to a group of Republicans - "if you want me to be Ronald Reagan, I'll be Ronald Reagan" - could enter the annals of American political lore. His convention-eve conversion to the Church of Tax Cuts gave Dole a creed resembling that to which Reagan pledged faith on his way to the White House in 1980.
But Dole's conversion also seemed a repudiation of his own history as a deficit hawk. If it isn't, then it will require spending cuts so deep they'd make Newt Gingrich blush. Dole's call for a bolstered military did nothing to deter the erosion of Dole's once-high reputation for fiscal credibility. Moreover, Democratic demagoguery on Medicare and Social Security is given a measure of legitimacy when benefits are adjusted not to stabilize the programs but to underwrite tax cuts tilted toward the affluent.
Seizing on the tax-cut issue helped Dole distance himself from the religious right and its focus on social issues. Another distancing technique was simply to ignore the Christian Coalition's presence at the convention. But pretending the religious right doesn't exist as a powerful force within the GOP is still a pretense - and, like Dole's tax-cut conversion, reduces the effectiveness of GOP efforts to characterize Clinton as an unprincipled waffler.
Perhaps the best line of Dole's speech was an apparent ad lib. Noting the president's tendency to adopt Republican-like coloring, Dole quipped that he'd expected to see Clinton at the GOP convention that night. But while the advantage on the character issue may still belong to Dole, pretense and self-reinvention narrow the gap.
LENGTH: Medium: 67 lines KEYWORDS: POLITICS PRESIDENTby CNB