I was sitting on the train in Berlin minding my own business and listening to snippets of German. The man next to me was reading the "Berliner Zeitung." When he flipped back to the front page, I gasped in surprise because there it was, albeit in German -- Pat Buchanan had won New Hampshire.
In lieu of emigrating to Europe, I decided that perhaps I should try to discover what Dole had done that was so grievously wrong. I assumed he had slept with his campaign manager or embezzled funds and killed his business partner. No, that was Clinton. Rather surprisingly, Dole had done nothing. At all.
Since his defeat, Dole rallied the support of his impressive network of state governors and other leaders (earned through his little-remembered Contract bill that gave federal funds directly to states to do with as they pleased), ending the primary battle cleanly and quietly. Yet in all this time, he failed to articulate his agenda, much less his reasons for wanting to become President, even in the face of a strong challenge by a person whose views were so contrary to his own. New Hampshire should have sent the message to Dole that he must find a position, any position, but in the end his contacts and everyone's general reluctance to support Buchanan effectively ended the challenge from the right.
Even Ralph Reed came to Dole's defense. Today, in the absence of any interesting (read: controversial) dialogue with Dole, the press has turned the discussion to his selection of a Vice-Presidential running mate. Although this choice will certainly be important for him, it does not alter the choice the electorate must make in November: Clinton or Dole.
Is this the time that Dole with transform himself into a more dynamic leader? Will he compete for our votes by appealing directly to the people's concerns, a role mastered by Clinton?
Michael Kelly, writing in the New Yorker ("Accentuate the Negative," April 1), thinks not and I would have to agree. Citing numerous examples of Dole's apparent incompetency at political speechmaking and general non-enthusiasm for campaigning, Kelly concludes "That Dole cannot perform at a level even remotely to Clinton's has been a great source of worry to his advisors and supporters. It shouldn't be ... he is running as the anti-Clinton ... Playing off Clinton, Dole is seeking to turn his assets into liabilities -- his age, his inarticulateness, his determinately inarticulate pragmatism, his shyness, his old-fashionedness -- while reminding voters of what they do not like about Clinton: his adolescent self-indulgences, his talkiness, his overpromising, his slickness. It is Elvis against Bogart..."
What it is, other than Elvis versus Bogart, is a question of how we view the office of the chief executive. Character is not an issue because Clinton has committed every political sin in the book and no one seems to care. There is little difference between the platforms of the two parties. Dole went left and Clinton right, leaving them in basically the same spot. The question is whether our chief executive should be a parliamentarian or a visionary.
Both roles have their positive and negative aspects. While Dole "got things done," he also reversed his positions enough times to make his actual opinions incomprehensible. On the other hand, Clinton's ideas, most notably health care, proved too ideal for reality and plan after plan meet its demise during his first term in office. So, as succinctly stated by Kelly, the question remains, "do we want someone to feel our pain or someone who probably doesn't feel his own?"
