Dole: The Caustic Comedian

The presidential contenders have assigned much of the day-to-day campaigning chores to their running mates, Republican Robert Dole and Democrat Walter Mondale. Accompanying Dole last week was TIME Correspondent Dean Fischer, who filed this story. It is followed by TIME Correspondent John Stacks' report on the Mondale campaign.

Waving Confederate flags, emitting Rebel yells, and sipping beer from paper cups, spectators at the big raceway in Darlington, S.C., waited with genial impatience last week for the start of the Southern 500, a classic stock-car event. They barely noticed the tall, lean man whose neat blue and white seersucker suit contrasted sharply with the bib overalls, T shirts and baseball caps in the crowd. Then the stranger in town stepped up onto the platform erected temporarily on the edge of the track, approached the microphone, and desperately tried to create an instant rapport with his audience. "I'm more of a stock-car fan today than I was yesterday," shouted Senator Robert Dole, the Republican vice-presidential nominee and Jerry Ford's vote-hunting emissary to alien lands.

Light Heart. Dole's brave try to win favor by kidding his own predicament aroused only scattered applause. For a few minutes, the Senator signed autographs, chatted with Ace Driver Cale Yarborough--a folk hero in the South for his lead foot and light heart--and smilingly posed for photographs with Miss Cindy McDowell, Miss Southern 500. Suddenly a roar swept through the crowd. Jimmy Carter was emerging from a green Chrysler, grinning with delight, totally at ease in familiar surroundings. When Carter reached the stand, the Republican vice-presidential nominee edged toward the Democratic presidential nominee. Smiling, Carter edged away. Finally, Dole maneuvered himself into a position next to the Georgian. "Glad to see you," said Carter.

Now it was his turn to address the crowd. Declaring that he had been a stock-car fan for 25 years, Carter promised that if he was elected President the drivers would be invited to the White House. Standing ten feet away, Dole remarked to anyone within earshot: "It's going to be a busy place."

The performance at the 500 was Bob Dole at his best: trying gallantly to cope with an awkward situation, kidding himself in the process, and doing his damndest to win support for Ford and the Republican ticket. As the vice-presidential candidate, Senator Dole sees his role in the campaign as that of "the lead dog," seeking new and promising territory for the G.O.P. He also has the job of carrying the fight to the Democrats, at least early in the campaign, while the President follows the strategy of staying put in the White House and acting "presidential."

Barnstorming through Dixie, Dole insisted, "We're not writing off the South. We're saying 'right on' in the South." To a group of supporters in South Carolina, he declared: "Carter may be your geographic neighbor, but we want to be your philosophic neighbor." Inevitably, Dole got in a sharp dig at what he calls Carter's "equivocation." A common line: "He has taken so many stands on 14B [the right-to-work law], the next time they ask him, he'll probably say it's his shoe size."

Adult Game. Dole was temporarily distracted from his assigned role last week when former Gulf Oil Lobbyist Claude Wild Jr. claimed he had given the Senator a $2,000 campaign contribution in 1970. Dole insisted he had no knowledge of any such transaction, and after a flurry of activity by reporters scenting scandal, Wild lamely admitted that he was sure he had been "in error" in making his charge. Wild did not comment on the allegation that he illegally gave Dole's administrative assistant $5,000 to $6,000 for the Senator's 1974 campaign--a claim Dole has denied. The headlines were painful for Dole. "I'd forgotten how tough the press was," he said. "I just haven't had that intense scrutiny before. This is different. It's an adult game we're in."

In the weeks ahead, Dole will be stumping through Florida, Alabama, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, California, Missouri, South Dakota and Kansas, "making points for the President" by sniping at Carter in the North, and concentrating his fire in the South on Senator Walter Mondale, the Georgian's running mate. Hoping to claim the middle of the road for the Republicans, Dole will be pointing to the liberal voting record of Mondale, whom he calls Mr. Busing.

Dole will also be trying to play the adult game of presidential politics for some laughs--at his and the Republicans' expense. "Half the people don't know my name," he likes to say, "and the other half think it's something to drink." As for the parlous state of the G.O.P., Dole told a crowd in Carbondale, Ill., "I'm very proud to be here. Being a Republican, I'm proud to be anywhere."

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