Dole on A Roll

By Jacob V. Lamar

The day after the Iowa caucuses, an earthquake shook New Hampshire. It was a small tremor, just enough to give folks a jolt. On the same day, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas swept into the Granite State for a final round of campaigning before this week's primary. The often tightly coiled politician seemed a changed man: jaunty, self-possessed, rejuvenated. After winning the Iowa contest with 38% of the Republican vote, he suddenly had the aura of a champion. "We're winning!" he exulted as he greeted a supporter in Nashua. His rhetoric was sharper, his jokes funnier, his rapport with voters seemed warmer. For Dole and his chief opponents in the Republican presidential race, the Iowa results promised to have earth-shaking ramifications.

As he barnstormed through the snow, Dole was clearly on a roll. When he posed for a photographer on a street corner near Exeter, a passing driver honked his horn and yelled, "Give 'em hell, Bob!" Dole marveled at his reception. "People are wishing me luck now," he gloated to his staffers. "He's grown as a candidate in just the last four days," said his pollster Richard Wirthlin late in the week. "He's more confident, more assured."

The flip side of Dole's Iowa victory was Vice President George Bush's defeat. Despite his status as Reagan's heir apparent, the advantages of office and more than $5 million in campaign funds, Bush finished a distant third, with a slim 19% of the vote. Pat Robertson, the former religious broadcaster who has never held public office, stunned the Republican establishment with 25% of the vote and a second-place finish, emerging as a powerful and potentially disruptive force.

The Iowa results set the stage for gripping political drama in both parties as the primary season opened this week. With no incumbent to rally around, each party had hoped for an early consensus behind a strong candidate. Instead, the muddied Democratic results and the turmoil in the G.O.P. increase the chances of protracted warfare right through the spring.

As expected, the chorus of lesser G.O.P. candidates began making their exits. Alexander Haig (0% in Iowa, last place) quit the race last Friday with a parting shot at Bush -- and, indirectly, at the Reagan inner circle that had ousted him as Secretary of State. "From my point of view," said Haig, "Bob Dole is head and shoulders above George Bush as a potential President." Pete du Pont (7%, fifth place) will soon be heading back to Delaware's chateau country. Jack Kemp (11%, fourth place) had counted on outflanking Bush and Dole on the right as the true-blue conservative candidate. But Robertson's message of moral regeneration proved more appealing than Kemp's pep talks on economics, and the Buffalo Congressman could only hope that a strong finish in New Hampshire would keep him in the game.

Struggling to keep his candidacy viable, Bush badly needed a win in New Hampshire. Two weeks ago polls showed him leading Dole by 20 points in the state. Late last week most surveys found the race too close to call. Dole was poised to upset a rival whose nomination had been portrayed as inevitable.

In Iowa, Dole capitalized on dissatisfaction with the Reagan Administration. But in New Hampshire, where the President remains popular, Dole struck a more conservative note, reiterating his support for the Nicaragua contras and, most notably, the Strategic Defense Initiative. "I will develop SDI, I will test SDI, I will deploy SDI," he thundered to the state legislature. A Dole aide boasted, "Ronald Reagan couldn't find any room to the right of that speech." Dole sounded even more like Reagan at a G.O.P. forum in Nashua. "As President of the U.S.," he vowed, "I pledge to veto any attempt to increase new taxes."

Yet even in the midst of his roll, Dole could not completely check the crusty streak that has proved his undoing in the past. His testiness surfaced when liberal students at the University of New Hampshire grilled him about South Africa. "Aren't there any conservative students here?" Dole bantered at first. Then he lost patience. Why, one questioner persisted, was Dole unwilling to support "realistic sanctions"? Dole shot back, "Name those realistic sanctions." When the student faltered, Dole bore in on him. "Name 'em," he growled. "Give me a list of them." The student replied, "I'm sorry, I can't." His point made, Dole drawled, "Oh, O.K. Go ahead."

Afterward, Dole defended his harshness. "I'm trying to make the point up here that Bob Dole is a conservative Republican; Bob Dole is tough enough to stand up to some of these ideas," he told TIME. "They ought to know that if Bob Dole is President . . . that's the way I operate." But after Ronald Reagan's sunny optimism, Republican voters may be startled when they encounter Dole's occasional cold furies.

While Dole built up momentum, Bush appeared unanchored. The Vice President's men blamed external factors for the crushing loss in Iowa: six years of a depressed farm economy, Dole's Midwestern background, Senator Charles Grassley's support for Dole. In truth, the Vice President had simply failed to motivate caucus goers. Bush had garnered 35,000 pre-caucus commitments, but wound up with little more than 20,000 votes. His projected supporters either changed their minds or stayed at home on caucus night.

When asked what he could do to turn his campaign around, Bush wanly replied, "Do a better job of getting my message out. Work harder, though I don't know how I can do that." In fact, Bush has been campaigning relentlessly for two years. His weak support in Iowa did not stem from lack of hard work, or even from his involvement in the Iran-contra scandal. The essential problem with the Bush campaign was the man himself.

His "message" builds on his loyalty to Ronald Reagan, but his rhetoric evokes images of following rather than leading. His stump speech -- delivered in disjointed sentence fragments and punctuated by jittery mannerisms -- does little to command respect or confidence. When Dole preaches about reducing the deficit, compassion for the poor and "hands-on leadership," he sounds convincing, even urgent. Bush tells his audiences, "I want to be the education President," leaving them sitting on their hands. Try as he might, Bush has not attained the stature that a successful candidate needs.

At midweek the Bush camp brought in former Reagan Wordsmith Peggy Noonan to rewrite his stump speech. The result was a tight, effective assault on the recent lack of congressional leadership, Bush's biggest weapon against Dole. The Vice President scaled back his intimidating Secret Service entourage and toured shopping malls to engage in the "retail politics" required in New Hampshire. Before an audience of retirees in Portsmouth, he pleaded for understanding: "I don't always articulate well, but I always do feel. Nobody believes more strongly." It seemed to work.

Even if Bush rallies for a clear win in New Hampshire, he faces tough tests ahead. Robertson could prove to be more of a spoiler in the South than he was in Iowa. Robertson credited his dazzling showing in Iowa to God and his "invisible army" of supporters. Actually, Robertson supporters functioned less like an army than a skilled commando brigade. They understood the caucus system well and adroitly concentrated on group voting. Robertson organizers even rented buses to deliver their supporters to meetings en masse. Throughout the South and in such states as Michigan and Minnesota, Robertson has built up similarly efficient organizations full of fervent campaigners.

To some Republicans, the Dole-Bush-Robertson conflict taking shape is a sign of fragmentation and discord in the G.O.P. "All the cultural contradictions of the party are coming home to roost," says John Buckley, a senior Kemp aide. "We are paying for the coalition we put together in 1980." Unlike Reagan in that year, no Republican in 1988 seems capable of winning the support of both moderate conservatives and right-wing evangelicals. Moreover, Robertson voters seem unlikely to throw their weight to a more electable, coalition candidate. "They hold their views with a ferocity that makes compromise impossible." says John Deardourff, a longtime G.O.P. consultant. "There is no middle ground for them."

Though Dole and Bush are both seen as traditional G.O.P. politicians, there seems to be a cleavage, in culture and outlook, between their respective supporters. Says Charles Douglas, a former New Hampshire Supreme Court justice and a Kemp supporter: "It's the difference between those who buy their clothes at Sears and those who go to Brooks Brothers." If Dole represents Main Street, Bush personifies Wall Street. Dole's roots are rural; Bush's are suburban country club. Like Reagan, Bush is upbeat about the future; Dole, and Roberston as well, speaks for those who are concerned or resentful about America's lost jobs and lost innocence.

The fractures in the G.O.P. coalition that surfaced in Iowa could deepen if the three-way battle drags out and grows bitter. For months the Bush campaign counted on its broad support and organization in the Southern states as a "fire wall" against any damage suffered in the early contests. But if Dole and Robertson continue to scorch him, Bush may not reach his fire wall intact -- and the others must hope that the spreading conflagration does not destroy the party's chances of keeping the White House.

With reporting by David Beckwith and Alessandra Stanley/Nashua