THE MATING GAME
By Michael Duffy/Washington
The last telephone conversation between Bob Dole and Colin Powell had all the romance of a bad blind date. Ending months of silence between the men, Powell telephoned to congratulate the Kansas Senator in early April after Dole clinched the G.O.P. nomination. By careful arrangement, Dole had been warned to simply say thanks and under no circumstances mention the vice presidency. Dole obeyed the ground rules but asked the retired general, "Can I call you for advice on foreign policy now and then?" Sure, said Powell, anytime. And then he hung up. The whole thing lasted less than a minute.
Things went downhill from there. To prevent the Dole team from portraying the call as any kind of endorsement, Powell immediately leaked the sum of it to a reporter. That clever move annoyed folks at Dole headquarters, who felt snubbed (and, they admit, unable to put a more positive spin on the exchange). The whole episode left such a bad taste in Dole's mouth that when nervous G.O.P. fund raisers, sounding a bit like anxious parents, recently asked Dole how things were going with Powell, the candidate said he'd prefer not to talk about it.
Powell has always had reservations about a campaign by himself or at Dole's side. But now that Dole trails Clinton by a dozen points--last week's TIME/CNN poll showed Dole with 38% of voters, vs. Clinton with 50%--even the eager cadre of Republicans who have been preening for the job have begun to issue declarations of independence, almost as if they don't want the job at all. Last week a confused Dole official hunted for a positive explanation. "It's like they want to prove they're all thumbs so they won't upstage the big guy," he said. That could be it. It could also be that this plum is looking more like a prune.
The change in behavior comes only a few weeks after Governors from nearly a dozen states were tripping over themselves to get Dole's attention. An adviser to George Voinovich put together a 12-minute videotape touting the Ohio Governor and sent a copy of it to Dole. Governor John Engler of Michigan used his job as chairman of the Republican Governors' Association to flood Washington with press releases of his own ("RGA Chairman Governor John Engler Praises Dole for Taking On Judicial Activism"). Governor Pete Wilson of California slipped into Washington for dinners with columnists.
And in their eagerness to show off for the nominee, the candidates attacked one another, creating a race within the race. Aides to Voinovich let it be known that Engler was not well liked by his fellow Governors. Pete Wilson's lieutenants derided the star power of Wisconsin's Tommy Thompson. And Illinois Governor Jim Edgar criticized Engler in the New York Times for spending so much time hobnobbing in the capital.
Dole can be expected to take special care with his choice, and not only because he would be the oldest U.S. President in history if elected. Dole was a vice-presidential nominee himself 20 years ago, and his aides hope to score a big preconvention boost when the nominee announces his decision. While his aides have yet to compile even the slimmest of dossiers on the likely prospects, an organizing principle is emerging. The race will be won and lost in the middle-class suburbs and ethnic enclaves of Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and New Jersey. Holding those precincts means winning over independent voters who went for Bush in 1988 and Clinton in 1992 and delivered the House of Representatives to Gingrich in 1994. Whether a Midwesterner is vital isn't yet certain. But in general terms, young is preferable to old, Catholic is better than Protestant, and pro-life beats pro-choice. Which helps explain why some hopefuls are more hopeful than others. We assess their prospects:
The Buckeye. If anyone has the inside track at the moment, it's Ohio's Voinovich. At 59, he boasts a seven-page resume: county auditor, state legislator, big-city mayor, two-term Governor. A Catholic from usually Democratic Cleveland, Voinovich is a mainstream Republican with a reputation as a problem solver and a 73% approval rating.
Neither flashy nor gregarious, he makes few speeches and cuts few ribbons, and his wife Janet makes many of her own clothes. Voinovich is pro-life, deeply pro-business and anti-casino gambling. He was the first Governor to endorse Dole. But he is not afraid of him: two weeks ago, he stunned Dole insiders by criticizing Dole's proposed repeal of the 4.3 [cent] gas-tax increase of 1993, saying the rollback distracted from the real issue of the deficit. Dole took the punch in stride, noting wryly to an aide that Voinovich "must have raised taxes." Indeed he did: on booze and soda pop, to eliminate a deficit. Now Ohio has a $1 billion surplus. And as Dole knows, 21 electoral votes.
The Fumbler. Michigan's Engler has learned enough in the past two months to write a quickie book that might be called "How Not to Win the Vice-Presidential Nomination." First, the two-term Governor waited until Dole had almost clinched the nomination to endorse him. Next, Engler angered Dole by making the endorsement with no warning while he was in Washington and Dole was in, of all places, Michigan. Then Engler presumptuously volunteered to reporters that he would make a good Vice President.
Even before these contretemps, Dole had doubts about Engler's judgment after the Governor helped talk Speaker Newt Gingrich into a government shutdown during the budget talks, a move from which the party has yet to recover. Outgoing, Catholic and an excellent campaigner, Engler avoided the draft because he was categorized I-Y for being 2 lbs. overweight in one exam and 10 lbs. in another. Even so, Michigan remains so vital to Dole that he recently auditioned Engler; the Senator and the Governor made joint TV appearances, conveyed by satellite so that Dole could rate Engler's performance.
The Other Hero. Would Dole really tap someone who backed Phil Gramm in the early primaries, was tangentially involved in the Keating Five savings-and-loan scandal and led the fight to open diplomatic relations with Vietnam? Not most people with that kind of resume. But Arizona Senator John McCain, 59, spent 5 1/2 years in a North Vietnamese pow camp and would give the G.O.P. a kind of Double-Hero ticket, compounding strength with strength much as Bill Clinton did with Al Gore. Dole insiders view McCain as potentially the last man standing, the one to whom Dole would turn if the other candidates fell short. The Arizona Senator is one of Dole's top foreign-policy advisers and one of only a handful who provide unvarnished advice.
McCain's drawback is that he brings to the ticket a state already solidly Republican (Arizona has not voted for a Democratic President since 1948). And his freewheeling style has sometimes cost him points with the campaign. Last week he had to apologize to Dole for leaking the details of the nominee's much awaited foreign-policy speech on the eve of its Thursday delivery, undercutting the public-relations drama of Dole's announcement that he supported extension of most-favored-nation trading status for China. "Loose cannon," growled a Dole official.
Ms. Hard-to-Get. New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, a tax-cutting Governor of a battleground state, called Dole weeks ago and said she didn't want to be considered for the No. 2 spot. That's usually a sign that someone wants the job badly. But since then, Whitman, 49, hasn't merely closed the door, she has locked it. Whitman made herself unacceptable when she announced last month that she opposed not only the party's strict antiabortion platform plank but also a ban on partial-birth abortions. That pro-choice stance has made her anathema to party conservatives and puts her beyond Dole's reach. Not that she was a shoo-in to be a heartbeat away. Dole may have taken a dim view of Whitman's short political resume, which before her term as Governor amounted to stints as a county commissioner and on the state utility board.
The Iceman. Governor Pete Wilson of California could have had the job if he hadn't run against Dole last year and in the process sent his own statewide poll ratings plunging to the mid 30s (a Wilson spokesman insists his boss's popularity is actually broader). At 62, Wilson is now looking toward 2000, as he demonstrated two weeks ago when, instead of supporting the Dole position, he repeated his opposition to the antiabortion plank in the party platform. Though Dole and Wilson (and their wives) were once close, the Senator now finds the Governor occasionally confusing. Wilson recently took Dole on a California trip that began at the gas chamber at California State Prison, San Quentin, and ended at Richard Nixon's grave. Dole aides are still ridiculing it as the "Wilson Death Tour."
The Trojan Horse. Wilson's implosion has helped the cause of California attorney general Dan Lungren, a 49-year-old Irish Catholic who is tough on crime and favors restricting immigration. Besides his young age, conservative credentials and statewide popularity, Lungren's main asset to the Dole campaign would be his potential to force Clinton to spend $10 million or so defending the state's 54 electoral votes instead of lavishing the money on the crucial Midwest. Some in the Dole camp are talking about sending Lungren up and down the Central Valley of California for a 10-week whistle-stop tour. "There is a lot of California dreamin' going on around here," admitted a top Dole official. Lungren helped himself with Dole last year by secretly telling him he'd jump ship the minute Wilson dropped out.
The Southerner. Former South Carolina Governor Carroll Campbell, 55, earned a big merit badge in March when he spearheaded Dole's pivotal victory over Pat Buchanan in the South Carolina primary. Campbell's backers say their man, a pro-business conservative who served two terms as Governor, would help the party hold its base in the South while freeing Dole to concentrate on the Midwest. Maybe so, but Dole seems more interested in luring him to a high job in his campaign--raising money, coordinating strategy and making speeches.
The Badger. Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson, 54, enjoys a strong reputation among conservative Republicans for his aggressive welfare reforms and take-no-prisoners campaign style. Like Engler, he was slow to endorse Dole and comes from a state few at Dole headquarters think can be won. More recently he criticized Dole in public for missing an event in the state due to a scheduling conflict--a complaint that left Dole's aides scratching their heads in wonder.
The White Knight. Powell, 59, remains Dole's first choice, even as the prospects of this fantasy ticket grow dimmer. The retired general has no more reason to be thrilled by Dole's performance lately than anyone else. Since taking himself out of the running last November, he has enjoyed his relative obscurity and chafed whenever the spotlight threatened to return. And his wife Alma, who was thought to oppose his candidacy last fall, has turned out to be much more opposed to a political career at this juncture than many of Powell's associates realized at the time.
There will be other names floated in the coming months. Spontaneous and self-generated boomlets for the likes of House Budget Committee chairman John Kasich of Ohio, Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson and Florida Senator Connie Mack are as ephemeral as tulips in May. Reason: Even if Engler's performance proves otherwise, competing in the vice-presidential-nomination contest--through whispers, faxes and surrogates--is a good investment. After all, it's not just about 1996. If Dole loses, the outcome of the G.O.P. mating game will go a long way toward determining who jumps to the head of the pack next time around.