B Y J A M E S C A R V I L L E
The real reason He's not good enough, he's not smart enough, it’s Sunday night, and Bob Dole is more than halfway through his 96-hour nonstop, nonsleep "Victory Tour." I wish this campaign didn't have to end like this. It's painful to watch Dole torture himself. It's like witnessing a hunger strike. As the clock ticks down to the final moment of reckoning, Bob Dole's speeches are getting even more incoherent than usual. The senator can rail all he wants at the "liberal media," but these sleepless days the only one stepping on Bob Dole's message is Bob Dole himself. How's this for self-interruption: "It's not a great economy. Everyone who understands Economics 101—I didn't do too well, come to think of it, but I understand it better now—understands this is not a great economy." As Bob Dole himself would say, Whatever. There are two things keeping the candidate going through his grueling schedule. First, the press traveling with him are dragging and complaining more than he is, and by all accounts, he is reveling in that fact. Second, folks have been writing pre-mortems for a month now, and a lot of those reports have concluded that Bob Dole just wasn't trying hard enough. Bob Dole is not a man who likes being called a quitter. Flying himself into the ground is his way of convincing the pundits and the historians that he gave this one his all. Personally, I believe he did give it his all, right from the beginning. His all just wasn't all that appealing. The irony of this campaign is that character was its central issue. Bob Dole kept trying to turn the voters' focus to the character issue, but it was there all along. You see, the reason Bob Dole's candidacy is going down in flames is not because the voters don't like his 15 percent tax scheme. It's not because he bragged about leading the fight against Medicare. It's not because he's old. The reason he's en route to retirement is that the voters have seen this guy's character and they just don't like what they see. There is no question in my mind that Elizabeth Dole, someone who comes off as a warm human being, would have made a more formidable candidate than her husband. Rightly or wrongly, they see in Bob Dole the neighbor who would chase your kids off his lawn. In Bill Clinton, they see the guy who would invite you in for a beer. The voters connect with Bill Clinton. They connect with him when they shake his hand. They connect with him through the ether of a television broadcast. I connected with Bill Clinton right from the moment I met him, back in the summer of 1991. As I have said before, Bill Clinton is one of those very rare people who can walk in and change the chemistry of a room. The molecules in the room are one way and then the guy walks in and the molecules suddenly realign. It's not a quality you can acquire. Like perfect pitch or a photographic memory, you're either born with it or you're not. I've seen local candidates who have it. I've seen plenty of powerful Senators who don't. I've been in a room with Bob Dole many times. He can't move molecules. He can't move an audience. He can't move the polls. At least not in the direction he wants them to go. If you look at the state-by-state polls, Bob Dole has actually been dipping in precisely the places he's been visiting. His visits are actually hurting his campaign. To make matters more frustrating, Bob Dole's visits have helped Congressional candidates in the districts he visits. He can mobilize Republican voters to pull the lever for Republican candidates. He just can't get them to pull for him. Has this been the worst Republican campaign in memory? Chew it over in Table Talk.
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