B Y J A M E S C A R V I L L E
Ask not for whom for Bob Dole, a candidate without luck or charm, the fall brings little hope. A lot of smart people spend a lot of their time sneering down their noses at the sloppy journalistic practice of rating a candidate's week. Who can blame them? The last thing this country needs is more blow-dried talking heads rating a candidate's week in the same way judges score a boxing round. Politics already suffers enough from that comparison. But sometimes one week really is indicative of the race as a whole. This past week was a case in point. Since I don't have enough patience for suspense, I'll just lay it out there for you: The fat lady is singing -- and she ain't singing "Dole Man." Dole started out the week with a bang. Unlike the week before, when he had to crawl back to Congress and beg fellow Republicans not to cut and run, Bob Dole came out with six-shooters blazing. He accused the President of being soft on crime. He criticized the President's "liberal" judicial nominees. He attacked President Clinton for cutting funding for the Drug Czar's office. He implied that the President condoned drug use. Sure, there were convenient omissions. For example, he forgot to mention that he voted to approve 182 of President Clinton's 185 judicial appointments, tried to block the creation of the Drug Czar's office in the first place, and even tried to cut the Drug Free Schools budget in half. Still, it was a powerful message. Or, at least, it should have been. The same day Dole tried to pin on his badge and mount his steed, the real crime-fighters in this country, the Fraternal Order of Police, gave President Clinton their endorsement. It was the first time ever the very influential FOP backed a Democrat, and it was a devastating blow to Dole and the Republicans. In fact, Dick Armey, the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives, was so ticked off, he called the Fraternal Order of Police a "mob...dressed up like policemen." Grapes don't get any more sour than that. When they were endorsing Republicans, the FOP was an organization made up of true patriots. As if the FOP endorsement wasn't enough to smother Dole's message, the Justice Department then came out with some of the most promising crime statistics in a decade. Violent crime fell almost ten percent; rapes plummeted by almost 20 percent; robberies dropped by 13 percent. Not exactly the kind of numbers you can use to build a case of incompetence or indifference. Then things got worse for Bob Dole. There was the "Brooklyn Dodgers" slip. Like George Bush's run-in with the grocery-store scanner in 1992, it was the kind of gaffe that supposedly proved that Dole was hopelessly out of touch. Personally, I don't think the slip was so bad. Nor did I think the scanner thing was such a big deal. (Actually, it wasn't even true: Bush was not at the neighborhood grocery store, staring wide-eyed at the kind of scanner that we're all used to; he was at a trade show, looking at a much more futuristic model that was still being tested.) But what I couldn't believe was how badly Dole's people handled the incident. They said Bob Dole was just joking. I'd like to meet the guy who's stupid enough to believe that. Why not just admit that Dole tripped on his tongue and then just move on?! And then, of course, there was Bob Dole's physical slip, off a four-foot stage in Chico, California. Again, terrible luck. The Washington Post added insults to his minor injuries by choosing to blow the whole thing out of proportion with a page-one above-the-fold photo of Dole flat on his back, as if he was in a coffin. It was totally despicable. And I mean that. Everyone I talked to at the White House felt the same way. Meanwhile, the President did not let up one bit in his campaigning. I've never even seen an underdog candidate work this hard. His travel schedule puts Captain Kirk's to shame! On Saturday, he was finally on the way back to the White House for some well deserved R & R, and he decided to stop off in South Dakota for some extra campaigning. South Dakota! Not only is the state distinctly lacking in electoral heft, it hasn't gone for a Democratic President since LBJ! There's never been a more determined campaigner in history. Or a more skillful one. I don't know if any of you caught the President's visit to the Grand Canyon this week, but it was simply brilliant. The President was announcing the creation of a huge new national monument in Utah. The obvious place to make the announcement was inside the park itself. But Utah is a rock-solid Republican state, and besides, a lot of people in Utah were none too pleased with the government's decision to take a huge chunk of the state and make a park out of it. So the President started at a disadvantage. He had to stage the event in a different park, in a different state. He could have come off looking like an idiot. He didn't. He launched into an unscripted story about a visit to the Grand Canyon back in 1971. He told the crowd about how he found a place on a rock where he was all alone, and studied the sunset for two hours. Then, drawing on the kind of sincere personal detail that Bob Dole could never muster, he explained that "even today, 25 years later, in hectic, crazy times, in lonely, painful times, my mind drifts back to those two hours that I was alone on that rock, watching the sunset over this canyon. And it will be with me until the day I die." I can't begin to do justice to the moment. That's the point. You had to see the man's eyes. You had to hear the sincerity in his voice. It was a small moment, but one that said everything about why Bob Dole is in way over his head. Bill Clinton has a superior product. Bill Clinton is a superior salesman. And now, six weeks out, Bill Clinton's getting ready to close the sale. Can Dole come back? Join Carville in Table Talk.
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