Dole's pity strategy

up to now, Bill Clinton has been regarded as the master tactician of this Presidential campaign. It is he who, with just a little advice from a patron of prostitutes, has built a formidable lead in the polls, and has induced Democrats who scheduled root canals to avoid being photographed with him two years ago to beg him to come to their town and raise some money for himself. But last week Bob Dole revealed his new strategy, and it is clever enough to have fooled most of the press. As you may recall, the ex-Senator first visited Los Angeles and, in trying to associate himself with a no-hitter victory by Dodger pitcher Hideo Nomo the night before, said he was going to win this November "just like the Brooklyn Dodgers." A couple of days later, he tumbled over a makeshift railing at a campaign appearance in Northern California. A verbal gaffe and a photographed pratfall, all in the space of a couple of news cycles. Accidents? Hardly. Downers? Just the opposite. These were the first salvos in Dole's new "pity strategy." Rather than trying to go against the grain of public perception and portray the man as vital and with-it, Dole and his advisers have taken the lemon of the candidate's perceived elderliness and decided to make lemon meringue pie. In the weeks to come, several more carefully planned incidents will round out the picture of a guy riding a wave of sympathy to the White House. Dole will get lost on the way to the second debate. He will be a finalist in the Publishers Clearinghouse sweepstakes, but in the press of campaign business will forget to mail in his final confirmation numbers. He will get trapped by a premature balloon drop. An incorrect take of a campaign commercial will be released, in which Dole spends 20 seconds denouncing Clinton's weakness on the issue of Quemoy and Matsu. In a joint appearance in St. Louis, Jack Kemp will throw a football at him, and it will bounce painfully off Dole's stomach. Life so often resembles nothing so much as high school. In the Dole campaign scenario, he is the bucktoothed, horse-faced girl who doesn't have a date to the prom, but could be a really good time, with the brains and the wit and everything. Clinton is the stuck-up student body president who keeps banging up his parents' car and getting away with it. The pity strategy is clever positioning, but I remember who won in high school. Co-creator and co-star of "This is Spinal Tap," comedian Harry Shearer is the voice of more than a dozen characters on "The Simpsons." He has been a two-time cast member of "Saturday Night Live" and is the host of nationally syndicated weekly radio broadcast "Le Show."

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