The Power of Words. Droll Dole stumps for state GOP

10.1.98
Droll Dole stumps for state GOP
By SCOTT MacKAY
Journal State House Bureau

       PROVIDENCE — Watching Bob Dole campaign for Governor Almond and Rhode Island Republicans yesterday, you could hardly tell he has retired, that for the first time in his adult life, he aspires to no political office, isn't running for anything.
       A cheering crowd of 200 at a Republican Party rally at the Providence Marriott heard Dole praise Almond's administration and urge the party faithful to get out and work for the election of GOP candidates this fall.
       At 75, Dole showed he is still master of the one-liner, the left-handed shake — his right arm was rendered useless by a World War II combat injury — and the occasional verbless sentence, delivered in an accent as flat as a field of Kansas wheat.
       There was one striking difference yesterday: an apparent studied avoidance of the sharp, partisan rhetoric that gave Dole, the former U.S. Senate majority leader who lost the 1996 election to President Clinton, his reputation as one of the GOP's toughest campaign slashers.
       There was, for example, the expected praise for Almond's record as governor. But there was no hammering of either of Almond's opponents, Democrat Myrth York or Robert Healey Jr., the Cool Moose candidate.
       And on the topic of President Clinton's affair with a White House intern and the calls for his resignation by some Republicans in Congress, Dole was statesman-like; he refused at both a news conference and the rally to slam Mr. Clinton.
       There was plenty of bait; most of the questions at the news conference concerned the presidential sex scandal. At the rally, Sen. John H. Chafee drew a big cheer from the crowd by saying, "If Dole had been elected we wouldn't have all these scandals out there."
       Said Dole: "I'm not taking any cheap shots . . . I think everybody ought to take a deep breath."
       Dole met last week with Mr. Clinton to discuss problems in Kosovo, which Dole visited recently. The president's troubles came up during the conversation, Dole acknowledged.
       "I have a pretty good relationship with President Clinton," said Dole. "He doesn't want to leave the presidency."
       Dole said he believes Congress should proceed with the impeachment investigation and put the partisan sniping on hold for a while.
       "I didn't lose to become Clinton's chief critic," said Dole. "You don't look back, the election's over."
       Democratic attacks on Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr are to be expected, Dole said. He likened them to Republican criticism in the early 1970s of Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox.
       "We used to attack Archibald Cox because he was going after our guy, Nixon," Dole said.
       He drew laughs when he referred to one of the great ironies of the sex scandal: that he lives next door to Monica Lewinsky in the Watergate apartment complex.
       "I've been close to her for a couple of years," Dole deadpanned.
       "I feel a little sorry for Monica, I must say. She can't go anywhere," because reporters are camped out at the front and back entrances to her residence.
       "We say hello and things of that kind," said Dole. "I walk by her door very quickly. I don't want to be subpoenaed."

       SINCE HIS DEFEAT, Dole has worked for a large Washington law firm, visited Bosnia on a diplomatic mission at the president's request, toured his home state several times to thank voters and Kansas Republicans for so solidly supporting his political career.
       And he has authored a book of political humor, called Great Political Wit: Laughing (Almost) All the Way to the White House.
       As he had during other tough times in his life, Dole retreated to the cocoon of humor to leaven the disappointment of his failed campaign.
       Stopping at the "Dole for President" office in Washington the day after the election, he made telephone calls to supporters around the country, thanking them for their help. "What got my attention that day, however, was not a call I placed, but one that came in to my office," Dole writes. "It was from the producers of the The Late Show With David Letterman.
       "Two nights later, Dave and I sat onstage, trading quips," he writes. "I suppose you could say my postpolitical career really began on that Friday night as viewers discovered I wasn't the glowering, Social Security-devouring sourpuss they'd come to know, if not to like, from watching all those attack ads made possible by White House coffee drinkers."
       Included in the book is his famous quip of a few years back when former presidents Carter, Ford and Nixon were standing side by side at a White House ceremony.
       "There they are," Dole said. "See no evil, hear no evil and evil."
       And he quotes an exchange between Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy's speechwriter, Theodore Sorenson, after JFK's stirring inaugural speech in 1961.
       "I wish I had said some of those things," Nixon said.
       "What part," asked Sorenson, with pride. "That part about 'Ask not what your country can do for you?' "
       "No," Nixon replied. "The part that starts 'I do solemnly swear.'"
       There are predictable gibes at that fifth wheel of American government, the vice presidency. The book quotes Walter Mondale, Carter's vice president, saying, "If you want to talk to somebody who's not busy, call the vice president. I get plenty of time to talk to anybody about anything."
       And plenty of send-ups of both liberals and conservatives. "Do you know the difference between liberals and cannibals?" asked a frustrated then- President Lyndon Johnson, in 1967. "Cannibals eat only their enemies."
       Of conservatives, Woodrow Wilson said: "A conservative is someone who just sits and thinks, mostly sits."
       Dole himself lampoons a conservative as someone who declares "Whatever it is, I'm against it" and a liberal as one who says "Whatever it costs, I'm for it."

       SCANNING THE CROWD yesterday, Dole even got a one-liner out of Rhode Island's reputation as a tough place for Republicans. GOP candidates must reach out to Democratic and independent voters to be successful in this state, Dole said.
       "This is not an easy state for a Republican to be elected in," said Dole, noting the 200 or so Republicans in the room. "You don't need a unity tour, we're all in this room."
       The lanky Dole looked thinner than he did during the 1996 campaign. When asked about it after his speech, he talked of colon surgery he had recently.
       "Took about a foot of my colon out in August," said Dole. "Slowed me down a bit."
       When asked why he was out on the hustings for Republicans when he could be enjoying retirement, Dole said he was only too happy to campaign for "my good friend, Linc Almond."
       And he said: "I'm still a Republican. I owe a lot to this party.
       "I like to do it. I've still got a chance to get to the White House if I can get Elizabeth to run."

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