Bob Dole managed “The Picture” to near perfection Sunday. A boat cruising along a glistening bay to a beautiful city, giving way to a flag-draped stage, then a model White House rising behind him with his handsome running mate, Jack Kemp, at his side.
Control of the image of the day is a constant in the playbook of the modern presidential campaign. And control of the tenor of his convention is critical to Dole’s chances to win the presidency he has sought three times in the last 16 years.
His campaign tried to wield an iron fist over the form and content of what the country will see this week during the Republican national convention. It defied a long tradition by denying Gov. Pete Wilson a chance to deliver a speech in his home state to avoid even the mention of abortion.
Yet it became clear on Sunday how little Dole could control beyond the convention’s security perimeter.
With Reform Party candidates Ross Perot and Dick Lamm on one flank, Republican challenger Pat Buchanan on another, and several Republican governors who seemed to put their own fortunes above Dole’s, the other images on display underlined the breadth of Dole’s election difficulties.
Lamm attacked the centerpiece of Dole’s tax-cutting plan. Buchanan agreed only to a “truce” with Dole, asking Buchanan supporters to remain within the GOP even though Buchanan stopped short of endorsing its nominee.
New York Gov. George Pataki refused an invitation to speak at the convention after party officials told him he had to follow a specific script on immigration.
Wilson and Gov. William Weld of Massachusetts, among the party’s leading moderate voices on social issues, complained openly about not being allowed to speak on issues such as abortion rights.
Dole wants no focus on abortion–from either side of the contentious debate–during the limited television coverage of the convention.
Instead, as part of the broader effort to win over independents and moderates who support President Clinton, Dole is counting heavily on the speech of the man who chose both not to challenge him for the nomination or to serve as his running mate– retired Gen. Colin Powell.
Powell will be the featured speaker as the convention formally opens on Monday, and the Dole campaign hopes to capitalize on the general’s widespread popularity and his statesmanlike, above-the-fray image.
But in full view Sunday, propelled by the reach of television, there were plenty of voices and images to compete with Dole.
Perot spoke to his Reform Party supporters, as did former Colorado Gov. Lamm. Both have taken aim at the heart of Dole’s presidential campaign, a 15 percent across-the-board tax cut. Perot derides tax cuts during a time of high budget deficits. “You and I know this is free candy just before elections,” Perot said. “This is destructive and we’ve got to stop it.”
Lamm also sharply criticized tax cuts at a time of high deficits.
“It is pathetic and embarrassing to watch an honorable man like Bob Dole, a man who has spent most of his congressional career warning us about the dangers of runaway federal deficits, suddenly contradicting himself with an election-year promise of tax cuts in order to prop up his sinking campaign,” Lamm said in his address to the Reform Party convention in Long Beach.
In an effort to blunt the Reform Party, Dole said during a brief address to supporters: “We are the Reform Party, Mr. Perot. The Republican Party is the Reform Party.”
Echoing a widely held view, Gov. George W. Bush of Texas said Sunday he believes the Reform Party candidate will take votes directly from Dole.
Buchanan addressed his supporters in Escondido, to the north of San Diego, speaking of a future Republican Party that he wanted to mold in his image. He asked his supporters to lay down their “pitchforks” for the moment and unite to defeat Clinton, but offered no praise or future support for Dole.
In fact, Buchanan devoted a substantial portion of his address to his hard-line opposition to abortion.
“The day my party walks away from innocent unborn, that day it ceases to be my party,” he said.
Though Dole had eliminated him as a serious contender last March, Buchanan has refused to endorse Dole. And his sister and campaign manager, Bay Buchanan, was among the leaders of the group that overran Dole’s campaign during the drafting of the party platform last week.
Although the platform is a politically irrelevant document–Dole claims he hasn’t read it–it provided Buchanan with the thing he covets most–a pulpit, something Dole wisely refused to give him during the formal convention proceedings.
On NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Buchanan’s sister said Dole had been “foolhardy” in characterizing her brother as “not a major factor” at the convention.
“There’s a movement in this country. It has captured the Republican Party,” Bay Buchanan said. “It’s about ideas, it’s about our future, and they would be wise to be sensitive to that and not to listen so much to their friends in Washington with all the high-paid lobbyists.”
Buchanan is a politician who has a stage as long as there is a television camera nearby. He also is a politician of some patience, and sees himself as in roughly the same place as Ronald Reagan in 1964, at the vanguard of a political party far more conservative than today’s Republican majority.
“Before our eyes, this party is becoming a Buchanan Party,” he said.
Dole’s rebuke of governors such as Wilson and Weld–which could be risky–reflects his belief that most of the nation has not focused on the presidential race, or even this convention at this point.
“Everything before has been a warm-up lap, a trial heat,” Dole said on his arrival. “But here in San Diego the real race begins.”
Asked if he was disinvited to the convention, Wilson said on Larry King Live: “I guess that is what you’d have to call it when you get an invitation and it is withdrawn.” He said he was “mildly offended” about not being able to speak in a national convention in his home state, but noted drolly that he will have ample access to the media to make his views known.
“I think it’s more than a little strange,” Wilson said. “I can’t tell you what the explanation is.”
There is this: Dole knows if he doesn’t win the election, he will never have another one. This one will follow his script.
