Don’t Write Off Dole Too Quickly

Flying through a night sky in the front cabin of his campaign plane 20 years ago, I asked Bob Dole how he was preparing for his televised debate against Walter Mondale.

“Oh, it’s no big deal,” Dole waved a hand. “Nobody will care. Everybody will be at a Friday night high school football game.”

Maybe because of his cavalier attitude, Dole floundered in that 1976 vice-presidential matchup.

His half-snarling remark that millions died in “Democratic wars” etched in stone his image as a sarcastic hit man.

Now two decades later I’m sure that Dole, despite his stoic nonchalance, admits Sunday night’s showdown against Bill Clinton is a big deal.

Very big.

It’s one chance in front of 80 million viewers to stop his campaign from its slide into doom.

I think Bob Dole can and will win this first debate with Clinton.

Sure, I know conventional wisdom pits them as Silver Tongue vs. Hatchet Tongue - that the president is silky, personable know-it-all who should talk rings around Dole.

But don’t discount unpredictability or the advantage of an underdog in these TV crapshoots.

Dole, playing his David vs. Goliath role to the hilt, said on a radio show, “I think I should get a draw just for showing up because people think he’s going to wipe me out. Maybe he will. He’s such a smooth talker.”

His spokesman, John Buckley, frothed superlatives about Dole’s opponent:

“We’re up against the greatest debater since Clarence Darrow, a master of the universe … Bill Clinton is the greatest debater since Benjamin Disraeli.”

Maybe the Man from Hope doesn’t belong in the all-time ratings with Churchill, Webster or Demosthenes, but you get the drift of Dole’s handlers:

Our guy’s over-matched.

That longshot image could work for Dole. It was pivotal in the presidential gabfests of 1960 and 1980.

Jack Kennedy was supposed to be a lightweight, but a poised JFK upset experienced Richard Nixon, who looked like a feverish gangster on TV.

Ronald Reagan was considered a know-nothing warmonger until his one-liners (“there you go again”) trounced Jimmy Carter.

But Dole’s no tongue-tied rookie. He’s spent 18 years in the heat of verbal warfare. He can be a wooden disaster in set speeches.

But on the Senate floor he was a quick, acerbic scrimmager.

Dole, not Clinton, is battle-hardened in more ways than one.

And Clinton totes the handicap of the overdog, an incumbent who’s record is vulnerable as a fighter’s glass jaw.

You can bet Dole, with nothing to lose, will take his swings: “Mr. President, how can you laugh at marijuana, telling young people you’d inhale pot, when drug use doubled among teenagers during your administration?”

I know you don’t like to be called a liberal, liberal, liberal, Mr. President. But when you had a Democratic Congress you walked and talked like one. Can you explain why gays-in-the-military wasn’t liberal?”

“You talk of being tough on crime, Mr. President, but how many of those 100,000 police you brag about are on the street? A fraction? Speaking of crime, why does your administration keep stonewalling on Whitewater and Filegate?”

As Republican strategist Eddie Goes says with pre-debate savagery, “It’s Dole’s chance to tell Clinton, ‘You’re lying through your teeth.”’

Not to fret, Dems - Clinton’s answers will be well-honed. But Dole gets an edge without Ross Perot stealing the show.

Jim Lehrer, an excellent choice as moderator, will perform Perot’s role of nailing Dole on his “free candy” tax cut.

Lehrer should also repeat his PBS probing of Clinton on post-election pardons.

What should worry Clinton’s camp is that sitting presidents are often overconfident, fat bull’s-eyes for big-screen critics.

Go back to Jerry Ford’s 1976 gaffe that eastern Europe wasn’t under Communist dominance.

Or Reagan’s sleepy, stumbling performance in the first 1984 Mondale match when viewers misjudged the Gipper as a comatose has-been.

Or George Bush’s fatal blunders in 1992 when he grimaced at a question, “I don’t get it,” then looked at his watch as if bored.

In a low-keyed season when voters say they’re “bored” or “confused,” Dole has one shot at the 40 percent who are fence-sitters.

Or else he’ll be buried, another Landon, Goldwater or McGovern.

Dole has to be aggressively commanding, attack Clinton without acid disrespect, make no dumb mistakes, avoid muttering half-sentences of Dolespeak, show he’s far from a sleep-walking aged man.

As a contrarian, my money’s on the challenger.

If I’m wrong, stand back for a landslide.

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