In America;Dole As Oxymoron

Good speech, bad move.

"I trust in the hard way," Bob Dole said on Wednesday, "for little has come to me except in the hard way, which is good because we have a hard task ahead of us."

Harder than he knows. The soon-to-be ex-Senator has taken on the debilitating task of trying to convince voters he is something he is not. It will wear him out and make him unhappy, and there is little chance it will succeed. Bob Dole is the insider's insider, the Senate maven who can find joy in a well-crafted amendment, and who speaks not in sound bites but in a garbled legislative shorthand. He hates campaigning. He does not like parading himself before the people. He is a creature of Congress, reveling in its shadows, its rituals and its privileges. Bob Dole the outsider is an oxymoron.

And yet, there he was, in a nationally televised announcement, insisting that "as the campaign for President begins in earnest, it is my obligation to the Senate and to the people of America to leave behind all trappings of power, all comfort and all security."

The origin of that edict was not at all clear, but after his speech Mr. Dole packed a bag, put on his everyman's coat, and hurried off to Chicago.

Now here's the problem. Outside of the Senate, Bob Dole has no protective coloration. He was never a dynamic or particularly compelling figure. Once his resignation takes effect, he will seem even less special. As he described it, "I will then stand before you without office or authority, a private citizen, a Kansan, an American, just a man."

Of course it's just a pose, but poses can get confusing. The whole point of this masquerade is to distance Mr. Dole from Washington (and the wreckage his party has made of the Government) so that he can get back to Washington as quickly as possible. But he can't get back to Washington (to an even higher office, with even more authority, and even greater trappings of power) without articulating a message. And he has no message.