GUEST COLUMN: Why Dole will lose in November

Jonathan Church says BobJonathan Church says BobDole's association with NewtJonathan Church says BobDole's association with NewtGingrich dooms his candidacy. Jonathan Church says BobDole's association with NewtGingrich dooms his candidacy.One sort of wonders what is going on in Bob Dole's mind right now, as he deals with the many pressing issues that threaten to deal him a devastating loss in the upcoming elections. The bounce he received from the convention was virtually insignificant. Jack Kemp was definitely a positive addition to the Republican ticket, but the Gingrich ghost still lies perilously close behind. Indeed, it is this latter consideration that is becoming Dole's almost-insurmountable barrier to even a fighting chance of being America's next president. Americans, regardless of their respect for Dole's war heroism and his distinguished career as a legislator, simply see Clinton as an important bulwark in Washington's balance of power. Dole may say he hasn't read the Republican Party platform. He may call for inclusion. He may appeal to women. He may be a war hero. But against the backdrop of Clinton's successful efforts to adopt Republican principles with a moderate touch, Dole will remain inseparable from the Gingrich extremism of 1995. Most Americans seem to expect that Republicans will maintain their control of Congress. Common sense tells voters that a vote for Clinton to fill the executive seat is imperative, or else control of the country's direction could shift into the unpredictable hands of a Dick Armey. Dole is simply not trusted enough to say "hold on" to someone like Gingrich. And Clinton knows all this. Don't for a minute think that Dick Morris has lost his influence as an advisor. Even if Clinton never speaks to Morris again, which is unlikely, he is already well-versed in the vocabulary of Morrissian strategy and polity. Bob Dole is most undoubtedly aware of all this. So it is difficult to fathom his as-yet-incompetent approach to countering the subversive forces working against his campaign. When he announced his retirement from the Senate, one of the political big wigs glaring behind Dole was none other than Gingrich himself. Watching this spectacle, one couldn't help but think of the stupidity of the gesture. If Clinton was watching, too, he was probably chalking this one up on the board as a point on his side, with an avuncular pat on the head from Morris. It seems Dole has had the inadvertent tendency to shoot himself in the foot -- and then there is his latest face-saving proposal, to decrease taxes across the board by 15 percent as a way of endorsing supply-side economics. More bang for the buck, he seems to say. But his latest counterpunch has had very little impact. Americans remember the 1980s. They aren't as stupid as politicians like to think. They know that while tax cuts may provide a pleasant stimulus to the economy, there is still a limit to the growth tax cuts can generate. A tax cut provision on Dole's scale will inevitably bring about spending cuts significant enough to scare Americans, especially after a year of debate over massive cuts -- even if they were just reductions in projected spending -- in Social Security and Medicare. But Bob Dole and Jack Kemp still advertise their confidence in the supply-side theory without reservation. They can't be ignoring the skepticism of American voters, can they? Maybe they just don't bother to read the accounts of voter skepticism. Or maybe they don't bother to read newspapers and polls at all. Dole must also find a way to overcome the age factor. He needs to project more fervor when he speaks, and he must be more successful at projecting an image that reflects a young man's vivacity and ability to endure the long hours that await in the Oval Office. He may be a war hero, but that was over a half-century ago. Combine all this with the Perot Problem, and you get a recipe for disaster. With the egomaniac's entry into the race, Dole must also find a way to adapt to the slices Perot will make into his otherwise safe hold on a significant percentage of independent swing voters. For some reason, a vociferous -- though not as large this year -- segment of the population demonstrates it unrelenting support for Perot populism. And it is more likely that these are your Joe Sixpack Republicans who'd be supporting the Gipper if it were 1980 -- and who would be voting for Dole now. Dole is desperate. He needs a trail out of the boneyard, and he knows it. He hopes his tax cut plan will be that trail, but it probably won't. So now it appears that the only realistic chance he has of overcoming Clinton's lead is by continuing to amuse Americans with his humorous political follies, to the point that they go to the voting booth so amused that they pull the lever for Dole as a forgiveness gesture. (This is sort of like winning one for the Gipper because, by George, the Gipper could tell a good story.) Like I said, one wonders what is going on in the mind of Bob Dole right now. If the current situation persists, he will not win in November. He will not win because the men who engineered the resurrection of the Republican Party are responsible for building the barrier that now excludes Republicans from the White House. Dole will not win because he would be the oldest president to be elected for the first time, a fact that even his fellow elderly citizens hold against him. He will not win because his luck is running short in the wake of the small but significant Perot surge. And he will not win for the very reason he thinks he can -- an unrealistic tax cut plan promising unlimited prosperity with minimal pain. Sorry Bob, I was rooting for you.