Moving to the Outside : Bob Dole could not get his campaign started as long as he stayed inside the Beltway. But will giving up the Senate make him a potent challenger?

WASHINGTON —  I quit, Sen. Bob Dole said on Wednesday. This isn’t working.

He’s right. The Battle of Pennsylvania Avenue is over. President Bill Clinton won.

After securing the GOP nomination in March, Dole said he would stay on as Senate majority leader. It would prove, he said, he was “a doer, not a talker” (unlike you-know-who, the Great Talker).

Only one problem: Dole couldn’t get anything done. The Senate is the last place on Earth to try to demonstrate your ability to lead. The Senate minority has the power to sandbag you at every turn. Which the Democrats did. Last week, Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) threatened to “shut this place down” unless Dole allowed a vote to raise the minimum wage.

The Senate majority’s not exactly a smooth-running machine, either. Dole concedes he can’t hold the GOP together to prevent a minimum-wage hike from passing. Trying to lead senators is like trying to organize cats. It can’t happen.

Now, Dole says he’s going to “leave behind all the trappings of power, all comfort and all security” and stand before the American people “without office or authority, a private citizen, a Kansan, an American, just a man.” Can Dole just shake off 35 years in Congress? He has to. Congress is what’s dragging him down.

Look at what’s happened in the past year. Since the end of the first 100 days of the GOP Congress, Clinton’s job-approval rating has soared. He’s been above 50% since late January. Right now, nearly two-thirds of the voters say they disapprove of the way Congress is doing its job.

As Congress goes, so goes Dole. Clinton established a double-digit lead over Dole in late January--after the government shutdown, the president’s widely acclaimed State of the Union speech and Dole’s widely criticized response. (Remember? Dole looked like a mortician.) Clinton’s lead has been growing steadily for the last three months.

The GOP’s base is in the suburbs, where a majority of voters now live. The past year has seen a big transformation in the views of middle-class, home-owning, tax-paying suburban voters.

Clinton has made big gains among these voters. While his job-approval rating among all Americans is up 11 points, it’s up 17 points in the suburbs. That’s also the constituency where Congress has collapsed. The percentage of all Americans who say the GOP Congress has been a failure is up 14 points since last year. In the suburbs, it is up 21 points.

What happened? Two things. First, Clinton co-opted the Republicans’ best issues, the ones suburban voters care most about--taxes and the deficit. Among suburbanites, the GOP’s advantage over Clinton on handling both issues has become negligible. The tax issue has always been at the top of the agenda for suburban voters. If the Democrats neutralize the GOP’s advantage on taxes, the suburbs are up for grabs.

How did Clinton take the center? Simple. The Republican Congress ceded it to him. The “contract with America” included a lot of popular causes--welfare reform, tax cuts, balancing the budget. But on issue after issue, congressional Republicans took extreme positions that alienated moderate voters.

Clinton saw an opening. When Congress passed radical plans for welfare reform, tax cuts and a balanced budget, Clinton’s response was, “I’m for that--but not that much.” When the president vetoed the GOP bills, voters applauded.

As a result, the president pulled off an amazing feat. He co-opted the Republicans’ best issues and stood up to them at the same time. He transformed his image from that of a big-government liberal (Clinton I, 1993-94) to that of a sensible moderate (Clinton II, 1995-96). At the same time, by drawing the line and vetoing the GOP’s extreme measures, Clinton looked tough and resolute.

Clinton I was weak. His enemies overran him. In 1994, Congress laid waste to his agenda (the crime bill, health care). Then the voters revoked his mandate. But Clinton II is a force to be reckoned with. He thwarts Congress and scores points for it. He has the entire Democratic Party in thrall.

House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) secured Clinton’s Democratic base. Terrified at the prospect of losing the White House, Democrats will do nothing to endanger Clinton’s reelection--including vote for Ralph Nader. Clinton is the first Democratic president in 50 years to be unchallenged for renomination. When he says he’s for welfare reform, tax cuts and a balanced budget, liberals respond, “We can live with that.”

A second factor in the great turnaround: Clinton became the protector of government programs the middle class wants. Suburban voters are affluent, well-educated and moderate, particularly on social issues. They don’t hate government. They hate taxes.

Republicans in Congress went too far to the right on social issues. They threatened government programs precious to the middle class. Clinton mentions those programs in every speech. When he promised to downsize government in his State of the Union (“The era of big government is over”), he added, “These cuts do not undermine our obligations to our parents, our children and our future by endangering Medicare, Medicaid, education and the environment.”

In 1988, George Bush beat Michael S. Dukakis among suburban voters, 60%-40%. In 1992, Clinton tied Bush in the suburbs; Ross Perot held the balance.

And now? Clinton is leading Dole 57% to 39% among suburban voters--almost an exact reversal of Bush’s lead eight years ago. The GOP’s suburban fortress may be falling.

Drastic news like that calls for drastic steps. Like Dole leaving the Senate, where he’s seen daily as leader of an institution in disrepute. Dole acknowledged that some may find his decision to leave surprising--given the view that Congress has been his life. “That is not so,” he insisted. “With all due respect to Congress, America has been my life.”

Dole needs to reinvent his campaign. What can he do? Four things, none easy.

Dole has to get social issues like abortion off the agenda. Some conservative leaders, such as Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition, are trying to help by urging the party to moderate its tone, if not its message on abortion and gay rights. Problem: Any backsliding risks a damaging floor fight at the convention.

Dole has to put some distance between himself and Gingrich. And neutralize the radical image of the GOP Congress. He’s got to make it clear he doesn’t hate government. As when he said earlier this year, “I’ve never said the government is bad. I say we ought to downsize it. It could be better. It could be more efficient. We can save money. But the government does a lot of good things.” Spoken like a true suburbanite.

Leaving Congress may help Dole separate his agenda from Gingrich’s. Making a deal with Clinton to get issues like Medicare, Medicaid, education and the environment off the agenda would help even more. But he’s got just one more month as majority leader to do it.

Dole has to run hard against Clinton on character and values, the way Bush ran against Dukakis. “What it all comes down to,” Bush said in an ad in 1988, “is which set of values will keep America’s future bright, and who do you trust to stick to those values.” It worked for Bush, but this time, the voters may not be so tolerant of a negative campaign--especially against a sitting president.

Finally, Dole has to find his own message. How did the GOP hold the suburban vote for so long? Answer: taxes, taxes, taxes. Conservatives are urging Dole to run on a 15%-across-the-board income-tax cut--like the one Ronald Reagan proposed in 1980. But that, too, has a downside. If Dole runs on a big tax cut, it will destroy the credibility of his commitment to deficit reduction.

Maybe Dole can reinvent his campaign. But can he reinvent himself? Dole outside the Senate sounds like a fish out of water. And age 72 is a little old for someone to be born again.

But age isn’t Dole’s biggest problem. It’s the fact that he’s the ultimate Washington insider, the candidate of the status quo. With Dole as the GOP candidate, the outsider factor in the 1996 race has been neutralized. For example, three-quarters of the voters say they don’t trust government. That ought to be a GOP challenger’s natural constituency. But right now, voters who don’t trust government support Clinton by a 10-point margin.

In 1988, Bush was supposed to be the elitist candidate: prep school, Yale, born to wealth and privilege, a blue-blooded country-club conservative. Bush’s good fortune was that his opponent was more elitist than he was: Harvard, PBS, the ACLU, a blue-blooded limousine liberal. Next to Dukakis, everyone else is a populist. Even Bush.

Well, next to Dole--Mr. Congress, Mr. Inside the Beltway--everyone else is an outsider. Even the president of the United States. For Dole to change that perception would be one of the great feats of political metamorphosis. Comparable, say, to Clinton becoming a tough-minded moderate.

Dole is determined to reinvent himself. His announcement statement last week was most un-Dole-like--deeply personal, dramatic and eloquent. No legislative jargon. No references to himself in the third person (“Bob Dole doesn’t believe that”). No inside baseball. No sarcasm. And, for once, he used a TelePrompTer instead of looking like he was reading his speech off his shoes.

He talked about leaving Congress and becoming an ordinary American. He offered himself as a president who “will keep his perspective and remain by his deepest nature and inclination, one of the people.” Bob Dole--one of the people! Is that plausible?

Maybe. He’s got to erase his Washington image and resurrect the image of Russell, Kan. That, too, is the authentic Dole--”the same man,” he said, “when I arose from my hospital bed and was permitted by the grace of God to walk again in the world.” The man who knows adversity: “This is where I touch the ground, and it is in touching the ground in moments of difficulty that I’ve always found my strength. I have been there before. I have done it the hard way.”

Stirring words, aimed at transforming the 1996 campaign. Right now, voters see only a choice between two insiders, the two most accomplished professional politicians of our time. It’s an unsatisfying choice: a choice between two incumbents. Dole’s objective now is to position himself where he ought to be--as a challenger.*