IN SEARCH OF THE REAL BOB DOLE

One day last February, shortly after joining the Dole campaign, I managed to position myself up close to the Senator so that I could get a sense of what he was like as he worked the ropes during a campaign rally. I was carrying a copy of Bob Dole, the biography by Richard Ben Cramer. The candidate abruptly turned and reached out to sign it, assuming that I was just part of the crowd.

Then he looked up, recognized me as a member of his press corps and broke into a grin. “Arrrggghhh! Brought your homework,” he joshed, addressing me for the first time. I was aware of the Dole stereotype: brilliant mind, bitter man. But here he seemed charming; he had a sparkle in his hazel eyes, a winning way with his deadpan wit. I had respected him, in some ways admired him, but with the sweetness and humor that emerged from that moment, I liked him.

During the early primaries, when the race was not going well for Dole, the photographers on the campaign plane would play a little game, scrawling a silly message on an orange and rolling it up the aisle toward his seat. One message read: CALIFORNIA OR BUST! Dole would watch the orange but never roll it back, leaving it to an aide to pick it up and read him the message. But the morning after his critical win in the South Carolina primary, Dole leaned over and grabbed the orange. “We’re on a roll!” he yelled, and rolled it back to us–once again engaged.

It was a rare glimpse of the jocular Dole, one so often recalled by those who have known him over the years but one who has been mostly absent in this year’s losing campaign. Had the race gone differently, those of us who covered him might have seen more of that Bob Dole. But for the most part, his performances have been painful to watch–the constant references to himself in the third person, the ubiquitous “whatever” that punctuates incomplete thoughts, the rambling speeches and the non-non sequiturs. The man renowned for his quick wit and quiet thoughtfulness mostly seemed out of step, unable to make the crucial connections and pivots.

On a brisk morning in May, he paid a visit to a school on the poor, mostly black, southwest side of Chicago, where he expected to hear teachers and social workers talk about domestic abuse. “Why has domestic violence increased?” asked a reporter after the event. Searching for a link to a theme in his campaign, Dole replied, “I think a lot of it has been the failure of the welfare system.”

The message he conveyed was that poor people are batterers. A social worker in the room rebuked him. As Dole was struggling to extricate himself, his aides hustled him away. But aware of how it would look if he ended this rare ghetto visit without pressing the flesh, Dole hopped out of the car and strode across the street into a local rib joint. The customers, most of them unemployed black men, answered his congenial banter with hard-eyed stares. Not five minutes later, his face fixed in a pained smile, Dole retreated to his motorcade. As he crossed what must have seemed like miles of inner-city street, he saw one smiling dark face–mine, as it turned out–and he threw an arm around my shoulder. “How ya doing?” he enthused. “Fine.” I replied. “How are you doing, Senator?” Finally he recognized me again, and his eyes opened wide in the awful realization of a failed rescue attempt.

In the early days of his campaign, Dole would sit with reporters to talk, joke and answer questions. But after a series of controversial comments on abortion and tobacco, his visits grew more infrequent. First there were no more sit-downs, just a few minutes’ standing in the doorway of the plane’s press cabin. Then there were even fewer minutes, then none at all. His last press conference with us was in March.

By the fall, Nelson Warfield, Dole’s 6-ft. 5-in. press secretary, was spending a good deal of his time throwing his heft in front of the television cameras, moving reporters back from Dole, who could be seen at times bobbing and weaving behind Warfield, trying to see clear to answer our questions. We were left with the troubling image of a candidate who was not trusted by his own staff to speak his mind.

Our wait for the real Bob Dole to reveal himself paralleled a tragicomic, rolling reassessment of when the real Dole campaign would begin. It would not be until after the primaries, we were told … until after the tax plan, until after the Veep pick, until after the convention … after Labor Day, after the debates. By the time we got to Wichita, Kansas, where only 1,000 people in his home state turned out two weeks before Election Day, it was clear that the Dole campaign was really over.

In the last few weeks, a gallows humor and growing sadness suffused the campaign plane. Reporters sat like attendees at a wake, most of them feeling genuinely sorry for Dole. His staff members grew hollow-eyed and resigned, speaking of postelection plans that had nothing to do with the White House. And hurtling toward defeat, Bob Dole, the most optimistic man in America, spent most of his time sitting alone, staring out the plane window.