FORMER SENATOR WILL JOIN PANEL ON BASE CLOSINGS

ST. LOUIS -- Two years after leaving the U.S. Senate, Alan Dixon orchestrates mergers at a St. Louis law firm and heads a panel that will decide the fate of many of America's military bases.

"You know I'm not a volunteer," said Dixon, 67, of his directorship of the base-closing panel as he drove recently from his plush law office to a bank where he sits on the advisory board. "They drafted me."

But Dixon, a Democrat who was still smarting from his 1992 primary loss to Carol Moseley-Braun, played hard to get.

The idea first came up during a golf outing more than a year ago with Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., who then headed the Senate Armed Services Committee, according to Dixon and his friends.

"He says, `No, I'm not interested,' to Sam Nunn and to everyone at first," said Gene Callahan, Dixon's longtime friend and political right-hand man. "He finally said, `OK, tell them I'll discuss it with them."

Sen. Bob Dole, R-Kan., joined the draft Dixon effort, and President Clinton also jumped in.

Dixon said he knew he couldn't say no.

"This is the worst job in the world," he said, his grin belying the words. "Anybody who wants this job ought to have his head examined."

But Dixon is a natural for the post, political observers say. During his 12-year Senate career, he chaired the Senate Armed Services subcommittee. "Al the Pal" - as he came to be known - also had good relations with both Democrats and Republicans.

The panel by July 1 is expected to choose which bases to close. Congress can reject the list, but it has never done so.

The job will be over this summer - and some friends are already calling for him to run for the seat of Sen. Paul Simon, who said he won't seek re-election in 1996. Dixon won't give an answer until at least July, he says.

He's spent most of the last two years working with the law firm Bryan Cave, in an office overlooking the Mississippi River to the state that rejected him. He helps organize mergers, "putting deals together and people together," he says.

Although Dixon isn't bitter, he seems aware that he will not be remembered for what he did - such as heading the base closure panel, halting attempts to cancel transit funding for Chicago and helping enact rules against racial discrimination in mortgage lending.

Instead, he's the senator whose fall made it possible for the rise of Moseley-Braun, the nation's first black female senator. He insists he's not bitter.

"Hey, I was there. I had the fight. It was good. ... I feel fine about my life. I feel fine about all my experiences. Fine about my future. ... Everything's fine," he said.