DOLE FACES BIG TEST

Former Majority Leader Bob Dole departed the U.S. Senate Tuesday for a full-time run as Republican presidential nominee. The upper chamber had been his work home for the nearly 28 years since he moved over from the House of Representatives, where he had toiled since arriving there as a young congressman from the high plains of western Kansas back in 1961. Win or lose this November, Dole's congressional tenure has truly been a remarkable 35 years.

Freed of the daily Senate meat grinder, Dole will at last be able to tell Americans who, exactly, he is and where, exactly, he would take the great nation he has served with such distinction. As he lays out his program, he could do worse than reflect on the wisdom of New York Times columnist Elizabeth Drew, writing recently on the Kansan. If the election were about having conquered adversity and about past battles won against overwhelming odds, Dole would be the runaway choice. But, Drew observed, that isn't what the election will turn on. Rather, voters are yearning to hear where the candidates would take America. And where flights of rhetorical brilliance are concerned, Dole can hardly match his rival, President Clinton.

In appealing to voters, Dole, the last presidential nominee of the World War II generation, has an amazing personal history on which to draw. Grievously, almost fatally wounded a lousy couple of weeks before the end of that war, Dole languished for 33 months in military and other hospitals. Told he would never use either arm and that he would never walk, he persevered. Hometown friends from Russell, Kan., took up collections in shoe boxes to pay his hospital charges. A heroic surgeon worked for free. The right-handed Dole gradually taught himself to use his left hand and to carry a pen in his useless right hand -- necessary to keep it from splaying out awkwardly. Unable to take notes, he made it through the University of Kansas law school by listening to, and memorizing, the endless lectures. Imagine.

He ran for county prosecutor, then the state legislature, then Congress. He arrived in the Senate with a reputation for abrasive partisanship and awesomely hard work. A senator only two years, Richard Nixon tapped him for the key post of national party chairman in 1971. Then, thanklessly, Nixon dumped him and, as the famously mordant Dole wit has had it ever since: "Watergate happened on my night off."

The collegial Senate years seem to have rubbed the rough edges off the acerbic partisanship that once defined him. The hard work, though, continues undiminished: the 72-year-old Dole keeps a pace that has aides two generations younger gasping in astonishment.

His stunning announcement last month that he would leave not just the leadership, but the Senate itself showed a flair for the dramatic. Dole promised this week that it wouldn't be the last surprise he springs this year.