KINDER'S COMMENTARY: DOLE HAS FOUNDATION OF ISSUES

By the time this is published, the New York primary will have been held and the frontrunner, all-but-inevitable-nominee status of Sen. Bob Dole will be still more evident. Regardless of what any current poll shows, reports that the Kansan is certain to be November road kill for a Clinton-Gore juggernaut are wildly exaggerated. The GOP nomination will be well worth having, and this fall's election is likely to be a close one, with the arithmetic of the electoral college map difficult for President Bill Clinton. Widely reported smugness among political operatives at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is reminiscent of similar attitudes among their counterparts in the administration of one-termer George Bush.

This is true for several reasons. Take first a historical fact that looms, ominously, for the Democrats. It is this: In the 11 presidential elections since Harry Truman's dramatic, come-from-behind victory in 1948, a Democratic nominee has won a majority of white male voters exactly once: Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. The national Democratic Party has gone left, far left, and ordinary voters can smell it. As a bunch of left-wing kooks and movie stars have taken over that once-dominant party, how many times have you heard a once-loyal Democrat say, "I didn't leave my party -- my party left me"?

Second, the rough-and-tumble GOP race has left the usual scrapes and scratches on each Republican candidate. This cat fight has unfolded as an unopposed Mr. Clinton has looked on with glee, visiting Bosnia for pictures with the troops and bidding to become the national school principal in urging that public school children wear uniforms. As Sen. Dole begins to consolidate his support and unite the GOP, he and all Republicans can turn to face the incumbent and focus on making Clinton and his record issue No. 1 in the 1996 campaign.

Third will be the cluster of issues relating to the character of both Mr. and Mrs. Clinton, issues that may bring the 1992 Clinton campaign boast -- "vote for me and you get Hillary in the bargain" -- home to haunt them yet. Comparisons of the Clinton draft-dodging, Paula Jones and "I-didn't-inhale" record to that of war hero Dole are bound to bring Democrats to grief.

Further, the Clinton character issue doesn't end but, rather, begins there. As the number and seriousness of Hillary Rodham Clinton's lies and evasions spreads like crabgrass in August, knowledgeable, insider Democrats are deeply concerned. Senate Whitewater hearings will continue into the criminal enterprise that was the Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan, Hillary Rodham Clinton, counsel. A professional special prosecutor named Ken Starr is at work down in the one-party fiefdom known as Arkansas, where a dozen Clinton cronies face indictments, and criminal trials have begun. The exhaustion of Ken Starr's patience with Mrs. Clinton was signalled when he made her the first-ever first lady to have a chance to tell it all to a criminal grand jury. This fuse is burning and could explode at any moment.

Nor is this -- even all this -- all there is. A House committee has lots and lots of questions about the disgraceful episode known as Travelgate, and before this one is over, Clinton cronies such as Harry Thomason will get their chance to go under oath. At issue: Who ordered the potentially criminal misuse of the IRS and the FBI in turning them loose on defenseless small-fry in the White House travel office? The First Lady has lied on this, too, and the more that is revealed the more one conclusion is unmistakable: All roads lead to Hillary.

None of this should suggest an obsessive fixation on the politics of scandal. A centrist-conservative Dole-led ticket can and should sweep to November victory on issues and issues alone. For years, when the GOP chafed in minority status, the party sought a standard-bearer perceived to be more popular than its platform, its ideas. Now, with majority status confirmed by the historic landslide of November 1994, a confident GOP can nominate a less-than-eloquent candidate manifestly less popular than its ideas, which broadly express the majority in the new American mainstream.

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.