MISSOURI COMMENTARY: BOB DOLE IS NOW FREE AT LAST

Senate majority leader and presidential candidate are each full-time jobs. To attempt to do them simultaneously is to ensure an inept performance in both. Sen. Bob Dole finally recognized the obvious and did so in time to begin to rescue his sagging presidential campaign. Dole did it in the most dramatic way possible by resigning from the Senate.

By day, Dole did battle with Ted Kennedy and by night he did battle with Bill Clinton. By day, he was a legislative maneuverer, a gridlock participant, the Senate half of the Dole-Gingrich "team." By night, he attempted to recast himself into a visionary. By day, he talked the words of Capitol Hill "cloture;" "conference committee;" "stand-alone vote." By night, he sought to talk presidential freed of "senator speak."

It obviously didn't pan out. His day job cast him in the very role he sought to outgrow, the role of manipulative Capitol Hill tactician. The American people are not enamored of Capitol Hill tacticians. They didn't like it last year when the tacticians closed down the government. They didn't like it this year when the tacticians devised clever strategies to produce nothing.

Whoever advised Dole to hitch his presidential aspirations to thwarting a 90 cent increase in the minimum wage ought to be farmed out to a lesser political campaign. Dole had supported some minimum wage increases earlier in his congressional career. But now a minimum wage increase would seemingly be a disaster or so Dole would have had the nation believe.

An essential part of the Dole campaign will be tax relief for middle and upper income tax payers. Another essential part will be the repeal of the capital gains tax, a benefit primarily directed to the well-to-do. Contrasting those positions with Dole's do-or-die resistance to giving the poorest workers in our society a 90 cents per hour increase boggle the mind. Standing day after day on the floor of the Senate doing battle with Ted Kennedy over the minimum wage became a continuing curse to the Dole presidential campaign.

After locking up the Republican presidential nomination so unseasonable early, Dole had the skeleton of a plan. He would pass some politically attractive pieces of legislation in the Senate, get his ally Speaker Newt Gingrich to race them through the House and put them on Clinton's desk to force some vetoes. In this scenario, Dole would appear as the one who could get things done and Clinton would be the villainous obstructionist. Nice scenario. Like a lot of nice scenarios, it didn't work.

Instead Dole is the one who became the obstructionist. Not only the Democrats, but a bunch of his closest Republican friends in the Senate urged him to pass the minimum wage bill. For Dole, the episode became the opposite of the picture he wanted to paint of himself. Instead of Mr. Can Do, he became Mr. Won't Do. But all of that is now behind him. Henceforth, he is Bob Dole full-time candidate, liberated and outside of the Beltway.

The nation is not so deep into the presidential campaign that Dole cannot change his strategy. But he cannot change himself. It's one thing to recast a game plan. It's another thing to remake a politician into something he has never been. Dole has been in politics since 1950 when he was elected to the Kansas legislature. He later served in the House of Representatives for eight years and has served in the Senate for close to two years.

Dole has hired a new speech coach to change the style of his presentation. He has hired new speech writers who effectively crafted his Washington farewell address. He has new media advisers. Dole will never be converted into a crowd pleasing orator or a matinee idol. He is what he is. He is bright. He is hard-working. He is persevering. He is lots of good and decent things, but he cannot be remade into something he has never been.

What Dole needs is a package of thematic concepts presented and repeated in a planned exposition. Up until now, his proposals seemed to come in a helter-skelter manner darting off in different, uncoordinated directions. Dole admires the political sagacity of Ronald Reagan. The Reagan campaign were packaged and made easy to follow. Those campaigns created a mood and had a sense of direction.

Now that Dole had been liberated from his confining duties in Washington, he has the chance to cast himself as the full-time presidential candidate. He might well look at the methodology of the Reagan campaigns for some pointers.

The battle cry used to be "Let Reagan Be Reagan." In 1996 the question up 'til now has been "When Will Bob Dole Be Bob Dole?"

~Tom Eagleton of St. Louis is a former U.S. senator from Missouri.