DOLE'S CREDIT

At a fundraiser for Virginia Sen

John Warner, Dole appeared to make one last pitch to Colin Powell to join the ticket. It did not matter, from the point of view of the strategy, that many of these feints were insincere. You can get more information by click at: kitchenutensils9.weebly.com At the end of the day, Dole decided to sequester the tolerance language in a separate plank -- a decision foreshadowed by his tacit alliance with the Christian Coalition in this campaign, and by his own 23-year pro-life voting record. Similarly, Dole's courtship of Powell was, as NR argued all along, mostly for show.  If the media have an insatiable appetite for Powell copy, Dole must have figured, why not feed it? So Dole had the worst of all worlds: he irked his conservative base, without convincing anyone that he was a true centrist. But then Nixon's maneuvers rarely convinced anyone either.

Finally, and to Dole's credit, he revived Nixon the Strategist

Giving some clear-headed foreign-policy speeches as spring turned to summer. In Philadelphia, he called for admitting Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic to NATO by 1998, and warned that "unless we vigorously move to train and equip the Bosnians, the U.S. and NATO will face a 'stay or fail' dilemma." In Dallas, he told the Veterans of Foreign Wars that it was "a requirement, not an option," for the United States to develop and deploy a missile-defense system. No one listened, of course, which is partly the fault of the voters. But it is also partly Dole's for running a campaign so edgeless that his best shots are all on foreign policy in what still feels, if not like the end of history, then like a post - Cold War world.

ABOUT the only Nixon 

Missing from Dole's repertoire was the Nixon of the Emerging Republican Majority -- the Nixon who won at least two out of his three presidential elections. He won them by his willingness to take some tough stands on tough issues -- chiefly, law and order, which was the affirmative-action issue of the late Sixties and early Seventies. In both cases, the tough position was denounced by liberals and slighted by the media; it was popular with voters; and it was absolutely right. Nixon took the tough position, and argued it forthrightly. Dole has not, on affirmative action, or any other domestic issue.

The chief artisan of Nixon's emerging-majority rhetoric

Pat Buchanan, remained nominally a candidate for the Republican nomination. When Pat Buchanan has not formally pulled out of the race, and Bill Clinton has not formally entered it, Dole must feel beleaguered by phantoms. Still, Buchanan has not been behaving aggressively. When Dole first declared that there would be tolerance language in the abortion plank, Buchanan released a dignified statement asking what moral standing the Party of Lincoln would have had in 1860 if it had linked its opposition to slavery to tolerance language. (A rebuke weakened only by the suspicion that in 1860 Buchanan would have been in the Party of John Breckinridge.) Yet when Dole decided to fence the tolerance language off, it was Pat's sister Bay, angry that there was to be any such language at all, who spoke of unconquerable will, and study of revenge, and courage never to submit or yield. Pat, the moderate in the family, held his peace. The latest word is that Buchanan will not speak at all in San Diego. Dole, who is a better politician than George Bush, must understand that Buchanan can be useful to him, while Buchanan, a lifelong Republican, does not want to stray away into schism. But mutual interest may not carry the day.