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Having won the "Newt primary," Dole, as the consensus front runner, had his choice of worker bees, and money by the ton. "There's a royalist mentality in the Republican Party," explains Roger Stone, a veteran G.O.P. operative who worked for Richard Nixon. "Others pop up, and and there's always the desire for someone else--in this cycle it was Colin Powell--but in the end, unlike the Democrats, we Republicans invariably reward the guy who's paid his dues. This time, it was Dole's turn. The bucks flowed naturally to him--and froze out others who may have made the race."
But with the political center vacant in the first half of 1995, that "desire for someone else" would reach out to the solid frame of General Powell, the Gulf War hero with an above-politics cast. Just as the prospective candidacy of Mario Cuomo had haunted Bill Clinton four years earlier, so Dole faced in Powell a potential dream killer. "Some things you can control," Clinton had observed philosophically as he darted about the country in 1991 while the Hamlet of Albany considered his options. "With something like Mario, all you can do is pray." In the fall of 1995, Dole too was praying. Powell had obsessed him--and the nation--for months. The general, said Dole, noting the obvious, was "hot." But "I can't affect what he does," Dole added. "I can only wait."
Finally, Dole's prayers were answered. Whether it was Alma Powell's well-known fears for her husband's safety or the general's own belief that he was unprepared for the job, on Nov. 8 Powell ruled out a run, only four days after Yitzhak Rabin's assassination.
"Two down, one to go," Dole observed, adding Powell to Gingrich on his list of obstacles removed. Now, he reckoned incorrectly, the primary process could be easily traversed, which would leave only Clinton, the man Dole believed a sober nation would sensibly reject. "Still can't conceive of him in the job," Dole said, "even though he's got it."
DUEL ON CAPITOL HILL
Everett Dirksen, a predecessor of Dole's as Senate Republican leader, once said, "I live by my principles, and one of my principles is flexibility." Dirksen would have marveled at Clinton's State of the Union address on Jan. 23, 1996, the speech in which the President declared that the "era of Big Government is over." As he continued co-opting Republican themes and perfected, in the face of the public's disgust with government, the idea that incremental policy initiatives could demonstrate vision and commitment, that single line reflected both a culmination and a foreshadowing of Clinton's re-election strategy.
Any prominent Republican could have responded to Clinton's State of the Union address, but Dole reserved the chore for himself. Had he his wits about him after the President spoke, as most any Republican would have, Dole could have welcomed Clinton to the G.O.P. and said good night. Instead, he prattled on nonsensically. "It wasn't a disaster, but I don't know what else you'd call it," says Senator Al D'Amato, a key Dole ally. "It looked right then like we were gonna get beat, and it got everyone thinking, 'Isn't there some way out of this? Isn't there someone else, someone new?'"
But there wasn't. It was literally too late for a new candidate to emerge--the filing deadlines for the primaries had passed--so a roiled G.O.P. electorate turned to the existing, mediocre field for an alternative.