Bob Dole reared his well-tanned head recently, giving his first serious interview since Monica Lewinsky's name became a household word. Dole being Dole, it should come as little surprise that his utterances were packed with reminders of why he didn't pass muster as a presidential candidate.
The most revealing snippet contained in the interview with Richard Berke of the New York Times was that Dole is more distressed over having been defeated in the 1988 Republican primaries by that preppy George Bush than over his drubbing from Clinton. "I still think more about 1988 and what happened in New Hampshire," said Dole. "I thought '88 was sort of my year." Dole also took a swipe at religious conservatives, asking, "What do these guys want?" He complained that "we keep getting caught in these one-issue things. They keep raising the bar."
This criticism wasn't limited to the Times interview. Dole, who posed as a pro-life conservative for much of his political career, had also recently endorsed the pro-choice candidate in Illinois's GOP primary to choose who would take on Democratic senator Carol Moseley-Braun. Dole said the conservative in the race, Peter Fitzgerald, was "out there on the fringe" and that the race was between "the mainstream and the extreme." Fitzgerald, however, prevailed in the March 17 primary. So what's Dole saying now? "Peter Fitzgerald has a winning message. . . . [He] will make an outstanding lawmaker in Washington."
The one encouraging sign from Dole's interview with the Times came when he was asked who he thought would win the Republican presidential nomination in 2000. He cited Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge and New York governor George Patakiwhich -- which probably kills any slight chance that either one had.