Eye on the Oval Office

By Hugh Sidey

On this hot August morning, the Capitol has been abandoned by the congressional combatants. The route to Majority Leader Robert Dole's office is uncrowded and cool, and the stone busts of Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson whisper from the shadows about great ambitions achieved and denied.

Dole has already tried and failed to follow the path of those three men from the Senate to the vice presidency. Now he wants to skip the intermediate step and go directly to the Oval Office. His gutsy performance as Senate leader over the past 7 1/2 months may help open the way.

"President Reagan came up here when Howard Baker was leader, and Howard showed him the view," says Dole, sweeping aside the curtains behind his desk and revealing through repairmen's scaffolding the marbled city below with its great avenues running toward the White House. "'Mr. President, this is the best view in town,' Howard said. The President looked at him and answered, 'No, Howard, it is the second-best view.'"

Dole succeeds in containing the mirth that rises behind his eyes and tugs at the corners of his mouth. He gives an understated smile and not the Kansas yuk that helped sink the Ford-Dole ticket in 1976. He joked so much then that people did not think he was serious, as if anyone scorched by the Dust Bowl and shattered by an explosive shell in the Italian mountains in World War II could be truly frivolous. He was not--and he is not.

Getting from the Hill to the White House is no easy feat. He has a Senate race to run in 1986 and a Senate to lead all the time, which makes him a target for every political pot-shooter around. Out in Ellsworth, Kans., the other day a man came up with a sign on his hat that said DUMP DOLE. With bemused aggressiveness the Senator confronted the fellow and declared, "You're not going to beat me." The tormentor was flustered and half admitted the task might be impossible.

That gentle unorthodoxy has confounded many political seers who have insisted that being Senate leader hinders more than helps a candidate, as concluded by Howard Baker, who stepped down. The dean of all handicappers, Richard Nixon, was heard to mutter that Dole might have more savvy than any of the other contenders. Indeed, Dole went up to New Jersey to see Nixon, whose political acuity Dole respects, and found the old campaigner with candidate lists and vote projections. He advised Dole to do his job in the Senate and stay away from the candidate "cattle shows." Dole loved it all, especially when the former President, having relinquished his Secret Service agents, took Dole to and from the airport in his own car.

Dole's mania for a sensible federal budget and a genuine attack on the huge deficits has cast him up against bankers, farmers, the elderly and the President of the U.S. This is a singular way to go for the White House. "I figure that you listen to all the arguments and then it is a leader's job to make up his mind what seems best and fight for it," Dole says. That has not always been the method employed by national politicians, particularly those from the Senate fearful of offending powerful interests. Dole is going to ride the budget-deficit issue right on through and somehow try to make that so meaningful and exciting a struggle that it will give him luster as a leader.

There is something different about Dole. He resides in the offices where the grandiloquent Everett Dirksen used to cut deals and drink bourbon. Dirksen was the ultimate Senate creature, as smooth and pliable as the leather chairs in the cloakroom. But Bob Dole has not been captured by his surroundings. He is still off there standing up like a silo on the Kansas prairie. He could be blown down by the political winds. But shouldering against the hot gusts in Washington sometimes builds strength.