Bob Dole quit the U.S. Senate last week after realizing he had a terrible problem. His best credential was destroying his last chance to be President. Since wrapping up the Republican nomination in April, the majority leader's plan to unseat Bill Clinton next November was a Capitol Hill variation on the Rose Garden strategy. That's a time-honored tactic: an incumbent President seeks re-election by staying close to the White House, giving speeches and awards in the mansion's lovely garden while reminding voters not so subliminally that they already have a perfectly acceptable President.

Dole figured, quite rationally, that his best chance of challenging Clinton was hunkering down on Capitol Hill, where Congress sits, 16 blocks east of the White House. And why not? The 72-year-old Dole had worked there 35 years, nearly half his life. No one understands Congress better than Dole, who has been a U.S. Senator for the past 27 years and his party's Senate leader for 12 years, longer than any other Republican in history. His position as majority leader would offer a bully pulpit for an aggressive legislative strategy against the President. With his party in command of Congress, he could hurl agenda-shaping bills down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House, where the President would be forced to go along or explain why he was vetoing such sensible and purposeful legislation.

That was the theory, anyway. In reality, it didn't work.

For one thing, Americans don't much like Washington with its culture of public-payroll bureaucrats and political lifers, too many of whom are seen to be making a mess of government, passing ridiculous laws or enmeshed in the thrall of special interests. Dole represents Kansas, a Midwestern grain state, but he is better known as "Beltway Bob," a consummate operator inside the infamous highway that encircles the capital. That's not a moniker of choice in today's political climate.

Another reason the strategy collapsed was that Dole was unable to initiate and manage any substantial legislation. With all 435 members of the House of Representatives and one-third of the 100-seat Senate facing election in less than six months, Congress is stuck in legislative gridlock over such minutiae as whether or not to reduce gasoline taxes or raise the national minimum wage. This is far from rallying-cry material.

His own Republicans have been tearing themselves apart. Their much ballyhooed Contract with America has become a battleground for centrists and conservatives. As a result, Newt Gingrich, a year ago the all-powerful Republican Speaker of the House, has seen his influence plummet, further damaging the chances of Dole, his Senate counterpart. Normally a master compromiser, Dole was sinking into a swamp of procedural pitfalls and parliamentary gobbledygook.

The longer Dole stayed on the job, the more his poll ratings declined. A TIME/CNN poll last week showed him trailing Clinton by 22 points--56% to 34%. As Dole dwindled, frustrated Republicans grumbled. A washout at the presidential level was bad enough. Worse, though, the Senator's stumbling could threaten the party's hold on the House of Representatives, which it won in 1994 for the first time in 40 years. Democrats were having such difficulty containing their glee that Clinton warned overconfident aides to "remember Greg Norman," a reference to the golfer who blew a huge lead on the final day of last month's Masters tournament.

For weeks senior Republicans had urged Dole to turn over his majority leader's job for the course of the campaign. That was the announcement he was expected to make last Wednesday to a packed Senate auditorium. Instead, Dole declared he would leave the Senate he loved by June 11. He would campaign without a safety net. "I will seek the presidency with nothing to fall back on but the judgment of the people and nowhere to go but the White House or home." Choking back tears, he said, "I will stand before you without office or authority, a private citizen, a Kansan, an American, just a man." He would seek the White House "the hard way," just as he had risen from a hospital bed after suffering horrific World War II injuries. "I trust in the hard way, for little has come to me except in the hard way, which is good because we have a hard task ahead of us." The crowd cheered and wept.

Desperate men take desperate actions, and Dole's decision to give up his podium was clearly a gamble. He may find it even more difficult to conduct a campaign away from Washington. But he may also surprise again. After all, until last week, he was a wooden speaker with his heart and feet anchored on Capitol Hill. Now he has shown courage, boldness and conviction, qualities Americans seek in a President.