Campaign Portrait, Bob Dole:Survivor On the Track

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One of the few Republican beneficiaries of the Iranscam affair has been Kansas Senator Robert Dole, thrust into the role of hot candidate even as his fledgling campaign apparatus goes through birth pangs. This is the third in a series of profiles of the major 1988 contenders.

For Bob Dole, the most ordinary tasks pose extraordinary challenges. Buttoning his shirt, for example. Because there is no feeling in the tip of his left thumb and forefinger, he aligns the buttons by sight and gingerly guides them through the holes; each one can take ten minutes. In public appearances, he clasps a pen in his clawlike right hand to ward off aggressive handshakers who have not noticed his withered arm as they crowd around him, thrusting scraps of paper and clamoring for autographs. He responds patiently -- "I'm not a very good writer" -- and laboriously signs with his left hand, which he learned to write with after coming home to Russell, Kans., a horribly wounded veteran of the war against Nazi Germany. It took three years, seven operations and months in a plaster cast that encased him from neck to waist for him to recover. Compared with that ordeal, says Dole's younger brother Kenny, "running for President will be a piece of cake for Bob."

At 63, Robert Joseph Dole, the small-town Kansan who rose to become Republican leader in the U.S. Senate, is a remarkable survivor not only of war but of politics. Despite losses in two prior bids for national office, he has steadily been rising in the polls for the Republican presidential nomination. ! Yet he still faces formidable obstacles in the 1988 presidential campaign. He has been known as an acerbic Washington insider, a pragmatic, conservative man for all sessions during his 18 years in the Senate. Can such a candidate project a vision of the country's future that will satisfy both the distrustful right-wing ideologues he needs to win the Republican nomination and the more moderate voters whose support could sweep him into the White House?

So far, there has been a curious hesitancy about Dole's campaign, raising questions about his managerial skills and decisiveness. A bumbling organizational effort in the 1980 race doomed his run for the nomination before it got off the ground, and this time too he has been slow to establish the kind of political operation that could consolidate his current popularity. He has yet to unveil a timetable for resigning as Senate leader to commit himself full time to the trail or decide what role John Sears, a respected Republican political pro detested by the extreme right, will play in his campaign. In January, after Dole had been quoted as saying he had discussed with his wife Elizabeth the possibility that she would quit her job and join his campaign, she confronted him: "How can you say that," she asked, "when you haven't even decided if you are going to run?" She happens to be Ronald Reagan's Secretary of Transportation, and some political observers suspect that if either member of this power couple becomes President, it may be she.