Politics: Showdown at The Rostrum

Robert Dole called it a "man-to-man" talk, but it looked and sounded more like a tirade. During a lull in the Senate contra-aid debate, the Republican leader angrily strode up to the rostrum where George Bush was presiding, pounded on the desk and waved a Bush campaign press release in the Vice President's face. For five minutes he took his rival for the Republican presidential nomination to task for practicing what he called "low-down, nasty, mean politics."

What steamed the Senator was statements in the press release contending that Dole is "mean-spirited" and practices "cronyism," a reference to recent accusations that he might have improperly helped a former aide obtain a federal contract. The Bush campaign handout also attempted to undercut the Senator's down-home image by portraying Dole and his wife Elizabeth as "millionaires," and by repeating past suggestions that a blind trust for Mrs. Dole might have been mismanaged.

Dole demanded an apology to his wife, but Bush refused to disavow the written statement. Political analysts suspect that paper was meant to put Dole on the defensive, shift attention away from the Vice President's still foggy Iran-contra role and goad the Kansas Senator into a display of his well-known temper. If so, it was at least partly a success.