AN INVITING SITUATION

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Republican consultant Ed Rollins has a way of getting his clients in trouble. At a roast in California on May 15, Rollins, a part-time volunteer for Bob Dole, suggested that California Democrat Willie Brown might run for mayor of San Francisco -- and not Los Angeles -- because Brown didn't want to let "Hymie boys" from L.A. push him around. It was the kind of gaffe that might have paralyzed a fledgling presidential campaign. But at Dole headquarters in Washington, no one came unhinged. Instead, sources told Time, campaign manager Scott Reed telephoned Rollins last Monday and asked him to step down. Ed Rollins no longer works for the Dole campaign. Simple as that.

Dole has run for President twice before, and it shows. In all the important measures, he is out front: raising ample funds, locking up major endorsements, leading the polls and avoiding self-defeating mistakes. In such key states as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, Dole is well ahead of the competition. He started at the top, of course, but the fact that he is staying there has frustrated the popular wisdom that an early front runner is doomed to fall. This time it's the also-rans who are doing that. His rivals have stumbled and stagnated, which means that each week without a Dole misstep reduces the chances that they will ever catch up. The growing sense that the second tier is fading, however, has raised the prospect that other contenders will jump in, chief among them Newt Gingrich.

So far, no strong runner-up has emerged. California Governor Pete Wilson remained sidelined last week after the removal of a benign nodule from his right vocal cord and missed his staff's planned deadline to enter the race officially by Memorial Day. There is also internal strife: top Wilson aide George Gorton went on "vacation" after Wilson tapped former Bush aide Craig Fuller to run the campaign. Phil Gramm of Texas, still smarting from the disclosure of his R-rated movie endeavor in 1974, has watched his approval ratings stay flat even as he becomes better known. Meanwhile, former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander was embarrassed by his failure so far to get an endorsement, as his aides had touted, from popular Michigan Governor John Engler.

The normally skeptical Dole, returning from a two-day trip last week to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and Atlantic City, New Jersey, admitted to a lieutenant, "It feels good out there." This campaign is different from his previous outings. Discipline is now a more regular companion. Prior to his announcement swing in April, Dole spent some time at his Washington headquarters delivering his stump speech to an empty TV studio. He wasn't keen about the idea-and he didn't deliver it very well. But his aides first tested the speech's broad themes with a focus group of Republican men and women in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Next they showed the tape to a "dial group'' of 30 Republicans -- some committed to Dole, some not -- in Cobb County, Georgia. Each was given a hand-held dial to register his or her approval of key passages; all voted 80% approval or more. Officials at other campaigns scoff at the front runner's overcalibration, but the careful market testing has helped Dole move away from talking about process and toward more presidential-sounding themes.