FACING THE AGE ISSUE

Bob Dole celebrated his 72nd birthday last Saturday, an occasion of more than passing significance. For it reminded the leaders of his party, the pundits searching for big issues and perhaps even a few real live voters of the thing Dole would most like them to ignore: if he were to win the presidency in 1996, he would be the oldest man ever inaugurated. Even if age doesn't matter, ideas do. At the very moment when voters have installed a generation of laser-guided, soul-driven Republican reformers, he finds himself cast as the embodiment of old-style, gear-grinding politics.

There is some comfort in the fact that Bill Clinton has an age problem too. With his first term more than half over, the President has left voters with a queasy feeling about his judgment and fortitude. His critics deride the "yuppie Zen President" who represents a feckless generation that protested wars while their elders fought them and lacks the confidence that comes from sacrifice.

Whenever presidential contests have brought generational change, the youngsters have always inherited power from their elders: Lincoln from Buchanan, Kennedy from Eisenhower and, of course, Clinton from Bush. When Bob Dole entered the Kansas house of representatives in 1951, Bill Clinton was five years old. Never before have Americans reached so far backward in their search for leadership-which is why the Republican Party is now confronting a historic dilemma.

Dole has come to dominate the Republican field so completely -- last week a TIME/CNN poll put him ahead of his closest rival by 32 points -- that his nomination looks increasingly inevitable. But as Dole's lead over Clinton has vanished, there is a growing fear in G.O.P. circles that the party is about to nominate a man who does not excite the party's rank and file; a Washington insider in an age when the term has become an insult; a closet centrist with a hard head and a bleeding heart; and, most worrisome, a candidate who might squander the party's chance to exploit Clinton's weakness and gain a new Republican dynasty.

All the messy concerns boil down to one question: Is Dole too old? Is he physically capable of completing what amounts to three back-to-back marathons: running the Senate, running for President and then completing four and possibly eight years as Commander in Chief without a noticeable degradation of energy, mental acuity or temperament?