BOB DOLE: FACING THE AGE ISSUE

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The voters don't seem to be worried: 3 out of 4 participants in the TIME/CNN survey don't think Dole's age is a problem. But they have yet to be forced into confronting the question the way Americans were in October 1984, when the 73-year-old Ronald Reagan concluded the second debate of that presidential campaign with his rambling thoughts about a time capsule and a drive along the California coast. Though Dole's health is excellent, the question will not go away because it has become a code for a deeper concern. Namely, is Dole's brand of back-room politics, with its emphasis on vote counting, compromise and dealmaking, too old-fashioned for a party that owes its ascendancy to the politics of conviction, confrontation and change? "We think the voters are a lot less interested in how many years Bob Dole's been on the planet than in how many years he's been in Washington," remarks Dan Schnur, a strategist for California Governor Pete Wilson's presidential campaign. "No question, the voters are looking for change. Bob Dole has been in the Congress for 35 years."

Sooner or later every generation turns into a cartoon, a caricature sketched by history and then distorted by memory. How voters and the party activists weigh the generational question in the coming months is likely to be one of the two or three big factors in the 1996 campaign. All Dole has to do is show that he might just win because of his age rather than in spite of it. "His policies are a helluva lot more attuned to the mood of the country than the incumbent's," says former Reagan imagemeister Michael Deaver, who argues that even baby boomers might be ready to turn back to the grownups. Dole actually draws his strongest support from voters 35 to 50. Says Deaver: "The boomers stop and say, 'What did we ever do? We have the most divorces, and we smoked a lot of dope. What has our generation brought to the table?'"

Last month in Goffstown, New Hampshire, Dole pointed to kids playing in a supporter's backyard and said the election was "not about our generation. It's about their generation. Maybe our generation has one more mission left to accomplish." Dole's strategy is simple: age is an asset in a race against Clinton. "It's experience, it's leadership, it's character and it's values," says an aide. "It's everything Clinton lacks.''

For rivals and pundits alike, the age issue offers a chance to examine Dole's heart and mind, along with the events that have shaped him. He has lived too hard and seen too much to deride the government as the enemy. Dole grew up on the prairie during the Depression, when the Federal Government meant jobs, farm price-support programs and rural electrification. After his Army service left him physically broken and unable to walk, it was government doctors who helped put him back together and G.I. Bill money that put him through school. As a county attorney signing welfare checks, he discovered that his grandparents were on the list of recipients. Dole's first floor speech as a freshman Senator in 1969 was a plea for funds for housing for the disabled.