And Now It's Her Turn

Let's suppose that you were test-marketing an antidote for a nation that had just impeached the most ambitious, adulterous, undisciplined and profane President in a generation. Your roll-out would need to look more spontaneous than calculated. It would be preferable if your candidate had never been one before. It would be reassuring to know self-control was not a problem. And it would be even better if, instead of chasing skirts, she wore them.

And so, just as the men who have recently announced their presidential ambitions did so as quietly as possible--on the Internet (Bill Bradley) or late on New Year's Eve (Al Gore)--the official story of Elizabeth Dole's decision to join the fray is one of immaculate conception. One morning before Christmas, the tale goes, she woke up and began thinking seriously about running for President. After eight years as president of the American Red Cross, she had tied the place up into a neat little bundle, securing the blood supply and the fund-raising stream, coping with one disaster after another. She began to wonder, What's next? And so she called aides and said, "Let's prepare, in case."

It's a good story, but Elizabeth Hanford Dole, 62, has never done business that way. She and her advisers have been thinking about her running for President since her husband was trounced by Bill Clinton two years ago. By Christmas 1996, Bob Dole was joking about the idea publicly, but a year ago, he says, she told him, "You have to stop kidding about this." She discussed the matter with him seriously, anxious to be sure he had put the defeat behind him emotionally. By last January aides were clucking over polls showing that she might pull independent women voters back to the G.O.P. fold for the first time in 20 years. They spent last summer puzzling through how she would cope with all the personal scrutiny politics brings--not because she has something to hide but because she hasn't. An adviser quipped that to make Liddy Dole seem more credible in this political climate, they would have to invent a sex scandal for her.

She's credible now. The latest TIME/CNN poll shows Dole running a strong second behind Texas Governor George W. Bush in the race for the G.O.P. primary. A general-election matchup between Dole and Gore, the poll suggests, would be a dead heat. Dole told TIME she wants to "talk with people, listen, do some traveling and a lot of praying" in the next few weeks. But those around her believe all systems are go. "Once she gets into it," says Bob Dole, "she's into it."