Bob Dole's presidential campaign left San Diego rejuvenated not only by an extraordinarily successful convention but by a bounce in the polls that shows he is not the longshot he once was.
Dole, despite delivering the finest speech of his long political career in accepting the Republican Party's 1996 presidential nomination, is undeniably the underdog in his campaign against President Clinton.But several polls taken during the four-day GOP national convention indicate that Dole, who trailed Clinton by as much as 20 points prior to the convention, has narrowed the gap to only 11 points.
"It's a tremendous beginning," Sen. Connie Mack, R-Fla., said as Dole and his running mate, Jack Kemp, departed Friday for a campaign swing through four states Clinton carried in 1992 - Colorado, Illinois, New York and Pennsylvania.
It will not be easy. What they have to do is come up with a state-by-state electoral equation that will give the 270 electoral votes needed to defeat Clinton. Polls currently show Dole leading in states with a total of 144 votes, while Clinton is leading in states with a total of 289 votes.
In addition, Clinton is likely to get his own boost in the polls when the Democratic Party nominates him for a second term in Chicago next week. In 1992, Clinton got a 12-point bounce, in part, because of a successful convention but also because of Ross Perot's suspension of his independent campaign for president.
Only two weeks ago during the drafting of the platform for Dole's campaign, the mood among Republicans was one of impending disaster, not only of Dole losing to Clinton but of possibly losing the Republican majority in Congress as well.
But all that changed with Dole's surprise pick of Kemp, his onetime rival and a widely popular figure among the GOP's moderates, as his running mate.
"That's what got things pumping," said Perry Hooper Jr., who chaired Kemp's 1988 presidential campaign in Alabama. "That's what got everybody excited."
So did the tightly managed, made-for-television events of the convention, featuring the more moderate voices of the party instead of the arch conservatives who had controlled the drafting of the party's platform.
Pat Buchanan, whose "cultural war" speech to the GOP convention four years ago alarmed moderate voters, was relegated to a "Pitchfork Pass" rally some 35 miles away from the convention hall.
And Ralph Reed, the executive director of the Christian Coalition, who had won the platform fight to keep the anti-abortion plank, was reduced to holding news conferences outside the convention hall in an effort to remind voters that the Republican Party was indeed "the pro-life party."
Even House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, the chairman ofthe convention, was kept under wraps, rarely appearing on the podium and, when he did, delivering the worst speech of all - extolling the spiritual virtues of beach volley-ball.
As enticing as retired Gen. Colin Powell and New York Congresswoman Susan Molinari were to moderates in their speaking roles, nothing they said compared to the electrifying moment when Elizabeth Dole, the candidate's wife, drifted Oprah-like into the sea of delegates to talk about the tender side of Bob Dole.
Her "guests" served as a prop for her talking at length about Dole's crippling war wounds from World War II - a subject that came up again and again, never as poignantly as when Sen. John Mc-Cain of Arizona, himself a hero in the Vietnam War, formally nominated Dole for president.
Virtually missing from any of the events, however, was any mention of Dole's half-century career in politics, the last 35 years of which he has spent in Congress.
But for all its MTV-like wizardry, the Republican National Convention ended with, in the jargon of television, a talking head - Bob Dole, in a 57-minute speech promising old-fashioned leadership to reverse what he views as the country's moral slide.
The speech marked a bold shift in tone for the convention. Dole offered a strongly conservative - even combative - message, in contrast to the speeches of Powell and Molinari, who appealed to moderates and women.
Dole's forceful speech often soared, especially when he spoke of his parents and his childhood of poverty on the Kansas prairie, of timeless values and of an America "of tranquillity, faith and confidence in action."
But he also seemed to declare a generational war on Clinton, the first president of the post-World War II baby boom generation, with a snarling indictment of the Clinton administration as a corps of elitists "who never grew up, never did anything real."
Also, after extolling the virtues of his hometown of Russell, where people rallied behind him after his war wounds, he ridiculed first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton's idea that "it takes a village" to ensure the welfare of children.
"It does not take a village to raise a child. It takes a family . . . and I shall, as president, promote measures that keep families whole," the once-divorced Dole declared.
He even took a shot at the Clintons' daughter, 16-year-old Chelsea, who attends private school, in promoting his policy to give parents tax-backed vouchers so they can send their children to public or private schools.
"There is no reason why those who live on any street in America should not have the same right as the person who lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue - the right to send your child to the school of your choice."
Dole used the word "trust" 10 times in his speech, apparently in an effort to capitalize on the widely held view among voters that Clinton cannot be trusted to keep his word.
But with his stoic demeanor and stern-looking gestures, Dole also occasionally appeared as an exacting parent: "Right conduct, every day, at every level, in all facets of life."