			Foreign Correspondent

		      Inside Track On World News
	    By International Syndicated Columnist & Broadcaster
		 Eric Margolis <emargolis@lglobal.com>

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A Bad Face Day for Senator Dole
by 
Eric Margolis 22 Feb 96


Television does strange things to people.  Take, for
example, my first TV appearance years ago, which I thought
was pretty good for a debut.   

I awaited critical acclaim.  Nothing, Not a peep. Nobody
seemed to have been watching. Wrong.  A week later, in this 
paper's Letters to the Editor: `I always read Eric's columns
and really like them.  I just saw him on TV. Boy, did he
look fat!.'

I survived this horrible experience with a badly dented ego
and a renewed commitment to tofu.  Bob Dole, however, may
not survive his permanent bad-face day on the TV screen. 

Besides making you look 10 lbs heavier, TV causes some
people, like Bill Clinton, to positively glow.  It makes
others appear wooden, or even half-dead. Senator Dole, a
vivacious,witty man, looks on TV like an ailing undertaker
in an old film clip.

This is half the reason why Dole's ship hit the reefs in
Tuesday's New Hampshire Republican primary.  Ordinary
voters, who almost always have more wisdom than party pros,
knew that Dole could not compete on TV with the glib
Clinton. They gave a tight victory to Pat Buchanan -  a
polite, New England way of saying, `Mr. Dole, you'd best be
going back to lead the Senate, where you belong. '

Dole also must blame himself for the debacle. As senior
party statesman, he should have wrapped himself in Roman 
`gravitas,' eschewing negative ads, and ignoring his rivals. 
Instead, he panicked, got off his pedestal, indulged in rank
gutter politics, and ended up debasing himself.  Ronald
Reagan would have simply laughed off his opponents, and
sailed on regally to victory.

Watching the lugubrious spectacle of Sen. Dole self-destructing
on TV, and the unseemly antics of his challengers, makes
one positively yearn for the good old days of cigar smoke-filled
backroom deals where the party brass decided who would run.

Dole, with ten time more money than all other Republican 
candidates combined, will probably soldier on through the
upcoming blizzard of 14 primaries and two caucuses between
today and 5 March. Neither challengers Buchanan nor Lamar
Alexander have the funds to fight so many battles in such a
short time.   

Buchanan is most unlikely to win nomination, in spite of his
startling victories.  He is too radical, too far right, too
hot-spoken for most Republicans, who remain a centrist,
middle-class party.  Buchanan's fiery rhetoric and calls for
trade protectionism  may appeal to unemployed New Hampshire
workers, but not to suburbanites, who form the core of the
Republican vote.


Equally important, the Republican and Democratic political
Establishments will combine to thwart Buchanan.  He is a
rebel and outsider, thus a threat to the political status
quo.  Buchanan is also anathema to Jewish groups for having
had the audacity to denounce the Israel lobby's
extraordinary influence in Washington, and calling Congress,
`Israeli occupied territory.' The Eastern media, which is
mostly liberal Democratic, will train its guns on Buchanan
and try to blow him out of the water as a racist, bigot,
anti-semite.

Buchanan does not represent mainstream Republicans. He is
preaching to the fears of unemployed or threatened workers 
who are shivering in the rising tide of economic malaise
that is gripping America - which will deepen if the stock
market finally crashes.  He plays to the xenophobia and
ignorance of the outside world that makes many Americans
seem so narrow-minded and shallow to foreigners. He is not
presidential material, merely a loud protest candidate.

But Buchanan's bombshell now threatens the Republicans with
their worst nightmare: a fatal split  between moderates, and
crusaders of the Christian far right.  And a rekindling of
the old feud between the party's moneyed establishment,  and
its militant spear carriers out in the field. Equally
ominous, the abortion genii is now out of the lamp, and may
shatter Republican unity.  

Over in the White House, they're laughing up a storm. Unless
Colin Powell runs, or the Prez and Hillary are indicted for
fraud, for now it looks like four more years of K-Tel Bill. 

copyright 1996    eric margolis

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