EDITORIAL\The case for Bob Dole\Despite weakness as a campaigner, he has much to offer.

THE problem is there really are two Bob Doles.

Dole the candidate comes across as so clumsy and ill-prepared that even now he has a difficult time telling voters why he wants to be president. This is the Dole who didn't realize in New Hampshire that trade and jobs were critical issues, who catered to the limited interests of the religious right, and who turned what should have been a Republican coronation into a genuine horse race.

But there is another Dole: Dole the seasoned legislator. He's the one who gets things done on Capitol Hill, who understands the importance of compromise over confrontation, and who has been around long enough to realize that this is a nation of realists, not ideologues.

It is this Bob Dole - pragmatic, yet rock-solid conservative - who finally came through after the pivotal South Carolina primary, and it is the one we have chosen to endorse.

Never mind the laments about this being a weak field, or the desirability of non-candidates like Colin Powell and Jack Kemp, or the concerns of having a 72-year-old heading the ticket. No candidate is ever perfect for the job of president - there always will be soft spots to sort through, which is why we have such lengthy election years.

The point is not to reflect on what might have been, but to scrutinize what's available. And even before last week's pullout by Steve Forbes, it was hard to make a case for anyone but Dole.

Patrick Buchanan? The Republican political establishment owes him a great debt for raising the one issue that a majority of Americans really care about: job insecurity. There is an underlying fear in this country about layoffs and lost wages - concerns that have tended to get lost in the shuffled agendas of both parties.

Buchanan's remedies, of course, collide with the realities of an open marketplace. Fortunately, the voters have picked up on it. Beyond economics, Buchanan has cast too dark a cloud on the American landscape - rhetorically grabbing at scapegoats in classic demagogic fashion. This country needs many things, but a divisive protectionist is not one of them.

Dole, by contrast, remains an uplifting and compelling American story. The son of a cream-and-egg dealer in Russell, Kan., his Depression-era hopes were indeed modest. He figured he would sell pencils on street corners.

But the serious injuries he suffered during World War II taught him about the importance of self-reliance, as well as compassion for those truly in need.

Ohio Republican Gov. George Voinovich put it quite well: "Dole's conservative on all the things you want him to be conservative on: downsizing government, returning power to the states and, above all, real fiscal integrity rather than phony budgets."

His awkwardness during the primaries is being attributed to the strength of far right conservatives who, politically, had him over an ideological barrel. Buchanan's impressive performances early on didn't help.

But amid those early stumbles, Bob Dole finally found himself. What emerged was a no-nonsense, hard-working pragmatic Republican, a politician not afraid of making deals in pursuit of the common policy good.

Doesn't Dole represent business-as-usual in Washington? To some degree. But he wouldn't have survived 36 years in Congress without a good grounding in voter expectations. And it's quite clear what those expectations are in 1996: smaller government, a balanced budget, drastic reforms in welfare and health care, and substantive changes in immigration policies.

Maybe there really are several Bob Doles - and maybe his willingness, and ability, to change with the times is a strength, not a weakness. That's our belief, anyway.