The Republican candidate: Dole, like Clinton, out of the loop.

After an anxious month or two, the Republican party is right where most of its leaders wanted it to be: the primary season, effectively, has come to an end, and Bob Dole, bleak but dead-safe, is assured of nomination. But like voters in general, Republicans aren't happy; their mood is fretful, and even the optimists among them, thinking ahead to November, have moments of dread.

A year ago, President Bill Clinton's fortunes were in the subbasement, and the greater part of the Republican establishment settled on Dole as a minimalist candidate, unlikely to make a mistake or confuse the party's basically negative message: beat the Clintons, vote Republican. Now, while Clinton is still no world-beater, his standing in the polls is respectable, and to make matters worse, the antinomies of the Republican coalition are making themselves felt, as commentators Theodore Lowi and E.J. Dionne, Jr., predicted they would. The Republicans need a new, unifying romance, but Bob Dole, whatever his other excellences, is not a candidate to catch hearts.

The dominant impression of Dole, at the moment, is that he is boring, out of touch, and possibly too old to be president. Every time Bob Dole campaigns, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd observed, he seems to lose votes. His inarticulateness has become proverbial, and his campaign staff was driven to the expedient of keeping him away from debates. Dole won, in the end, chiefly because he was not Pat Buchanan, just as his best hope lies in the fact that, especially in his military and personal virtues, he is not Bill Clinton. Back in the legislative world where he is a master, Dole hopes to build a record of achievement--and provoke vetoes--sufficient to establish him as a man who can do what the president, at best, will only say, a Kansas Machiavelli championing honest action against unreliable speech.

Still, Michael Dukakis taught Democrats the risk of a candidate who offers "competence" without vision, even against an opponent who lacks Bill Clinton's fluency and voters this year have been left with the sense that Dole has no very clear goals. Even the New York Times, not given to levity, poked fun at Dole's nine differing proclamations of "what this race is all about." Too many of his efforts to define the issues--his appeal to the future because it's "what lies before us," or his assertion, on the "Brinkley" show, that "something will pop up in November"--sound like drift or an opportunism greater than Clinton's.

Dole's habit of referring to himself in the third person, for example, suggests that he sees "Bob Dole," the public person, as an artifact quite distinct from the man himself. Of course, it's a familiar truth that politics requires the compromise or abandonment of old allegiances and lesser principles in the hope of a greater good, a reshaping of the self that is chancy. Bob Dole never had any illusions on that score: his family was Democratic, and he became a Republican to have a better chance of election. But the obvious risk, that political souls will lose themselves in their own contrivances, is the sound part of the distrust of "insiders. " For Bob Dole, the price of Republicanism has increased dramatically in recent years as the party has lurched to the right. He and his wife changed churches, apparently deferring to conservative Protestant sensibilities; this year, he took the antitax pledge he once scorned; his position on abortion appears to be a form of periodical literature. Dole upholds principles from time to time, but his public persona seems increasingly ruled by a driving ambition that leads him to attempt any role that will please, however ill-suited to his somber nature. "I can be a Ronald Reagan," he told a campaign crowd, "if that's what you want."

No, he can't: at bottom, Bob Dole is too shrewd and too honorable to believe the lines that go with the part, and he delivers them without conviction, though he has every reason to envy Reagan's gift for enchantment.

Dole knows, of course, the advantages of moving toward the political center, which Clinton has been treating as his personal camp ground for some months now. Dole recognizes, too, that his age requires a running mate of extraordinary stature, hence his pursuit of General Colin Powell despite war drums on the right and the risk of a slate-the first since McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt in 1900-where the nominee for vice-president overshadows the head of the ticket. Since Powell isn't playing, Dole will probably turn to governors like John Engler of Michigan or Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin. More venturesome possibilities, like Christie Whitman of New Jersey, lead straight into a political minefield.

The Republican right wing is restive, and Pat Buchanan is making third-party noises. Buchanan's threat is at least half bluster: He glories in the role of Republican rowdy, and he would leave the party only in the direst circumstances. Buchanan's followers, however, are another story. About 40 percent of Buchanan voters have been saying they're not inclined to support Dole, and this threat is especially credible in the case of "Reagan Democrats," who, without a firm Republican commitment on social issues, may decide to vote their economic interests. Dole's staff thinks so: two days after Super Tuesday, they had their candidate, in hard hat and French cuffs, playing to blue-collar conservatives.

Social conservatives in general, fobbed off with symbols during the Reagan and Bush years, have been unhappy with the low priority assigned to their favorite measures by Gingrich, Dole, and the Republican majorities incongress. So far, Ralph Reed has played a crucial, conciliating role, keeping the Christian Coalition more or less neutral during the primaries, a position that hurt Buchanan and helped Dole, especially in the decisive contests in South Carolina and Georgia. And if it proves impossible to enact a socially conservative agenda, Reed is willing to work with probusiness and libertarian Republicans on the basis of the view, associated with Bill Kristol, that if government can be radically scaled down and decentralized, "civil society"--churches, families, voluntary associations, and local communities--will take up the slack, restoring America's moral order and sense of personal responsibility.

This argument is almost certainly false: capitalism is anything but conservative, following the relativism of the market, and trading tradition at a discount to desire. It's hardly news that economic and technological changes are weakening the institutions of civil society--undermining local community, shattering trust in the workplace, intruding on and reshaping family life. These days, as Robert Putnam says, Americans are increasingly apt to "bowl alone." Only a minority of social conservatives sees this clearly, but great numbers have an inkling, and much of the force behind Buchanan's candidacy lies in his half-articulate contention that the common good should rule rather than being subject to the logic of markets, that work and home are goods at least as important as a larger GNP. This sentiment limits Reed's freedom of maneuver, firing an insistence that Republicans pledge government support for traditional values, most obviously, the right to life. (The loathsome side of Buchanan's movement," ready to enlist as storm troops for the "culture war," sees even less reason to compromise.) So Dole is not likely to take any decisive steps toward the center, especially since he is so indebted to Reed. The platform will probably stay where it is on abortion; Buchanan may get another chunk of convention prime time; and barring a change of heart by Powell, conservatives may have something close to a veto on the vice-presidential nominee.

The Right, though, isn't Dole's only problem. Ross Perot is again feeling tempted to run. Both Clinton and Dole are free traders, and protectionists will be looking for a champion. If Dole does keep to the right on social issues, moreover, it will open a lot of terrain in the center. Facing so many dangers and lacking magic, Dole will play it safe, waiting for his opponent to make a mistake.

On the Democratic side, however, Bill Clinton hasn't been making many. He has avoided any serious primary challenge, reflecting his own skill, but also his party's embattlement. Democrats are a smaller flock, more coherent and--thanks to Gingrich and the election of 1994--more inclined to see their fortunes tied to those of the party. Clinton and the Democrats have successfully portrayed themselves as our protectors against extremists, the defenders of Medicare, education, and the environment. The president has held out some lures for wandering conservatives--school uniforms, tough talk on immigration, a soft-pedal on affirmative action--and Whitewater, so far, is yesterday's news. Clinton has even been doing well with recent crises in foreign policy, treating Cuba and China firmly without being nutty and giving Israel decent support. In Bosnia, things are going as well as could be expected and the president even won an award as "Irish-American of the Year." Things could blow up at any time, of course, and even among his supporters, millions regard the president with resigned distaste; but at the moment, Clinton may be forgiven a little basking.

Still, Democrats need more than Clinton's unction. Where the economy is concerned, both Clinton and Dole seem out of the loop, barely aware of the fears and resentments that underlie the latest economic statistics. Neither has a credible program addressing the decline of job quality and real wages, the problems attendant on "downsizing," or the increasing inequality associated with a winner-take-all society. In New Hampshire, Bob Dole was moved to denounce corporate greed," but seems to have left it at that. Clinton has supported a rise in the minimum wage and has begun to talk again about "fair" trade, but apart from support for retraining, his administration has not developed an industrial policy. (Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, however, has given Democrats what looks like a decent beginning.)

Someone--the Democrats are still the best bet--needs to do better. Convinced that the burdens of change are not being fairly distributed, more and more Americans are sometimes desperate and often angry, depending on government and politics to give them an effective voice, yet not trusting established institutions to provide it. And regrettably, the election of 1996 has thus far not offered much to prove them wrong.

Wilson Carey McWilliams is professor of political science at Rutgers University.