The two Bobs.

Meet Bobs Michel and Dole, establishmentarians extraordinaire. As long as they're the Minority Leaders, they don't seem to mind that their troops are more of a minority with every election.

WHEN Warner Brothers cast Ronald Reagan alongside Pat O'Brien in their 1940 classic Knute Rockne-All American, they could not have known they were creating a metaphor for a future President. In its usual way Hollywood played down the Rock's biting sarcasm in favor of sentiment, reaching a teary pitch in the famous "Win one for the Gipper" halftime speech that sent a divided Notre Dame football team back onto the field looking for blood. Less well known is an equally telling incident, which the film omitted. After listening to a whole conversation about what good sports his Notre Dame players were when they lost, Rockne couldn't take it any longer. "Show me a good and gracious loser," he said curtly, "and I'll show you a failure."

With an attitude like that, Rockne never would have made a Republican. A Reagan Democrat, yes. But a Republican? Hardly. Today-eleven years after the Gipper took the White House with a brand-new GOP majority in the Senate, seven years after his mandate was renewed and the established Beltway wisdom about the inevitability of one-term Presidencies was turned on its head, and scarcely three years after Vice President George Bush was swept into the Oval Office as the anointed heir of the Reagan Revolution-the Republican Party remains a good and gracious loser. Worse than that, at a time when Republican Party registration is on an upswing (as many people call themselves Republicans as Democrats these days), Republican numbers in both Houses of Congress have been shrinking: in the Senate, from 53 Republicans at the outset of the Reagan Administration to 43 today: in the House, from 192 in 1980 to 166 today.

Presiding over these disastrous losses are the best sports the Congress has ever had. These are the two Bobs: Bob Dole and Bob Michel, Senate and House Minority Leaders.

Fair enough: some of the blame rests with George Bush. But blaming Bush for the GOP's wimpiness in Congress is a chicken-or-egg proposition. While Dole and Michel would probably perform better (as they did under Reagan) with a President who was out in front on the issues, Bush himself would unquestionably be better were he served by House and Senate leaders who weren't so defeatist. Congressional leaders, after all, tell Presidents what can be done and what can't. "What comes out of George Bush's mouth is George Bush's," concedes an Administration official. "But if he were meeting weekly with CochranGingrich instead of Dole-Michel, you'd have the President's capital-gains-tax cut on the table instead of worker's compensation. No President is going to put his credibility on the line when the top two Republican leaders are telling him he can't win."

Establishment Men

LIKE BUSH, the two Bobs are charter members of the Republican establishment. Unlike Bush, however, they are also members of a more significant establishment -the congressional establishment. Hostile to the supply-side economics that gave Republicans their best decade ever and Dole a stint as Majority Leader, both men have more in common with the Congress President Bush is attacking than the one he would like. Bob Michel has labored for four decades in the Republican vineyard without ever having tasted the power of a committee chairmanship; if everyone in the House retired today he would draw the biggest pension. Over in the Senate, only four men have served longer than Dole, all but one of them Democrats. In every sense of the word, these are pre-Reagan, Nixon/ Ford Republicans who believe that getting along with the Democratic majority is more important than advancing the Republican standard. Just a few days ago Bob Dole said as much on the floor, when George Mitchell warned that unless the Senate got through a civil-rights bill, an environmental bill, an EPA-Cabinet-level bill, and the parental-leave bill, senators wouldn't go home on time. Far from taking issue with Mitchell's laundry list of liberal concerns, Dole said he hoped to "accommodate the Majority Leader" in moving all this legislation through expeditiously. Senator Thad Cochran (R., Miss.), incensed by what he was hearing, rose to remind the chamber that what Mitchell put forward was "not on the Republican agenda." Mr. Dole was silent.

In the case of the civil-rights bill, Dole made good on his promise to accommodate Mitchell. The package was hatched in one of those backroom deals in Dole's office with almost no other Republicans knowing what he was up to. The next day, staffer Sheila Burke kept Republicans from even looking at the bill until after the Democrats had had a chance to consider it at their morning conference. Republicans didn't get to discuss the compromise until the afternoon, by which time Teddy Kennedy had already put his spin on it (the bill would negate several Supreme Court decisions, Kennedy welcomed the President's change of heart, etc.). No wonder some call Dole the "Assistant Majority Leader" behind his back.

The tax summit was a Bob Dole classic. In fairness, Dole had not ever claimed the tax issue; indeed, Bush buried Dole in the New Hampshire primary by telling people Dole would raise their taxes and he wouldn't. After Bush reversed himself last year, Dole was asked how Republican candidates should deal with the change. "Tell them to get some lip balm," he quipped. Taking the pro-tax side in last year's budget summit was sweet vindication for Dole.

The other reason for Dole's enthusiasm was that, like Bob Michel in the House, Dole sees himself more as the President's emissary to Congress than as congressional Republicans' emissary to the White House. Dole's voting record (ACU: 83 per cent) is pretty solid. As he never tires of pointing out, he sides with the President on virtually every vote. The problem is, he may be with the President on big votes, but he's not with Republicans on the things that matter most: amendments.

In the Senate, amendments are the lifeblood of a minority. Precisely because the minority party is in no position to dictate terms, all it can hope to do is to put its opponents clearly on record on a host of issues so that when campaign time comes around, the other side is vulnerable. Under Senator Howard Baker in the late 1970s, the Republicans did just this, using amendments to force the Democrats to make clear their outrageous positions on everything from SALT II and school prayer to busing, welfare, and the Panama Canal. Republican challengers in 1980 were able to draw on these recorded votes, and the Republican majority that emerged was no coincidence. Prominent liberals such as Birch Bayh and Frank Church went down to defeat as challengers were able to run ads drawing on this Republican-created record.

Under Dole all this has changed. The point of a backroom deal is always to get unanimous consent-and so Republican senators offering amendments find their toughest opponent is not George Mitchell but Bob Dole. Remember the recent Helms anti-pornography amendment? Dole against. Or Don Nickles's attempt to make the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the Fair Labor Standards Act apply to Congress just before Chuck Grassley finally succeeded in getting a similar amendment applying the civil-rights bill to members)? Dole missing in action. A line-item-veto amendment? Haven't had one in years.

"If there's a gut, wedge issue, he'll water it down," says one Senate staffer. "If Mitchell savages Republicans, the response will be bland. So there's no attempt to establish a clear Republican identity that voters might respond to at election time."

Same Words, Different Tune

WHEN THERE'S the House's Bob. Same story, different style. Well, not so Cut to October 6, 1990, the day the government shut down because renegade House Republicans helped defeat the first tax package offered up by the summiteers (including the two Bobs). It was a Saturday, and most of the congressmen didn't want to be there. Suddenly, Majority Leader Richard Gephardt asked for authority to recess and reconvene with two hours' notice later that night. In response Vin Weber (R., Minn.) rose to ask whether this meant that the Democrats and the GOP negotiators were planning to come back with a budget at two or three in the morning, giving Republicans no time to study it. Marge Roukema (R., N.J.), a moderate, asked Michel what every Republican was thinking: "I want to ask our leader, are you confident that you can protect the interests of the minority here under this procedure?"

Michel huffed and puffed a bit about a leader's knowing enough not to get out too far in front of his troops, and added that he would not spring a package on people without enough time for them to read it. "I would honor everyone's feelings in that regard," he told them.

He was lying. In fact, the intention of the Democratic and Republican leadership was to bring back the first budget, rejiggered around the edges, in the hopes it would squeak through in the dead of night.

Michel's double-dealing on the tax issue was not unexpected. After all, Michel had been in on the negotiations from the start and had never really been a tax-cut enthusiast. So put out were House Republicans that, in the midst of all this, not only did they adopt a strong anti-tax resolution put forward by Representative Dick Armey (R., Tex.), but they also included language directing their leaders to transmit this and no other message to the White House. It was a stinging rebuke.

Unhappiness with Michel's behavior during the summit and the not-unrelated loss of nine House seats in last November's election made him vulnerable for the first time in the leadership elections shortly thereafter. Although Michel never said so, the impression was that the 1990 leadership vote would be the last hurrah for the old man. The feeling was that Michel was going to step aside because of redistricting rather than challenge Illinois neighbor Representative Ed Madigan (whom Michel had supported for Whip over Gingrich in early 1989).

But a funny thing happened. Michel later went to the White House and explained that if he were redistricted out because he had promised not to challenge Madigan, Bush would be faced with the possibility of Gingrich as Minority Leader. Hesto presto, Madigan became Bush's new Secretary of Agriculture. That way, Madigan had a job, Michel could keep his seat, and Gingrich would go nowhere. Now there is no talk of retreat. "He's going to die with his boots on," says one House staffer. And maybe remain Minority Leader thereafter.

Michel's one advantage over Dole is that whereas Dole is feared by his colleagues, Michel gets on with most of his. At party gatherings, Michel, one of the all-time great schmoozers, can typically be found standing near the piano, belting out "Old Man River" or "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" in an impressive baritone. "Everyone thinks of him as grandpa, and of his shortcomings as gramps asleep at the wheel," says one House member. "But that doesn't give him enough credit. He cultivates that image, because no one wants to beat up on grandpa. But he's much more calculating."

Indeed he is. Kindly, gentle Bob Michel is not so nice when faced with a dispute. In fact, he can get downright personal. At a recent leadership meeting over at the White House, Michel savaged Senator Bob Kasten (R., Wisc.), who had just introduced a pro-growth tax-cut package with a strong pro-family component. Instead of addressing the merits, Michel attributed Kasten's endorsement of a capital-gains-tax cut to personal motives, in this case a desire to please his "Fortune 500 contributors." Similarly, during the whole budget summit Michel bypassed debate on the deficit and castigated his opponents for their "parochial concerns."

Michel combines this tendency with a leadership style that plays people off against each other. Today he plays Newt Gingrich or Vin Weber off against Mickey Edwards (R., Okla.) or Jerry Lewis (R., Calif.). When Senator Trent Lott (R., Miss.), HUD Secretary Jack Kemp, and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney were all in the House, he did the same thing to them; one reason these people are no longer in the House. His success is partly due to never really allowing an issue to come to a head. "Leadership meetings in the House rarely end up with a Republican position," says a staffer. "So people end up talking about what Heather Foley [Speaker Tom Foley's wife] wants to do about some Capitol renovation."

Fading Hopes

AND SO the Republican Party lurches from election to election, the prospects of ever taking control of Congress fading with every day the two Bobs remain at the helm. Just two years ago, Republicans were fired up about taking advantage of the planned retirement of dozens of incumbent Democrats in 1992 and seizing the House. But under Michel's leadership-which has seen the Republicans lose seats in every contest save for 1984, when Reagan was reelected-all such talk has vanished.

Ditto for the Senate. Dole has an unblemished record of losing Republican seats in every election since he became leader. This year, in the wake of George Bush's stunning victory in the Gulf and with some prominent Democrats left out on a limb by their Vietnam-style antiwar fever, Republicans vowed to make the Democrats pay. A number of vulnerable Democratic senators-Terry Sanford (N.C.), Wyche Fowler (Ga.), Fritz Hollings S.C.)were targeted, and people were even saying the Republicans might end up on top in the Senate again. But now they are all afraid that what happened to Richard Thornburgh will happen to them. Today rumors have Dole stepping down (he has yet to announce he's running for re-election next year), but colleagues aren't buying. "This guy can't live without it," says one Republican senator. "Here's a guy with a pretty wife, and he's here till midnight every night."

Why do the Bobs get away with it? Largely because Republicans on the Hill are more comforted by the thought of remaining incumbents than inspired by the idea of winning control. In a party with an almost Confucian deference to hierarchy and grey hair, defeating either Michel or Dole for leadership would require a sustained, determined, and probably somewhat nasty campaign-and any member who tries to kill the king had best make sure he succeeds, or he'll soon find himself parking out in Bethesda and banished from any hope of a good committee assignment.

In the meantime, the party overlooks opportunity after opportunity. Before he was even in the leadership, Gingrich brought down Speaker Jim Wright (D., Tex.), but House Republicans under Michel have blown opportunities to press the Democrats on the savings-and-loan scandal, on spending, even on the check-bouncing. In the Senate, meanwhile, Dole has refused to press the quota issue, the war vote, the Clarence Thomas nomination, etc. Yet the two Bobs are still sitting pretty. People wonder when they'll step down; Republicans never speak of booting them out.

"Under these guys the Republican Party no longer behaves like an opposition party but like a minor partner in a coalition," says one Capitol Hill Republican. "People talk about a third party. Hell, I'd settle for two."