Dole Eager to Downplay GOP’s Performance in Congress : Politics: On the campaign trail, minority leader avoids reminding voters of the Republicans’ anti-Clinton strategy that helped perpetuate gridlock.

ROSWELL, Ga. — Autumn has been grand for the Grand Old Party. Congressional Republicans have largely derailed President Clinton’s legislative program and set the stage for sweeping election victories that could give the GOP more power than it has had in years.

But when the man who can most claim credit for the Republicans’ successful stop-Clinton strategy strides to the campaign dais these days, his topic is likely to be crime-fighting, tax-cutting, foreign affairs--usually anything but gridlock.

“We’re looking forward,” Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) recently told a rain-spattered crowd here in the home district of House Minority Whip Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). The next congressional session “is going to move America in the right direction.”

It is no accident that Dole has chosen to downplay the Republicans’ performance during the last congressional term. The masterful strategy that yielded such rich dividends in Congress--derailing bills ranging from health care to campaign finance--carries formidable risks for the GOP as the party heads toward 1996.

Although the strategy seems to promise a bonanza for Republicans at the ballot box on Nov. 8, some analysts say they believe that it could complicate the party’s broader ambition to retake the White House. In the face of tricky challenges from independents as well as Democrats, the Republicans may have a hard time distancing themselves from the Washington Establishment they have worked so hard to discredit.

Even if the Republicans win the seven seats they need to regain control of the Senate, the job of separating themselves from an unpopular Congress--while trying to advance some kind of positive program--is likely to be even tougher.

And for Dole, the approach that proved so lethal in August and September could reinforce his image as a strident naysayer--and a consummate Washington insider--just as the jostling field of Republican presidential candidates begins to position itself for the job he has so long coveted.

Both the rewards and risks of his strategy were evident as Dole crisscrossed the autumn-tinted Eastern Seaboard last week as part of a campaign swing that has taken him to more than 30 states since Labor Day.

The Republican faithful cheered heartily in Georgia, New York, Connecticut and Pennsylvania as Dole forecast the party’s success in the midterm elections and joked about his special status with the Clinton Administration.

“They’ve blamed me for everything but that airplane that crashed into the White House,” Dole joked in his familiar growl at stop after stop. He got in gentle jabs at the competition, wryly observing that former independent presidential candidate Ross Perot “thinks a lot,” pointedly remarking that potential GOP presidential rival Dick Cheney’s proposal for preemptive attacks on Iraq makes no sense--”unless you’re running for something.”

But lurking ever near were questions about why Congress, Dole’s platform and preserve for 34 years, seemed to be in such a pathetic state. The question even came from the gray-suited participant at an American Bankers Assn. convention in New York.

Voters want congressional term limits, a drawling Southern banker told Dole, because “we want some leaders who will take a chance” and won’t take positions on issues “just so the other party loses.”

Later the same day when Dole appeared on CNN’s “Larry King Live” to talk about Clinton’s recent moves in the Persian Gulf, a caller from Buffalo, N.Y., complained: “It seems you’re not willing to agree or work with the President at all.”

Said another, from Tulsa, Okla.: “Why can’t you phrase your dialogue more constructively?”

“Some people have short memories,” Dole countered, insisting that “we’ve been a big help to President Clinton.”

And that has been Dole’s approach. The man who last year said that “a little gridlock may be good from time to time” now parries any suggestion that he deserves blame--or credit--for its fruits.

Yet there is no question that Republican strategy has been more of a winner in the short term than many political professionals had expected--and also more of a high point in the soar-and-plummet career of this highly durable 71-year-old politician.

Said Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican and a close Dole ally: “He’s probably in a stronger position within the party than he’s ever been.”

Dole came to prominence as Republican National Committee chairman in 1971, but was ousted two years later. He was honored with a vice presidential nomination in 1976, only to be blamed when the Gerald R. Ford ticket went down to defeat.

He survived failed presidential bids in 1980 and 1988, won the Senate majority leader’s position in 1981 and lost it when Republicans lost the Senate in 1986.

With George Bush’s defeat in 1992, Dole became the GOP’s titular head, even though much of the party’s surging right wing considered him too centrist, too pragmatic and simply too respected by the Washington Establishment.

The Clinton years have followed the same trajectory as the rest of his career, beginning in deep gloom that gave way to promise. “Two years ago, the Democrats had control of the agenda, were eating at the (Ronald) Reagan political base and were about to make hay on health care and welfare reform,” said Stuart Rothenberg, publisher of the Rothenberg Political Report. With Clinton’s help, “the Republicans turned it all around.”

Dole is personally credited with stopping the Administration’s $16-billion economic stimulus package in April, 1993, and guiding the overall Republican strategy in the health care debate.

In one example of his skill, he held his fire on the Clinton health care proposals for three months--until January, 1994--so the Republican leadership would not be accused of premature judgment. When public opinion--prodded along by other critics--had begun to turn against the Clinton plan, Dole was ready to speak out.

Witnessing Dole’s lawmaking skill was “like watching the best pitcher in the National League,” said Lawrence O’Donnell, chief of staff for the Senate Finance Committee, chaired by Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.). “It was Dole in control.”

The control came in large measure because Republicans used the filibuster 78 times, in more and different ways than ever. And that fact led to Congress’ acrimonious meltdown last month, as the session’s close smothered legislation on the environment, campaign finance, lobbying and telecommunications and nearly extinguished a high-priced education bill that had been expected to pass easily.

At the session’s end, Clinton urged voters to punish the Republicans for holding up solutions to the nation’s problems.

But the common political judgment was that, in the short term, there would be little penalty for gridlock. That became especially clear when one Democrat, Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, began boasting in a campaign ad on television last month that “a majority of the time, I voted with the Republican leader, Bob Dole.”

In the course of the past congressional session, Dole has gained powerful advantages in his quest for the presidency. Although his age is a liability, his senior rank has given him huge fund-raising and organizational advantages and a leading claim on a party “that is highly hierarchical and tends to give the nomination to the next in line,” one GOP strategist said.

But his prominence also has caused him problems with the broader electorate. A CBS-New York Times poll, taken last month after the failure of the health care bill, showed that Dole’s negative rating had bounced to 27%, from 20% a month earlier, while his approval rating was barely changed at 24%.

The unfortunate fact for Dole is that his role in saying no to some of Clinton’s legislation tends to confirm a general impression that he is a negative personality, said Ross K. Baker, a congressional scholar at Rutgers University. “It just dovetails all too neatly with this impression of Dole as this dark, sardonic presence,” he said.

And while Dole’s opposition role has turned off some parts of the broader electorate, it has not convinced all conservatives that he is their man. Many remember Dole’s earlier declarations that he wanted to find common ground with Clinton; they suspect Dole was forced to take a harder line by the right wing of the party, including another potential presidential rival, Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.).

“It isn’t the Bob Dole critique of Bill Clinton, but the Phil Gramm critique, that prevailed” in the party, said James Pinkerton, a White House aide in the Reagan and Bush administrations.

These countervailing pressures from the right and center grow inevitably from Dole’s role as minority leader: The job compels him to take strong positions for the growing conservative wing of GOP Senate ranks while not alienating the dwindling number of moderates.

Many observers say they believe that those pressures will be even sharper if the Republicans gain control of the Senate. The job would not only impose huge demands on his time, but also oblige him to try to pass some kind of affirmative program. It also would increase Republican vulnerability to the anti-incumbent vote in 1996.

Some political professionals say they think that the Republican Party will be in much the same touchy spot as Dole in 1996. The unappealing spectacle of this year’s gridlock might not be long remembered--until voters start asking why there has been little or no progress on the problems they care about.

The independents--who according to polls pose a particular risk of draining off Republican votes--are likely to aim their fire at Republicans, according to conservative analyst Kevin Phillips. Perot, who ran as a independent presidential candidate in 1992, has been calling for voters to throw the Democrats out in 1994--and dump the Republicans in 1996 if they have not performed.

If the Republicans win the Senate, or even the House, “they’ll be on the spot, big time” to act, Phillips said. “It could be that people are so unhappy with both of them that by early 1996 they are lighting prayer candles for (former Joint Chiefs Chairman) Colin Powell and Ross Perot,” he said.

But Dole, who has said he will decide whether to run for President between the midterm election and January, sounded nonplussed by the prospect that he will inherit his second favorite job: majority leader of the Senate.

“I’ll take that chance,” he said.