JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, THE TV TALK SHOW HOST, cornered Colin Powell at a wedding reception in Washington in February and asked the obvious question: Can you envision a Bob Dole-Colin Powell ticket this fall? “I answered that last November,” Powell said, referring to his statement that he wouldn’t run for the Republican presidential nomination and didn’t have any interest in the vice presidency either. But that was more than three months ago, McLaughlin protested. “It’s worked so far, hasn’t it?” Powell shot back. Then he smiled and slipped away. Oh, yes, Powell also told McLaughlin that he speaks to Dole quite a bit.
Powell’s answer — not a flat no is bound to encourage the surprising number of Dole advisers who want the all but certain GOP nominee to tap Powell as his running mate. Vin Weber, a Dole campaign co-chair, favors a run at Powell. He thinks the retired general will sign on if Dole has a solid chance of winning and if Dole “puts it to him pretty hard” that his country needs him. Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah, an influential colleague of Dole’s, says a Dole-Powell ticket “is certainly something that could happen.” According to Bennett, Dole has suggested, in another context, a way to deal with conservatives who oppose Powell. Dole told him of a meeting with women who belong to Republicans for Choice, followed by a session with supporters eager for him to toughen his anti-abortion stance. “Do you want me to stand up and say I don’t want any of those [pro-choice] women to vote for me?” The pro-lifers said they didn’t. “You handle the vice presidency the same way, ” insists Bennett.
Maybe, but Dole hasn’t said so explicitly. In fact, no one has talked to him about the vice presidency. Dole’s campaign manager, Scott Reed, says he has a half-dozen things on his agenda over the next month, and deciding on a running mate isn’t one of them. All Dole has said publicly is that he’d consider Powell and won’t choose anyone with “inherited wealth,” meaning Steve Forbes. But Powellmania is growing among Dole strategists who are impressed by Powell’s awesome poll numbers. In the Wall Street Journal/NBC poll conducted in early March, Powell led President Clinton by 9 points, while Dole trailed Clinton by 19. Better still, Powell jacks up Dole. In another poll, a Dole-Powell ticket beats Clinton and A1 Gore by 47 percent to 45 percent.
Matchup polls are hardly conclusive, but no potential running mate has ever added as much to the ticket in matchups as Powell. There’s a reason for this, argues William J. Bennett, the former drug czar who urged Powell to run for president. “He’s the most respected guy in the country,” Bennett says. With him as Dole’s veep, “it changes the identity, the complexion, the feel, the meaning of the Dole campaign. It’s really a new day. It puts the Democrats on the defensive.” But it also puts Dole on the defensive with conservatives. Powell turned many of them off last October when he unveiled his political leanings: pro-choice, pro-gun control, pro-affirmative action, critical of welfare reform and the Contract with America. He’s softened those views a bit since then — he’s against taxpayer-funded abortions — but he hasn’t changed them. That means choosing him would be extraordinarily risky. Picking a Midwestern governor like John Engler of Michigan would involve less risk.
Ralph Reed, the boss of the Christian Coalition, says three things could happen if Dole picks Powell, all bad. The best is that the nomination would be merely “problematic.” Worse, it might prompt Patrick Buchanan to bolt from the Republican party and run against Dole as an independent. A Dole-Powell ticket, Buchanan said on March 3, “will split the party asunder and many of my people will walk out no matter what I do.” Worst of all, according to Reed, the entire social conservative wing of the Republican party might abandon Dole. “Even if we escaped a blowup at the convention, the stress on the Republican coalition would be horrendous,” warns Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council. And Carroll Campbell, the former South Carolina governor and Dole campaign co-chair, says Powell “could raise red flags among some people, and there’re going to be a lot of them.”
Reed doesn’t believe Powell will be asked or would accept if he were. (Reed says he’s talked to Powell confidants.) “The most important thing in choosing a vice president is to select someone who will unite the party around the themes of the 1994 landslide,” Reed adds. The veep should be an economic conservative who wants a balanced budget and a tax cut, a backer of term limits, and a pro4ifer, Reed says. That’s not quite a description of Powell. Reed, by the way, has influence with the Dole camp.
There is a scenario, however, for Dole to mollify conservatives should he name Powell. He could pledge to stick with strong anti-abortion language in the 1996 GOP platform, including the promise to name pro4ife judges, then have Powell say he’d abide by the platform. This wouldn’t be unprecedented. George Bush transformed himself from pro-choice to pro-life the instant he became Ronald Reagan’s running mate in 1980. But some senior Dole advisers fear this wouldn’t work. Ideology is what matters with a running mate, says a key campaign official, and Powell fails the test. “Everybody’s interested in Powell, but it’s a pretty big mountain to climb,” the official says. After mishandling relations with Buchanan, Dole has little flexibility on a veep. ” That makes the bank shot with Powell that much more tricky,” another Dole adviser says.
Choosing Engler wouldn’t be tricky at all. He’s conservative, he’s pro-life, and he comes from an important industrial-belt state that Dole might lose without Engler on the ticket. And Engler is Catholic, which could be a factor in a close election. Republicans lost the Catholic vote in 1992 and 1988 after winning it in 1984 and 1980. Several other Republican governors have some of these attributes. Dole likes George Voinovich of Ohio personally, but he’s not as conservative as Engler. Tommy Thompson comes from a smaller state, Wisconsin. So Engler makes more sense. Besides, “John is widely acceptable across the spectrum,” says Michigan senator Spencer Abraham. “Engler would be satisfactory,” says Bauer. He’s “a very viable possibility,” echoes Reed.
Dole aides have also discussed a California ploy. Dole is ready to run all- out in California (Bush gave up there early in the 1992 campaign) to deny Clinton the state he must win for reelection. The problem is there’s no obvious California running mate since Governor Pete Wilson is unpopular and Attorney General Dan Lungren, a conservative and a Catholic, is not a national figure.
Chances are, Dole’s decision on a vice president will hinge on how much he trails Clinton this summer. If he’s still 10 to 15 points behind, he’ll be more inclined to make a pitch for Powell, despite the risk of alienating conservatives. If the gap has narrowed, Dole is likely to play it safe and go with Engler or an Engler clone. Of course, no one knows for sure how Dole will size up the situation. For now, he’s not talking.
by Fred Barnes
