Tamala Edwards

HEADLINE: ROAD SHOW; MORE FUN THAN THE REAL CAMPAIGN. SHORTER TOO

On its face, a campaign diary about the 1996 presidential race sounds like something that should be marketed as a sleeping aid. But away from the staged events and stale analysis lay a hurly-burly American Oz of pig farmers, profane tiremakers and pundits with pitchforks. Covering the campaign for the New Republic, journalist Michael Lewis was smart enough to leave the pack and take that yellow brick road, turning in dispatches that were fresh, hilarious must-reads. The same is true for Trail Fever: Spin Doctors, Rented Strangers, Thumb Wrestlers, Toe Suckers, Grizzly Bears, and Other Creatures on the Road to the White House (Knopf; 299 pages; $ 25), a compilation of those reports.

A first-timer on the campaign trail, Lewis had two prescient impulses. The first was to chuck the tags of the marked-for-isolation press. Using his anonymity, he eavesdrops on Al D'Amato in the bathroom (guess who doesn't wash his hands) and rummages through Bill Clinton's trash. "What are you doing in here?" demands a Clintonite catching him pawing the garbage. "I'm supposed to meet George [Stephanopoulos] here for a drink," lies Lewis, successfully. The second trick was to stick with the losers. Lewis does due diligence by Clinton and Bob Dole, but spends most of his time listening to Morry Taylor's curses, Pat Buchanan's poetry and Alan Keyes' messianic rantings. The result is like a pointillist painting: up close, these events are a sea of bright dots; step back, and they are a captivation of the splendor, spirit and stupidity of our quadrennial madness.

Trail Fever is not without flaws. His magazine editor pared Lewis' endless Morry Taylor stories; his book editor should have too. At times Lewis also talkstoo much about himself, preening when he should be prying. Still, Trail Fever isa winner, proving, as the author writes, that "if you look long and hard enough at ugliness, you often find real beauty in it."

HEADLINE: IN SEARCH OF THE REAL BOB DOLE

BYLINE: TAMALA EDWARDS

One day last February, shortly after joining the Dole campaign, I managed to position myself up close to the Senator so that I could get a sense of what he was like as he worked the ropes during a campaign rally. I was carrying a copy of Bob Dole, the biography by Richard Ben Cramer. The candidate abruptly turned and reached out to sign it, assuming that I was just part of the crowd.

Then he looked up, recognized me as a member of his press corps and broke into a grin. "Arrrggghhh! Brought your homework," he joshed, addressing me for the first time. I was aware of the Dole stereotype: brilliant mind, bitter man. But here he seemed charming; he had a sparkle in his hazel eyes, a winning way with his deadpan wit. I had respected him, in some ways admired him, but with the sweetness and humor that emerged from that moment, I liked him.

During the early primaries, when the race was not going well for Dole, the photographers on the campaign plane would play a little game, scrawling a silly message on an orange and rolling it up the aisle toward his seat. One message read: CALIFORNIA OR BUST! Dole would watch the orange but never roll it back, leaving it to an aide to pick it up and read him the message. But the morning after his critical win in the South Carolina primary, Dole leaned over and grabbed the orange. "We're on a roll!" he yelled, and rolled it back to us--once again engaged.

It was a rare glimpse of the jocular Dole, one so often recalled by those whohave known him over the years but one who has been mostly absent in this year's losing campaign. Had the race gone differently, those of us who covered him might have seen more of that Bob Dole. But for the most part, his performances have been painful to watch--the constant references to himself in the third person, the ubiquitous "whatever" that punctuates incomplete thoughts, the rambling speeches and the non-non sequiturs. The man renowned for his quick wit and quiet thoughtfulness mostly seemed out of step, unable to make the crucial connections and pivots.

On a brisk morning in May, he paid a visit to a school on the poor, mostly black, southwest side of Chicago, where he expected to hear teachers and social workers talk about domestic abuse. "Why has domestic violence increased?" asked a reporter after the event. Searching for a link to a theme in his campaign, Dole replied, "I think a lot of it has been the failure of the welfare system."

The message he conveyed was that poor people are batterers. A social worker in the room rebuked him. As Dole was struggling to extricate himself, his aides hustled him away. But aware of how it would look if he ended this rare ghetto visit without pressing the flesh, Dole hopped out of the car and strode across the street into a local rib joint. The customers, most of them unemployed black men, answered his congenial banter with hard-eyed stares. Not five minutes later, his face fixed in a pained smile, Dole retreated to his motorcade. As he crossed what must have seemed like miles of inner-city street, he saw one smiling dark face--mine, as it turned out--and he threw an arm around my shoulder. "How ya doing?" he enthused. "Fine." I replied. "How are you doing, Senator?" Finally he recognized me again, and his eyes opened wide in the awful realization of a failed rescue attempt.

In the early days of his campaign, Dole would sit with reporters to talk, joke and answer questions. But after a series of controversial comments on abortion and tobacco, his visits grew more infrequent. First there were no more sit-downs, just a few minutes' standing in the doorway of the plane's press cabin. Then there were even fewer minutes, then none at all. His last press conference with us was in March.

By the fall, Nelson Warfield, Dole's 6-ft. 5-in. press secretary, was spending a good deal of his time throwing his heft in front of the television cameras, moving reporters back from Dole, who could be seen at times bobbing andweaving behind Warfield, trying to see clear to answer our questions. We were left with the troubling image of a candidate who was not trusted by his own staff to speak his mind.

Our wait for the real Bob Dole to reveal himself paralleled a tragicomic, rolling reassessment of when the real Dole campaign would begin. It would not beuntil after the primaries, we were told ... until after the tax plan, until after the Veep pick, until after the convention ... after Labor Day, after the debates. By the time we got to Wichita, Kansas, where only 1,000 people in his home state turned out two weeks before Election Day, it was clear that the Dole campaign was really over.

In the last few weeks, a gallows humor and growing sadness suffused the campaign plane. Reporters sat like attendees at a wake, most of them feeling genuinely sorry for Dole. His staff members grew hollow-eyed and resigned, speaking of postelection plans that had nothing to do with the White House. And hurtling toward defeat, Bob Dole, the most optimistic man in America, spent most of his time sitting alone, staring out the plane window.

HEADLINE: Dole's Vision, Ideas 'Amorphous,' Analyst Believes

GUESTS: TAMALA EDWARDS, "Time"

BYLINE: FRANK SESNO

HIGHLIGHT: One analyst says the voters aren't seeing and hearing much from the GOP presidential candidates. Tamala Edwards believes Bob Dole isn't going after more votes, while the competition is holding him to a vision.

FRANK SESNO, Anchor: [referring to previous news story in which random New Hampshire citizens failed to recognize the GOP candidates when shown photos of them]

Well, maybe Granite State voters will do a little bit better today after last night's 90-minute debate. We'll see.

Our next guest has no trouble identifying the candidates, however. Time magazine's Tamala Edwards has been on the campaign trail for weeks now, following Gramm, now the Dole campaigns.

[interviewing] Footprints, hard to find in New Hampshire?

TAMALA EDWARDS, 'Time': It's nine BB balls bouncing around in a barrel. The voters are, like, 'Who are these people?' I think for someone like Bob Dole that piece is a little scary. He's the frontrunner. Why don't people know who he is? Why don't they know what his message is?

FRANK SESNO: Talk about Bob Dole and what you're seeing him encounter on the stump.

TAMALA EDWARDS: Not much. I mean, he shows up to talk to these people. He gives them somewhere between eight to 15 minutes of a speech. He doesn't mix itup. He doesn't get out and shake hands and say, 'Let me answer your questions. Let me tell you who I am.' He shows up, he gives a patented speech about character and vision and your family and God and all these amorphous things that don't connect, compared to people like Steve Forbes, who is 'Everybody's got to pay taxes.'

FRANK SESNO: And how do the audiences respond to Bob Dole?

TAMALA EDWARDS: They're impressed with him. They respect him. Are they connected to him, though? I don't think so.

FRANK SESNO: Enthusiastic?

TAMALA EDWARDS: The way everybody is about their grandpa who served in the war.

FRANK SESNO: So, sort of respectful-

TAMALA EDWARDS: Right.

FRANK SESNO: -but not turned on?

TAMALA EDWARDS: No.

FRANK SESNO: Who have you been out with, or who have you seen, or who have you talked to in terms of voters who is being ignited by anybody?

TAMALA EDWARDS: I think some people are still watching Forbes. Some people, Buchanan. I mean, he reaches out to that heart issue of morality. But a lot ofvoters, I think, now that Forbes is somewhat falling by the wayside, are, like, 'Who am I going to turn to? Will it be Alexander? Will it be Buchanan?' Gramm is now out of the race. But I don't know if Dole is picking up anyone. I don't know if he's trying to pick up anyone. He's doing three appearances a day. He's not going to eight places and jumping out there and shaking hands. He's just trying to hold.

FRANK SESNO: You've talked to his campaign strategists as you've traveled around. What is their game plan here?

TAMALA EDWARDS: To keep him on message, to talk about America, the Reaganite vision of we can go back to this - values and character where we all loved our family, our state, our nation, our community, our God. The problem is Reagan was a great actor. When he said that, we all got warm inside. Poor Bob Dole says that and you want to believe him but it doesn't connect in your soul.

FRANK SESNO: Any surprises you're out looking for in a couple of days?

TAMALA EDWARDS: A better showing by Alexander. And I wouldn't be surprised. Or maybe an outright win by Buchanan.

FRANK SESNO: All right, we'll see. Thanks very much Tamala Edwards. Appreciate it.

TAMALA EDWARDS: Thank you.