The big squeeze - Senate Leader Robert Dole's legislative influence

National Review, April 17, 1995 by Rich Lowry

WILLIAM ROTH, chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, is hardly a firebrand. With the notable exception, 15 years ago, of his co-sponsorship of the Kemp - Roth tax-rate- reduction bill, the five-term Delaware Republican rarely lifts his gaze above the status quo or the narrow interests of his constituents. But his committee, by reputation one of the least conservative in the Senate, so far has passed the Congressional Accountability Act, the unfunded-mandates bill, the Paperwork Reduction Act, a regulatory moratorium, and a comprehensive regulatory-reform bill. What's gotten into Roth? Majority Leader Bob Dole.

In the House, Republicans devoted to the Contract with America and deep spending cuts have been advancing with a pincer movement: the junior members push from below, the leadership from above. The result is a Republican conference that (at least until recently) moved with remarkable unanimity. In the Senate, junior members have been creating the same pressure for change as in the House. What has been lacking is the leadership from above.

That may be changing. ``The Balanced Budget Amendment changed the world over there,'' says one observer of the Senate. ``Dole and his people are now running scared. Dole realizes he needs to prove he can get it done.'' In the case of Dole's regulatory-reform bill, getting it done meant bypassing the Environment and Public Works Committee led by John Chafee and giving Roth a quiet push of encouragement. A piqued Chafee held an irrelevant hearing tilted toward opponents of reform, but Dole got his bill -- and campaign talking point -- from Roth, albeit somewhat weakened.

In the same vein, the majority leader recently sent letters to committee chairmen -- many of them the oldest and least aggressive members of the Republican conference -- outlining what legislation their committees must produce, with a rough schedule for doing it. This is the kind of discipline Republicans in the Senate have traditionally lacked and that Dole has been loath to impose.

Bob Dole may have a tough-guy reputation among the general public, but inside the Senate, fellow Republicans know him as a leader who hesitates to make tough decisions and who puts cordial relations with his friends (most of them the Senate's more moderate members) above politics or ideology. His leadership style shades toward the cryptic, with fellow Republicans often left just as much in the dark as Democrats about his intentions. Dole-led meetings rarely come to closure. His involvement in day-to-day Senate organizing has often been close to nil.

This style nearly sank Dole in the debate over health care. He relied heavily for political advice on his chief of staff, Sheila Burke, a former nurse with liberal sympathies, and most of that advice was disastrously wrong. Dole righted himself in time, and a team led by Senator Bob Packwood (R., Ore.) provided the organized opposition needed to beat the Clinton plan. But the health-care experience was the first warning sign.

THE next came soon after the Republicans took control of the Senate. Democrats happily stalled two weeks on an unfunded-mandates bill that almost all of them supported. They in effect filibustered the Balanced Budget Amendment for five weeks with nary a peep from a distracted Dole. When crunch time came on the BBA, Dole found his easygoing stewardship had gained him nothing with Democrats, who were unwilling to deal in good faith, or with his friend Mark Hatfield (R., Ore.), chairman of the Appropriations Committee, who was unwilling to grant any personal favors. The vaunted Dole ``leadership'' had failed -- starkly and with potentially dire political consequences.

Dole has begun to awake and hear the rumblings of revolt emanating from the junior wing of the conference. ``Impatient, frustrated, unhappy,'' is how one Senate aide describes the freshmen. Some are talking about dumping moderate committee chairmen after the 1996 elections. The public attack on Hatfield, the lone defector on the Balanced Budget Amendment, was just a symptom of broader dissatisfaction. Some freshmen have even suggested doing end-runs around certain committee chairmen by bringing conservative provisions directly to the floor through amendments, a step that would amount to a mini-revolt.

It's not just newcomers who are agitated. Georgia Senator Paul Coverdell recently sent a memo to Majority Whip Trent Lott and Idaho Senator Larry Craig -- for them to pass on to Dole -- warning that at the end of the hundred days, ``the Senate as well as the House will be judged on the Contract.'' Not a happy prospect. ``Most newspapers now run a daily chart showing action on Contract issues -- lots of check marks in the House, almost none in the Senate.'' What to do? ``Change the defeated/defeatist attitude . . . by pushing the envelope.'' Coverdell argues for picking up the pace on Contract items, and then -- assuming Republican unity -- blaming any defeats on the Democrats.

On the line-item veto, Dole embraced this strategy. At first it seemed Republicans were headed for an intra-party massacre. Senators Dan Coats (Ind.) and John McCain (Ariz.), longtime advocates of the line-item veto, had sponsored a version identical to the one that passed the House. But Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici (N.M.), who was worried about handing too much power to the President, jumped in with a weaker version eventually endorsed by West Virginia Democrat Robert Byrd (``like having the Mafia endorse your crime bill,'' says Coats). Dole seemed content to let both versions make it to the floor, dividing Republicans and muddling their message.