BOB DOLE celebrated, if that's the right word, his 73rd birthday last Monday amid muted talk that he is the oldest candidate of either party ever to seek the US presidency. In a youth driven culture that's not a recommendation.
He spent the day in his native Russell, Kansas, a small town in the prairie between two rivers a country of livestock and wheat, of scattered small towns with small populations. He grew up in the dust bowl 1930s.
He was starring in a film documentary about his roots and why he will be the anointed candidate of the Republican Party after next month's national convention in San Diego, California.
Dole chatted with one of the few black families in the town the New York Times reported. As one might expect, the family votes Democratic and did not volunteer their services to a native son. His staff invited them to meet the candidate. The press was excluded.
It was one of Mr Dole's better days in what has not been a good month for the Republican presidential candidate. What with the humid weather and the Olympic Games in Atlanta, Americans are glued to their TVs. They don't want to think about politics until after September 2nd, Labour Day.
There is muttering among Republicans that Dole, up against a whizzkid like Bill Clinton, is out of it. Why not recognise the fact and choose someone else? Of course, the San Diego convention can do whatever it wishes, including replacing a candidate with some behind the scenes organising. But that won't happen. Dole has the delegates pledged to him and they'll vote for him regardless.
Is it that bad? Yes. Dole at this time is in the doldrums, more so than Michael Dukakis was after he lost his 15 point lead to George Bush in 1988.
Russell, Kansas, is an oasis in a region once considered part of the Great American Desert. Dole returned home from the second World War and a long stay in hospitals with a shattered arm. He served in the State Assembly for one term. Since 1961 he has been here, an insider in Washington in the House till 1969, and the Senate which he controlled twice as Majority Leader.
He is an experienced politician with personality flaws that tend to alienate voters. His asides were responsible in part for Gerry Ford's dismal showing in 1976 against Jimmy Carter. (Ford's pardon of Nixon helped also to pull him down.)
There is no new Bob Dole. The old Bob Dole, who argues against the evidence that tobacco is not addictive has been helping tobacco and wheat farmers for years. In return they fill his campaign chest with dollars.
A major difference between Clinton and Dole is that the virtues of the Democrat come across on television, while the vices of the Republican are highlighted. The President is in the prime of life smart, well informed and a voracious reader who forgets nothing, talks on his feet without missing a beat and is well groomed. Dole is a mumbler and a bumbler on television he forgets what he wanted to say and closes with a quip that offends friends.
He has embraced issues such as cutting off welfare aid to children without live in fathers which present him as heartless, although he is not. He has offended women Republicans by his artless attempts to embrace the Christian Coalition, Southern evangelical Protestants who have taken the vocal lead on the abortion issue from the Catholic bishops.
The presidential election is three months and one week away. The news agenda, foreign and domestic, drives politics here. The TWA Flight 800 crash remains a mystery if there is the hint of a bomb aboard, the election campaign will reflect it.
An administration scandal could change the present scenario. Mr Clinton has been extraordinarily lucky despite Whitewater and the rest. His luck could change.
Shifting voting blocs change politics without a Ross Perot candidacy, George Bush would have been re-elected in 1992. Bush had won a war against an international villain. He lost the election in whole or in part because of an important bloc of voters, the Reagan Democrats, who began to desert the party after 1964 because of civil rights, welfare and other such policies. In 1968 some of them began flirting with George Wallace.
Four years later, many Reagan Democrats voted for Nixon against George McGovern. Their votes helped put Carter in the White House. In 1980 they abandoned the Democrats for Ronald Reagan. This was his labour trade union vote it re-elected him in 1984.
What it did in 1988 it is hard to say, but it probably split or abstained. Much of that vote which is Irish American, Polish, part Italian but above all Catholic working class went to Clinton in 1992. He is very much aware of the fact.
Whatever other reasons Mr Clinton had for putting his weight behind the peace process in Northern Ireland, the role of the Reagan Democrats was a consideration.