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Is Tiger Woods' dad a racist?
The reporter to whom he told his Scotland joke, which has enraged Golf World magazine, says he's no Fuzzy Zoeller.
By Susan Zakin
[06/17/99]

Inside the Starr chamber
Bob Woodward's new book shows the independent counsel as the pervert-run-amok we all knew he was.
By Jack Hitt
[06/17/99]

Magic's seductive hold
The murder of Mexican talk-show host Paco Stanley reveals the growing disjunction between illusion and reality in Mexico.
By Richard Rodriguez
[06/17/99]

Clinton's stealth China policy
The president would rather look like a bumbler than own up to a policy that ignores China's wrongdoing, from campaign finance to nuclear espionage.
By Christopher Hitchens
[06/17/99]

Life returns to Kosovo
A war-weary people emerge from the rubble with tales of neighbor helping neighbor, regardless of ethnicity.
By Laura Rozen
[06/16/99]

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It wasn't exactly a campaign speech. Dole did go through a lot of the motions of a presidential candidate -- sprinting through a list of vague policy statements and embracing such cutting-edge political principles as "returning our public schools to greatness." But on the day that Al Gore officially came out of his vice presidential cave to declare his candidacy and Texas Gov. George Bush was wrapping up a campaign swing through Iowa and New England, Dole remains a child perched at the top of a high dive -- someone who still has the option of climbing back down the way she came instead of taking the plunge.

Dole did make clear that she's not running for vice president. The question keeps coming up anyway -- in part because Bush is running so far ahead in the early polls and early fund-raising, and maybe in part because of a kind of sexist assumption that a woman should aim for the second slot.

If Dole runs, the creators of our political lexicon are going to need to revise their terminology. "Stump speech" won't apply to a woman whose most defining characteristic on the campaign trail is her now-trademarked and annoying "Dole stroll," the political equivalent of a stage dive, in which she clips on a wireless mike and ambles through the audience as she speaks. The tactic makes Dole's political events feel more like life-enhancement seminars than political rallies or fund-raisers.

Clad in a peach suit and pearls, Dole went Oprah on the Rotary Club Wednesday, weaving through banquet tables, reminiscing about the time she donned leather and chains and rode a Harley on "The Tonight Show," all in the name of love and putting Bob Dole in the White House. Dole's routine is actually more late night infomercial than daytime talk show. Perhaps Tony Robbins is a closer parallel than Oprah for Dole's choreographed efforts to step off the podium and feel our pain.

With her Southern drawl and saccharine-sweet delivery, Dole quickly ticked off a laundry list of her beliefs. She endorsed fast-track trade legislation, the admission of China into the World Trade Organization, allowing more visas for high-tech guest workers and increasing defense spending, and she vowed to do something about "those dern taxes."

The speech was peppered with examples of an annoying Dole rhetorical tic, injecting questions into declarative statements, which makes her sound schoolmarmish and patronizing. In supporting the elimination of the research and development tax, Dole mused, "Research is just absolutely critical, isn't it?" and "We want to do everything possible -- don't we? -- to encourage that economic growth."

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