WASHINGTON -- In the teasing style of 2000 presidential wannabes, Elizabeth Hanford Dole is inching toward a White House run by dipping a dainty toe in the water. She's formed the ritual "exploratory committee."

Translation: Send money. She'll run if she can come up with the $20 million entrance fee.

She'll get it. Mrs. Dole wasn't wasting time on those campaigns with husband Bob Dole. She has connections in every big state and deep in the Republican business network. Plus the bevies of women who exhort, "Run, Liz, run."

Truth is, Mrs. Dole, 62, has been training and polishing her image for this White House marathon most of her life. Barbed wire wouldn't keep her from the starting line.

Will she be a serious contender -- or a footnote as history's first viable female candidate for the top job? Is she merely angling to play George W. Bush's running mate?

First, a disclaimer. I'm not coldly neutral toward Mrs. Dole. We share North Carolina roots. I know her hometown, Salisbury, and the street on which she grew up. I'm not invulnerable to ladies who can pronounce "grits" in two magnolia syllables. But every argument about Mrs. Dole's future focuses on one question: Is the country, despite our post-modern pretensions, ready for a woman president?

The gender gap

Polls aren't reassuring. A new Gallup survey says, all else equal, voters would prefer a man 42 percent to 31 percent. Those who figure a woman would make a better president cite "common sense, compassion, and need for a change" -- a needle at the male incumbent's testosterone.

Evidence of other women on the national stage is shaky. Geraldine Ferraro's 1984 vice-presidential fling with Walter Mondale was a semidisaster. Patricia Schroeder quit in tears at the '92 starting gate. Sure, we have New Jersey's Gov. Christine Whitman and a slew of female governors, senators and congresswomen.

But a vote for a female president might raise a higher psychological barrier if people ponder they're choosing a commander-in-chief. My guess: Being female cuts both ways for Mrs. Dole. It will help her raise money, energize followers, but test her in ways novel to male contenders.

That's the riddle about Mrs. Dole: Is charm enough? Lord knows, her personality could melt titanium. As her Oprah-style act at the '96 San Diego convention proved, she has a bubbly spontaneity in crowds that makes the rest of the GOP presidential field look like frozen peas. The woman was born to campaign.

Stress test

What we won't know for a year is how Mrs. Dole responds in the heat of a rancorous mob debate. How will she handle a screaming horde of reporters? She chatters cozily about education and kids, but can she cope when grilled about a Chinese warhead crisis, abortion, taxes, Kosovo? Bluntly, is Mrs. Dole tough enough?

If times turn harsh, if there's recession or foreign threats, Mrs. Dole's chances may look slimmer. She'll have to prove she's as steely as the guys, or a Margaret Thatcher. Granted, Mrs. Dole's more qualified by experience than any 2000 Republican. But she's never run for office. So what? She's a former secretary of labor and secretary of transportation, past president of the American Red Cross and she has worked for five presidents.

Of course, she drew mixed reviews in the last job: She hiked Red Cross funding and reformed the blood supply, but was criticized for making paid speeches to shine her political image.

We got a sample of Mrs. Dole the Candidate in her TV ad for Iowa-New Hampshire audiences. She turned her 10,000-watt persona on the camera: "What does a woman like me offer the country? I'm not a politician and, frankly, today I think that may be a plus."

OK, a common hypocrisy -- a woman who's spent her life in a political town running against Washington. Mrs. Dole positions herself as a healer, a unifier who'll stifle the bickering. "If I run, this will be why: I believe our people are looking for leaders who'll call America to her better nature," she said, echoing Abraham Lincoln. "Yes, we've been let down -- and by people we should have been able to look up to." Pretty shrewd, a neat left hook at President Clinton while wearing that smile.

Polls are fluff at this stage, but Mrs. Dole runs about 2-1 behind Texas Gov. George W. Bush in matchups. Republicans swoon at a Bush-Dole ticket -- name-identity bonanza. Her pollster Linda Divall insists, "We're not thinking at all of No. 2."

I say, run, Liddy, run. Maybe she's our post-Monica president: A Southerner with charm, savvy and smarts who won't go berserk at the snap of a thong.

Sandy Grady is Washington columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News.

Pub Date: 3/14/99