c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Charles W. Colson, former special counsel to Richard Nixon, served a prison term for his role in the Watergate scandal. He now heads Prison Fellowship International, an evangelical Christian ministry to the imprisoned and their families. Contact Colson via e-mail at 71421,1551(at sign)compuserve.com.)

(RNS)-There’s a struggle under way for the soul of Bob Dole and it could not have come at a more inopportune time. It involves the dual roles Dole is currently playing as Senate majority leader and presidential candidate.

The flashpoint is gambling, and the senator’s final disposition in this matter will tell us a great deal about whether he can both run for president and run the public’s business in the Senate.

Here’s how the fight is shaping up:

On one side are corporate gambling interests, which, to put it mildly, have been rolling Sweet Sevens throughout the nation in the past five years, as states hungry for revenue scrambled to make casino gambling legal.

And while gamblers may believe that all it takes to get rich is a small investment and a lot of luck, Gambling Inc. knows better. Instead, it makes practical investments, including a nearly half-million-dollar contribution to the Dole campaign, according to a recent Washington Post report. In return, these keepers of the one-armed bandits hope to stifle any criticism of their trade, at least in official circles.

Enter Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.), a courageous congressman who, like many Americans, is alarmed at both the growth of gambling and what it is doing to the quality of our national life. Wolf has secured House approval of a bill to study gambling’s effects on Americans. But the measure languishes in the Senate.

So the question is obvious: Will Dole, who is on record favoring such a study, also bring the bill before the Senate for a vote, and thus open the way for a national gambling commission? Or will he instead placate his financial benefactors, who would like nothing more than for this bill to die a silent death? Only time will tell.

Clearly, as majority leader, Dole is obliged to allow this legislation to be fully considered by his Senate peers. But with his campaign running dangerously low on money, it will be tempting not to discourage financial supporters. I know how such decisions are made. I used to make them.

If Dole puts his political interests before the nation’s interests, he should be prepared to duck the avalanche of well-deserved criticism. Here is the senator who-rightly, in my opinion-attacked Hollywood for the part it has played in our moral decline. By not allowing the Senate to vote on this legislation, however, he would be saying that he believes gambling is, at worst, a morally neutral presence in society. Or perhaps he buys the gambling industry’s hype and actually believes the spread of legalized gambling has been good for America.

If the latter is true, he should read the recent Washington Post series on gambling and its human cost. The Post looked beyond the rhetoric that gambling is the cure for financially ailing communities desperate for revenue. Instead, readers are left with the clear impression that the only beneficiary will be Gambling, Inc.

The last time a national commission studied gambling and tried to curb its excesses was 1976. In that year, Americans legally bet $17 billion. In 1994, Americans legally bet $482 billion-28 times as much. Gambling was once limited to Nevada. Today, 26 states have casino gambling. And seven cents out of every dollar produced by the American economy was spent trying to prove that it’s possible to get something for nothing. The result of this misplaced hope can be devastating.

The nation is strewn with the depleted checkbooks of those who have succumbed to the gambling mania. The Post series, for example, told the story of Betty Yakey of Concordia Parish, La. Thanks to video poker, the”crack cocaine”of legalized gambling, she lost her life’s savings of $191,000.

Wolf’s commission, if allowed to form, would bring other such stories into public view. A gambling commission might also shed more light on the handmaiden of gambling: crime, often of the organized variety. Does anyone doubt that the gaming industry is terrified of the publicity such a commission might generate?

President Clinton has promised to veto a bill that would curb excessive litigation against businesses, and Republicans are, with good reason, pointing to the fact that one of the biggest contributors to Clinton’s re-election campaign is the Trial Lawyers Association.

If Dole caves in to the big gambling money, citizens might well conclude that he, too, cares more about his contributors than the interests of the American people. It will be one more bit of evidence that Washington-Republican and Democrat-has little desire to lift itself out of the muck of politics as as usual.

MJP END COLSON