It's a nice thought, but untrue.
One need look back no further than Dole's run for the WH. Consider the period; Clinton had troops deployed to more locations around the globe, over his 8 years than we had at any time during our history as a nation.

Now, granted, they were 'meals on wheels' deployments...... but can we assume that Mr. Dole was more of a hawk than Bill Clinton?

Actually you just reaffirmed the point Cavanaugh was making. Yes, more troops were deployed overseas during the Clinton years but these were all peacekeeping/nation building deployments - what you referred to as "meals on wheels" deployments (quite apropos btw).

The only "hot" deployment during the first term was Somalia - which started as a humanitarian deployment under Bush I but ended with the Mogadishu fiasco in October 1993 - three years before the general election. By the time Dole and Clinton faced off Americans were enjoying a robust economy and thoughts of war were far from the public's mind. Two events that could have changed things for Dole, Rwanda and Kosovo. Unfortunately for the Rwandan's the genocide there was widely ignored by the parochial American press while it was treated by State as a U.N. problem. The Clinton State Department managed to keep Kosovo off the table as an issue at the Dayton Accords in 1995, so when Dole and Clinton faced off there were no pressing hot deployments. That left Dole, by far the bigger hawk, arguing domestic policy - Clinton's strength.

Of course all this was pre-9/11. Now, despite the efforts of a cheerleading media that's done everything but announce for Kerry, the bulk of Americans recognize that we're at war. Between Kerry and Bush the obvious choice for most hawks will be Bush - even those that don't care for his domestic policy will hold their nose and vote for Bush over Kerry.