Latest / BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback / Episode 451 BOB DOLE The Life That Brought Him There ( Part 32) Senate Republican Leader (C) Policy Passed and Changes in the Senate

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Episode 451 BOB DOLE The Life That Brought Him There ( Part 32) Senate Republican Leader (C) Policy Passed and Changes in the Senate · BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

• 0:25
  SPEAKER_03: Senator Dole was clearly a conservative and a definite hawk, and yet he really fought for people with disabilities.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_03: He fought for better domestic and international nutrition.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_03: He consistently voted for civil rights.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_03: He promoted women, very aggressively named the first secretary, uh first female secretary of the Senate, the first female uh majority leader's chief of staff.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um do you see those as contradictory?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_03: Was it just all of who he was?
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was all of who he was.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he grew up, you know, he talked about this to me many times in this interview.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: So he grew up in a in a family where both his parents worked, not because you know they were a two-income family, because they had to be.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um his mother was a very strong person, um somebody who worked day and night and ran her family.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh his father worked incredibly long hours, always kept a very neat appearance as Senator Dole always did when he was senator, and I'm sure he would if he walked in now.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I think he was he was always comfortable and liked strong women.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't, it was just second nature to him.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: If he you know, the two people he promoted were Joanne Coe, uh to the uh Secretary of the Senate, who um I don't remember who coined the phrase, but um she was called uh Bobdle's uh Bradley fighting vehicle.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um she was not really tall and she was really stocky and she had a deep voice.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and if she told you you were not gonna do something in no uncertain terms, you were concerned about trying to do that.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I went to a uh one time I went to a campaign, she was also a director of Campaign America and uh his is uh pack and I somebody told me they were having a fundraiser one time, so I I knew this wasn't gonna work out.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: But I went over to I think it was at the Willard, and I walked in the hallway, and Joanne was sitting at the table out front.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um and she I didn't think I'd asked because I remember what she said.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I said, hi Joanne.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, I told you you weren't gonna be in here.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why you came over.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: And uh she said it gruffly but in a friendly way.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: And um and that was it.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't go in.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even said something in the effect of uh, you know, couldn't I please go in?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, No.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: I said, okay.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: Later.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um Sheila Burke was the chief of staff, and and uh I didn't know everything about her, but uh what I knew about her was she could keep a massive amount of information organized.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he loved information and and schedule and issues to be organized.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh she was uh she was called the 101st senator for a long time because many senators used her as a resource for policy.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: She knew health policy probably better than any of them, and many of them knew it pretty well, and certainly Senator Dole did.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: But uh you know, so he was he was very um comfortable with strong women, and and Elizabeth Dole isn't wasn't really a shrinking violent.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, it was just it was very natural for him without trying to be groundbreaking just to uh support um women in proper positions of power and and also issues that would affect you know a broad audience.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_03: You uh tell accounts uh in several places in the book uh of his leadership and how he was able to get senators from both parties to vote in a certain way that maybe they didn't really want to vote because he argued and was able to convince them that it was for the good of the country.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_03: And as you said before, he would really go out of his way to try to make an arrangement so that they could vote the way he wanted them to vote.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_03: What's the difference between uh today and what we saw back 15 or 20 years with uh with what Senator Dole was able to do?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um one of the things that I don't mean is to I mean this is a criticism either of the leaders, it's just the way that the way the world works in the Senate now.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um in Senator Dole's era, um I wasn't that aware of Senator Mitchell's style when he was um when he was the democratic leader.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was aware of Senator Dole's and then a lot of the agenda um was obviously set by the leader, but uh he was also driven by the leader.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: He was the one who um was running the show.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't know he didn't delegate it to me if you have to work very closely in fact managing who wanted the center to be a place of productivity.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and not so much.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, politics was he said to me a number of times, you know, this place is full of politics.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: Anyone who doesn't think it is um doesn't understand what what our system is about, actually.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: But politics doesn't need to be all that this place is about.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: Politics is part of it.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a it's kind of like a reality.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh sometimes it intrudes too much, but ultimately we're here to do the business of the country to to address the problems, uh, address issues, um fiscal legislation, social policy, international policy, working with the president.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um he was he was an in as a Senate leader, he was an independent person and uh was able to command respect because of that.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: But also he was somebody who wanted to get things done.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And as I said, it was the issues were leader-driven under his time, not so much now, and and partly it's um I don't know if the leaders it's partly maybe the leader style styles, um, but it's also the caucuses, caucus makeup is now are more polarized and and less um just less socializing, less sort of open communication across the aisles.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: There are those that do talk to each other.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um but there's a fair number on both sides of them.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: I would be surprised if to work in a bipartisan or if somebody from the the other party would reach out to them and say, I'd like to work together with you on something.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's just not done anywhere near as much as it should.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: So um it was really a different, it was a different time.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: Hi everybody, this is Randall Wallace, and uh welcome to this episode as we look at Bob Dole and how much um the Senate's changed, his effect on policy, and uh you hear uh Mr.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Thompson making the the uh case that the the this it was a different era.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: And it really is the it is a different era, but it's the era where everything begins to change.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Bob Dole's time in the Senate when he's bringing the Republican Party back um is the era where uh things begin to change.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: But Dole sort of saddles this end of the era as we knew it, when Reagan is president, when Bush is president, and that change begins really when Bill Clinton comes in.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: But you see that gradual change actually happening in the 80s, in the late 80s, and during the Bush administration, as the fire breathers from the from the uh House are coming over into the Senate.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so Bob Dole really is that last man in that era, and uh from that era of the World War II generation, and he affects policy in ways that you probably wouldn't see Republicans or Democrats doing today.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um and and and that's a not a good thing, I don't think, because when you look at some of the issues that we'll be talking about uh as we look at his majority leadership and the Bush years, you're talking about the WIP program, the school lunch program.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh these are things that look out for the poorest citizens.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, I I'm a Republican, a very conservative Republican, but I believe there is a role for government.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: And uh you're gonna hear uh these senators talking about Bob Dole's uh effect on policy, whether it be in agriculture or foreign affairs, uh or or any number of different issues.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then we're gonna look a little bit at the the beginnings of that change as we get closer to the 1990s.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_08: I came to the Senate in 1985.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_08: I was on the agriculture committee.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_08: I represented agriculture state like Senator Gold did.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_08: He is the majority leader, and there were it was a very tough time in the Midwest in agriculture.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_08: Farmers were losing their farms, committing suicide.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_08: It was just a very tough time.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_08: One of those, I remember, I just remember it very well.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_08: And we had an 85 farm bill that we were working on.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_08: And of course, I was trying to get certain things in the farm bill uh that were opposed by the administration.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_08: And uh Senator Dole was the majority leader of the Senate, and we had the farm bill on the floor, and uh I know that I got under his skin a lot.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_08: And uh there was a period of time there where uh Senator Dole and I were uh uh open heads.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, very strongly, and I think there were times when Senator Dole wished I'd never ever showed up in the United States.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_08: But that's that's the way things are, you know?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_08: And so there was a period of time there were um I never got along with Senator Dole.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_08: Uh, I thought he was ignoring the crisis in rural America and that type of thing.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_08: Of course, now that I've had the had the uh privilege of being here a long time, now being chairman of the agriculture committee, I can understand the pressures that are on someone like that.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_08: Uh, and that sometimes you can't always do what you want to do.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_08: You have to take care of other people and stuff.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_08: Of course, when you're a freshman center, do you don't have to worry about things like that.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_08: Uh so uh there was uh I'd say 85, 86, 87 in those years, uh uh we uh we bumped heads a lot.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_10: Now you served on several committees with him.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_05: Well, just agriculture, to be honest.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_10: And what was he like as a committee member?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_05: Oh, he was very hardworking and serious-friendly.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_05: And on agriculture, you know, he was one of the real leaders.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_05: He had been there a long time uh when I got to the committee, and uh that was one of the first assignments I had in the Senate.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_05: My predecessor in the Senate, uh Jim Eastland of Mississippi, had been a chairman of that committee.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_05: Uh yeah, he was chairman of the judiciary committee.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_05: Uh Herman Townage was actually the chairman when I first came on the committee from Georgia.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_05: Uh that committee had a uh uh a legacy, a history of uh of Southerners being in conspicuous positions of leadership on that committee.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_05: And uh but Bob Doe got along well with everybody.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_05: Uh it was there were regional uh differences on some issues.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and even Senator Doe and I disagreed on uh certain uh farm programs because the way they would be administered uh the cotton program particularly was was a unique uh um activity in in farm country because it was more localized in the deep south.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_05: Uh and sometimes there was there was resentment from other parts of the country that the cotton program cost so much in comparison with the uh dollar amount of subsidies that were paid to growers.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_05: Um but nonetheless uh as as with most important programs where you have differences of opinion, you you work out the differences, and maybe it's around the the border, the edges.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_05: But the cotton program was always one that Bob Doe would figure out a way to support.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_05: Um so he could keep the farm groups all together at the end, that we could all support the bill and defend against all amendments, whether it was aimed at cotton or wheat or corn or dairy or the other programs.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_05: And so that was one of the reasons why the agriculture bills usually passed, because we had this broad base of support.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_04: Even before that, in the Senate, we started working together on anything that related to agriculture, food assistance, um, rural America, um veterans affairs.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_04: We had common ground uh there, and uh our first cooperative efforts, as I remember it, were about 1968.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_04: I was responsible for launching the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_04: And how did that come into being?
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_04: Well, uh the way it came about, um I was watching a television program one night by CBS called Hunger in America.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_04: I remember saying to Eleanor, uh, what are they talking about, hunger in America?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_04: This is the richest country in the world.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_04: There are no hungry people in America.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_04: I had run the Food for Peace program for President Kennedy, so I knew about hunger in the world, Africa, Asia, Latin America, parts of the Middle East.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_04: I knew about that, but I wasn't really aware of the degree of hunger right here in this uh country.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_04: And I watched that hour-long documentary on CBS with fascination.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_04: Um, one of the things they showed that got under my skin was a little boy, you know, maybe a little guy, nine or ten, in a school lunch room, I think in South Carolina, and uh you it was during the school lunch period, and you had half the kids sitting down, you know, eating their lunch.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_04: The other half were standing along the wall.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, and uh the television uh camera zeroed in on this little boy and said, What do you think?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_04: When you stand here and are unable to eat like the other children, I thought he'd say he was mad or that he was angry.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_04: He kind of dropped his gaze to the floor and he said, I'm ashamed.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_04: And the um reporter said, Well, why is that?
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_04: And he says, Because I haven't got any money.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_04: I remember saying to two of my daughters who were watching the program, you know, it's not that little guy who should be ashamed.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_04: It's George McGovern, a United States Senator, and I didn't even know that students aren't allowed to eat unless they have the money to pay for the lunch.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_04: That's the way it was in those days.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_04: I didn't know that.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_04: I went to the Senate floor the next day and introduced a resolution calling for the creation of a select committee on nutrition and human needs and introduced that as a bill.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_04: And to my surprise, it passed without objection.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, I don't know whether you could do that today or not.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_04: In the sense one objection would have halted the action on the bill, but anyway, it passed, and Bob Dole became the ranking Republican on that committee, and from that day until we both left the Senate years later, he and I worked hand in glove on school lunches, on food stamps, on the WIC program, which we helped launch.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_04: Anything that had to do, we revolutionized food assistance in this country.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_04: There are millions of people in America now getting food stamps, millions of children now getting fed at school even if they don't have the money to pay for the lunch, millions of low-income young nursing or pregnant mothers and their infants through the age of five that came out of that committee of ours.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_04: And Bob Doe was a key factor in this.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_09: In some ways, I have to be careful how I phrase this, but in some ways, it would be harder for a conservative Republican, given his constituency and their suspicion of government programs, food stamps that, you know, quote the welfare state.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_09: Um how did Dole, who is a budget balancing traditionalist, how did he reconcile those two schools of thought?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_04: Um well, Bob Dole is a highly intelligent man and a man of great integrity, and he came to see in the hearings that we conducted that society actually gained income.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_04: The government actually gained income if you could produce healthy kids that go out into life, uh, better educated, more vigorous, able to earn more money and therefore pay more taxes.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_04: It's the same way the GI Bill works.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_04: Bob and I are both beneficiaries, the GI Bill cost billions and billions of dollars.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_04: Do you know that the federal government made money on that bill?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_04: They made two or three times what it cost them.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_04: The reason is that because we went back and got a college education after the war, or went on to graduate school, in my case, all the way to a PhD at Northwestern University in history, um your your field.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_04: And uh the government just made money hand over fist on the additional taxes we've been paying ever since we got these better jobs that go back to the the same thing with the school lunch program, the same thing with food stamps, the same thing with the WIC program.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_04: Every time you take a child or an adult or a worker and you increase their nutritional health, you're gonna increase their productivity and their earning power.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_04: And Bob saw that.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_04: We saw it in the hearings we uh conducted.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_04: Um and um and I'm sure that he uh well of course we we both got criticized in our home states for giveaways and that sort of thing, but that became more and more of a diminishing minority.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_09: What w the hearings uh were there also, did you go out into the field?
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_04: We did.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_04: We went right out into the field.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_04: The first one was in Florida, and I said to the staff, why do you want to go to Florida?
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, you know, it's a prosperous state, and everybody's out on the beach and picking orches and so on.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_04: Why there's no hunger in Florida?
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_04: And they said, believe us there is.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_04: So we go down there and they take us into a migrant labor camp.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_04: People are out picking berries and and uh doing other things in the field, thousands of them.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_04: Then they go back to these little huts and tents and places at night.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_04: Uh we visited one family that were living in a garage.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_04: I remember seeing this little mother, and she was little, and nine or ten children, they were all in a single car garage.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_04: You had to take the car out, of course, but and they were on cots and sort of stacked up, and uh um it was obvious that they didn't have enough to eat.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_04: They were I wouldn't say they were emaciated, but the children were underfed.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_04: And that was our first stop in going out into the field.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_04: But after two days of that in the migrant labor camps, we we'd seen a lot.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_04: We went into the slums are great cities.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_04: We went into school houses where they didn't have a school lunch program.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_04: We uh uh we traversed this country in in public hearings and and we learned a lot.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_04: It was an eye-opening experience.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_04: It really was.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_04: I remember one conservative Southern senator.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_04: He was a Democrat, you know the Southern Democrats were more conservative than the than the Republicans.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_04: And yeah he he was a great man.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_04: I don't want to ridicule him but he said to me after we left this garage, I said, gosh Alan, isn't that terrible that poor woman living there with ten, ten ten, eleven kids and he said, well I noticed she's got a television in there, why couldn't she sell that television and buy some food?
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_04: And I said Alan, if I were stuck in an overheated garage with ten kids, if I had to beg, borrow or steal the money, I'd have a television set, how are you going to take care of a a raft of kids like that all day long and her husband's out in the field picking berries and so on.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_04: And that night about 10 o'clock he came to me and he said you know George I hadn't thought about this but you're right about that it's okay.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_04: So so he gave up making a speech on the Senate floor uh talking about this woman who was pretending she was poor who had a television you and Senator Dole both represented uh farm states.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_10: Uh did your philosophies on farm and the farm bills and whatnot coincide pretty much yes I wasn't as directly involved in that.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_06: He and Senator Talmadge my senior colleague who he and I served together the first six years of my career Senator Talmadge was the chairman of the agriculture committee and he and Sumter Dole worked together on a lot of these things just like Sumter Dole was on the Finance Committee and he also worked with Senator Long.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_06: So my relationship with Senator Dole on agriculture was seen through the eyes of Talmadge which again was a good relationship and I think that's one of the reasons that that Bob and I got along over the years and worked together on so many things is because the people had served longer with Bob were people that I had such a close relationship with on the Democratic side.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_08: Dole was always there on nutrition strongly and he was there I mean I look back and I think what were we fighting about I mean and perhaps this is also a temper that tells the time back in those days we had these fights on farm policy over the edges on the main thing in the middle we agreed on.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_08: It was always sort of on the edges we were battling.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_08: Today it's sort of on the fundamental premise of what we do in agriculture that we're fighting over.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_08: So I look back and I think I didn't realize Dole and I agreed on so many so many things.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_05: It's interesting uh with that historic look back on that that was first formed in the agriculture committee and Bob Doe was really an architect who would bring together these disparate interests and make sure they stayed glued together and mutually supportive as the bill made its way through Congress what what were the issues that the bills the farm bills dealt specifically with in the period that we're talking about well how you deal with the disasters or weather related disasters are a problem common to all farmers there would always be a disaster provision of the bill giving the government the authority to come in and make some contribution to alleviating the consequences of of uh wind weather related disasters that would be something that would cut across all commodity areas of interest um some of the other things were were trade and the level of subsidies for growers and how you calculated those benefits and the uh entitlement definitions of who would be entitled to the to them there were just a lot of details that had to be worked out.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_04: Tell me about the WIC program that's one of the best programs the federal government's ever launched it provides nutritional supplements to low-income nursing or pregnant mothers and their infants through the age of five years.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_04: It you can't talk to a person who's had anything to do with that program who doesn't tell you this thing is just wonderful what it's doing to transform lives and to bring new strength and hope to young uh families.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_04: That is a result of hearings by our select committee but it also went to the uh Committee on agriculture which was the legislative committee Bob and I served on both committees and we were the chief sponsors of that Senator Humphrey came to me and said George I would consider it a great personal favor if you'd let me be the lead sponsor I know this came out of your committee and I know you and Bob have worked on these things but this may be my last term in the Senate and I'd love to be able to say I was the lead sponsor so I said why not that's how it got brought to the floor is the Humphrey bill with Dole and I and others listed as co-sponsors to it.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_04: I've always been glad we did that because Hubert was so grateful and would that happen in the Senate today?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_10: It could, depending on the relationship between the the senators involved uh Hubert knew me well enough as a longtime neighbor you know I lived next door to him here for twelve years in Washington used to ride to work with him all the time um yeah I think it could happen I'm I'm just trying to think about the people up there but it probably probably could happen again you mentioned uh Bob Dole's interest in in uh international and and food programs and whatnot um as as I've been doing my research on the man uh it's become clear that he did have quite a bit of of interest in other issues beyond the United States.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_10: Could you talk a little bit about that?
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_05: Well I do I do think he had the broad view and had um a great deal of interest in the world you know he his involvement in the war I'm sure brought home to him that we needed to have a strategy for keeping the peace around the world and that there was a um a need for the Congress and individual members of Congress and the Senate to understand international relations and how we could work together in the community of nations to solve problems without resorting to war were there some issues where you and and Bob Dole really parted company I don't really recall any um I'm sure we we disagreed on a thing or two but that I don't remember them.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_10: Was there a time after that where you began to work more easily together?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah I re yes that's true.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_08: And um Dole sort of won me over one time because uh and we were let me tell you think things we didn't speak very much.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_08: Of course he was a big leader I was just a freshman and uh and I was a rather cantangerous freshman to tell you the truth because I I I was sort of representing sort of what I was hearing in my own state with people going under and you can imagine uh uh how that presented itself to me and I was just I think probably voicing those frustrations um but there was a time it was Reagan was leaving office now that would be uh 80 uh eighty uh eighty eight uh in nineteen eighty eight I had had an it was uh let me think about this a second it was uh yes it was in nineteen uh eighty seven it was Christmas and the Reagan administration wanted something it was an ambassadorship was somebody that they wanted to appoint and it was I think it was right around December 23rd and everybody wanted to get out of here but I had something that I felt that I had been violated that the an agreement had been violated and it had to do with a a railroad in Iowa I don't need to go into all the aspects something to do with railroad and transport based thing that I felt that I had been stiffed on and I wasn't going to let it go until they fixed my problem and Senator Byrd then was our majority leader.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_08: And I was here and he said you could go home he would protect me because I wasn't going to let anything happen on the floor until my problem was fixed.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_08: So I went home and I remember about midnight I get a call can I let this thing go and I said no so Senator Byrd being the majority leader protecting me then later on I got a call from Reagan's person down the White House who is this Secretary of State at that time must have been uh Baker James Baker and uh I kind of know him nice guy very nice guy called me up Tom we got to have this guy get this done I said I'm sorry I guess different I'm in a bargaining mood right now and I'm not gonna let this thing go well we have to have I said no I'm sorry well it was literally about 2 a.m in the morning on December the 23rd and I get a call and it's the White House must have been was it Deaver I think at that time and and Byrd and Dole got me on the phone said Byrd was protecting me and I said no if I have to I'll get in my car and come back in there but I'm not gonna let go and so finally an agreement was reached that the White House would fix my problem in the next year if I let it go.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_08: I said got to work fine with me let it go so that was the last thing done before we went home for Christmas and uh so the next spring passes now we're into 1988 and that fall and because of a quirk in the way we did legislation that year my problem was not fixed by Reagan wasn't fixed.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_06: So now we fast forward into the next year so now we're into 89 and now Bush is president here comes the bill thing with my railroad thing in it and uh I said at that time I said well okay let's get it fixed well the response from the White House was we had no deal with you that was Reagan I said wait a minute uh uh I had the commitment of the administration and that should pass on no so I went and saw Bob Dole and I said to Dole I said you know remember that thing that a year ago we had that agreement and I went oh yeah he said I remember that I said well I thought we had an agreement the administration would take care of and fix it yeah he remembered that I said well now they're saying they don't have to because that was Reagan and not them and I said that's not right well he said you're right let me see what I let me see what I can do and he left the floor came back and basically what he told administration a deal is a deal I made that deal bird made that deal administration made that deal and you got to fix it and they did so my esteem for Bob Dole went up about a thousand percent I said now there's a man that keeps his word and so I think my relationship with Dole after that got real good and I mean it and uh I kind of saw him in a different right and uh from then on I've had just the best relationships with him any others outstanding issues that uh comes to mind in terms of your relations with Senator I I think uh you would have to say um I'd have to look back at the whole record in all the votes but one of the most important pieces of legislation that I handled and was involved in was my partnership with Barry Goldwater on what became known as the Goldwater Nichols Bill.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_06: But Barry and I in the Senate were the partners for about two, two and a half years where we really reorganized the U.S.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_06: military we changed the whole relationship of the people out there in the field who were fighting the battles to the back in the Pentagon bureaucracy.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_06: We made the people in the field much more powerful we took away some of the authority of the people back in the Pentagon uh and we basically emphasized the jointness the importance of Navy Army Air Force uh Marine Corps all working together in the battlefield sense and the planning and the takeoff and the landing and uh that was an extremely controversial bill and Senator Dole was supportive of that legislation even though the Marines and Navy were very much opposed to it the Army and Air Force tended to at least be from neutral to positive and he supported the efforts of Senator Goldwater and myself and it's looked back on as the most important uh reform of the Pentagon in the last 50 years and has helped immensely on the battlefield and saved uh in my view an awful lot of American agony and lives and resources and so forth.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_06: Uh and without Senator Dole's support on that we wouldn't have we wouldn't have passed it because the White House wasn't in favor of it.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_06: The Pentagon by and large wasn't in favor of it and it was sort of Barry Goldwater and myself uh rallying the troops in the Senate so we had to have uh Dole support and and bird support and that that would have been an easy place for Bob Dole to take a partisan position because he would have been lining up with a substantial part of the military and uh lining up with uh the White House.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_06: White House didn't fall on its sword to try to defeat that legislation but it certainly Cap Weinberger was Secretary of Defense and he was definitely opposed to it.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_06: Now part of the justification for that was economic.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_10: I mean you were saving money uh right and uh what about your fiscal policies and Doles?
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_06: Did you have a lot of balanced budget uh Southern Democrats and I was in that category today may be different but Southern Democrats back then uh tended to agree with uh what I would call the middle of the Republican Party moderate might not have been the right word because on fiscal issues it'd be more conservative but not far right and and Bob Doe was in that I called it middle of the Republican Party is one of the reasons he was so successful.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_06: So Southern Democrats and Republicans generally speaking had a lot of similarities of views on fiscal policy and on defense and foreign policy.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_06: So I suspect if you looked at our voting record other than those that simply were procedural you would find an awful lot of similarities particularly on fiscal policy I felt then and still feel that we were at a on a on a glide path that was going to lead to uh huge fiscal problems because we were creating all these automatic entitlement programs.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_06: And so um though those were things where Bob Dole and I would have agreed um much more often than we disagree.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_10: Um looking back over the last I guess fifth of the 20th century um it's struck strikes me that it's kind of a continuing battle between those who who want uh to favor the private sector and those that want to have more government programs I guess would be one way of putting it do you think that will always remain sort of the the two two sides of things as we go forward in history?
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_05: Well I think there will be people you know who will resist growth the growth of government and the expansion of government power.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_05: Some people just think well you know I just want to be left alone well that's great if you don't have a problem you know you're totally successful or never have had an accident um or made a mistake but uh I think in our mature political system that we have now we've evolved to the point where the people who are on those fringes you know are beg getting fewer and fewer.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_05: Most people are beginning to uh be somewhere in the middle of those extremes and I think that's good.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_05: I think one thing has helped is you know communications access to information being able to watch the Senate live from the time we are uh open the Senate until we adjourn in the evening if you wanted to you could tune in and watch the whole thing.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_05: Of course you can't see what's going on across the room or by in the in the other meeting room but with the access to all the different channels and everything of of of information televised as well um we've all become I think a little more moderate as a country um the extremes don't control and can't control as they look screwed and I think that's a very good thing I actually disagree a little bit with that statement from from that copper about the extremes I think granted this was recorded recorded in the 2011 time frame before I think we're the T4 movement.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: Who became the leader after Bob Dole and whose insights were pretty profound about the changes that he saw and he was somewhat instrumental in some of that as you'll hear him talk about because he was one of these groups that came one of these guys who came in uh when Bob Dole was in leadership as as things began to change in the Senate in the 1990s.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_10: I was surprised in doing research about uh some of your uh views that you had supported the balanced budget amendment and do you think fiscal responsibility is also a big problem these days?
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_08: Sure as we speak now making this we have a so-called stimulus bill on the Senate floor or uh coming to the Senate floor tomorrow tonight or tomorrow and quite frankly I just I mean they're talking about it being 150 billion 160 billion dollars uh which we're borrowing uh as someone pointed out uh I think Judd Gregg we're borrowing uh money from China which our kids and grandkids will have to pay for with interest they're gonna take that money and we're gonna send it out checks to people so they can buy a flat screen TV made in China who's getting the benefit of this uh and right now our budget deficit our deficit this year I think no let me put it this way yeah our our total a deficit this year will be somewhere in the neighborhood of about I want to say three or four hundred billion dollars total.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_08: And the trade deficit is about seven hundred it's pretty close to a trillion we've had them both both up trade deficit plus the other deficit.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_08: It's just huge.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_08: It's about uh uh right now our trade deficit plus our current accounts deficit is about ten percent of our GDP way beyond anything we ever imagined.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_10: Do you think that the Senate in the 1990s uh would be handling things differently
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_08: Yeah, I I I think that the Senate uh today uh the nineties would have handled today's problems or our our our fiscal problems differently.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_08: Um but then again uh you have to think you know the White House is a player in this too.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_08: And I've been here through what, five, six presidents now?
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_08: From Ford on.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_08: And uh I've never seen anything like this in the White House where it's just I mean they're just adamant they're not going to raise any revenues whatsoever.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_08: But when your need sometimes needs you you've got to do some things, and even the most conservative Republicans in the past have recognized that once in a while you've got to do some things.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_08: We've got this position now with the White House saying this.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_08: Now, what I like to tend to think is if we had in the 90s with a dole as a leader, uh uh he probably would have told the White House, well, that may be your position, but that's not going to carry here.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_08: We got to do some other things.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_08: Now he would have been fiscally prudent about it, but he would have recognized sometimes you have to bend a little bit and do some things.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_08: But uh, what's happening now is that the White House says things and the Republican leadership just doesn't.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_08: They just follow the White House.
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_08: And I've never seen this before around here.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_10: I suppose what's uh lingering in their minds is read my lips and uh the price that Republicans paid for that, both Bush in terms of re-election in ninety-two and dole in ninety-six.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_10: That was one of the things people were still holding against him.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_08: I know they talk about that all the time.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_08: I don't think that had uh had that much to do with it uh uh at all.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_09: Uh one of the most important ways in which this this town and this institution has changed since you first came here.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_07: Well, I'm not sure it's all good.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_07: Um I think that uh uh the generation and the era of Bob Dole uh and his colleagues, both in the House and the Senate, was a better time.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_07: I'm not a uh you know naysayer or pessimist about uh the future.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_07: I'm always hopeful.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_07: But I do think that uh modern technology and 24-7 news and instant communication and uh airline travel, and now members go home almost every weekend, many of them leave their families back home.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_07: It has uh contributed to a less congenial, uh less cooperative, uh, less friendly atmosphere.
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_07: Everything's partisan and gotcha, and um and that has infected the institution some.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_07: And the high Senate, you know, was designed not to move cleanly and smoothly and quickly.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_07: And you add that on top, it makes doing things very difficult.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_07: But uh, in spite of it, every now and then uh the American people, uh including their representatives in Congress, uh rise to the occasion and do something, uh, as uh Senator McCain would say, greater than themselves.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_09: This is a project, obviously, about Bob Dole, but more than Bob Dole.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_09: I mean uh Dole's career in a lot of ways is is almost a microcosm for the transformation of the Senate, the Republican Party, conservatism, and and you and reading your book, you know, you you in many ways do represent kind of a a shift uh uh generationally, uh geographically, uh uh to some degree culturally, ideologically, where the Republican Party has moved over the last 30 years.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_09: Did that make for uh pretension?
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_07: Well, perhaps so.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_07: Uh I started as saying years ago, way back in the 70s, to my Republican colleagues in uh New England and the Midwest, just hold the line.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_07: Uh, you know, we're gonna build a majority from the South.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_07: We're gonna begin to pick up House and Senate seats in the South on a regular basis, and and that will move us into majority, coupled with what we already had, and which grew some even in the West.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_07: And that's exactly what happened.
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_07: Uh so I do think that uh the uh the base of the power of party has shifted uh more southern and western.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_07: Um I do think it is uh probably more conservative than it was in the 50s and 60s.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_07: Uh but um I have found also over the years that I'm still conservative and still where I was, but a lot of people in America and in my own party have moved beyond me.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_07: And uh so uh times have changed.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_09: How difficult was it for him, do you think?
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_09: Um I mean, clearly you were part of the, for lack of a better word, kind of the fire brands coming out of the house.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_09: I mean New Gingrich modified all of that.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_09: There was a different sort of approach to to all this.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_09: I mean, how different and of course it came to a head in some ways the government shut down uh during the Clinton presidency.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_09: How how did he handle that?
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_07: He didn't like it.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_07: You know, he he uh had some uh things to say about uh you know the I can't remember what name he called uh the group, uh maybe it would have included me.
• 49:29
  SPEAKER_07: Uh so he had trouble, you know, with these young Turks, uh the you know, the blow-dry haired guys coming out of the house, you know, from uh even though I mean he he uh you know worked with Kemp.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_07: Uh Jack Kemp was one of us, and there was Duke Gingrich and Carol Campbell and Jim Martin and a whole number of us that came over to the Senate from the House, and we we slowly began to change the dynamics within the uh Republican conference.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_07: When I first got here, the conference was kind of maybe moderate, uh, but uh the group that came uh be right before me, like Phil Graham and John McCain, and some that came right after me like Judd Gregg and some that came with me like Dan Coates of Indiana, we began to change the shape uh the uh this this I think became a lot of the strength of the Republicans in the Senate.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_07: Uh but and so he did struggle with that, and and and I think sometime uh he wasn't sure about me, quite frankly.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_07: I mean, I did uh defeat uh his friend and the whip, Alan Simpson, are a really great guy, by the way, but uh that was part of the revolution that was building.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_10: So that is a perfect segue to my last question, really, which is in fifty years, how do you think Dole will be looked back upon, and how do you think he should be thought of uh in the future?
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_08: In fifty years, um Well, I I think he'll be looked upon as one of the uh uh uh a key figure in the in the uh progress of America.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_08: Uh he played a key role here in Congress for a long time.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_08: Uh he was a candidate for president uh three times, four to three times, three times candidate for president.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_08: And uh and uh uh was just a very key player here for all the years I was here when I first came here through through ninety-six.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_08: Um so I think he'll be looked upon as someone who was uh for a period of time was one of the key pivotal players in American political politics.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_08: I think secondly, he'll be looked upon as someone who was a key player uh in the development of disability policy and helping to get it done, to get it through.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_08: Um he was always in the background, he never he was never in the forefront because he was he wasn't on the committee and he was minority leader at that time, he had a lot of money.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_08: But he pulled together, as I said earlier, the key people to get it done.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_08: Um and um I think if we look back upon as as a as a as a as a reasonable uh conservative um who um who I think had a uh a very a much broader view of America than maybe some of those who have come after him.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_08: I don't mean to cast stones at anyone, but I just think Dole had a much broader view.