Latest / BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback / Episode 450 BOB DOLE The Life that Brought Him There (Part 31) The Senate Republican Leader (B) The Leadership Characteristics of Bob Dole

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Episode 450 BOB DOLE The Life that Brought Him There (Part 31) The Senate Republican Leader (B) The Leadership Characteristics of Bob Dole · BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Finance committee is kind of unique and unfortunately it's still somewhat unique.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's too much partisanship there, but there's less less so than there is in a number of the other committees.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um there are times when members work together because they you know they feel that a lot of some compromises that they're willing to work out to move tax legislation or legislation that involves taxation.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: Healthcare is actually a major piece of tax legislation.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um he built this record of working across party lines in the finance committee and and got to know people really well.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, one of the things that is not so apparent from my perspective now is a real respect and often an admiration for people on the other side of the island.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he had it certainly for um for his sometimes adversaries, but often his um people he could allies.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: He was somebody who you know really practiced to me at one point, and I probably said it many times you know, you didn't want to go out and burn your bridge with somebody today because you might need them tomorrow.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I saw what I was coming in.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um working on the compromises, he just rubbed it again way into the nitty-gritty details, and if it went beyond his ability, although we can always incredibly capable of uh absorbing information and understanding how policy would work and offering ideas for creative solutions to some place where people were stuck.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: He would bring people in for what are now called background deals.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um bring them into his office, and there's some stories where he would set up four meetings at a time at a time.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um I knew of a couple of times when there were these two going on.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: I you know, I couldn't go in, or sometimes you could go in for a photo up and I would run in with the photographers and they would all show us up.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: But the senators themselves would all sit around the table with staff people somewhere nearby, but basically they would hammer it out themselves and they would argue back and forth one-on-one, and he would sit and argue and control and you know, stay for an hour and right back and go to the room too, and sit down and engage fully.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I've heard stories uh that he would basically tell um folks he brought in the room, you're not going out of here until you get a deal.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want anyone to leave.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: And they he commanded enough respect that they know enough so that they wouldn't leave.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: And uh he he made things happen.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_06: Um how would you describe his leadership style?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_13: Well, he was uh he he was easy to to be with, he was accessible, he was not pretentious in any way whatsoever.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_13: You felt very comfortable in his presence, and uh so you trusted him and uh he he was not a tyrant, he didn't try to pressure people.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_13: Um his style was more of uh you know asking you to do something, and uh if you decided you could do it and help him and support him, uh he was pleased, but if you didn't he didn't argue with you or question your motives or or in any way uh act as if he uh was just disapproved of your judgment or anything like that.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_13: He truly respected all all the senators.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_13: Um and uh those of us who were who were younger and hadn't had the experience that he had truly appreciated his manner, his warmth, his genuine uh honesty, and his energy that he brought to the job.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_13: He was a tireless worker.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_10: Bob Dole, I think, is a classic representative of a magnificent period of history in America.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_10: He's the epitome of the greatest generation.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_10: I mean, uh his age and you know, his uh high school athleticism, you know, sort of the the belt buckle of America out there in in Kansas, his service in the military, his injury, the painful recovery he went through, uh, how I think that contributed to his determination and his work ethic uh to try to do things for his uh people and for his country.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_10: And it led him to uh become, I think, uh a magnificent uh member of the legislature, starting off in the Senate, uh uh jocularly known as the sheriff.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_10: He would patrol the back uh bench, and if somebody unfairly attacked uh then President Nixon, he would uh you know jump into the breach and and uh begin uh a defense.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_10: And that led him on to powerful positions in the Senate, chairman of the finance committee and and majority leader, and he was unique in that role too.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_10: Uh in a way he sort of created that martyr role, but I do think that role now has changed even more.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_10: But um, you know, I think America owes a debt of gratitude to that generation, our fathers and grandfathers now, and our uncles who served in World War II, a lot of them, and did so much to build and change and improve this country.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_10: And I the question is, and I've always asked this question, are we going to accept the baton from that generation and uh carry it forward?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_10: Um we are, in a way, but not in many ways that we should.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_07: Hired by this Randall Wallace, and you know what he just said is probably the central question that this entire podcast has been about.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_07: Are we as a as a future generation going to live up to the country that we were handed by the World War II generation, of which Bob Dole is a central figure?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_07: And I I've said this all along with um this generational difference has been profound because we inherited in the 1990s a country from the World War II generations, honestly, probably the closest to the Founding Fathers generation as we have ever had.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_07: Um this generation, they they whether the Great Depression won World War II, uh changed society for the better, and create created a middle class, uh integrated um all the racial segregation issues of the of the that plagued the country for years, uh, you know, won the Cold War, and they handed this country to the next generation as strong as any country in the history of the human race.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_07: And have has the generation that followed them lived up to that, well you can live up to your own you can you can you can make your own decision based on that.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_07: But this is episode C and D of um or B and D or B and C one of those things um in the in a three-part series about Bob Dole becoming the majority leader, and what we're gonna listen to now are the characteristics of a leader.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_07: And really, there's no one who sets the gold standard better than Bob Dole, as we talked about in the about the election that he won in our last episode, and in this episode, we're gonna listen to what made him a great leader.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_07: And in the next one, we're gonna look listen to some of the policy accomplishments that Bob Dole himself accomplished as the majority leader in the U.S.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_07: Senate.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_07: And then we'll move on into um a couple of land uh landing lectures and then the 1988 campaign.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_07: But these two are really gonna be interesting because they're they're really looking at uh the things that made Bob Dole great, which I think are things that our current leadership needs to learn today.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_07: And then you can see the results of that leadership that he provided the country.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_07: So we're gonna hear from uh several U.S.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_07: senators and his chief of staff in this episode, and I think you're gonna find it fascinating uh just what made Bob Dole tick and what made him such an accomplished leader in the United States Senate.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_06: You know, so few people understand how this place works.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_06: And and and I've known Senator Dole for almost 30 years, and worked with he and Mrs.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_06: Dole on their autobiography, and still couldn't tell you in a paragraph what exactly he did, you know, sort of behind the scenes, to make the place work, to make a bill come together, to form a coalition, to diffuse uh uh I mean what what were his threats?
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_10: Well, I think he uh he understood uh the Senate as an institution probably as as well as anybody uh I've known.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_10: Uh and uh some people you know say, well, Bob Byrd is the you know the one that wrote the book on the Senate.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_10: But uh Bob Dole um I think uh he you know since he was prepared so thoroughly before became leader, and he learned so much as chairman of the finance committee.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_10: See, that's where you learn to deal with uh Richard Russell, uh who was chairman of finance when Bob was like, I guess, number two, and then uh on the uh Republican side, and then one day there was an election and Russell was a minority, and Bob Dole was chairman.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_10: You so he learned how to work with a guy like Richard Russell.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_10: Now there are not many Democrats left, uh like I mean, like Russell Long.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_10: Russell Long.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_10: Uh there are not many Democrats left like Russell Long now, but uh he learned the art of the compromise and the uh the beauty of the deal when you do something uh that is good for the people in terms of tax policy or uh trade policy, or in the case of Bob, things he felt passionate about, like the Americans with Disabilities Act.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_10: So sometimes Bob's background in the defense area or his personal uh you know injuries transcended any partisan politics that uh might have existed.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_06: Do you think there's a bit of a populist in him, too?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_06: Oh yeah, sure.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_10: Yeah.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_10: Uh I think he was just the epitome of a a Kansas uh senator and the people from Kansas.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_10: He he was uh he was it, he defined it, he reflected it, uh, and uh I think that's a great credit for him.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_06: Let me ask you a broad question.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_06: Whether once you got here and got to know Dole, whether there was anything about him that surprised you, I mean, m compared with the public image, the public persona that that he had.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_06: Is there something about Dole that you wished people generally could experience the way that that you and your colleagues experienced on a regular basis?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_09: Yeah, I wish that people knew the impact that people who went out of their way for him after he was injured in World War II, that that made an impact on him.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_09: Some of the people he knew and some people he didn't know, and some people were in Russell, Kansas, and some people were someplace else.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_09: Or it's a doctor in Chicago.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_09: These people that stood by Bob Dole and uh made brought him to the point where he could be a congressman and a senator, had a lasting impact on his life, and I can't prove it, but I think they made a big difference to how he saw his role as a senator, and probably had a great deal to do with a lot of decisions he made, even though I could not point to him, but that's what I believe.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_09: See.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_06: When when Bob Dole came here, of course he f was in the House first, and then came over to the Senate in '69 and established himself as the so-called sheriff of the Senate.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, the the the the gunslinger for the Nixon White House, there's a perception that the Bob Dole of the 1980s and the 1990s is very different in some ways from the Bob Dole of 1969, 1970.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_06: Is that is that true?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_12: Well, because of the role he played.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_12: And uh I think in his mind he felt that that was about the only way open to him to get to where he wanted to be.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_12: The leadership.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_12: Otherwise he'd be a member.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_12: And I did not see Bob Dole as just a member.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_12: Anyone in a hospital who can be there stretched out, telling me eyeball to eyeball, I'm gonna be the county attorney.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_12: And then I'm gonna be in the state legislature, and the first opening, I'm gonna Congress.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_12: You know, there are other people, very ambitious people, who say, Well, I hope someday I can be there.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_06: Did that did that profession go to the White House?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, did he do you think he saw himself someday?
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_12: He didn't use the White House, but I said to myself, anyone who is uh straight out this far, that's just step number one.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_12: So I wasn't surprised.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_12: I I don't think any one of us here was surprised when he ran for the presidency.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_06: I remember asking George Mitchell if he could describe what it is, whatever uh quality or qualities that Noel had that made him succeed um in in the leadership position.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_06: And he and he said it was a combination of things, but almost a sixth sense about what combination of personalities and legislative change.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_06: I mean what what mix would work?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_06: And it's it's not something you can quantify, it's not something you learn in a textbook.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: Well, not only that, it's not really an intellectual exercise, it's more an empathetic personality arrangement.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you sort of sense these things rather than hear them or understand them.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: You sort of guess, but if you guess right, you usually win.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: But uh That's a psychological gift.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not based on a whip check necessarily, it's based on how you evaluate this person's basic views and beliefs and this prejudice and his oppositions.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: But that's a quality of leadership, and I think Dole had it in spades.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_06: But that suggests that you get to know all of your colleagues?
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_06: Well, yeah, you gotta know them.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: But it's more than that.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: I, you know, uh it's it's hard for me to tell you what I think about this.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think it's just knowing them.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: In some strange way, you've got to understand, you've got to be able to uh uh anticipate what they're gonna say on a particular issue.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's too ethereal for this circumstance, but that's what I think.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_06: And that's not something you can teach in the classroom.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's not something you can emulate.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's either you got it and do it or you don't.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_02: Do you sense that he was impatient?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_02: He was impatient, he was ambitious, and he was uh sometimes criticized for being over ambitious, but I never thought that.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_02: I thought, you know.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_11: But of all the ones, who was the most natural leader of men?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_11: And I'll say men, there's no question Bob was the in terms of a natural leader.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_11: Who would you follow into battle?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_11: I often said, I'm ever stuck in a barroom fight and have to fight my way out.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_11: I want to fight out back to back with Bob Doell.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_06: And what were the qualities that contributed to that?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_11: They're indefinable.
• 17:29
  SPEAKER_11: Either you've got it or you don't.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_11: Bob had it.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_11: Did he always have it?
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_06: Or because there is a sense that he's evolved, in many ways, he's evolved, like hopefully all of us do.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_06: Um, I mean that you know, the the the the sheriff of the Senate was in many ways a very different figure from the well-regarded chairman of the finance committee and and a decade later, you know, the would-be president.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_11: I mean, there was a sense that Yes, but even among the freshmen that came in, if you were to say who would have been the natural leader among us, it would have been Bob.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_06: He he clearly evolved.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_06: Conservatives hate the word grow because they always equate it with moving left.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_10: Yeah, that's right.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_10: You know, he grew it off.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_10: Yeah, oh yeah, yeah.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_10: I've been accused of that myself.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_10: Okay.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_10: See, when you get in a leadership position like Bob did and like I did, uh you you know you still have your same philosophy, you still have your ideology, but you also have to come to terms with the fact that you're not a dictator.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_10: You are the leader, and you're charged the responsibility not only of leading your party in one uh body of the Congress, but in finding a way to get things done, which means you have to work with moderates and liberals and you know, Democrats and everybody, and conservatives certainly, to shape uh a consensus or a way to get to an agreement uh that is good for the country.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_10: And uh Bob uh was good at doing that.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_10: Uh you ha if you're gonna be a successful leader, you have to learn to do it.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_10: And the minute you do, your friends uh that share your philosophy or from your region will then say, What happened?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_10: You know, and they'll start attacking you.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_06: Is pragmatism a dirty word?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_10: In some in some uh areas, and I don't I don't uh I'm not a total uh pragmatist.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_10: I am uh and Bob too, I think.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_10: Uh there is a grain of populism in me, but I also uh I think it's a genetic part of my body to want to get things done.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_10: Why would you want to come to Washington, D.C., for heaven's sake, and and live and serve in the Senate if you're not going to get anything done?
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_10: When you could be living back home, better life, making more money, more time with your family.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_10: You have to really want to be here and want to get something done.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_10: If you're in the Senate as a job or just to survive, man, I feel sorry for you.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_06: Well, that that that's fascinating because as as the conservative movement has evolved and grown in many ways, you know, there is this libertarian streak here.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_06: Sure.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_06: Oh, yeah.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_06: And I'm wondering about the the conflict.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_06: There are a lot of Republicans who basically believe the government is the problem.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_06: So how do you become the party of government if at the same time you really harbor those profound suspicions about it is a conundrum in a way.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_10: Um, but I'm not a libertarian.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_10: I do think there is a role for the government, and if it's not what it should be, then we ought to do something about it.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_10: Uh I think that uh, you know, uh I do think government uh, you know, is not effective, not efficient, doesn't, you know, bureaucracy's not good, it's hard to make them function properly.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_10: Um but uh and I think government tries to do way too much.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_10: I mean, I still hew to that same basic philosophy.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_10: I still believe that the uh the best government is the least government closest to the people.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_10: I still believe the private enterprise will always do a better job than FEMA, uh the Federal Emergency Management Administration.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_10: I think uh, you know, agriculture policy uh uh that's run out of Washington, D.C., probably doesn't relate a lot of times to the Kansas uh wheat rule or the Mississippi cotton planter.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_10: So uh yeah, I still have I have that strain in me.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_10: Uh but I've also been uh reading a book uh recently I find quite interesting, but maybe because of my background, but because of what it says.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_10: The title of it is How the Scots Invented the Modern World.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_10: And if you go back and study the history of Scots and what they did for the world, uh one of the things they did, David Hume and others, talked about um, you know, the human nature, uh passions, you're inclined to have your passions override your good judgment judgment.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_10: Uh the bad is a very powerful force.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_10: And one of the ways you control that is you begin to have a rule of law.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_10: You have a government that says, no, wait a minute, you can't rape somebody, you can't steal some property's property, you can't just shoot somebody if you're getting uh angry at them.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_10: And you've got to have some entity that uh brings order to man and to society.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_10: Now, the problem is when that government become, you know, wants to become too powerful and starts trying to dictate and uh take and give uh too many things.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_10: So there's a there's a delegate balance there, but that is the uniqueness of uh our uh American form of government.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_10: Um I think about it a lot that we don't take an oath to the people, we don't take an oath to some particular leader, we'll take an Oath to Constitution.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_10: We take an oath to support and defend a set of principles and ideals unique in the history of mankind.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_10: And uh we should, you know, be careful how we do that.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_06: Do you think there's a a little bit of a populist in Bob Dole?
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_14: I think most of us in our part of the country have a streak like of the populism.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_14: Uh we don't have uh the ever-present huge corporations that you have in some parts of the uh uh country.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_14: You what you have are little independent merchants up and down Main Street, farmers toiling out in the fields and so on.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_14: And so there's always a certain amount of skepticism about people with great wealth and great power and and so on, and and that's a populist impulse.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_14: They didn't trust the railroads, they didn't trust the banks, uh they they didn't trust the big oil uh companies, and uh yeah, there's there there's that populist streak in in Bob Dole.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_06: You think it was sharpened it all by living through the Great Depression?
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_06: I mean the dust bowl.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_14: I do.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_14: I think in uh with Bob Dole, uh his instincts were also sharpened by the war.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_14: In World War II, he was shot to pieces.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_14: By all odds, he shouldn't be alive today.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_14: He should be they left him on the battlefield there for a while thinking it was not worth uh bringing him back.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_14: And so the rest of us came back from the war and enrolled in colleges and so on.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_14: Bob spent the first three years after the war trying to stay alive, and the people that saved him were the veterans' hospitals, a mighty federal government.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_14: So I think that softened his attitude towards Washington and towards what you can do by federal power.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_14: It's not all evil.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_14: Sometimes they do things right.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_14: They won World War II, they sponsored the GI Bill, they healed me in a veterans hospital.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_14: I think all those things are are not far below the surface with uh Bob.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_14: He he's a good authentic uh Republican, like my dad and mother.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_14: Um he's uh but he's perfectly capable of dealing with people across the aisle, with the uh opposition, and trying to work out a uh a compromise.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_14: And he has a reputation for being a fair bargainer, and so I think um, yes, I think his populist background, but I also think his experiences with the federal government uh have uh softened him, and I use that word in a complimentary way.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_06: He uh uh he he c he also developed uh by all accounts a very close friendship with Hubert Humphrey.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_14: Yeah, Hubert liked Bob Dole um a great deal and uh went out of his way uh to show that to uh Bob.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_14: And there again, Hubert was born in South Dakota and grew up in first in um Dole in South Dakota, and then here and we still have the Humphrey drug in here in South Dakota, so he spent his first 25 years in South Dakota.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_14: He left when his father convinced him that a Democrat couldn't be elected to anything in South Dakota.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_14: I think when I did get elected ten years later, he thought something of a miracle had been performed.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_14: But he um he admired Bob.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_14: And uh he and I talked among ourselves several times, and he said he's a good ally to have on your side.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_06: Was it uh I have to ask was it rough for you running against Humphrey for the for the president?
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_14: Oh yeah, yeah, that was the saddest part of that whole thing.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_14: Um that was that was tough.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_14: Before I ran, I asked Hubert if he were going to run again in 72, and he said, no way.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_14: I've been over that trail one too many times.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_14: Ed Muskie talked to him and got the same answer.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_14: But once the race started and he heard the firebells ringing again, Hubert was a competitor.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_14: I I had great affection for Hubert Humphrey, and I was sorry about the friction that developed in 72.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_14: He was desperate to get to the White House, and if he'd have gotten there, he'd have been a really first-rate president, in my opinion.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_14: So, yes, I I found it difficult to run against him.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_06: Do you think there's a little bit of the populist indulge?
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_06: And I mean by that, uh, you know, a kid growing up in Dust Bowl, Kansas with as little as as they had.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_06: Um I I I just went in any any and the sense of humor that punches the stuff to I mean I just I wonder if there's a little bit of prairie populism.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_12: Well, I'm not from Kansas, so uh I can't say yes or no, but uh knowing him, I'm certain his childhood, his background had a great influence.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_06: Now you you'd served in the House, didn't you, before you were in the Senate?
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_14: Four years, yeah.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_06: So in some ways you you have parallel careers.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, like Bob Dole, you were in the House before you're in the Senate, you you came from a rural farm state.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_14: Right.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_06: Uh you had a lot of similar experiences growing up in terms of the the the the depression, the war, um a heroic career in the war.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_06: Um did that did that make it easier to establish a a a personal relationship with Dole?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_06: And and how long did that take?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, to what extent did his reputation early on in the Senate as a a gunslinger, you know, the sheriff of the Senate, was that a something you had to get over?
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_14: Well, he came to the Senate some years after I was there, and um at that time uh Bob Bliss's heart was a pretty partisan, uh tough guy uh on the rhetoric, and uh he was uh he was pretty partisan.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_14: Uh it's interesting that he came from a Democratic family.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_14: His mother and father were Democrats.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_14: My mother and father were Republicans, so I think each of us always had a certain sympathy for the other's point of view because we understood the background that uh we uh came from.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_14: Um I always knew that Kansas and South Dakota had a lot in common in terms of uh economic interests.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_14: Bob understood that every bit as clearly uh as I did.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_14: I have to confess I warmed up to him rather slowly because I did think that he was something of a gunslinger.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_14: And I think the same was true of him towards me.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_14: He uh probably sensed I had national ambitions and so on.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_14: When I ran for president, he was the Republican national chairman.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_14: You probably knew that.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_14: And um he um uh he had to do what he had to do, which is to play the role of the Republican national chairman.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_14: So he was a tough opponent during that 72 race of mine.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_06: How early on did you, if you did, sense a discrepancy between sort of the public image of Dole and the reality?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, as long as I've known him, people have been coming up and saying they didn't know he was funny.
• 31:00
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, that's it's the most obvious.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_06: Right.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_06: But I mean uh there was that period clearly in the mid-80s, early 80s, when he began to demonstrate the capacity for responsible leadership.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_06: Yes.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_06: So in a kind of a professional way, people began to reassess the mix and death.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_06: Yes.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_06: But but beyond and beneath that professional level, the man himself, I mean, did did you sense complexities?
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh certainly not at first.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um it was probably into the finance committee days um when I began to have a better sense of that.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it was because I had more exposure to him.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, uh you needed that to really see the sort of depth.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, the sort of you know, rumbling around desk to desk.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: You got one um uh vision.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sitting down in uh you know the back room with Bob Bill and Danny Rumson Kensky.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh entertaining.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um unbelievably frank, you know, or a conversation with Herman Talmadge or Russell Long.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, I look back and I am blessed with having been there at a time when there were giants, you know, A.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: Rubikoff, Herman Talmadge, I mean, just uh, you know, Russell Long, Jack Hines, John Chafee.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just remarkable human beings.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_06: Particularly in the mid-70s and and and actually the vice presidential campaign and that remark about Democrat wars.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, this notion of Dole as a gut puncher, as a very occasionally mean partisan.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_06: And yet one senses even then among those who were his colleagues that that that image wasn't the same.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_06: That it took a while for the public to see the other side of Dole, but I I take it among his colleagues, you you would you'd always see that.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_14: I think so.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_14: I think that's fair to to say.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_14: What I have noticed about Bob over the years, he just gets more humorous all the time.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_14: I don't know whether what's the source of that, but he has a great wit and he has a great storytelling uh ability.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_14: And um I don't think you can be a humorist and be entirely mean.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_14: Yeah, yeah.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_06: He also I think he likes to particularly poke foot at pomposity.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_14: Yes, he does.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_14: I mean, I think that's a populist.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_14: Yeah.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_14: Yes, he does.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_14: Great.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_14: No, I find I think audiences uh respond to him very well, especially on the humor level.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_06: He told me once that after the 76 campaign, um when he was taking some heat, Hubert Humphrey went to him.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_06: I think it may have been the day after that, but it was that week.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_06: And said, Bob, I know where you are.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_06: I've been there.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_06: Don't pay any attention to them.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_06: You know, forget the people who were scapegoating.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_06: You did what they wanted you to do.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, it was an extraordinarily generous kind of thing.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_06: Um it sounds like that was typical of Humphrey.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_14: I think it was, yeah.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_14: Humphrey would like to get along with everybody and about him.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_05: Because I assume this was the first time you'd really gotten to know him.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_05: Um what about him surprised you or sort of didn't maybe dovetail with the public image of the guy?
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_08: The public image was horrific.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_08: Um what do I mean by that?
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_08: He came over as this mean-spirited uh uh guy who they erected the barriers when he was running for president, not to protect him, but to protect their little kids from being eaten by him.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_08: All right, and that's the image that the public persona that you saw, but the man himself was witty, engaging, fun loving, could poke fun at everybody, including himself, uh, was self-deprecating and um had an appreciation for life that went well beyond um uh politics.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_08: Um the problem was he was too smart.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_08: The problem was he they thought everybody else was smart enough to figure out where he was going, and that he uh did not delegate um his political um um his political strategies uh or would give to others the the ability to carry out and put Bob Lowell, the person, the much bigger person, the war hero, the the the consummate statesman, the the the person of of great integrity out there.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_08: Um Bob Low wanted to know who was going to drive his car and what time was he gonna get to the plane and and where were they landing and who was gonna meet them, etc.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_08: You can't run a presidential campaign like that.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_08: Uh um and so consequently uh the great intellect that he had, um, instead of concentrating and working on projecting this warmth that so many people who worked with him knew about the collegiality that so many people who were the people who worked with him, Democrats and Republicans and legislative aides, and and even the media who was so up close and personal day in and day after day knew about him.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_08: Um that never got through uh um uh again uh because he was too busy running his own campaign and not not delegating and building a team.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_08: It's very difficult for an extraordinarily bright man like Bob Doe, who was who uh was as successful as he was in terms of his local pol politics on origins, and is being elected and re-elected over and over, uh uh to delegate to people uh who may not have the intellectual acumen that he does.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_08: And he therefore got to believe that because he was as successful as he was, um he didn't need this infrastructure that you see in um most modern campaigns.
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_08: Well, getting elected in Kansas is a lot different than running for uh an office with a far greater depth and perception uh than in the diversity of interests, needs, etc., in this country is not the same.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_08: And consequently, sometimes there are those who run for political office who because they are successful, for example, uh I would think that running uh for office in the way I did for my own hometown would equip me to run for higher office.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_08: Nonsense.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_08: In my own hometown, if you were if you had the Republican approval when I ran back in the 60s and 70s, um you were elected.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_08: We thought that maybe it was because of the bumper stickers that we put out and and the pot holders that we put out and the color of the of the pencils or pens that we gave out, that that had something to do with us getting elected.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_08: Had nothing to do with it.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_08: But somehow that's the politics of the old.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_08: Unfortunately, for all of his great action, he never really broke away from being a Republican who got elected in Kansas, and you got elected if you were a Republican.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, it was that simple.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_08: Just like I got elected because I was a Republican running and a Republican stronghold in the town of Hempstead.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_08: I had nothing to do with my looks.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_08: God, if it was based on that, or my speech with my Brooklyn accent, I never would have gotten elected.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_08: Or the color of my potholders that we gave out.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_05: Television wasn't friendly to him either, was it?
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_08: No.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_08: No, because he did not learn and didn't take the coaching necessary to let him relax and be himself.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_08: The irony was he was too busy.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_08: He was too busy doing the business of the people.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_08: Um as opposed to our president now, who's just lazy.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_08: Bob Dole was never lazy, never lazy.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_08: I mean, uh, he was just always jammed right up uh uh to his to the top.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_08: It was a big thing when he and Elizabeth could go off for a weekend or whatnot.
• 40:24
  SPEAKER_08: That was, you know, like breaking the rule.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_08: And so it was because of his legislative duties, it was because of the of the uh commitment that he had to the legislative agenda and to the presidents that he served and to the Congress that he served and to the party that he served, that he was so busy that he never took the time out necessary, number one, to be rested, look rested, be uh um groomed for television with all of the various makeup, etc., and have the kind of personal coaching, etc., on a regular basis that would have permitted him and spent the time necessary with the image maker, so to speak, so that he could project his not a phony Bob Dole, but but himself.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_05: Because the truth the real Bob Dole never got out there.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_05: Do you find it ironic that post-96, maybe for the first time, people, whether it's on Letterman or the ads or whatever, see a dole that they didn't see before.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_08: That's right.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_08: Well, we all s we all knew him.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_08: We saw him, we saw him in the caucuses cracking the jokes and having fun and and um uh um uh and and understood what he was about, and he would have been a great president.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_08: But again, um the American public never got that opportunity to to uh to to really appreciate and see the fullness of the man.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_08: I got to see it.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_08: We took a codel when I never forgot we went to Italy, and um and he the fact of the matter that I um spoke literally no Italian, I understood, but you know, and he brought me as the interpreter and he would say my interpreter.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_08: Wow, he had a great say hello, Alfonso Bongiorno! He would go, you know, good morning, you know.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_08: Um God, and of course we went to the area where he was wounded, and they had a a little town turn out to meet him was one of the great highlights.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_05: And was that an emotional thing for him?
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_08: Oh, very, yeah, very emotional.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_08: The other thing, you never saw Bob Dole's the inner self, the emotion, the man when he would get choked up.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_08: And um yeah, I saw him when he was very emotional when when Bush lost the presidential.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_08: Very no one took that loss harder than than Bob Dole.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_08: He really uh wanted the president uh to win and to be successful.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_08: He took he took that very very, very hard.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_08: Um but again I have to tell you um um you saw the Bob Dole that we all knew in the Senate, the consummate master legislator.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_08: Um when when he left uh uh public office, le you know, elective office, that's when you began to see him come forward.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_08: And of course, you see the things, the World War II memorial, all the kinds of things that he became involved in, not to promote his own career, but to do um, again, the business of those who had been forgotten, uh the American people.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: But you're saying double strengths are off-camera.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: They are.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: They are no question.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_00: No question.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: In an era when the camera is increasingly critical, is increasingly increasingly critical.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: And um uh you know, I do think it's interesting be I had the same experience you had, which is after the election, everybody sort of said, God, well, how come we didn't see that pop double?
• 44:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, I think he got better, I think he got more comfortable.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um Uh uh but at the end of the day, he is somebody for whom personal relationships and connections were enormously important.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's difficult to translate that for some people.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um and you think of the people that we've had, you know, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, um uh, you know, who are so facile in terms of um, you know, Reagan wasn't as good, at least in the experiences I had in a room where he sat with 15 senators or something.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he wasn't as good at the detail, he wasn't as good at um that kind of legislating.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um but i in front of a group.
• 45:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he was uh charismatic.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and Dole's strength was clearly in the room uh with a you know it's sort of like the difference between Tony Bennett and Sting.
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, Tony Bennett's always gonna be better in a small room, and Sting's, you know, gonna do great in front of Madison Square Garden.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um i i you know, it's a different style.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_06: You mentioned Medicare.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_06: Let me ask you, in how did Dole and his conservatism evolve over the time that you knew him?
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_06: Um and and I don't that gets into all sorts of other issues, uh, but the party was clearly moving to the right.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_06: Yes.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_06: Um he sometimes gave the the appearance of chasing after it, um not always successfully.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_06: Um you know, we can think of a number of instances in which um there was certainly internal stresses, yes, yes, as increasingly, particularly the religious right, yes, came to uh call the shots and the national party.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_06: And and you know, where was he in all of that?
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_06: And how did it evolve and you know, um because he often looked uncomfortable hardline pandrack.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's not a good pandering.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: No, he's not.
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_00: He's not a good actor.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_00: No, he's not.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and that I think is to his credit.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh uh the thing that I um found, at least in the issues that I was responsible for um over time, was a remarkable sensitivity to the common man.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: And uh whether it was welfare, whether it was social security, uh, disability, um uh food stamps, uh, you know, the budget uh impasse when we, you know, went into uh into the black hole during the uh sort of early Gingrich days when we shut down the government.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um at the end of the day, I think Dole's view was in fact truly a conservative view, and that is that there is a role, but a limited role for government.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: But it is an important role.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: And there are people for whom the government is the safety net, and for whom um uh it is important to give them assistance to support them in their uh their lives, uh, but that they have to make an effort to support themselves.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: And do you think that was influenced by his own experiences after the war?
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: Not only his own experiences after the war, uh the experience of his family being dependent upon welfare, his family living in the basement of their home.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh also, you know, the the kindness and goodness of of uh strangers and of neighborhoods.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he was the first one it takes a village.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, if you think about it, uh long before Hillary Clinton, you know, Bob Dole was in fact dependent upon the village, you know, when they all collected money in that cigar box.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh he uh ultimately I think had an extraordinary appreciation for what government can do, but also a sensitivity to what it can do go run amok.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and the fact that it isn't dependent upon drawing funds from people who are in fact supporting themselves and their families.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so the balancing between what government can do and should do in supporting people and what people ought to do for themselves.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, you'd walk into a room with him, uh however many people there were in the room, he was immediately drawn to the person in the wheelchair.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_00: He was immediately drawn to the person who was challenged in some fashion, uh with an absolute comfort.
• 48:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um but he was also highly suspicious of organized constituencies that that spoke for these uh folks.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, you and I have both heard him go off about some of these um advocacy groups uh w that he didn't feel were in fact benefiting the people for whom they were organized.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and they were just, you know, professional uh, you know, sort of advocates.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um but when it really came down to the individual, um I also recall during the budget shutdown, it was one of the many days where uh we were going back and forth over some kind of a continuing resolution to try and open things back up and and allow us to continue to negotiate this sort of budget stalemate.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_00: And um uh I was sent into the cloakroom to call over to the house and find out, you know, whether we were gonna be able to move something.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer came back, you know, no way, no how, you know, we're holding, holding.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I went out to tell him, and uh it was on the floor, he was standing uh up from the well, and I said, you know, I just checked in with a particular leader on the house side, and uh they said, no way, and he said, You tell them the next time that I'm not holding it, because unlike them, there are people who live on their paychecks from paycheck to paycheck, and half of those people have never understood what it was like to go without a paycheck.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um I mean, he was so angry, uh, not at the principle of trying to be, you know, uh fiscally reasonable, but at the pain it was causing to people who had no responsibility, uh, and the lack of understanding of the sensitivity of that issue for people who really were dependent.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you saw that time and time again.
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_00: You saw that in social security issues, you saw that in disability issues, you saw that in food stamp issues.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure there are people to this day who think he did it simply food stamps because of the ag community.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh this was a man who knew what it was like to live in circumstances where people potentially went hungry.
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so he's a real streak of populism.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 50:53
  SPEAKER_00: And it it comes out of sort of bedrock beliefs in a Kansas upbringing, uh, where people are tough and they're independent, but they're also dependent upon one another.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you work hard and um you don't count on others to bail you out, um, but you help your your colleagues and your friends and your uh neighbors when you need to.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, and it could find expression in pointed jokes about Gucci Ghost.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh not that he was, you know, immune to uh you know to uh to that in the sense of uh you know he had done well in his life.
• 51:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think better than he ever expected.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, like a lot of of us who came up from either lower or middle class families, you know, doing better than ever expected, and far better than our parents ever did, we still are surprised, you know, not having been, you know, gifted with that.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I think he was always a little uncomfortable with enormous wealth.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, they used to laugh about the you know, the sort of millionaire caucus in the Senate, um uh which was remarkable, but he was never comfortable in that world, I think.
• 52:00
  SPEAKER_00: I mean he obviously has done very well, he and Elizabeth both, but you know, at heart I think he is a he's a Kansas kid, and that's where his values are.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_06: There's this scene in the Woodward book which uh struck me, um because in some ways it it's so uh unnecessary, but it's revealing.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_06: There's some sort of strategy session, and uh, you know, the uh obviously uh consistent with Hollywood speech and all of this and promoting you know as the as the winning strategy in ninety-six, and someone must have said something because all of a sudden he went off and he didn't have to.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_06: Um basically talking about gay people and said we're not gonna single out um any group to go after.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, it was a this kind of almost ferocious counter to to the implication that there's political advantage to be had by exploiting these cultural constituency.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_06: And I wonder to what extent the whole kind of social values conservative because he is a social values conservative, there's no doubt about it.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_06: But there's a subtle distinction between, in effect, living it because it's it's in your bloodstream and sort of politically exploiting it.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_06: Particularly when it comes to people, individuals.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and I think that's the point.
• 53:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh you know, where he may agree or disagree with lifestyle choices or uh, you know, any number of things in terms of people's beliefs, political beliefs, religious beliefs, whatever they happen to be, um uh uh I don't think I can think of an instance where he would deliberately uh harm, embarrass, single out uh an individual or their choice.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_00: He could personally disagree.
• 53:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the thought of him, you know, standing on the floor railing about people who'd made a different decision than he'd made about lifestyle or religion is so antithetical to him as a human being.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think he is enormously understanding of people who have different views.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_00: He could hold different views in his own right, but I don't think he would ever take advantage uh unless it was just so abhorrent.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, i you know, sort of uh uh uh overt racial discrimination, someone who had, you know, whose whose views were based in hate.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, um I can't imagine him tolerating that.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_06: Tolerate is a good word.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_06: Uh because I wonder, presumably, too, when you get to the point of leading the Senate, you learn tolerance because you're dealing with a lot of people who are who have human weaknesses and right, right.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_06: Um piccolo.
• 54:55
  SPEAKER_06: Well, yeah, exactly.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um how did he deal with all of that?
• 55:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you know, again, um uh he really did have the patience of Job.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't know whether that is um uh uh out of sort of um experience under fire, I mean his own sort of patience that it required to come back from World War II and his injuries.
• 55:19
  SPEAKER_00: Uh the months and months of d uh of sort of you know uh being, you know, waiting for that small increment of uh of improvement.
• 55:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um he could be quick-tempered, as we all know, but uh uh he would never uh uh fail to surprise us when we were all chomping at the bit on something, going after someone or some issue, and he would just you know, he just wait, he waited out.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um and similarly with sort of watching the cast of characters, and we had the from the sublime to the ridiculous in the Senate in terms of personal behaviors.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, people that would have, you know, raging, pouting, you know, screaming, you know, meltdowns.
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh, you know, people would come up, you know, it's Thursday at noon, you know, are we getting out today?
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_00: I, you know, I want to go off and play golf.
• 56:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like, you know, please.
• 56:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, where he just showed enormous patience and restraint.
• 56:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the ability to sort of tolerate those differences.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um we were on the floor one night quite late, two o'clock in the morning or some ridiculous hour, and um waiting for a consent agreement, waiting for an agreement to essentially allow us to proceed or close down, knowing what the rules were gonna be the next day.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we were all just crazed, you know.
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um and the his his counterpart, the person who was the leader at the time, just wasn't giving us anything, had sort of disappeared into the uh to the ether.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we were all just, you know, just get on the floor and you know, start.
• 56:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he was just, you know, waited out, waited out.
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think in his to his credit, w uh the members came to understand and appreciate that.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh came to know that he wasn't likely to do the hair trigger kind of thing.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I think felt in that the his tolerance and his willingness to let them melt down, which occasionally they all needed to do.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and he used his own sort of response and anger and level of response, frankly, as a tool.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you know, it didn't happen very often.
• 57:27
  SPEAKER_00: When it did, people knew it was very serious.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't the sort of histrionics that you see from somewhere, you know, the slightest thing in there of sort of off-railing.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_00: I think are far less effective than people like Senator Dole, who were very clear that when it mattered, it mattered.
• 57:41
  SPEAKER_00: When it didn't, you know, you just let people you know, these are people all of whom have constituencies, all of whom have needs.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that benefited him as a leader.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_06: That bipartisan respect that he enjoys, is that something that grew with over time?
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_06: Can you explain that?
• 57:56
  SPEAKER_03: Or well, I don't I don't.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_03: I think he just always was who he was, and uh and humor, and by the way, I I I've met that her name is not Gertrude Van Heffen.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_03: No, but you know, she does what people like.
• 58:12
  SPEAKER_03: They like to watch that, and she's a hell of an interviewer, so you know that's not my I'm not the judge of that.
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_03: But uh uh Dole, uh all humor comes from pain.
• 58:27
  SPEAKER_03: That's a very important thing to learn in life.
• 58:30
  SPEAKER_03: Anyone that you have ever met with a delicious sense of humor has worked through tremendous pain to the degree of their own definition, not yours or mine.
• 58:42
  SPEAKER_03: Groucho Marx.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_03: I talked to Danny Kay one night, he said, Simpson, just a little Jewish kid on the streets of New York getting the crap kicked him out out of me every day by Irish guys and black guys, and and I learned humor.
• 58:58
  SPEAKER_03: I had to, to, to, to save my life to get just getting kicked around.
• 59:03
  SPEAKER_03: Groucho Marks, I never met him, but I sure met Kay, Bob Hope.
• 59:07
  SPEAKER_03: I met him and knew him, and was going to do a shtick with him and didn't get that done.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_03: So humor, that was Bob Dole's stock and trade.
• 59:18
  SPEAKER_03: So with humor, you can adapt to any kind of humor, but he never his humor was was never, you know, was it could be biting.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_03: And uh uh but it was never intended to be biting.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_03: It's a very interesting point.
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_03: But humor humor is the universal solvent against the abrasive elements of life.
• 59:41
  SPEAKER_03: That was what my mother taught me.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_03: And so Bob uh was rich in that.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_03: And he could, you know, he could uh he could uh he could leaven any any heavy situation with humor, poke prick the prick the boil and and lessen it.
• 1:00:06
  SPEAKER_06: Uh and wasn't he a populist?
• 1:00:08
  SPEAKER_06: And the reason I asked that is people always understandably focus on the war years and see that as a transforming, defining part of of making him who he was.
• 1:00:18
  SPEAKER_06: And I've always thought that that, critical as it is, tends to overlook the experience of growing up dirt poor in the depression in a small town in Kansas and the Dust Bowl and all that, the stoicism and the humor.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_03: Stoicism, yeah, you you use that.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_06: And I wonder if there's a a little bit of the of the populist that he that he brought out of that experience.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_06: I mean, whether it's you know, pricking the pomposity of of Washington types or or talking about Gucci goats of the lobbyists lined up who, you know, and looking out for people for whom there aren't lobbyists.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_03: Well, I think the the great uh plains of Kansas and open spaces produce people like that.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_03: Uh something about I think if you just grow up in a bunch of trees on the east coast, you you don't see.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_03: You you you're you're you don't if you step out in Kansas, I mean there's a hill over there that may be that high, 400 yards away, and or you go to Wyoming and the Teton Mountains are soaring up 6,000 feet in front of your face, it puts things in perspective when you grow up and you're a kid and you think, geez, this is big.
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_03: Bigger than bigger than big, and and I think it uh I think it gives you a better perspective.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_03: Uh the heartland, uh a lot of presidents from the heartland, Ohio, and you know, not to say the East and the West Coast aren't wonderful, you know, experiences.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_03: Big Sur and you know, Massachusetts and the Berkshires, well, all that.
• 1:01:55
  SPEAKER_03: Well enough of that.
• 1:01:56
  SPEAKER_00: But well, and I think um, you know, going back to a mu the much earlier conversation, I think um one of the things that people didn't not anticipate with Dole was that tolerance.
• 1:02:09
  SPEAKER_00: And uh people that don't know him well view him as an intolerant fellow.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I think in fact one of the hallmarks of stole of Dole is his tolerance uh and his willingness to accept people from such a wide array of views and positions and styles.
• 1:02:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've never seen anybody quite as tolerant.
• 1:02:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, he's remarkable.
• 1:02:33
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, you'd see it in small things in the Senate.
• 1:02:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um we had a particular senator who had a tendency to break into tears when he felt strongly about something, and it was always l a little over the b edge, emotional, um for kind of odd reasons.
• 1:02:53
  SPEAKER_00: And there was nobody as controlled as Dole was in terms of his own sort of personality and emotions.
• 1:02:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um and he could deal with that person.
• 1:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, you know, when the guy left the room, you know, Dole would be shaking his head, but he could deal with him as well as he could with somebody who, you know, was um could be mean and nasty, and there were plenty of those as well.
• 1:03:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um he was unbelievably tolerant of people's foibles and you know styles.
• 1:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was remarkable.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_00: That calls for an extraordinary dexterity.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and uh no question.
• 1:03:29
  SPEAKER_00: But again, I mean I think i if you know, looking at Dole from 76 forward, I didn't know him in 76, but when I went to work for him in 77, I mean, if you look at the transition in um uh uh almost uh gravitas uh as he acquired more and more responsibilities, as he became responsible for a greater array of issues and people in terms of um constituencies, you s you saw him you know take on those responsibilities and treat them very seriously.
• 1:04:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh I mean I just I think he had an extraordinary array of skills that no one could have anticipated.
• 1:04:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know, whether it's negotiating over the smallest detail, whether it's building relationships with a Danny Rosankowski or uh uh Charlie Wrangell or you know, any number of characters on the House side or in the Senate.
• 1:04:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, with Bob Byrd, with George Mitchell.
• 1:04:31
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can't think of three people who are different more different than the three of them.
• 1:04:35
  SPEAKER_00: But I bet both Mitchell and Byrd would say that their relationships with Dole were extraordinary.
• 1:04:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I don't think they could have expected it, nor would many others had had they not gotten to know Dole.
• 1:04:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm sure that would be true of George McGovern.
• 1:04:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that would be true of Tom Harkin, uh people who with whom you can't imagine Dole having a great deal in common, but who found common purpose and were able to work with him.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_06: You mentioned Wrangle's name.
• 1:05:00
  SPEAKER_06: That intrigued me.
• 1:05:01
  SPEAKER_00: What was the You know, Wrangell was a very active, very outspoken member of the House of Ways and Means Committee, an urban, you know, uh uh Democrat um uh dealing with a farm state senator.
• 1:05:13
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, Dole could deal with Wrangle when he needed to.
• 1:05:16
  SPEAKER_06: Wrangle also strikes me as a bit of a throwback, too, to an era when a deal a deal maker.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, no question.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_06: And someone who can think big.
• 1:05:24
  SPEAKER_00: No question.
• 1:05:25
  SPEAKER_00: No question, no question.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh but again, I mean, I think the other side of Dole is the side that had every policeman and every cleaning lady in the Capitol want to see him before he left.
• 1:05:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, he was so uniquely aware of the people around him, uniquely aware of uh people's contributions in whatever form.
• 1:05:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, never sort of lost track of who he was or what he was, um, or you know, take on the airs of, you know, sort of an aristocracy.
• 1:05:57
  SPEAKER_00: Just didn't happen with him.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_06: A little bit, I mean, I think this is a real populist in Dole.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_06: No question.
• 1:06:04
  SPEAKER_06: And correspondingly, uh not only an appreciation for the cleaning woman, right, but uh a positive delight in poking fun at the stuffed shirt.
• 1:06:16
  SPEAKER_06: No question.
• 1:06:17
  SPEAKER_00: No question.
• 1:06:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and that's I mean, it that's why it's interesting.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that Dole could get along with the the differences between uh Jack Danforth and Chuck Grassley.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_00: You know, enormous differences in wealth and you know, we used to call them the millionaire caucus, you know, Jay Rockefeller and Danforth and Heinz and, you know, uh Lloyd Benson and others.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but Dole somehow found a way to do that, you know, to deal with these pro, you know, to t to Pete D'Iminici, you know, anybody more simple than Pete in terms of backgrounds.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_00: But Dole um never took on the airs of someone who had arisen to an extraordinary position.
• 1:07:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, he remained at the heart of it a kid from Kansas.