Latest / BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback / Episode 479 : The Fall of Bob Packwood (part 13) The Oral History on Bob Dole ( B ) - Dole 20

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Episode 479 : The Fall of Bob Packwood (part 13) The Oral History on Bob Dole ( B ) - Dole 20 · BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

0:25
SPEAKER_00: Hi everybody, this is Randall Wallace.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: So this is part two of our look at Bob Packwood's uh his listen to his oral history for the uh University of Kansas and the Bob Dole Institute of Politics with Richard Norton Smith.
0:38
SPEAKER_00: This is a fascinating uh oral history.
0:42
SPEAKER_00: And we decided to package the whole thing and let you hear it.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: Uh we've been using it throughout, as we said, uh our documentary uh series on Bob Dole.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: It is, in my opinion, the best oral history of any oral history I've listened to on any subject.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: That's he's just a fascinating senator to hear talk.
1:02
SPEAKER_00: And it makes you sadder even as you think about it for what happened to his career.
1:07
SPEAKER_00: But uh, like I said, the insights, the stories, he's a masterful storyteller, the insights in how the Senate works, the people that he worked with, and of course Bob Dole makes this a priceless treasure.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: So with that, here's part two of Senator Bob Hackwood talking about the U.S.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: Senate and Bob Dole.
1:53
SPEAKER_02: It's interesting.
1:54
SPEAKER_02: He said uh once to me.
1:56
SPEAKER_02: Um Bill Clinton at the time of the government shutdown, Clinton was looking, you know, for any kind of advantage.
2:03
SPEAKER_02: And uh he called up Rostronkowski saying, tell me something about Bob Dole that'll give me a leg up.
2:09
SPEAKER_02: And Rostonkowski said a lot of complimentary things about him.
2:12
SPEAKER_02: But then he said he's the most impatient guy in Washington.
2:15
SPEAKER_02: He says, um, you know, uh uh at some point he'll he'll he'll give you what you need just to to to get out of the room.
2:25
SPEAKER_02: Exaggeration?
2:26
SPEAKER_01: Uh uh a bit, but uh but true.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: Bob was impatient.
2:29
SPEAKER_01: And he would be impatient with other senators who weren't prepared to quite go along or wanted a little more time.
2:35
SPEAKER_01: But this is also the frustration of a leader.
2:37
SPEAKER_01: He wants to move.
2:39
SPEAKER_01: And I say, well, I'm you know, Mr.
2:41
SPEAKER_01: 7 o'clock at night, and he's hoping he can get the vote done and finished by eight o'clock.
2:45
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, I'd I'd uh Bob, I'd I'd rather do it tomorrow.
2:50
SPEAKER_01: God damn it, uh why can't we do it now?
2:52
SPEAKER_01: Because I've got some other things I want to say.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: Can't you say 'em now?
2:54
SPEAKER_01: No, no, I'd rather he he was impatient in that sense, but leaders are driven to that.
2:59
SPEAKER_01: I don't but you're right.
3:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh and he he was impatient, and I've seen him been willing to give things in conference.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they would be things important to me but not important to him that he'd give away.
3:14
SPEAKER_01: But he he wasn't going to give away the very important things.
3:21
SPEAKER_01: Take us he was impatient.
3:23
SPEAKER_02: Take us into a conference, because you know, most people will never see it and have no idea of how it functions and and what the individual dynamics are and and what what would someone like Dole, how would he how would he?
3:35
SPEAKER_01: Well let's say you've got a typical ways and means finance conference on a a bill of m modest importance, not unimportant, but not the big tax bill of the year.
3:46
SPEAKER_01: So let's say you've got ten or twelve House conferees and six or seven Senate conferees.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, first, eighteen to twenty people in the conference is not going to reach any conclusion.
3:59
SPEAKER_01: So the staff will clear out all of the chaff where everybody can agree, or even ahead of time, House staff will say, Yeah, listen, we'll recede on two, four, six, eight, and ten, if you'll recede on one, three, five, seven, and nine, and this the staffs agree.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: So that's all cleared away.
4:18
SPEAKER_01: Then you get down to the to the really tough stuff, and the question becomes a kind of a game as to what is really important to them and what will they give to get what is really important?
4:34
SPEAKER_01: And they're thinking of the same thing, but what's really important to us, and what will we give?
4:38
SPEAKER_01: And it's inter it is interesting bargaining, and at the end, a lot of it is determined by the two chairmen.
4:48
SPEAKER_02: And how much presumably there's uh obviously party differentials there, but to what extent are there also differences between the Senate and the House?
4:59
SPEAKER_01: There are differences between the Senate and the House, but you'll also see geographic differences on trade.
5:05
SPEAKER_01: Uh tremendous geographic differences.
5:08
SPEAKER_01: And that became even more pronounced as we as we went on.
5:11
SPEAKER_01: Uh you're from an industrial production state that's losing competitively you don't like trade anymore.
5:18
SPEAKER_01: You're from a shipping state that has a lot of going in, going out in ships.
5:22
SPEAKER_01: You're but that has nothing to do with party.
5:26
SPEAKER_01: Uh that would be one.
5:30
SPEAKER_01: You would normally get a normally get a partisan division on these taxes favor the rich.
5:39
SPEAKER_01: And usually the Democrats would say that, and the Republicans say no, and when you balance it out and you look at but that would you know you could figure the parties would line up on something like that.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
5:48
SPEAKER_02: And there's also going on throughout this period, throughout the 80s and into the 90s, this internal shift, some of it generational, some of it cultural, some of it geographic within the Republican Party.
6:00
SPEAKER_02: And I'm wondering, it's sort of is personalized in some ways by say a Kemp versus a Dole.
6:08
SPEAKER_02: Although, of course, later on they became good friends and I'm not sure they ever became good friends at that time.
6:13
SPEAKER_02: But I mean how how is that uh how did how did that manifest itself?
6:17
SPEAKER_02: And and of course, Kemp in effect raised the curtain to Gingrich.
6:20
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, where the party went.
6:21
SPEAKER_02: I mean and Dole, who was, ironically, when he came to the Senate, perceived as a kind of a hard conservative partisan.
6:30
SPEAKER_02: Did he change or did the party change?
6:34
SPEAKER_01: There's no question the party changed.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you know when when when you looked at the fact that that the that the the Brooks and the Hatfields and the Javiteses and and the Saxby was quite liberal.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: And Hugh Scott was really, really a liberal.
6:51
SPEAKER_01: The pa the and this is all before Roe vs.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: Witch, where abortion is not an issue.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: Guns are not a big issue.
6:59
SPEAKER_01: Um taxes are an issue only in the sense that they're always an issue because taxes are always too high.
7:06
SPEAKER_01: This is not supply side, they're just taxes are too high.
7:10
SPEAKER_01: But the party dramatically changed.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: No, and again, Bob's big issues were not guns and abortion.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: Did he go along?
7:19
SPEAKER_01: Did he vote with me?
7:20
SPEAKER_01: But you mean did he did he take a lead on those?
7:22
SPEAKER_01: He's kind of like the president on those.
7:23
SPEAKER_01: This is this wasn't his thing.
7:27
SPEAKER_01: Plus, when you are in leadership, you are forced to the center unless you're unusual.
7:34
SPEAKER_01: Newt was unusual.
7:36
SPEAKER_01: Newt was able to set the agenda and get the people to vote for for an in it.
7:41
SPEAKER_01: But he's the guy that in a meeting would spin off a hundred ideas and you've got to jettison 95 of them.
7:47
SPEAKER_01: But other people don't spin off any ideas.
7:50
SPEAKER_02: What was the chemistry between Doe and Gingridge?
7:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, Newt really didn't become a what I'd call a major factor till about 1990.
8:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh when I can't remember when Bob Michael finally left and took over.
8:05
SPEAKER_01: We were not yet in the majority over there.
8:08
SPEAKER_01: And I've sat in some leadership meetings when when Dole and Newt would be there and other, I can't remember how many others, and it wouldn't have been a conference because they weren't on the same committees as I recall.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: Newt would talk ten times as much as Bob.
8:28
SPEAKER_01: Bob would listen, Bob would comment.
8:31
SPEAKER_01: But Bob was not a talker.
8:34
SPEAKER_01: And I mean Newt is just non-stop and brilliant in some portions of it.
8:42
SPEAKER_01: Irrelevant in other portions.
8:45
SPEAKER_01: But for any of us that talk like that, we get taken with our own ideas and we think they're all important.
8:56
SPEAKER_02: When Doe uh ran for majority leader, um you were very active in that.
9:01
SPEAKER_01: Oh heavens, yes.
9:02
SPEAKER_01: I was so uh I supported him all the way along.
9:07
SPEAKER_01: It's close race as I recall.
9:09
SPEAKER_02: It was yeah, like what, side by a vote?
9:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, did wasn't Ted Stevens the other one?
9:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
9:14
SPEAKER_02: And and this is sensitive, but I mean I would think Ted Stevens was was not Mr.
9:21
SPEAKER_02: Congeniality.
9:22
SPEAKER_01: He still isn't, never was, and probably that's what killed him.
9:26
SPEAKER_02: Uh uh No, he's uh considering how close it was, had he had he been as he is a smart guy, and had he been as tough as he'd been in congenial, he might have beat Bob is it fair to say that that senators will tell you one thing and and no and as long as they have a secret vote, uh reserve the right to change their minds.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you remember the the famous Mo Udall comment when he was running, I can't remember who he was running against for uh number two position.
10:00
SPEAKER_01: I think there was two hundred.
10:04
SPEAKER_01: Um let's say there was two hundred, and he had a hundred and hundred and nine people pledged to him, and the vote comes and he gets ninety-one, and he says, he says, I want to thank very much the ninety-one who voted for me and the eighteen who said they'd vote for me.
10:19
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: You want to be careful though, you don't dare.
10:24
SPEAKER_01: Let's say you got two people running, you don't dare tell both of them that you're gonna support them.
10:29
SPEAKER_01: Because they'll have a list, and then they'll start comparing their list with other other people.
10:32
SPEAKER_01: And not that they won't compare it with their the guy they're running against, but let's say, let's say I'd be supporting Bob and I'd say, uh Bob, I got these sixteen people.
10:44
SPEAKER_01: And maybe I might be talking to the the opponent's number two guy, and say, Listen, we got these sixteen, he let me see your list.
10:50
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Let me see your list, and there'll be names on both lists.
10:55
SPEAKER_02: How do you run for a leadership position?
10:59
SPEAKER_02: I mean it's a very unique electorate.
11:01
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
11:02
SPEAKER_01: It's a very it is very you're you know, you're talking about fifty-fifty-five people usually.
11:08
SPEAKER_01: Uh and this this is a peer group, this is why a show horse could never win a race like that.
11:14
SPEAKER_01: This is in this is an insider.
11:16
SPEAKER_01: You you try to think to yourself, when is the last time that an outsider, you know, Bob Bird, beat Ted Kennedy for the number two spot in the Democratic Party after Kennedy had been elected to the number two spot.
11:32
SPEAKER_01: But you you go through the leaders that were there.
11:36
SPEAKER_01: Of course, Everett Dirksen was a showman.
11:39
SPEAKER_01: I'll give him I'll give him credit for that.
11:41
SPEAKER_01: But Mansfield, Scott were not.
11:43
SPEAKER_01: Uh Bob Byrd certainly was not.
11:46
SPEAKER_01: Uh Howard Baker wasn't a showman.
11:49
SPEAKER_01: Uh Tom Dashell was not a showman.
11:51
SPEAKER_01: George George Mitchell was, in my mind, the toughest leader we had to face with because he was so good in debate.
11:59
SPEAKER_01: He he had uh, and most people in debate don't realize this, you ought to be very careful of granting your opponent's premise.
12:07
SPEAKER_01: You know, if you say, you know, George had to be sort of like, you know, can we start out this debate by at least agreeing that we will not allow the babies to be thrown in the gutter and trampled on by horses?
12:21
SPEAKER_01: You'd better not agree to that premise.
12:24
SPEAKER_01: Because you're dead.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: And he he was an expert at doing that.
12:27
SPEAKER_01: He he had the capacity in lay language to sort of one, two, three, four, and you're not quite sure where you got trapped.
12:37
SPEAKER_01: But it's leaders inside.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: If you think you have a chance to be leader and you want to run for it, you do.
12:44
SPEAKER_01: I did a couple times and got I finally got beat once.
12:46
SPEAKER_02: Uh what do you pro uh what is it you have to offer uh to wit to win over the uh the undecided?
12:54
SPEAKER_02: It's it's almost personal.
12:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
12:56
SPEAKER_01: You you don't say if I'm elected uh I'll guarantee that more of you get on meet the press.
13:01
SPEAKER_01: Uh you don't make first you can't generate that, but you don't say if I'm elected, I'll make sure the Republican conference uh makes the television studio available to all of you on a free basis when you know you haven't got the money to do that.
13:12
SPEAKER_01: It isn't that kind of a race.
13:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
13:18
SPEAKER_01: What were Dole's strengths as a majority leader?
13:21
SPEAKER_01: His strengths are that he was the natural leader of the caucus.
13:24
SPEAKER_01: That was his strength.
13:25
SPEAKER_01: His weakness was he did not have a long-term strategy in mind.
13:32
SPEAKER_01: Most leaders do not have long-term strategy in mind.
13:35
SPEAKER_01: They are swept up with the minutiae day-to-day.
13:38
SPEAKER_01: Mansfield is the only one that I recall that could look at things on a little longer basis.
13:42
SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
13:42
SPEAKER_02: And that's i doubly interesting in that, as presumably he was interested running for the presidency.
13:48
SPEAKER_02: You would think that if only to further that objective, you would develop a kind of a larger scenario.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: But the kind of strategy I'm talking about is the kind that Newt attempted to lay out.
14:03
SPEAKER_01: You know, here's the contract with America.
14:04
SPEAKER_01: Here are the goals.
14:06
SPEAKER_01: Bob never seemed to have that capacity.
14:10
SPEAKER_01: We had short-term strategy about what are we going to do next week when the Democrats are filled about it.
14:15
SPEAKER_01: That's just a tactic.
14:16
SPEAKER_01: That is a strategy.
14:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
14:17
SPEAKER_02: That's very interesting you say that because it it does get to the heart of, in in a sense, what speculative what kind of president he would have been.
14:25
SPEAKER_01: Well, when you are a president, I think you're in a better position to at least set the goals.
14:32
SPEAKER_01: You can even set them better when you are not the leader in the Senate.
14:39
SPEAKER_01: I was, when I was just two years chairman of the Finance Committee, I was much better able to set the goals of what I wanted to do in the Finance Committee than a leader would have been able to set the goals in the Finance Committee.
14:51
SPEAKER_01: Because he's got a hundred other things to think about.
14:58
SPEAKER_01: You don't realize how important this agricultural bill is.
15:01
SPEAKER_01: Well, of all the things Bob would realize, he probably realized how important this agricultural bill is, but he also has got to worry about the trade bill and the tax bill, and he irritates the guy whose only interest is the farm bill.
15:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's an is because someone who had to the public the reputation for being having a temper, for being I'm almost having a short fuse.
15:24
SPEAKER_02: This would seem like the worst job in the world.
15:28
SPEAKER_01: It is.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: And and being impatient to booth?
15:31
SPEAKER_01: Well it it is a doggy, thankless job.
15:36
SPEAKER_01: You can get on Meet the Press a lot if you want, you can make a lot of comments and you can get news coverage, but it is a frustrating job.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: I'll come back again.
15:44
SPEAKER_01: I I think of the Lugers and the Sam Nuns and the Scoop Jacksons, none of whom were leaders in the elected leadership sense.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: All of whom exert more influence in the areas that they chose to work in than any leader did.
15:58
SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
16:01
SPEAKER_02: What was your observation of the uh Dole-Bush relationship?
16:06
SPEAKER_02: When when the clearly they're they're both aiming toward 88.
16:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
16:10
SPEAKER_02: I mean, that must have colored the relationship.
16:13
SPEAKER_02: And then, of course, at the height of the 88 campaign, there was a that confrontation that took place on the Senate floor.
16:21
SPEAKER_02: Were you around?
16:22
SPEAKER_01: I don't remember.
16:22
SPEAKER_01: Refresh my memory.
16:23
SPEAKER_02: Well, at the height of the before the New Hampshire primary.
16:29
SPEAKER_02: Well, that was the night of the New Hampshire primary on TV.
16:32
SPEAKER_02: And but I think actually before that, just a few days before that, there had been stories in the press about that the Bush campaign apparently was flogging about some kind of questions being raised about Elizabeth's trust fund and investments and all this kind of thing.
16:48
SPEAKER_02: And he confronted the Vice President on the floor.
16:52
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you mean to confront him personally that the Vice President was on the floor?
16:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, on the floor.
16:56
SPEAKER_01: I m I must have missed that part.
16:58
SPEAKER_01: But inevitably, you're starting to see it now on the Democratic side.
17:04
SPEAKER_01: Inevitably, races lead to this kind of you start out, you can almost have an agreement gentleman's agreement.
17:11
SPEAKER_01: We're not going to have any negative campaigning.
17:13
SPEAKER_01: It won't hold.
17:15
SPEAKER_01: Because your opponent will do something they don't think it's negative, and you go, son of a bitch.
17:22
SPEAKER_01: And then they say, he's dragging me through the gutter.
17:24
SPEAKER_01: And then the opponent says, I didn't drag him through the gutter.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: I said he voted for that bill.
17:28
SPEAKER_01: And it it degenerates.
17:30
SPEAKER_02: I'm almost wondered uh uh whether there was any maybe this is too easy, but whether there was actually a kind of a cultural clash.
17:40
SPEAKER_02: I mean, Dole coming from his background, totally self-made, having overcome a number of obstacles in his life, looking at George Bush as a as a kind of privileged, you know, character, whether there was uh because I think w would you agree that there's a bit of the populist in Dole?
17:59
SPEAKER_01: There were in many of those people from the South and from rural states, there is a lot of populism in them.
18:05
SPEAKER_01: Uh all of these Southerners were conservative, were conservative on race.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: But if you mean if you think people like Huey Long, let alone his son Russell, were conservatives, or Herman Talmud, my God, they would spend money on agriculture and they would spend money on social programs, or they would outdo, they would outdo Jack Javits and those kind of things.
18:25
SPEAKER_01: Bob uh comes from a bit of that tendency.
18:28
SPEAKER_01: There was a bit of populism in him.
18:29
SPEAKER_01: But this was also almost anybody that comes from a heavy agricultural state will have a bit of populism in them.
18:37
SPEAKER_01: It's sort of the William Jennings Bryan background.
18:39
SPEAKER_02: I I just often wondered whether everyone knows about the impact of the war.
18:43
SPEAKER_02: I've often thought that people underestimate the impact of growing up in the Dust Bowl, you know, and the scars that it must have left.
18:51
SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
18:52
SPEAKER_01: You bet because he was ten years older than I am, so he grew up.
18:54
SPEAKER_01: I was born at the start, but he grew up in the Depression and the Dust Bowl.
19:00
SPEAKER_01: And you know, I just assume that everybody that had any connection with anything to do in Kansas in the 30s had a hell of a time.
19:07
SPEAKER_02: Remember that line, I think he he's credited with it, uh, outside with the with the line of well-heeled lobbyists.
19:13
SPEAKER_02: Uh what do you outside the Gucci goafs?
19:17
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:18
SPEAKER_01: That's yes, where he's I feel sorry for all those lobbyists out there and they're Gucci loafers.
19:22
SPEAKER_01: Wasn't that roughly that it?
19:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: But yeah, Bob didn't have a lot of sympathy in in that sense for a lot of these absolutely egregious loopholes that people wanted to add.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: He just he was um he was much more interested in broad base programs than he was.
19:38
SPEAKER_01: Are we gonna because so much of what they wanted was very s comparatively small.
19:43
SPEAKER_01: It is an earmarked special interest for whatever it might be.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: And I think I finally got to Bob.
19:49
SPEAKER_02: And you were talking about tax reform and the role that you played.
19:53
SPEAKER_02: Uh what what was his was he supportive?
19:55
SPEAKER_01: Oh boy, I'll see.
19:57
SPEAKER_01: He just pretty much uh left me on my own.
20:00
SPEAKER_01: Uh we did have a key meeting in his office midway along and where I wanted to make sure what I wanted to make sure that I wanted him to understand the others are kind of with me, as I and I wanted them to say it in front of him.
20:20
SPEAKER_01: But he never faltered.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: But but here's the difference.
20:25
SPEAKER_01: The tax reform as we know it, with the low rates and getting rid of all the loopholes, alm almost did not come to pass.
20:33
SPEAKER_01: The House had barely passed a bill in almost Christmas of 1985.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't a bad bill.
20:40
SPEAKER_01: It got the rates down to 35%.
20:45
SPEAKER_01: And then Congress never does much till mid-February of the following year.
20:49
SPEAKER_01: And I had some desultory hearings, but when I started markup on the bill, it just got worse and worse.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: I was losing ten, twenty billion dollars a day in new loopholes, and I was getting I was getting outvoted, so on a Friday, and I remember this so well, at about eleven o'clock a.m.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: I just wrapped the gavel and said, We're done.
21:09
SPEAKER_01: So he says, We're done for the day.
21:10
SPEAKER_01: He says, We're done with the bill.
21:11
SPEAKER_01: I'm pulling the bill.
21:13
SPEAKER_01: And I said, This is a Friday.
21:16
SPEAKER_01: I call my chief of staff and say, let's go to the Irish Times and get drunk.
21:21
SPEAKER_01: And we didn't get drunk, but we each had two pitchers of beer and big cheeseburgers, and that gives you lots of courage.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: And we go back about 2 30, and we keep saying, by God, they want tax reform.
21:31
SPEAKER_01: We'll give them a tax reform.
21:33
SPEAKER_01: We had the head of the Joint Tax Committee come over and we said, Give us a bill that has 25%, 26%, and 27% low rates.
21:42
SPEAKER_01: Give us some alternatives.
21:43
SPEAKER_01: He said, if you go 25%, you'll have to get rid of the mortgage interest deduction.
21:48
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, we bought about 26 and 27.
21:52
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Let me see what I can do.
21:53
SPEAKER_01: So he comes back about Monday or Tuesday, and he's laid it out.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: And it's pretty tough.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: What we're gonna have to get rid of, because the present all along is saying it's got to be revenue neutral.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: Now, we were only doing five year estimates in those days.
22:10
SPEAKER_01: They do ten years now.
22:11
SPEAKER_01: To pretend you're gonna be revenue neutral ten years from now or five years from now, when half of your neutrality depends upon how fast the economy is growing.
22:19
SPEAKER_01: You tell me in 2010 is it gonna grow two percent, three percent, five percent?
22:23
SPEAKER_01: You don't know.
22:23
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
22:24
SPEAKER_01: They don't.
22:25
SPEAKER_01: Know.
22:25
SPEAKER_01: So you have two choices.
22:27
SPEAKER_01: You just accept the best estimates you can give, realizing they'll be wrong, or you just say, Well, we won't pay any attention to any estimates.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: We've just So it had to be revenue neutral.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: But at least had an outline of how we could get there.
22:41
SPEAKER_01: And I'll I'll tell you a wonderful story, by the way, with Admiral Rickover.
22:45
SPEAKER_01: You know who Admiral Rickover was?
22:48
SPEAKER_01: You know, here's he's kind of a legend, and the Navy always tried to retire and we passed a special bill keeping him on active service, which must have irritated the Navy to no end.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: 1969, he comes in to my office, no appointment, by himself, comes into the reception room.
23:04
SPEAKER_01: Hello, ma'am.
23:05
SPEAKER_01: I'm Admiral Rickover.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: Any chance that Senator Pack wouldn't be free?
23:08
SPEAKER_01: And the receptionist talks to my secretary, and I say, Oh my gosh, send him in.
23:11
SPEAKER_01: So he comes in.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: We chat about 45 minutes and he leaves.
23:16
SPEAKER_01: Six months later, same thing.
23:19
SPEAKER_01: So he comes in again.
23:20
SPEAKER_01: I said, Emerald, let me ask you something.
23:23
SPEAKER_01: You're not very popular in the Navy.
23:25
SPEAKER_01: We have to pass a bill every couple of years to keep you on active duty.
23:28
SPEAKER_01: He says, Oh, he says, you you understate my unpopularity.
23:31
SPEAKER_01: He says, uh, and they didn't really want nuclear subs.
23:36
SPEAKER_01: They were perfectly happy with diesel.
23:38
SPEAKER_01: How did you ever get them to come to where you are?
23:42
SPEAKER_01: He says, it's very easy.
23:45
SPEAKER_01: He says, whenever a committee is established to study a subject you're interested in, get on the committee.
23:51
SPEAKER_01: He says, That's not hard to do.
23:54
SPEAKER_01: Volunteer to take the minutes.
23:57
SPEAKER_01: He says, make the minutes long and obtuse and totally confusing.
24:03
SPEAKER_01: But on about page 16, put in a sentence or two about your project.
24:06
SPEAKER_01: At the next meeting, the chair will say, I move that the minutes be adopted as they've read.
24:12
SPEAKER_01: He said, At those minutes, expand your sentence or two to a paragraph.
24:17
SPEAKER_01: He said, You will discover that by the eighth meeting, they have adopted your project.
24:24
SPEAKER_01: And he says, No one, especially in the Navy, will admit they never read the minutes.
24:29
SPEAKER_01: So, and doing this tax reform, I'm sort of thinking of this.
24:33
SPEAKER_01: So we have the outline of this thing on a Tuesday.
24:40
SPEAKER_01: On Thursday, I called the Finance Committee together.
24:42
SPEAKER_01: This is the reason I'm Bob had almost no input on this because it was going so fast.
24:47
SPEAKER_01: And sort of laid out the outline of it.
24:51
SPEAKER_01: With the head of the Joint Tax Committee sort of explaining some of the details.
24:54
SPEAKER_01: And I was surprised.
24:56
SPEAKER_01: I said, this is not a markup, this isn't a hearing, just public, want you to hear what he's saying.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: And as the meeting broke up, most of them go, I think that's a pretty good idea.
25:06
SPEAKER_01: There may be something there.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: I thought that's interesting.
25:08
SPEAKER_01: So that's a Thursday.
25:11
SPEAKER_01: Following Tuesday, I started meeting in my office at 7.30 with staff.
25:16
SPEAKER_01: At 8.30, with Moynihan, Bradley, and Mitchell on the Democrat side, and with Wallop, Chafee, and Danforth on the Republican side, seven of us.
25:27
SPEAKER_01: But I'd already met with my staff at 7.30.
25:29
SPEAKER_01: I had my Admiral Rick over outline.
25:32
SPEAKER_01: I'd go over it with them and make sure they're on board.
25:36
SPEAKER_01: And then when you go to a committee meeting at 10 o'clock to really start considering some things or possibly voting on things, you've already got seven people out of the 20 with you, and they're somewhat informed.
25:48
SPEAKER_01: And so we start on Tuesday.
25:52
SPEAKER_01: And a few things pass that are sort of getting rid of some deductions.
25:57
SPEAKER_01: And we have a big chart up there as to what you what you have to do to get to the goal.
26:03
SPEAKER_01: There's a few lobbyists outside.
26:05
SPEAKER_01: We meet on Wednesday, and there's more lobbyists outside.
26:08
SPEAKER_01: By the time we get to Friday, it is packed.
26:12
SPEAKER_01: This is where the Gucci Loafer statement may have come in.
26:14
SPEAKER_01: They are outside.
26:15
SPEAKER_01: You can't get out to go to the bathroom without them stopping and stuffing a piece of paper in your pocket with an ID on it.
26:20
SPEAKER_01: Please take care of this.
26:21
SPEAKER_01: And it's packed, and it's hot.
26:24
SPEAKER_01: And it's May.
26:24
SPEAKER_01: And I've got a terrible primary election against a nut Baptist minister who is good looking, doesn't have any money, thank God, but he's good looking.
26:32
SPEAKER_01: And my campaign chairman wants me to get home.
26:34
SPEAKER_01: The primary's in May, and I'm still back here in early May trying to get this bill out.
26:38
SPEAKER_01: So on Friday afternoon, I go out and I announced to the lobby, the committee's done for the day.
26:43
SPEAKER_01: We're not going to meet this weekend.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: Cheers.
26:46
SPEAKER_01: They can go golf or they can go sale.
26:48
SPEAKER_01: I then went back inside and said to the committee, we're not going to have a formal committee meeting.
26:53
SPEAKER_01: But if any of you are interested in talking further about this, we'll meet here tomorrow, 9.30.
26:59
SPEAKER_01: All 20 members show up.
27:01
SPEAKER_01: Not a lobbyist in Halloween.
27:03
SPEAKER_01: And on Saturday and Sunday, we finished the outline of the bill.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: And was ready to go until the oil industry people, and Bob was one of them.
27:13
SPEAKER_01: And Russell Long and Lloyd Benson and David Bourne and and uh Max Boncas and one or two others had a little amendment for oil, oil and gas.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: And we had about$100 billion in loopholes that were closing.
27:28
SPEAKER_01: And their thing cost$750 million.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: And I thought they could they could possibly upset this whole thing if they're not with me.
27:36
SPEAKER_01: Or maybe I can beat them twelve days, but I so I gave it to them.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: And on Tuesday night about 1 30 in the morning, this bill passes 20 to nothing.
27:50
SPEAKER_01: And the committee had only seen it twelve days earlier in an outline form.
27:55
SPEAKER_01: And that's why I say Bob hardly had any input.
27:58
SPEAKER_01: There was, we were just we were a runaway train.
28:02
SPEAKER_01: And it it passed.
28:03
SPEAKER_02: But he he could have intervened if he had wanted to.
28:05
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: No, he was with me.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: There's no he liked what we were doing because we were getting all of a sudden very good press on what we were doing.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: And finally, on the weekend before the final vote, both the Washington Post and the New York Times editorialized in favor of it.
28:17
SPEAKER_01: So Bob loved what the Republicans are doing.
28:21
SPEAKER_01: But we but again we also did a 20 to nothing in committee.
28:25
SPEAKER_01: So was he supportive?
28:26
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
28:27
SPEAKER_01: Was he particularly involved in the day-to-day details?
28:30
SPEAKER_01: No.
28:31
SPEAKER_01: But I say it was going so fast.
28:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:33
SPEAKER_01: I've I use this on occasion to say Congress can really move on major things when it's ready and wants to.
28:41
SPEAKER_02: Let me ask you a couple things.
28:42
SPEAKER_02: Um presumably part of the leadership is uh is a kind of self-restraint and ability to look beyond past personal rivalries and the like.
28:52
SPEAKER_02: Um did that did that apply to Dole?
28:57
SPEAKER_02: I mean, did did Dole manage to get along with with everyone?
29:02
SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, it's hard for me to say because he got along with me.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: Uh uh I I actually adored the guy.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: And and we got along sensationally.
29:10
SPEAKER_01: And when I was chairman of the Commerce Committee, and he was chairman of finance, and there'd be conflicts and schedules, and I'd say, Bob, I can you know I can't be at finance.
29:18
SPEAKER_01: I I've got a commerce markup, but I've got to be at it.
29:21
SPEAKER_01: Would you do me a favor and put off till tomorrow this issue because it's big we'd do things like that for you?
29:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
29:27
SPEAKER_01: So but I got along with him fine.
29:29
SPEAKER_02: But in terms of as a leader, when he was in the leader's job, um presumably everyone doesn't get along with everyone, but but that never that didn't impair his uh his effectiveness.
29:43
SPEAKER_01: Uh no, I think I you know I think his comments on Dennis were like, when are the real Republicans coming?
29:47
SPEAKER_01: That was a snap comment on some hot issue.
29:49
SPEAKER_01: I don't found that he carried grudges, but more importantly, it was Russell Long's philosophy, you know, no permanent friends, no permanent enemies, just temporary alliances.
29:58
SPEAKER_01: And don't irritate the guy that wasn't with you last week, you're gonna need him next week.
30:03
SPEAKER_02: Again, maybe speculative, there is this again, there was this kind of pop culture notion that, you know, the dole had evolved, the dole had become and that that somehow the marriage to Elizabeth was a significant factor.
30:15
SPEAKER_02: That, you know, she had softened Bob and all this.
30:19
SPEAKER_02: Aaron Ross Powell, Jr.
30:19
SPEAKER_01: I that no, that I don't know.
30:21
SPEAKER_01: Although I knew her I knew her before she was married to Bob, and almost before I think she maybe even knew him.
30:27
SPEAKER_01: Um that I I couldn't comment on.
30:30
SPEAKER_01: I have no idea.
30:31
SPEAKER_01: I think, if anything, that Millism, it's the fact that you're a leader, and at the same time you're impatient, you also realize somehow I am the leader.
30:40
SPEAKER_01: And somehow I've got to move this cat along, and that's gonna require some compromises I don't like.
30:46
SPEAKER_01: Uh which makes it impossible on occasion for you to have this long-term strategy.
30:51
SPEAKER_01: It just you can't.
30:52
SPEAKER_01: It's not it's not your fault.
30:54
SPEAKER_01: It's just you're in a different position.
30:55
SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
30:55
SPEAKER_02: But he's also an interesting conservative who who didn't see government as necessarily automatically the enemy, and who in fact wanted to make it work.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
31:06
SPEAKER_02: Which put him at odds with this emerging generation of almost nihilists.
31:12
SPEAKER_01: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
31:12
SPEAKER_01: That government doesn't work and shouldn't work and shouldn't have.
31:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
31:15
SPEAKER_01: I agree.
31:16
SPEAKER_01: But that was coming along later in both of his and my career.
31:19
SPEAKER_01: That's a generation 20 years younger than we are, in his case, 30 years younger than he is.
31:23
SPEAKER_02: Does that get back to what we were talking about at the beginning, the generational as much as anything else?
31:27
SPEAKER_01: Let me stop a minute.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: Just want to check my office to see if the phone call is coming in that I'm hoping to get.
31:33
SPEAKER_01: What time is it now?
31:35
SPEAKER_02: Uh 1140, and we're almost done.
31:49
SPEAKER_02: Vice President running.
31:51
SPEAKER_02: Were were you were you squeezed?
31:53
SPEAKER_01: No.
31:54
SPEAKER_01: I wasn't at all.
31:55
SPEAKER_01: No.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: No, I was clearly in Bob's corner.
31:59
SPEAKER_01: And that that again, I didn't dislike George Bush, and I got along fine with George Bush.
32:05
SPEAKER_01: But that's blood is thicker than water, and and I liked Bob and knew he's a good leader, and that was no problem for me.
32:10
SPEAKER_02: Let me ask you a question, kind of a perennial.
32:13
SPEAKER_02: Why is it that people are so reluctant to elect members of Congress to the presidency?
32:18
SPEAKER_02: What what are the factors that that militate?
32:22
SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's been it's been argued, for example, that first of all, you learn a different kind of persuasive skills that aren't the same called for and trying to move the country.
32:32
SPEAKER_02: Secondly, that there's that there's a lingo, there's a language that you speak that that sort of inside the beltway.
32:39
SPEAKER_02: Well, and but I mean the the minutia of of the legislative process that you kind of slip into that outside the beltway sounds like a foreign language.
32:48
SPEAKER_01: Well, you've also got, if you've been in Congress any length of time, a long voting record.
32:53
SPEAKER_01: And anybody that's got a long voting record is gonna have eight or ten things at a minimum that an opponent can take a shot at if they have not had to vote on the same things.
33:01
SPEAKER_01: That's uh that that is one reason.
33:03
SPEAKER_01: Secondly, uh, unless you're going to uh abandon your your duties, and some of the senators are, you you've got a job to attend to while you're running for president that a Mitt Romney doesn't have to worry about, that a Giuliani doesn't have to worry about.
33:18
SPEAKER_01: Uh even a governor, by and large, has a little more control over his own schedule in terms of running.
33:25
SPEAKER_02: Do you think there is a fundamental difference, though, between the legislative skill set, say, and a and a gubernatorial executive who come to the Senate who are not very happy there.
33:37
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
33:38
SPEAKER_01: There's it's an in it first, you know, a governor is the titular head of the state.
33:44
SPEAKER_01: A senator is not the titular head of anything.
33:48
SPEAKER_01: And the governor has two functions.
33:49
SPEAKER_01: One, like a president, he's supposed to inspire a state, or two, he's gotta he's gotta run a government.
33:55
SPEAKER_01: And it's a different skill than managing an office with 25 employees or 30 employees that you've got.
34:02
SPEAKER_01: And uh that's the sum total of your staff.
34:05
SPEAKER_01: It's just and you it really is not a management job in any circumstances.
34:09
SPEAKER_01: There's a little bit of coalition building, but that isn't management.
34:15
SPEAKER_02: How important were staff to Do?
34:17
SPEAKER_01: Oh, Sheila.
34:19
SPEAKER_01: Sensational.
34:20
SPEAKER_01: God, she was a good staffer.
34:22
SPEAKER_02: And what made her good?
34:24
SPEAKER_01: One, she had Bob's confidence.
34:25
SPEAKER_01: Two, she's extremely bright.
34:27
SPEAKER_01: Three, he would listen to her.
34:29
SPEAKER_01: Uh Rod DeArmett was another.
34:31
SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, he had good staff and he would listen to his staff.
34:35
SPEAKER_01: Um, Sheila could speak for him.
34:38
SPEAKER_02: It's interesting that that he was comfortable being in many ways surrounded by strong women.
34:45
SPEAKER_02: I mean, Joanne Coe was certainly that.
34:48
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: No, he and I shared uh almost all of my significant people from about 1974 or 5 on were women, my chiefs of staff and press secretaries and legislative directors.
35:00
SPEAKER_01: I I don't know, Bob, what what I discovered.
35:04
SPEAKER_01: There were often women who wanted to prove themselves and they would work harder than men, uh just to prove that they're as as good as a man.
35:13
SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
35:13
SPEAKER_02: Do you think that's a generational thing?
35:15
SPEAKER_02: Do you think we've in some ways moved beyond that or are moving beyond it?
35:19
SPEAKER_01: I think we have because when Bob and I started, what what when I graduated from law school and after clerking a year went to a law firm in Portland, no law firm had ever hired a woman.
35:29
SPEAKER_01: I mean major law firm.
35:32
SPEAKER_01: Finally, one hired a woman and relegated her duties to probate for widows and uncontested divorces for women.
35:40
SPEAKER_01: And that's and you know that the opportunities were slender.
35:46
SPEAKER_01: So if a woman in that era was given an opportunity, she really wanted to perform.
35:53
SPEAKER_01: You know, now they're lawyers and they're doctors and they're heads of universities, and they have options that they didn't have then.
35:58
SPEAKER_02: You we talked earlier about the the the relative well, the gradual disappearance of of the Liberal Republican.
36:06
SPEAKER_02: And all that is reflected in this shift, this this tidal shift in terms of the the party's center of gravity.
36:15
SPEAKER_02: You experienced it yourself in Oregon.
36:17
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
36:18
SPEAKER_02: Um how did it feel to be part of this shrinking caucus?
36:23
SPEAKER_02: And and how did Dole deal with with that?
36:27
SPEAKER_01: What uh even it hadn't even shrunk that far.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it it's almost gone now.
36:31
SPEAKER_01: You've got no more the two women from Maine and Arlen Specter, and if there's one more and Lincoln Chafee was one, uh you hardly have anybody left.
36:39
SPEAKER_01: But even in my last term, there were at least enough of us that we could be a factor.
36:46
SPEAKER_01: That that if if we were really badly treated and wanted to bad together, we could probably join with the Democrats and kill something or or support them on a on uh breaking a filibuster.
36:56
SPEAKER_01: So it it it's it simply has gotten now where it's uh the they're almost insignificant.
37:04
SPEAKER_01: But but that part of the difference came and it's this a lack of civility that now exists on both sides.
37:11
SPEAKER_01: And most of this I blame on Newt.
37:15
SPEAKER_01: Because from the time he took over after Bob Michael left, and he would have beaten Bob Michael, I think.
37:22
SPEAKER_01: Uh Newt was basically saying, Gang, we're not getting any place, be nice guys.
37:28
SPEAKER_01: You know, they're in control, and they get three things and you get one, and they get three things and you get one.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: I said, and we're never gonna be in the majority.
37:36
SPEAKER_01: We gotta hit them, we gotta attack them, we gotta have a program and we gotta bring them down.
37:40
SPEAKER_01: And they bring Jim Wright down.
37:42
SPEAKER_01: And then the Democrats say, Well, by God, if that's West played, we're gonna bring Newt down.
37:47
SPEAKER_01: And it became hardball in the House.
37:50
SPEAKER_01: About a third of those uh are now senators, about a third of the Senate came from that Republican and Democrat came from that milieu.
37:58
SPEAKER_01: And it has hardened the lines, and the civility is infinitely less than it was now, and part of this is they don't have drinks at five o'clock and they don't have parties with each other on Saturdays.
38:10
SPEAKER_02: You let the Senate when?
38:13
SPEAKER_02: So um by by which time Dole was clearly gearing up to run.
38:22
SPEAKER_02: Um a couple of things.
38:24
SPEAKER_02: Were were you surprised when he made the decision to leave?
38:26
SPEAKER_01: Yes, I was.
38:27
SPEAKER_01: I I thought um at his stage, uh he could have taken as much time off as he wanted, and nobody would have objected.
38:35
SPEAKER_01: I was surprised when he left.
38:40
SPEAKER_02: You so you also were there for the government shutdown.
38:43
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yes.
38:44
SPEAKER_01: Oh God, yes.
38:46
SPEAKER_02: What was that like?
38:47
SPEAKER_01: Well, I could I was one of those I could see it coming.
38:49
SPEAKER_01: I I was opposed to it.
38:50
SPEAKER_01: I could say, you know, you think you're gonna get a shutdown and the government you're gonna have all these news stories about outrageous things that have finally been stopped, and said, and I almost predicted it.
39:02
SPEAKER_01: What you're gonna have is some family that wanted to see the Washington Monument that's been planning for this trip for a year with their two kids.
39:08
SPEAKER_01: That's almost the story that came out.
39:10
SPEAKER_01: But you could see it coming.
39:12
SPEAKER_01: It was so simple.
39:13
SPEAKER_01: God did we get killed on that.
39:15
SPEAKER_01: Why couldn't Gingrich see it?
39:17
SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
39:18
SPEAKER_02: Was he so wrapped up in in the philosophical ideal.
39:23
SPEAKER_01: I know.
39:23
SPEAKER_01: To me, it was so simple.
39:24
SPEAKER_01: I mean it's I guess it's simple because I'm thinking this is the this is if this were to happen, this is the way I would play it from the other side.
39:30
SPEAKER_01: And it must have driven Dole up the wall.
39:32
SPEAKER_01: The shutdown.
39:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:33
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I would think so.
39:34
SPEAKER_01: It was such bad politics.
39:37
SPEAKER_01: But he had no idea.
39:38
SPEAKER_01: And secondly, you can you can picture what the press is gonna pick on in something like that.
39:45
SPEAKER_01: It's the poor fellow with his family.
39:48
SPEAKER_02: You mentioned your troubles.
39:51
SPEAKER_01: What was Dole's relationship, I mean, to you during during that period?
39:57
SPEAKER_01: I mean, he absolutely stuck with me right to the very end when I finally was thinking of resigning, initially thinking of it.
40:05
SPEAKER_01: He counseled me against it.
40:07
SPEAKER_01: I I finally did resign.
40:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, oh yeah.
40:09
SPEAKER_02: And and how I mean, did he he came to you and tried to talk you out of it?
40:13
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'd I I would talk with Bob Dove, the parliamentarian, the guy that Bob relied upon then is for parliamentary stuff.
40:19
SPEAKER_01: And I talked with Sheila about it and kind of re- there was I was thinking about.
40:25
SPEAKER_01: And uh I think Sheila said to me one time, uh, the leader wants to talk to you, and I went over and talked to him about it.
40:30
SPEAKER_01: And he said, Yeah, don't mommy says, Don't do that yet.
40:33
SPEAKER_01: He said, uh come a time when you may want to, but but he said, uh what what do you need from me?
40:38
SPEAKER_01: What I he did there's nothing he wouldn't have done.
40:40
SPEAKER_01: There wasn't much he could do, but there was nothing he wouldn't have done that was in his power to help me.
40:47
SPEAKER_01: Even even if if necessary, would have uh helped me raise money for a legal defense fund.
40:52
SPEAKER_02: Really?
40:53
SPEAKER_02: That's friendship.
40:55
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
40:55
SPEAKER_01: That's correct.
40:57
SPEAKER_02: Have you had much relationship with him in the years since uh you left the Senate?
41:01
SPEAKER_01: About once a year at some function.
41:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
41:05
SPEAKER_02: One last big question, and then I want you going.
41:11
SPEAKER_02: People don't know how the Senate works.
41:14
SPEAKER_02: I mean, people don't know how Congress works.
41:16
SPEAKER_02: And I'm I'm trying to get a sense of behind closed doors, um, is it a kind of sixth sense that a successful leader has in knowing just when to push something, to bring people together, to detect the makings of a deal?
41:35
SPEAKER_02: What what are the qualities?
41:36
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we've all read about Lyndon Johnson and his legendary, you know, mastery of the Senate, which suggests it's a psychological gift as much as anything else.
41:47
SPEAKER_02: Um what what was it in Dole's case that that made him?
41:52
SPEAKER_02: You're you're born with it.
41:54
SPEAKER_01: I mean, first you you've got to you have to be you have to be sufficiently immersed in the business that you understand when there's an opportunity for something like this.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: And an amateur couldn't do it until they've been at it uh for a while.
42:08
SPEAKER_01: But once you're in it, you can intuitively I'll give you an example.
42:13
SPEAKER_01: Twice I was chairman of the senatorial campaign committee, and I would go around the country and I'd meet with people who are thinking of running for the Senate, and I'd say, you know, let me let me see your structure and talk with a couple of your people, and they'd all have the pyramid, and here's the chairman, and here's the press secretary, and it has all laid out.
42:30
SPEAKER_01: And I could tell in fifteen or twenty minutes whether they understood what they were doing or not.
42:35
SPEAKER_01: Didn't because I'd been at it so long.
42:37
SPEAKER_01: Anybody in politics understands the inside on the things they're working on, but it's an intuitive sense of when is the iron hot.
42:48
SPEAKER_01: And you can't teach it.
42:51
SPEAKER_01: And Bob by and large had it.
42:54
SPEAKER_01: That's it.
42:54
SPEAKER_01: The thing he lacked, but it's not his fault, is long-term strategy because the job doesn't lend itself to that.
43:01
SPEAKER_01: Because almost everybody that is badgering him is thinking about today and the vote tomorrow and my issue.
43:09
SPEAKER_02: And is there also another element, I mean, just in terms of knowing, maybe through long exposure and or intuition, um what it will take to persuade that particular senator in that particular circumstance?
43:26
SPEAKER_02: Is it a knowledge, a kind of really intimate knowledge of your colleagues, or is that a lesser factor?
43:32
SPEAKER_02: I mean, Johnson really has.
43:34
SPEAKER_01: It is a factor.
43:37
SPEAKER_01: But what you might know in terms of trying to put together a coalition is I think I can get Jim Abner if I was willing to give in this thing on the farm bill.
43:53
SPEAKER_01: It's unrelated to what you're trying to put together now.
43:55
SPEAKER_01: But you know that that's very important to Jim Abner.
43:59
SPEAKER_01: And and it's a little thing, but it's important to him, and he'll give you this big thing in exchange for it.
44:05
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
44:06
SPEAKER_01: Uh maybe Lyndon Johnson may have been the best in the world in understanding that.
44:10
SPEAKER_01: But after a while, you know that certain people are interested in in certain things.
44:15
SPEAKER_01: Their record shows it, their speeches show it.
44:17
SPEAKER_01: If you've got good staff, your staff knows it.
44:22
SPEAKER_02: How do you think Bob Dole should be remembered?
44:37
SPEAKER_02: Lyndon Johnson was famously called a master of the Senate was the only master of the Senate.
44:49
SPEAKER_01: An an example of what Lyndon Johnson could put together in in his passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act.
45:04
SPEAKER_01: He had to get a he had to do some compromising, and the liberals, led by Wayne Morrison, Dick Newberger, and some others in the North, did not want the compromise he had, but they day very desperately wanted a bill passed to build a very high federal dam in a place called Hills Canyon on the Snake River between Oregon, Idaho.
45:23
SPEAKER_01: The Southerners hated this concept of this dam.
45:28
SPEAKER_01: But somehow, Lyndon talked the senators into voting for the dam in exchange for these liberals agreeing to a tempered-down civil rights bill, Lyndon knowing full well that the House would reject the dam when it got there.
45:43
SPEAKER_01: That yes.
45:47
SPEAKER_01: Cairo's book is full of that.
45:49
SPEAKER_01: I never saw any leader that had that kind of a capacity.
45:54
SPEAKER_01: That he just he just knew where the opportunity was.
45:59
SPEAKER_01: That that's and he was operating in my mind in a much more difficult circumstance than leaders now.
46:06
SPEAKER_01: He was operating when committee chairmen were inviolate.
46:09
SPEAKER_01: When you just didn't cross committee chairman, so you had to be extraordinarily devious and far-sighted and clever because you didn't have the powers that are now devolving upon the leadership.
46:21
SPEAKER_02: So that was it's a it's a unique to limiting Johnson's personality, temperament.
46:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
46:27
SPEAKER_02: I mean his could it happen again?
46:28
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you if it's it's it can always happen again, especially as you're giving the leader more powers, I say.
46:34
SPEAKER_01: Early on, when Johnson becomes leader, and the Democrats have got increased their numbers tremendously, in 58, as I recall, and he's trying to give the freshman, each freshman a significant part on a significant committee.
46:48
SPEAKER_01: And if the Senate's following strict seniority, so he's got to talk to every senior senator and say, what about if you were to switch to this committee?
46:55
SPEAKER_01: He's got to keep all these pieces moving because he doesn't have any authority to like the leader does today to put two people on the finance committee.
47:02
SPEAKER_01: So he's got to persuade, cajole, beg, berate, threaten to get all this done.
47:11
SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
47:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you you've read Cairo's books?
47:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:17
SPEAKER_01: The first two I find interesting, just getting up to, but his the the one on the Senate is incredible.
47:23
SPEAKER_01: Looking forward to the one on the presidency, but the one on the Senate was amazing.
47:27
SPEAKER_01: I mean, even at at the very end, when he's vice president, so he's now in theory president of the Senate, and he attempts to get the senators to vote for him still as the leader while he's vice president.
47:40
SPEAKER_01: And powerful as he was, the Senate's saying, Lyndon, you're not here anymore.
47:44
SPEAKER_01: This is our club.
47:46
SPEAKER_02: Is it less of a club now?
47:48
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yes.
47:49
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
47:50
SPEAKER_01: Uh I say part of it's just jet travel, and you can get places and you're not there all the time.
47:56
SPEAKER_01: But part of it, and it you know, in those days you had three networks.
48:00
SPEAKER_01: That was it.
48:02
SPEAKER_01: Uh part of it is the tremendous press everybody can get, and everybody tries to get, and you've got to work at getting press.
48:08
SPEAKER_01: And the insiders who work hard hate the show horses who don't work hard.
48:17
SPEAKER_02: Another another division, line of demarcation.
48:22
SPEAKER_01: You look, every now and then either the Hill or Roll Call puts out who've been on the Sunday morning talk shows.
48:28
SPEAKER_01: It isn't it isn't very often that it's a real insider that is a factor.
48:35
SPEAKER_01: You know, it has to irritate the House members in a win that obscure senators can get on when powerful House members who really are a factor cannot get on.
48:45
SPEAKER_01: Well, how much of a rivalry is there between the houses?
48:48
SPEAKER_01: Well, there's there's great rivalry because and the House often can out with the Senate in this sense.
48:54
SPEAKER_01: They're more specialized.
48:57
SPEAKER_01: You know, the senators are trying to cover as many committees as the House is covering.
49:01
SPEAKER_01: They serve on at least two committees, sometimes three, that's a select committee of one kind.
49:06
SPEAKER_01: You cannot do that as well as a House member who has the Ways and Means Committee, one principal committee.
49:13
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you're a genius and work hard at it, you can stay even with them.
49:18
SPEAKER_01: But they they can so often just are more knowledgeable of just of necessity.
49:25
SPEAKER_01: They're not any smarter, just they're more knowledgeable in that area.
49:30
SPEAKER_01: Is liberal republicanism dead or could it revise?
49:33
SPEAKER_01: Oh no, it's bound to revive because if we keep going the way we're going and end up losing 55 percent of the women and 70 percent of the Hispanics and 90 percent of the blacks, and uh and 52 percent of those under 30, we can't uh we can't last very long.
49:52
SPEAKER_01: It uh the nice thing about democracy, unless a party shoots itself in the foot like the wigs and just disappears, is that finally a party gets tired of getting beaten and they change.
50:06
SPEAKER_01: The classic example in this in English politics is Disraeli and the English reform, the Second Reform Act, where the Liberals have got a bill, but Disraeli and the Conservatives not only have a bill, they leapprog them in terms of the Irish nationalist and go for a reform bill that the Liberals cannot buy.
50:27
SPEAKER_01: And they win, and the description of Robert Blake's he gets the conservatives to vote for things they would never vote for because of the thrill of beating the liberals.