Latest / BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback / Episode 448 BOB DOLE The Life That Brought Him There (Part 29) Feeding Children All Around the World with Senator George McGovern

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Episode 448 BOB DOLE The Life That Brought Him There (Part 29) Feeding Children All Around the World with Senator George McGovern · BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

• 0:25
  SPEAKER_14: The only good thing that the or the better thing about the farm bill is that we now include all the nutrition programs because we're having trouble passing the farm bill in thinking the 70s.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_14: So we married it up with food stamps and wick and school lunch, and that way we get the city people to vote for it and the farm people to vote for it.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_14: So uh but there used to be the American Farm Bureau Federation was you know pretty much against subsidies, except maybe what they call uh a loan program where you could borrow have some money and if the price went up, you could still make a profit.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_06: Many, particularly young girls, do not stay in school, and those who do often lack the energy needed to learn.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_06: Their minds cannot be filled with knowledge until their stomachs are filled with nutritious food.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_06: A mutual desire to feed the world's hungry children led two distinguished United States senators, George McGovern and Robert Dole, to head a collaborative effort to encourage school feeding programs and enhance nutrition and school attendance.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_06: The commitment of Senators McGovern and Dole to combat hunger can be traced to their collective experiences in World War II, in which both men were profoundly impacted by the sight of children starving in the streets.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_03: I think what brought Bob Dole and I together was that we had a common interest in the problems of hungry people.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_03: Now, maybe we got that in Italy, watching the hunger that existed then in war-torn Italy.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_06: In addition to shared military service, the lives and careers of George McGovern and Bob Dole have followed similar paths that saw them rise from humble Midwest beginnings to war heroes to the pinnacle of political success.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_06: George McGovern was born in 1922 in a small town in South Dakota.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_06: A shy child who was often too embarrassed to speak, he found his voice at Dakota Wesleyan University.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_06: Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, McGovern left school to enlist in the United States Army, where he was trained as a pilot and flew 35 missions during the war.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_06: He returned to Dakota Wesleyan, graduated in 1946, and later earned a PhD from Northwestern University.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_06: He then set his sights on politics and was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1956 and to the Senate in 1962, where he served three consecutive terms and earned positions on key Senate committees.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_06: President John F.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_06: Kennedy appointed McGovern as the first director of the U.S.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_06: Food for Peace program in 1961.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_06: McGovern earned the Democratic nomination for president in 1972, but was defeated in the general election.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_06: Continuing his commitment to public service, he then embarked on a new career as a statesman, activist, and professor, and was appointed U.S.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_06: Ambassador to the U.N.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_06: Food and Agricultural Agencies in Rome.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_06: Born in 1923 on the plains of Kansas, Dole enlisted in the U.S.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_06: Army at the age of 19.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_06: Fighting in World War II, he was severely injured by gunfire and was not expected to survive.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_06: During his long and painful recovery, he decided to pursue a career in law.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_06: While still in law school, Dole ran successfully for state legislature and was soon thereafter elected Russell County Attorney.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_06: In 1961, he was elected to the U.S.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_06: Congress, where he served four terms.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_06: In 1966, as Norman Borlaug was confronting India's food crisis, a young Representative Dole was deeply impacted by a congressional trip to see the situation firsthand.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_06: Dole was elected to the Senate in 1968 and was soon appointed chairman of the Republican National Committee.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_06: His Senate colleagues elected him Senate Majority Leader in 1984.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_06: The 12 years he spent as leader of the Republicans made him the longest serving leader in the party's history.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_14: They benefit and uh they have a better quality of life.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_06: Building on their accomplishments in reforming U.S.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_06: food and poverty assistance programs, Senators McGovern and Doe began working in the 1990s toward reviving and strengthening school feeding, nutrition, and education programs throughout Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Eastern Europe, with the ambitious goal of providing a nutritious lunch every day for every hungry child in the world.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_06: With the support of President Bill Clinton, a pilot program was funded in 2000 through the U.S.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_06: Department of Agriculture, which initially provided nutritious meals for children in 38 countries.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_06: Congress then passed legislation to establish a permanent international school feeding program.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_06: And in 2002, President George W.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_06: Bush signed the George McGovern-Robert Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program into law.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_06: Since its inception, the McGovern Dole program has provided meals to 22 million children in over 40 different countries.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_06: In addition to improving nutrition levels and general health, the program has boosted school attendance by an estimated 14% overall and by 17% for girls.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_06: Children who receive school meals show improved concentration, cognition, and academic performance.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_06: Additional benefits of school feeding programs include increased local employment, lower birth rates, and the reduced transmission of HIV and AIDS.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_06: The McGovern Dole program also reignited global commitments to school feeding.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_06: More countries began participating as donors for school feeding programs, and school feeding has since been championed by the UN, the G8, and other international development groups as one of the key components of alleviating hunger and poverty worldwide.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_06: In addition to cash donations, thousands of tons of food commodities have been distributed to participant countries under the auspices of the McGovern Dole Program.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_06: The increased support given to the UN World Food Program's School Feeding Initiative, the largest of its kind, allowed it to double its operations between 2000 and 2005.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_06: By 2006, the WFP's efforts were reaching more than 20 million children in 74 countries.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_06: 11 million of these children are in Africa, and over 50% are girls.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_06: The benefits of school feeding are especially powerful for girls and young women in overcoming gender inequalities in literacy and education.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_06: Through collaborative leadership that has encouraged a global commitment to school feeding, Senators McGovern and Dole have enhanced school attendance and nutrition for millions of the world's poorest children.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_06: As they continue to strive towards their goal of providing a nutritious school lunch every day for every child in the world, it is most fitting that George McGovern and Robert Dole be recognized as the 2008 World Food Prize laureates.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_08: This one is looking back at Bob Dole and George McGovern's work in detrition programs.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_08: And I'm gonna tell you, nothing we're gonna get into it in 1996, but nothing ever made me as mad as listening to Bill Clinton and Al Gore go after Bob Dole for what they claimed was him gunning the school lunch program and food stamps and these nutrition programs in the name of the damn bill was the McGovern Dollar International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_08: And he had been active in every bit of those uh education and child nutrition programs since the 1960s.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_08: And just you know, when you talk about partisan politics, uh that one hurt me to no end because it was untruthfully a distortion uh, you know, of that when you look at who Mondo really was.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_08: I don't think there's a handful of people who realize that program.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: I want to congratulate Gabby and Pat for the great work they've done, and I keep pretty close tabs on food programs and farm programs.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: They've been together bipartisanship demonstrated in almost every case as sort of carrying on the George McGovern tradition, and as a result they got we had a lot of bipartisanship in the Senate when George and I were there, and I joined him because I we had a lot of things in common when it came to hunger.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: So we got acquainted, you know, two veterans, two partisans we both ran and lost for president.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: I remember when we were both at the White House in the Oval Office one day, and I can't remember who said it first, but either me or yours at all.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: This is what it looked like.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_03: There was never one word of partisanship, not a hand in the ten-year history of that committee on nutrition and human needs.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_03: So uh we had some heal the water sessions to go through, but we did that.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_03: And we found that one place where we agreed was that nobody wanna be hungry in this country, especially children.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_05: You two became an amazing team on food stamps and school lunch and wick.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well there are all kinds of cases where children aren't fed.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_05: I guess you would support expansion of the school breakfast program.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, that's I don't say more important, but just as important as lunch.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: You get out of bed, you take a shower, whatever, go to school while half awake, and something need or crap you up.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_05: Are we ever gonna get to that place where hunger's eliminated in the United States?
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_02: I think we need to have more focus on how widespread hunger is.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I've been at it for 95.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_05: Well, hopefully Frack can solve this problem by the time it's 95.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_05: I don't know.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I hope I'm here when they saw a button and sleeve it that way.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_10: Far more an institution man than he was when he started.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_10: Um he was uh he the perception of Democrats of Bob Dole has changed dramatically in in the last uh 40 years.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_10: Um when he came to the Senate, he was viewed as a firebrand, he was viewed as a hardcore partisan, he was the chairman of his party, and uh and even up to including that time when he ran as the vice president, he was kind of viewed as as the attack dog.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_10: And um but then something happened, and um even though he was viewed in that way, and in my view, rightfully so, oftentimes, he um he became much more Bob Dole, the pragmatist, the deal maker, the the the person comfortable in working with George McGovern on child nutrition and uh with Tom Harkin on on the Americans with Disabilities Act.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_10: I mean, monumental pieces of legislation that could have never occurred were it not for the fact that uh somebody with his Republican credentials could come together with someone with equally as strong Democratic credentials and fashion this remarkable compromise legislatively.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_10: And I think he got so much fulfillment from those accomplishments that it probably led him to understand that if these were good things, that there's a lot more that could be done in that regard.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_10: And so by the time he and I developed our relationship, he had well understood and acquired that feeling.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_10: And so I was the beneficiary of that evolution, and I I uh I think it's true today.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_10: I've heard actually heard him say in uh in um speeches around the country that uh uh some of his proudest accomplishments were ones where he worked across the aisle with others uh who were not of his philosophy or of his his political uh persuasion.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_10: So um but I think that's really uh that happened in the you know about halfway or two-thirds of the way through his career, and now he's viewed by virtually every Democrat as a pragmatic, moderate who um people would jump at the chance to work with at almost anything he wanted to do.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_10: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_04: And ironically, for that very reason, is pillaried by many in his own party.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_04: Particularly on the right.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_10: Exactly.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_04: For whom consensus is a dirty word, and compromise is equated with surrender.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_07: Exactly.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_07: Um you kind of mentioned your differences on farm policy with Dole.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_07: Just broadly speaking, um, sort of how was your approach to farm policy different from his?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_07: And did it have anything to do with Iowa versus Kansas or not?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_12: No, I don't think so.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_12: It didn't have much to do with Iowa versus Kansas.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_12: Uh I think it uh just had more to do with the philosophy of of uh farm policy at that time.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_12: Um I had something called the Harkin Gephardt Farm Bill, which would have uh perhaps been more government intervention, more of government into the marketplace, substituting higher loan rates, target prices, uh set asides of land and stuff like that for controlling the supply.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_12: Uh I think Senator Gole was more of a free market person.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_12: Um and uh probably thought that uh the minimalist approach of government in those things was probably better.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_12: There was a legitimate policy difference.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_12: Um and usually, as so often happens, the truth is probably somewhere in between both of those positions.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_07: How did subsidies play into that?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_07: Did you agree on on the well, you know, dole was very good on on farm policy, quite frankly.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_12: And as I look back compared to what we're facing now, uh I would have been closer to Dole than I am to the opposite side today, quite frankly.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_12: Uh I think that uh the Dole McGovern food bill, for example, uh Dole was always very good on nutrition program.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_12: Dole was always there on nutrition, strongly.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_12: Um and he was there.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_12: I mean, I looked back and I think, what were we fighting about?
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_12: I mean and perhaps this is also a temper that tells the time.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_12: Back in those days, we had these fights on farm policy over the edges.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_12: On the main thing in the middle, we agreed on.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_12: It was always sort of on the edges we were battling.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_12: Today it's sort of on the fundamental premises of what we do in agriculture that we're fighting over.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_12: Uh so I look back and I think I didn't realize Bill and I agreed on so many things.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_12: It's interesting uh with that historic look back on that.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_11: Working with all of us on farm issues.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_11: We're all from the farm block.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_11: We all had farmers, we had rural issues, we had uh we had things we we could work on together.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_11: Our voters expected us to work on it together.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_11: Each state has two senators, and each of us are important.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_11: And then uh Bomb Bom Dole did more than that.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_11: He helped shape the food stamp program, the school lunch and school breakfast programs, and he went beyond the traditional farm state senator, adding a conservative voice to the use of food to help some real social problems in America.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_11: And he really helped give it legitimacy and gave us the oomph to pass it.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_13: I was on the agriculture committee with him, and so I saw him more on a day-to-day basis there.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_13: But because of that committee's jurisdiction over nutrition and uh the food stamp program and other um uh uh food and nutrition assistance programs, uh he is well known with George McGovern.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_13: They would work closely together together and uh make sure that our committee would report out legislation on those subjects.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_13: He expanded some of our feeding programs worldwide, too.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_13: This was another initiative that he had.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_13: And of course, people say, well, he's doing that to help the farmers.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_13: You know, Kansas is a farm state.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_13: The more wheat you can grow and sell and make into foodstuffs, uh, the better off those farmers are going to be.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_13: How the government buy their products and and ship them overseas.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_13: So that you know, the so-called Food for Peace programs, these programs always had a strong leader in Bob Dowell.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_13: And he he cared about it deeply, not just because he was from the farm state.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_13: But uh I think he really was a very sympathetic person for for those who were who were not well nourished, who were having a hard time staying alive.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_13: Uh he wanted to be helpful.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_13: He thought uh our country was strong enough, wealthy enough, we ought to be able to make a difference, and we did, and it was through the legislation in many cases that he had helped write or wrote himself and uh got passed in the Senate and worked with the House to get it enacted into law.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_13: I think that's called a win-win situation.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_09: Involved in nutrition programs.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_09: Somebody mentioned that earlier today.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_09: I remember working with Senator McGovern.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_04: Because that really does encapsulate all of this, and it still surprises people that uh who don't know that the the two of them are are such close friends.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_10: Well, Bob, of course, was the chair of uh of of the party when George McGovern ran for office, and so they were uh when I should say when he ran for president, and uh so they couldn't have been more diametrically uh opposed politically and ideologically and style and everything.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_10: I mean, uh so it was it was really uh uh a classic political case of strange bedfellows, but they both served on the agriculture committee, and they both uh I think over time realized that the only way they're gonna get something done, because by then we had seen the diminution of democratic strength within the within the ranks of the Senate.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_10: And so there was a requirement that they start working, that we find these odd relationships, and from time to time they they start to develop.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_10: And I think it was just it started with agriculture, and it started with this belief that not only could they work out wheat agreements together, maybe they could actually work out nutrition agreements together.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_10: And and I I uh to this day I can't tell you who was more the force of of uh of the effort.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_10: I mean, they both care so passionately about this.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_10: But over time, because they worked so closely together, they developed this friendship, and uh the friendship led to a relationship that to this day is uh one that George McGovern holds to be one of the most special in his life.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_10: Uh I was just uh fortunate enough to attend the dedication of the McGovern Library in South Dakota, and uh uh Bob Dole was there, and uh and I was uh uh I was surprised at the at the depth of public affection they showed towards each other.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_10: And uh it was really kind of an emotional experience to see it and to uh understand how these two old political warriors are now the closest of friends and care deeply.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_10: I ever almost every time I see Bob now, one of his first questions is, uh, how's George doing now that Eleanor died?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_10: And so Eleanor George McGovern's wife.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_10: So um they they uh they found a moment that transcended politics and ideology, and that uh has created a friendship that lasts uh and is very deep to this day.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_04: And it's of course ironic that um one person with whom he worked very close on that was George McGovern, who he had been you know beating up on as R and C chairman in 72.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_11: Yeah, they're friends.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_11: Um uh Bob Dole and Humphrey used to go down to Miami, Florida.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_11: They had a friend, Duane Andrews, and sometimes they'd get down there around Christmas and they have a good time, their families would be there.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_11: No, they were they were good friends, but you'd you see them on the campaign trail, listen to their speeches, you wouldn't believe it.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_11: But it was possible to compartmentalize.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_11: Yeah, and that's that's what I remember about those days.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_11: Um the I think it was Tip O'Neill said, Politics ends at six o'clock.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_11: Uh people would go off that floor.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_11: Uh I remember one time I was at a hearing, Howard Baker gave came in.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_11: I got mad at him, and I said some uh sharp things to him, and he got mad at me.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_11: And uh and we walked out of the room together.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_11: I said, Howard, I'm trying to think of what I was mad about.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_11: He said, you know, I was having the same problem.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_11: We i in those days you try to diminish those disputes and and keep a personal connection.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_11: That was part of the joy of the Senate.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you know, it's it's as if I mean in a nutshell, you tried to narrow differences rather than exploit them.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_04: Right, right.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_11: And and there were such strengths to be found in finding that human connection.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_11: So many ways in which you could uh solve problems.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_04: I wonder, too, if to go back to the earlier point, th they're both populists.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, there's both there's that streak of rural populism and and real compassion for people who are who are wife's victims.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_10: Well, I think you know, they're both about the same age.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_10: Um the war experience, uh also George was a very um able and uh heroic pilot.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_10: I think he flew something like, I don't know, 25 missions or something, may have been more than that, uh at the age of 19 and 20 years old as a pilot.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_10: Um horror stories about uh landing aircraft with so many with a bullet-ridden airplane, and uh so I think they're they both showed remarkable valor and courage in time of war, and so they had that wartime experience.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_10: But I think with age too, and I I I I I don't know if this is categorically true, but but I think with age you became you become more appreciative of what is really important in life.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_10: And some of the things that seem important when you're forty aren't nearly as important when you're seventy.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_10: Ironically, it's easier to be a statesman the older you get.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_10: I think so.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_10: If your name isn't on the ballot.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_10: I think so.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_10: I even find that when you're when you're not in office, somehow the the uh you know these battles don't take on the meaning that they had when you were in office.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_10: Um I I've had countless uh very, very friendly relations with with some of the people that uh that uh uh I had huge legislative battles with in the Senate, but but uh but times change and your attitude changes, and uh but I think it is true that once you depart from the Senate or the Congress, uh um for whatever reason, these fights don't quite seem to have the same depth of consequence that they might have had otherwise.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_04: I I became very close to uh President Mrs.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_04: Ford in their later years, and I w will always be grateful for the uh congressional gold medal ceremony, and you've said some very nice things that day, uh, which I know touched them deeply.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_04: But I mean there is that sense that you know, why why do you have to wait till you're 80?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_10: Right.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_10: You know, to Right.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_10: Well you see that with I mean you saw that with President Ford and President Carter, two opponents.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_10: Um you saw it with President Bush now, uh first President Bush, 41, and President and Clinton, uh two opponents.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_10: I mean, it just uh it really something happens, but uh yeah.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_14: But you're gonna be interviewing Senator McGovern and you talk that with not a commission, but we had a select committee, is another thing that was pretty popular, it's not so popular now, on nutrition.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_14: And just that one committee you know changed the whole face of how we look at hunger in America and around the world.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_04: And how did it come into existence, the committee?
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_14: Uh appointed by the Senate.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_14: I think I think Senator Mansfield was the leader then, uh urged by Senator McGovern and others.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_14: I was on the committee.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_14: So that's how McGovern and I ended up working together on all these different programs.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_14: I mean he's he's the real leader.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_14: I'm just a disciple.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_14: So in fact, he celebrates his 85th birthday Saturday, tomorrow.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_14: And just lost his wife, is in on L.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_14: And apparently he's not he's lost quite a bit of weight, he's just not coping with it too well.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_14: So maybe you can cheer him up at three o'clock.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_08: So we're gonna go with uh historian uh Richard Norton Smith to hear him talk with George McGovern.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_08: You're gonna hear how George McGovern talk about the various things working with Bob Dole and these various nutrition programs uh for which they are so well known.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_08: And um it's important to see the role that Bob Dole played because um even back then a lot of this was seen more as the liberal democratic thing, and um the fact that you had a person of Bob Dole's stature there to help push it through was a big deal, and this is something that Bob Dole was enormously proud of.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_08: And I think you know, I'm a I'm a Republican conservative, but it is important to make sure uh poor among us are well fed um so that they can learn you know, the poor children to put them on equal footing.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_08: And uh Bob Dole ought to begin, and I think he he has gotten uh more so in his later years the recognition he deserves for the major role he played in all these children's nutrition programs.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_03: Even before that, in the Senate, we started working together on anything that related to agriculture, food assistance, um, rural America, um veterans affairs.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_03: We had common ground uh there, and uh our first cooperative efforts, as I remember it, were about 1968.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: I was responsible for launching the Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_04: And how did that come into being?
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_03: Well, uh the way it came about, um I was watching a television program one night by CBS called Hunger in America.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_03: I remember saying to Eleanor, uh, what are they talking about, hunger in America?
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_03: This is the richest country in the world.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_03: There are no hungry people in America.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_03: I had run the Food for Peace program for President Kennedy, so I knew about hunger in the world, Africa, Asia, Latin America, parts of the Middle East.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_03: I knew about that, but I wasn't really aware of the degree of hunger right here in this uh country.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_03: And I watched that hour-long documentary on CBS with fascination.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um of the things they showed that got under my skin was a little boy, you know, maybe a little guy, nine or ten, in a school lunch room, I think in South Carolina, and uh you it was during the school lunch period, and you had half the kids sitting down, you know, eating their lunch.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_03: The other half were standing along the wall.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, and uh the television uh camera zeroed in on this little boy and said, What do you think when you stand here and are unable to eat like the other children?
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_03: I thought he'd say he was mad or that he was angry.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_03: He kind of dropped his gaze to the floor and he said, I'm ashamed.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_03: And the um reporter said, Well, why is that?
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_03: And he says, Because I haven't got any money.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_03: I remember saying to two of my daughters who were watching the program, you know, it's not that little guy who should be ashamed.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_03: It's George McGovern, a United States Senator, and I didn't even know that students aren't allowed to eat unless they have the money to pay for the lunch.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_03: That's the way it was in those days.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_03: I didn't know that.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_03: I went to the Senate floor the next day and introduced a resolution calling for the creation of a select committee on nutrition and human needs, and introduced that as a bill.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_03: And to my surprise, it passed without objection.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I don't know whether you could do that today or not.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_03: In the Senate, one objection would have halted the action on the bill, but anyway, it passed, and Bob Dole became the ranking Republican on that committee, and from that day until we both left the Senate years later, he and I worked hand in glove on school lunches, on food stamps, on the WIC program, which we helped launch.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_03: Anything that had to do, we revolutionized food assistance in this country.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_03: There are millions of people in America now getting food stamps, millions of children now getting fed at school even if they don't have the money to pay for the lunch, millions of low-income young nursing or pregnant mothers and their infants through the age of five that came out of that committee of ours.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_03: And Bob Doe was a key factor in this.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_04: Um how did Dole, who is a budget balancing uh traditionalist, how did he reconcile those two schools of thought?
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_03: Um well Bob Dole is a highly intelligent man and a man of great integrity, and he came to see in the hearings that we conducted that society actually gained income, and the government actually gained income if you could produce healthy kids.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_03: They'd go out into life, uh, better educated, more vigorous, able to earn more money and therefore pay more taxes.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_03: It's the same way the GI Bill worked.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_03: Bob and I are both beneficiaries, the GI Bill cost billions and billions of dollars.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_03: You know that the federal government made money on that bill.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_03: They made two or three times what it cost them.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_03: The reason is that because we went back and got a college education after the war, or went on to graduate school, in my case, all the way to a PhD at Northwestern University in history, um your your field.
• 39:57
  SPEAKER_03: Uh and uh uh the the government just made money hand over fisk on the additional taxes we've been paying ever since we got these better jobs that go back to the the same thing with the school lunch program, the same thing with food stamps, the same thing with the WIC program.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_03: Every time you take a child or an adult or a worker and you increase their nutritional health, you're gonna increase their productivity and their earning power.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_03: And Bob saw that.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_03: We saw it in the hearings we uh conducted.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_03: Um and um and I'm sure that he uh well of course we we both got criticized in our home states for giveaways and that sort of thing, but that became more and more of a diminishing minority.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_04: What i the hearings uh were there also, did you go out into the field?
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_03: We did.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_03: We went right out into the field.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_03: The first one was in Florida, and I said to the staff, why do you want to go to Florida?
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_03: Uh you know, it's a prosperous state, and everybody's out on the beach and picking orches and so on.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_03: Why there's no hunger in Florida?
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_03: And they said, believe us, there is.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_03: So we go down there and they take us into a migrant labor camp.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_03: People are out picking berries and and uh doing other things in the fields, thousands of them.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_03: And then they go back to these little huts and tents and places at night.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_03: Uh we visited one family that were living in a garage.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_03: I remember seeing this little mother, and she was little, and nine or ten children, they were all in a single car garage.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_03: You have to take the car out, of course, but and they were on cots and sort of stacked up, and um it was obvious that they didn't have enough to eat.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_03: They were, I wouldn't say they were emaciated, but the children were underfed.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_03: And that was our first stop in going out into the field, but after two days of that in the migrant labor camps, we we'd seen a lot.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_03: We went into the slums, great cities.
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um, we went into school houses where they didn't have a school lunch program.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_03: We uh uh we traversed this country in in public hearings and and we learned a lot.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_04: It was an eye-opening experience.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_03: It really was.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_03: I remember one conservative Southern senator, he was a Democrat, you know, those Southern Democrats were more conservative than the than the Republicans.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, he he was a great man, I don't want to ridicule him, but he said to me after we left this garage, I said, gosh, Alan, isn't that terrible, that poor woman living there with ten, ten, ten, eleven kids?
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_03: And he said, Well, I noticed she's got a television in there, why couldn't she sell that television and buy some food?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_03: And I said, Alan, if I were stuck in an overheated garage with ten kids, if I had to beg, borrow, or steal the money, I'd have a television set.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_03: How are you gonna take care of a rafty kids like that all day long and her husband's out in the field picking berries and so on?
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_03: And that night about 10 o'clock, he came to me and he said, You know, George, I hadn't thought about this, but you're right about that.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_03: It's okay.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_03: So he gave up making a speech on the Senate floor, uh, talking about this woman who was pretending she was poor, who had a television.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_04: Do you think there's a a little bit of a populist in Bob Dole?
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_03: I think most of us in our part of the country have a streak like of the populism.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_03: Uh We don't have uh the ever-present huge corporations that you have in some parts of the uh uh country.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_03: You what you have are little independent merchants up and down Main Street, farmers toiling out in the fields and so on.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_03: 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.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_03: 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.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_04: You think it was sharpened it all by living through the Great Depression?
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_04: I mean the dust bowl.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_03: I do.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_03: I think in uh with Bob Dole, uh his instincts were also sharpened by the war.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_03: In World War II, he was shot to pieces.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_03: By all odds, he shouldn't be alive today.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_03: He should be they left him on the battlefield there for a while thinking it was not worth uh bringing him back.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_03: And so the rest of us came back from the war and enrolled in colleges and so on.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_03: Bob spent the first three years after the war trying to stay alive, and the people that saved him were the veterans' hospitals, the mighty federal government.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_03: So I think that softened his attitude towards Washington and towards what you can do by federal power.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_03: It's not all evil.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_03: Sometimes they do things right.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_03: They won World War II, they sponsored the GI Bill, they healed me in a veterans hospital.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_03: I think all those things are are not far below the surface with Bob.
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_03: He he's a good authentic uh Republican, like my dad and mother.
• 46:29
  SPEAKER_03: 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.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_03: 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.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_04: He uh he he c he also developed uh by all accounts a very close friendship with Hubert Humphrey.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, Hubert liked Bob Dole um a great deal and uh went out of his way uh to show that to uh Bob.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_03: And there again, Hubert was born in South Dakota and grew up in first in um Dole and South Dakota, and then here and we still have the Humphrey drug in here in South Dakota.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_03: So he spent his first twenty five years in South Dakota.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_03: He left when his father convinced him that a Democrat couldn't be elected to anything in in South Dakota.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_03: I think when I did get elected ten years later, he thought something of a miracle had been performed.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_03: But he um he admired Bob and uh he and I talked among ourselves several times and he said he's a good ally to have on your side.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_04: Was it uh I have to ask was it rough for you running against Humphrey for the for the president?
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_03: Oh yeah, yeah, that was the saddest part of that whole thing.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um that was that was tough.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_03: Before I ran, I asked Hubert if he were going to run again in 72, and he said, no way.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_03: I'd been over that trail one too many times.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_03: Ed Muskie talked to him and got the same answer.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_03: But once the race started and he heard the firebells ringing again, Hubert was a competitor.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_03: I I had great affection for Hubert Humphrey, and I was sorry about the friction that developed in 72.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_03: He was desperate to get to the White House, and if he'd have gotten there, he'd have been a g a really first-rate president, in my opinion.
• 49:12
  SPEAKER_03: So, yes, I I found it difficult to run against him.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_04: Tell me about the WIC program.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_03: That's one of the best programs the federal government's ever launched.
• 49:25
  SPEAKER_03: It provides nutritional supplements to low-income nursing or pregnant mothers and their infants through the age of five years.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_03: It you can't talk to a person who's had anything to do with that program who doesn't tell you this thing.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_03: It's just wonderful what it's doing to transform lives and to bring new strength and hope to young uh families.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_03: That is a result of hearings by our select uh committee, uh, but it also went to the uh Committee on Agriculture, which was the legislative committee.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_03: Bob and I served on both committees, and we were the chief sponsors of that.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_03: Senator Humphrey came to me and said, George, I would consider it a great personal favor if you'd let me be the lead sponsor.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_03: I know this came out of your committee, and I know you and Bob have worked on these things, but this may be my last term in the Senate, and I'd love to be able to say I was the lead sponsor, so I said, why not?
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_03: That's how it got brought to the floor is the Humphrey bill with Dole and I and others listed as co-sponsors to it.
• 50:51
  SPEAKER_03: I've always been glad we did that because Hubert was so uh grateful.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_04: Would that happen to the Senate today?
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_03: It could, uh, depending on the relationship between the senators involved.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_03: Uh Hubert knew me well enough as a longtime neighbor.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_03: You know I lived next door to him here for twelve years in Washington.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_03: Used to ride to work with him all the time.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_03: Um yeah, I think it could happen.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_03: Um I'm just trying to think about the people up there, but it probably probably could happen, I guess.