For Dole, The Hardest Part May Be Over
Bob Dole was like a guy who puts on his coat but can’t quite say goodbye to a place full of warmth and laughter. It is always tough to leave home. At the end of his choked-up farewell speech, Dole glanced at the clock and quoted the Ecclesiastes line about a season for all things.
“I think my season in the Senate is about to end,” said Dole, voice croaky - and not for the first time.
His feet said go, his heart said no. For eight minutes Dole wandered the Senate chamber where he had spent half his life. He had a grip, grin and quip for the biggest egos.
And for eight minutes while Dole lingered, senators stood clapping. It was a strange sound. I have never heard such a gust of applause from politicians for their own breed. They did not stop until Dole vanished through the gold-studded cloakroom doors. Too bad for Dole that the 1996 presidential election was not held that minute in the gilded chamber.
I have no doubt that in a vote of senators, both parties, Dole would take Bill Clinton by a landslide. Not 99-0, but big. No wonder Dole was reluctant to leave the Senate cocoon for the crueler world of airports, county fish fries and high school gyms. Even some in his party see him as a doomed loser.
That is Dole’s problem - getting Americans to know him as well as his Senate pals. Polls show many Americans do not even know of Dole’s terrible wounds in now-distant World War II.
After all, Dole’s a star only to C-SPAN junkies. When he came to Washington in 1961, the Kennedy era was in swing, Floyd Patterson was champ, jukeboxes crooned “Moon River” and Dole wore Elvis-styled sideburns. He has spent a lot of years as Beltway Bob. Maybe if voters had hung out with Dole in his last graceful, wistful Senate hours, they would ditch the Dole stereotype - a mean-spirited, sarcastic ideologue.
He shrugged when he showed up at his office, tried to make a phone call, and a sheepish aide apologized, “It’s disconnected.”
“Already?” said Dole. “They move fast around here.” He was happier when senators hung a plaque on his office sun porch naming it the “Robert J. Dole Balcony.” Okay, so it was not a building or monument.
“Will it be in big letters?” he said. “Maybe neon?”
Senators were betting how quickly Dole, who has a marshmallow sentimentality, would bust up during his goodbye speech. He lasted eight words - “Well, I want to thank all my colleagues” - and his throat went lumpy.
Oddly, when Dole spoke of Senate giants, old-lib Democrats popped into his mind: Hubert Humphrey, Phil Hart, George McGovern.
He honored 93-year-old Strom Thurmond for the most long-winded Senate spiel. “Twenty-four hours and 18 minutes,” cackled Thurmond from the Senate chair. “And since then you haven’t been invited as an after-dinner speaker,” shot back Dole.
Another oddment: Of his 12,000-plus Senate votes, Dole sounded proudest of passing the act for disabled Americans, rescuing food stamps, saving Social Security from bankruptcy, saluting Martin Luther King Day. You would think he was angling for the Liberal Hall of Fame.
Ditching his text, Dole swung into campaign mode as he matched his straight-arrow persona against Clinton’s chameleon style.
“Your word is your bond,” Dole said, hammering his Senate mantra. And a subtle dart at Clinton: “Leadership is background and backbone.”
He rambled near tears in a Senate scene like that old TV show, “This Is Your Life.” House members, including Newt Gingrich, lined the walls.
Dole even praised shocked reporters in the press balcony.
He thanked everybody but his dog, Leader. “It’s been a great ride,” he said. “A few bumps along the way.”
And a few potholes left. During Dole’s valedictory performance, you would think Democrats would have been classy enough to mute personal warfare. But House spoilsports met under a grainy photo of Dole and Gingrich emblazoned, “If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Kitchen.” Gracelessly, they savaged Dole’s sins - blocking a minumum-wage boost and health-care bill.
“His marks? Big, fat red F’s across the board,” snarled Rep. Vic Fazio, D-Calif. That was rare vinegar.
On a day of flowery rhetoric, I thought Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, D-N.Y., who fought Dole bitterly so many nights, cut through the affectionate malarkey.
Moynihan watched Dole come down the Capitol steps at 3:30 p.m. into gauzy sunshine. Wife Elizabeth and daughter Robin and Senate graybeards walked by Dole. Tourists made a path, touching his hand, yelling illogically, “Four more years!”
“Dole made things move in the Senate,” sighed old sparmate Moynihan. “With Bob gone, that may not happen.” Then Dole waved his good left hand, climbed in a car, and rode into a colder world. He had left home.
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