The Two Bob Doles
How a famed bipartisan became a Trumper
On the death of Bob Dole, Barack Obama released a typically gracious statement: “Senator Bob Dole was a war hero, a political leader, and a statesman—with a career and demeanor harkening back to a day when members of the Greatest Generation abided by a certain code, putting country over party. Our thoughts are with Elizabeth and the Dole family.”
Some of these sentiments, with a slightly different twist, were expressed in the statement Donald Trump released shortly after: "Bob Dole was an American war hero and true patriot for our Nation. He served the Great State of Kansas with honor and the Republican Party was made stronger by his service. Our Nation mourns his passing, and our prayers are with Elizabeth and his wonderful family."
Eulogies are no place for unvarnished honesty. Obama played up Dole’s record of bipartisan cooperation (“putting country over party”), while Trump emphasized Dole the partisan (“the Republican Party was made stronger by his service.”)
Both claims have an element of truth. Dole, especially before the hard right turn the GOP took in 1994 with the rise of Newt Gingrich, was known for working across the aisle. His signature achievements include working with Democratic Senator George McGovern to expand food stamp coverage in 1977 and shepherding the passage of the Americans with Disability Act in 1990. But Dole was on occasion an unyielding partisan. His fierce defense of Richard Nixon during Watergate earned him the title of Nixon’s hatchet man.
In 2016, when Donald Trump became the GOP’s presidential nominee, there were only five Republicans alive who had run for the same office: George H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, George Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney. Of these five, only Dole endorsed Trump in 2016. He again was alone in this select company in endorsing Trump in 2020. Dole called himself a “Trumper.” In doing so, he very much was acting as a partisan loyalist and not someone who put “country over party.”
In truth, there were two Bob Doles: his statesmanship was always in tension with his partisanship. In an admiring obituary in Bloomberg Opinion, Jonathan Bernstein acknowledges both sides of Dole and tries to square the circle by suggesting that Dole’s partisanship was carefully balanced by his willingness to cooperate with Democrats:
Dole was also extremely partisan. One can look at this a few ways. It’s possible to construct a pretty negative interpretation, with Dole advancing the vicious partisanship that took over after he exited office in 1996. One can also focus on Dole as the architect of rejectionism, with Republicans in 1993 and 1994 using the filibuster to defeat the Democrats rather than working constructively to cut the best possible deals while in the minority. Dole had a long career and fought hard for his side; if you’re looking for the roots of the worst of the current Republican Party, it’s possible to find examples in things Dole did.
But I think a better way to look at Dole’s political career is that he exemplified a healthier path that partisan polarization could’ve taken. In other words, he’s historically important precisely because he was such a strong partisan, and yet he did not automatically reject working with Democrats. His great legislative accomplishment, the Americans with Disabilities Act, was a bipartisan initiative during a time of divided government. Even during Clinton’s presidency, when he was finding new uses for the filibuster to block the Democrats’ agenda, he was willing to back off and cooperate to ratify NAFTA and other bills. As Senate finance chairman during Ronald Reagan’s presidency, Dole was a key leader in cutting taxes in 1981 — and in raising taxes in 1982, when he and other responsible Republicans thought it was the best policy. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, not Dole, was the main player in shutting down the government twice in 1995 and 1996; Dole didn’t prevent it, but he did eventually act to cut a deal and move on.
This is a very balanced assessment, mirroring the balance Dole himself tried to strike in the first few decades of his long political career. But surely the real lesson of Dole’s career is that the balance didn’t hold and couldn’t work. With the rise of Gingrich in 1994, Dole migrated to the right of the party.
Dole’s core identity was a partisan one. He once infamously even blamed the Democratic Party for all of America’s major wars in the 20th century. In a 1976 debate as a vice presidential candidate, Dole said,
It is an appropriate topic, I guess, but it's not a very good issue any more than the war in Vietnam would be or World II or World I or the war in Korea—all Democrat wars, all in this century. I figured up the other day, if we added up the killed and wounded in Democrat wars in this century, it would be about 1.6 million Americans, enough to fill the city of Detroit.
Dole later tried to walked back those words and even deny that he ever said them. But they reveal the essential partisanship of his core. Unlike the Bushes or McCain or Romney, Dole had no political identity other than being a party man. He as the ultimate apparatchik. As long as the party had room for cooperation with the Democrats, he would cooperate. But once the party became more radical, he shifted as well. He was no leader at all, but a simple thermometer useful for measuring the fever of the GOP, which kept getting higher and higher during his long life.
(Edited by Emily M. Keeler)
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Bipartisanship has been dead along time. Bob Dole helped kill it off during the Clinton years by embracing the Christianist right wing conspiracist nationalism that was galvanized by the possibility of same sex marriage in 1996, in my opinion..