Former Republican Kansas Sen. Bob Dole died on Sunday. His life stretched from beginnings in rural Kansas to the Italian battlefields during World War II to Congress, where Dole spent 35 years as a GOP stalwart and long-serving Senate Republican leader
Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and Elizabeth Dole with their dog. | Photo by CQ Roll Call via Getty ImagesA man of few words but many accomplishments, former Republican Kansas Sen. Bob Dole died on Sunday
Dole was a Washington, D.C., fixture wary of the trappings of Beltway life. Valued by both sides of the political spectrum, Dole’s congressional doggedness once inspired fellow D.C. pillar and frequent Senate sparring partner, Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, to break protocol on the Senate floor in 1986 and address Dole directly.
Kemp was a technocrat, the force behind a massive 1981 tax cut, then the largest in American history. Dole had criticized the measure as a budget-bloating bill, causing Kemp to retort: “In a recent fire, Bob Dole’s library burned down. Both books were lost. And he hadn’t even finished coloring one of them.” Washingtonian Magazine dubbed Kemp the member of Congress with the worst sense of humor.
In 1942, at the age of 19, Dole left Kansas University during his sophomore year to enlist in the Army, where he rose to the rank of second lieutenant in the Army’s 10th Mountain Division. It was hours before a medic could get to Dole. And it was three years before he was able to fully leave the hospital, suffering two near-fatal fever spikes, multiple surgeries, a lost kidney and a lost shoulder. He finally departed with a non-functioning right arm, only a few working fingers on his left hand and over 70 pounds lighter.
''We don't come from any money in our family,'' Dole said. ''I'm a little sensitized to people who work hard all their lives and don't quite make it.'' Dole chaired the Republican National Committee from 1971 to 1973, then later became Senate Finance Committee chair in 1981, before ascending to the party leadership position after the 1984 elections.
“I think that inside Bob Dole is a very soft spot for the little guy,” former Sen. Jack Danforth, a Republican from Missouri, told Dole biographer Jake Thompson. “He is a latter-day version of the old Midwestern populist type of public person.” In pragmatic fashion, Majority Leader Dole focused on getting bills passed — 163 in his first year alone. It was nearly double the number passed in 1984. Opponents charged that the bills were light on substance. But Dole thought he was completing a record that would put him on the path to the presidency in 1988.
Bob Dole pays his last respects to former President George H.W. Bush as he lies in state at the Capitol on Dec. 4, 2018. | Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo
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