Of course, it was midnight, or after, when he’d land again in D.C. (that’s the bad news with time zones—you end up paying them back). Dole would have the car drop him at his big house on Beechway, in Virginia—tell the driver what time to come back. Bob would head for the basement. If Phyllis was still up, she might bring him dinner on a tray. That’s when she’d say anything she had to tell him. Then she’d go upstairs. ... Bob would sleep on his bed, in his cellar.
Chet Dawson made a visit to Washington that year, and he came back to Russell shaking his head: “Bob came home at 2:00 A.M.,” Chet told the boys in the drugstore. “I guess he didn’t want to disturb Phyllis, so he just curled up downstairs. Four hours later, the limo showed up to take him away again. ... What kind of life is that?”
That’s what Phyllis wanted to know. Sometimes, she’d bring Bob’s tray, with his food—all cut up, as he liked it—and she’d muster courage to announce: “We have to talk.”
Bob would snap: “Whaddya want to talk about?”
She never had a good answer. There was no answer short or neat enough. It was just ... they had to talk—didn’t they? ... What happened to their life? If they couldn’t talk, well ...
It wasn’t that they fought. (Bob didn’t have time.) Sometimes, she would have liked a fight ... then she could scream ... maybe he’d see how she felt—see her. But when? ... She tried to think of ways she could be different, to fit in with his life. Maybe she should stay up, eat supper with him. But Robin had to eat. And had to get to bed—Robin had school. Phyllis could count—she went back and figured out—how many times they’d had dinner together, the three of them, that year, when Bob made chairman. Two times.
One day Robin told her: “Mom, all my friends’ parents sleep together.”
Phyllis put on a brave face: “Well ... you don’t know what happens when you’re asleep—do you?”
She would ever remember the day she knew that life with Bob was never going to “straighten out”—was never going to be the life she’d thought of as a girl in New Hampshire, nor even the life she’d had in Russell, Kansas.
It was the mid-sixties, Robin was in grade school, maybe eleven years old, and she had a doctor’s appointment. The doctor was a wise old head who’d dealt with hundreds of young girls. ... So, just to keep Robin from worrying while he made his examination, the doctor asked—would she like to have her ears pierced? He offered to do the job, thirty-five dollars, including gold posts ... of course, he’d take care of any complications, infections, whatever ... Robin should ask her folks.
Well, Robin came out of that office, high as a kite—so excited! Could she get her ears pierced? ... Mom? ... Mom! Could she?
Phyllis didn’t know what to say. (Where she grew up, the only young girls with pierced ears were gypsies ... or, uh, worse!) “Well...” she said, “you’ll have to ask your father.”
That night, Robin left a note in the basement.
“Dear Dad: Can I please, please, please, please have my ears pierced? I talked to the doctor and he said it would cost $35 and that would cover any complications. Please, please ... Love, Robin.”
And she drew, at the bottom, two boxes: one marked YES, and the other NO. At age eleven, she’d left her father a speed-memo.
(His response was also characteristic. He drew a third box, checked it, and marked it MAYBE. He scrawled underneath: “I’ll talk to you Tuesday.” That was three or four days away—for a girl that age, an eternity. Of course, when they did talk, he was a pushover. Phyllis had to take Robin to the doctor, get it done.)
Anyway, Phyllis knew then. When she saw how surely Robin knew her dad, when she saw how her daughter accepted the facts—the way Bob was ... then Phyllis had to accept, too: it would never be as she had dreamed it would be.
She rolled with it. Or she thought she did. She tried. She’d say what she had to, in the basement ... then she’d leave him alone. If they got a social invitation, she’d tell him, but she wouldn’t push. Sometimes, she’d go to the parties alone. When she got to feeling guilty about always being the guest, she’d invite everybody for dinner, then tell Bob: he was having a party ... did he want to come?
They did get along—they never fought. That’s why she felt like she’d been kicked ... when Bob said, one night, in the basement:
“I want out.”
He wasn’t happy. They could see that—the ones who knew him, staff who’d been with Dole since Kansas: they always knew—from the comments that leaked as he worked through the day, jokes he muttered after calls from the CREEPs. (It was Dole who gave Washington that nickname for the CRP, Nixon’s Committee to Reelect the President.)
The problem was, the CREEPs held all the cards (and the money—Nixon’s reelection budget was ten times bigger than the RNC’s) ... they treated the Republican Committee like a poor cousin ... or worse: like a trained dog they had leashed in the backyard, to be loosed whenever Mitchell, Haldeman, or Colson yelled, “Sic ’em!”
That wasn’t how Dole saw the job. He’d learned a few things after three years in the Senate—he had more respect for his colleagues, and himself.
Sure, he’d attack George McGovern in speeches—try to paint him onto the left-wing fringe ... or off the edge of the canvas! But Dole wouldn’t let the Party newsletter use the cartoon (Chuck Colson sent it over) showing McGovern in the black pj’s of the Viet Cong. He wouldn’t send out the letter hinting that Hubert Humphrey had a problem with booze. He wouldn’t use the collection of new, kindly comments from Ted Kennedy about George Wallace (Colson’s headline: WHAT A DIFFERENCE A BULLET MAKES!).
Most of the envelopes with the red tags (“Urgent!”) ended up in Dole’s wastebasket now. Dole knew they didn’t come from Nixon.
Problem was, he didn’t know what Nixon wanted. The minute Dole demonstrated his independence, he was adjudged “unreliable” by the CREEPs and the White House crowd. By ’72, Dole couldn’t get in to see the President ... couldn’t ask what Nixon wanted ... couldn’t ask for Nixon’s help. That frustration leaked from Dole, too—in the usual way:
“Agh, I called Haldeman, I said, ‘Bob, I’m the National Chairman! I want to see the President!’
“He said, ‘Fine. Tune in Channel Nine at ten o’clock. You can see him then.’ ”
In fact, so painful and public was Dole’s estrangement from the power crowd ... it probably saved his career. When burglars broke into the Watergate office of the Democratic National Committee, Dole couldn’t even take the story seriously. He’d never believe those Big Guys in the White House were involved.
He did ask his Big Guy friend Bryce Harlow ... who couldn’t make much of the story, either. “It’s got no legs,” Harlow said. “It’ll blow over ...” Dole thought he might make a formal statement—say the Party had nothing to do with this fiasco.
But that might look like he was backing away ...
“It’ll fade in two or three days,” Harlow said.
Dole raised the subject, once, at the White House. “I’m getting questions on the, uh, Watergate,” he said. “Maybe we oughta make a statement, just to clear the air.” But that suggestion lay on the table like a dead fish. Nixon didn’t say a word.
So, Dole saw his duty: he hit the road, tucked his head ... handled the questions in his own way:
“Agh, well, we got the burglar vote ...”
Dutifully, Dole swiped at The Washington Post: the Post was in bed with McGovern! Doing the Democrats’ dirty work! ... More than dutifully, Dole flew around the nation, trumpeting Nixon’s achievements: revenue-sharing for the states; draft reform, a volunteer Army; the diplomatic opening of China; the hundreds of thousands of boys he’d brought home—with honor—from Vietnam. Dole did believe that Nixon was solving the problems that mattered to Americans, that McGovern was out of step ... that Nixon would win by a landslide ... that Nixon could reorder the nation’s politics—not just in the White House, but in Congress, in the states.
But the CREEPs only cared about the reelecti
on—a landslide for the President. They didn’t want to hear about down-ballot races. Dole couldn’t even get a call through to Nixon’s staff anymore. They treated the Party like an enemy. What could Dole do?
He kept flying. When the Senate went into recess, he stayed on the road for weeks. If they scheduled him a day to rest, an evening home, he’d remind them of some commitment he’d made, some emergency in a distant state. He didn’t want to go home.
One night in D.C., he sat up late, in half-darkness, in his Senate office. Staff was gone—except for Judy Harbaugh and his RNC driver, waiting for Dole to call it quits. “I want to talk to you,” Dole told Judy. “I’m going to need your help.”
Judy tried not to gawk. Bob Dole never asked for help.
“Looks like I’m going to get a divorce.”
She didn’t know what to say. She knew—they all knew in that office—Dole didn’t have much family life. They always figured that’s the way he was cut out. The shock was that he meant to do anything about it.
It wasn’t really what he meant to do. ... After he said he wanted out, he didn’t bring it up with Phyllis for weeks: they stuck to their routines. When Bob did try to talk to her again (“Well, we don’t want lawyers gettin’ their hands on everything—we prob’ly ought to talk”) ... it was too late.
“Here’s the name of my lawyer,” Phyllis said. “Talk to him.”
Still, Bob didn’t leave ... he wouldn’t go. He stayed at the house (as much as he stayed anywhere) all through the divorce. He didn’t know where to go. It was Phyllis who finally called his RNC driver to come over and put Bob’s belongings in the garage.
Bob told Judy Harbaugh: “I need you to find me a place to live.”
She rented him a tiny place in the Sheraton Park hotel. She got him some linens, and kitchen stuff—plates, a couple of pans—so he could cook ... if he could cook ... what was he going to cook? For the first time in his life. Bob Dole was alone.
He hadn’t felt like that since the Army, the hospitals. How could he end up like that again? ... How could he not? He had no friends to call, no family in town. He couldn’t even call his mother—Bina took that divorce hard. She took to the couch in the front room, in Russell. She blamed Bob ... and herself. If she’d paid more attention to Phyllis—just a little more!—this wouldn’t have happened. Never! She was so miserable, Doran couldn’t even get her up for Christmas. Bina said: “There’ll be no Christmas for me.”
Phyllis’s mom, Estelle, blamed her daughter. She thought Bob didn’t really want to leave. She told Bob it would break her own heart if he went through with this, if he let Phyllis go. “Well,” Bob replied softly, “if that’s what she wants ...”
The fact was, he had no idea how to work his will in a personal affair. Politics, sure—but not this ... and not now. He was tired, stretched thin. He could not find the will.
He took sick, with a vicious infection that laid him out for days, while he thought what he might have said, or done—thought back through years, how it might have been different ... but he could not make it different. He couldn’t do any more now. He was in his bed ... well, not his bed. It was that hotel, four walls ... not much else.
He had his job, thank God, and he did it. As soon as he was out of bed, he was in the air again—another coast-to-coast swing. Bob Dole wasn’t the kind to quit. Sometimes, you had to be tough! He flew a quarter-million miles in that election, for the Party, for the President.
That year, ’72, Nixon piled up the biggest margin of any Republican in history. Of course, the President and his men were exultant ... though Nixon did, sure enough, fail to mention any Party institutions in his victory speech.
Only Dole seemed to notice that.
Sure enough, Nixon’s landslide did not raise the GOP to power in either house of Congress. In fact, liberal Democrats unseated Republican Senators from Maine, Colorado, Delaware, and Iowa.
Only Dole seemed to harp on that.
That was his reputation, by that time, in the White House: sour all the way—Bob Dole, crying wolf for the Party. One week after election, the capital’s smart-guy community knew: Dole was on his way out—just a question of when.
Dole didn’t need the tom-toms to tell him ... it was almost time, anyway. He’d have his own reelection campaign in 1974. If he could bow out of the chairman’s job with grace—say, mid-’73 ... well, that would give everybody time.
Only Dole had grace in mind.
Two weeks after the election, Dole was summoned. It was his first visit to Camp David—his last for many years. Nixon had him flown up by chopper, with Attorney General Dick Kleindienst—who looked like a man on the way to his hanging. That’s when Dole figured: maybe there was a noose for him, too.
Dole said, by way of small talk, “Agh, d’ya bring your rope?”
But, no ... Nixon was awfully kind—talked about all the work Bob had done—helluva job! ... The President had that big map from the office, all striped now with flight paths—that was a gift for Dole. And a jacket, emblazoned: “Camp David.” Nixon couldn’t have been friendlier—wanted to talk about Bob’s future.
“Well, I have been working hard,” Dole allowed. “I thought maybe I could stick around, have a little fun with the job, a few months ...”
Nixon was nodding: yes, he’d figured Bob was ready to move on.
“No, well, I mean ...”
No need to explain: Nixon understood! Well, who did Bob think should be his successor? ... Of course, Dole caught the drift. He mentioned some Big Guys—Mel Laird might be good. ...
That’s when Nixon brought up the name George Bush. Nixon wanted to place Bush ... but Bush didn’t want to be number two anywhere. Maybe he could be number one at the RNC. Did Dole think Bush might take the job? ... It was John Mitchell who suggested that Dole go to New York, sound out Bush—see if he’d be willing.
So, dutifully, Dole flew to New York, had his meeting with Bush, took his sounding, in the Waldorf. ... Bush was cordial—nice guy, you know—he listened, smiled, didn’t say yes, didn’t rule it out.
Dutifully, Dole reported back to the White House.
It was only later, after Dole found himself and his daughter in the last car of Nixon’s inaugural parade (well, just about the last car—maybe some cops behind them, or a sanitation crew) ... after Dole learned from the papers that he’d been dumped as chairman (his demise unceremoniously leaked) ... along with the news that he’d been dumped for George Bush ... did Dole learn that Bush had talked to Nixon.
Bush had talked to Nixon before Dole ever flew to New York!
You’d think Bush might have said—somehow, let Dole know—it was all just a dog and pony show ... he’d already taken Dole’s job!
“Gaghhd! Guy just sat there! ...”
Nice guy!
Well, didn’t matter anymore—did it? Dole’s job was gone. He was back in that hotel, alone, with those walls ... his map, a Camp David jacket in the closet ... and in his head, an unfading memory of Bush’s blank, friendly smile.
58
1973
BAR TOLD HIM NOT to take that job. “Anything ... but not that committee.”
It was the first time she’d ever said something like that, but ... the Republican National Committee? It was ... just politics, just thumping the old tub! ... Oh, she’d been to enough of those dinners to know the score. Bob Dole could run around the country, saying nasty things about the Democrats—fine ... but that was a lousy job for George Bush! ... George Bush was serving the country!
They’d been happy in New York, at the UN—in their grand apartment in the Waldorf (actually three apartments put together, on the forty-second floor of the Towers). After all those terrible things people wrote (she remembered well) when George got the job: how he was “just a politician,” “ignorant of foreign affairs,” who would “devalue the U.S. mission,” whose appointment “demonstrated Nixon’s contempt”—George had shown them, hadn’t he?
He was a raging success ... he’d
done his homework, he knew the issues. He’d represented his country with honor. The staff at the mission loved him—as did the foreign diplomats, whom the Bushes entertained assiduously, with dinners in New York, picnics at his mother’s place in Greenwich, nights at the ballpark to watch Uncle Herbie’s Mets—George had made so many friends! ... Actually, George and Bar had, since she got hold of a Blue Book, the list of diplomats and their wives—she memorized the names, made sure to talk to them all, at parties ... then she’d take them over and introduce them to George—they made a wonderful team.
Bar would bring her needlepoint and sit through Security Council debates. She tried not to sit next to the wife of someone George would vote against—but if it happened, no matter: they could still be friends. After all, they were professionals. They had to take the line of their governments. Everybody understood that—understood there could be no deviation from that, no matter what one might think privately. In fact, there was no job (none in Bar’s experience) where the power of mindset came in so handy. No one but Bar knew when George had argued for a different policy in Washington. (It happened seldom, as a matter of fact.) But George would never sow discord within his delegation, and he wouldn’t allow any carping about the State Department, or Kissinger. No one but Bar would see Bush’s heartache when he picked up the paper and found out Kissinger was secretly talking with the Red Chinese—pulled the rug out from under Taiwan ... and from under George Bush, who was laboring to keep Taiwan in the UN. ... No, Bush would simply take the new line—a two-China policy—no one would ever see him acting as if he did not believe it. ... No one but Bar would ever know his humiliation and rage when the U.S. lost the vote on two Chinas, and the Third World delegates (“little wiener nations,” Bush had called them) started laughing and whooping, catcalling Uncle Sam, in the aisles. ... No, he would gather the delegation and reassure them: they were a good team—no second-guessing and no looking back ... “On to the next event!”
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