What It Takes

by Richard Ben Cramer

  He would find out, it was Bob Dole’s life.

  The great confrontation was the half-hour Agriculture Debate at the Kansas State Fair, in Hutchinson. Dole insisted on the Lincoln–Douglas format—no moderator, no panel, just the two candidates, toe-to-toe, in a tent, and on statewide TV. Both candidates tried to pack the arena. The Dole crowd, Russell folks, were convinced that Roy’s people were nothing but thugs (who’d been paid ten dollars apiece to show up!). Those Roy people were cheering when their man asked Dole:

  “Why did you support legislation to do away with the Department of Agriculture, when it’s so important to the farmers of Kansas? ...”

  Dole didn’t know what legislation Roy was talking about. (His staff had put together a fat briefing book—last minute, of course, dictated from phone booths—Bob never looked at it.) Dole hemmed and hawed: he couldn’t answer, and that threw him off track.

  Near the front of the crowd, Bina Dole kept her eyes on her son, and as he began to press, she saw his brow grow dark. She knew that look—he was enraged. Bina stopped whispering with the other Russell ladies, her own mouth drew into a tight line—she was rigid with worry, her hands worked in her lap. Bill Roy was pressing his advantage, painting Dole as a thoughtless political slasher ... Look who you are ... compared to me—a doctor!

  How could Bill Roy know ... that’s what Bob Dole always wanted to be? How could Roy understand what had been stolen from Dole ... as Roy seemed now to be stealing the rest of Bob’s life?

  With one minute left, Dole strode to the podium. “Why do you do abortions?” Dole said. “And why do you favor abortion on demand?”

  There was an instant’s hush in the tent ... the crowd began to boo. This was so ugly ... hundreds of people—not just Roy’s crowd—were hooting Dole back to his chair.

  Roy stammered out words, but nothing like an answer. He knew he had less than thirty seconds. The statewide broadcast ended with his senseless mumble into the microphone, the angry hoots of the crowd, and Bob Dole stalking off stage.

  The folks from Russell planned to stay for dinner, but Bob didn’t come. He had a plane waiting to take him to Parsons—just a three-seater. Dole asked Bill Wohlford: “Whyn’cha come on to Parsons?”

  Wohlford was one of Dole’s Washington staffers who’d quit his job to help in Kansas—one of those big, humble Dole loyalists who didn’t expect much talk from the Senator. Wohlford hardly knew what to say in the plane—though he saw: Dole was down. For the first time that Wohlford knew, Dole seemed to want reassurance. It was dark in the plane—just dim nightlights, the glow from gauges ... Dole was slumped in a sling-seat.

  “We can do it,” Wohlford said, heartily. “We just got a lot of work, but we got a lot of people now ... we just have to turn it loose!”

  He meant, to win.

  “Yeah,” Dole said. “... I’m just not sure it’s worth it.”

  In the end, there was no time to wonder—no way to change anything. The campaign tumbled to its close with a relentless ferocity that everyone tried to disown. No one could deny, though—the Dole campaign did “turn it loose.”

  Dave Owen found an account of Dole’s war service in a vets’ magazine; he had the story reprinted on hundreds of thousands of fliers, under the headline GUTS! ... then dispatched crews in motor homes to hand them out—for days at a time, one Main Street after another. It was the first time the Bob Dole story had been told in anything other than whispers.

  In the end, there was also a mailing to Legion vets, which alleged (in another headline): THE ONLY MILITARY TERM BILL ROY KNOWS IS AWOL. Then there was a little asterisk. You had to go to the next page to find a box that explained: Bill Roy was absent from the House of Representatives for two votes on military matters. (They’d happened to fall on Fridays—Roy was back in Kansas.)

  In the end, there were stops at local high schools, where Dole would tell the kids, at the close: “Go home and ask your parents if they know how many abortions Bill Roy has performed.”

  In the end, the mudslinger ads went back on TV—no one seemed to think they were shocking anymore. ... By that time, there were newspaper ads, too, showing a skull and crossbones: one bone was labeled “Abortion,” the other “Euthanasia.” Underneath, it said: “Vote Dole.” By that time, the last week (especially that Sunday of the last weekend), there were thousands of fliers found on windshields. Those showed photographs of dead babies in garbage cans: “Vote Dole.”

  Dole said this stuff didn’t come from him. He was trying to stop it. This kind of thing didn’t help him!

  But it did.

  In the end, a switch of two votes per precinct would have made the difference. And one of the most Democratic precincts was around the Catholic church in Kansas City—Bill Roy lost there. His own Catholic precinct, in Topeka, he used to win two-to-one while running for Congress. He broke even in that one.

  In the end, Bob Dole was returned to the Senate. On election night, his supporters gathered in jubilation at that Ramada, in Topeka. They could hardly believe it: they’d turned it around. They’d pulled it out! Dole could not believe it either. (He kept saying that night, “Well, ’fraid we didn’t quite make it ...”) Dole would not come downstairs to speak till after two o’clock the next morning. Dave Owen said they had it won. The reporters downstairs said Dole had it won. The network TV said Dole had won. But Dole called 105 County Clerks before he would claim it.

  Even then, there was no jubilation for Dole. Even while the crowd whooped and chanted his name, Dole had a stubborn grip on the facts. He was a winner, he’d escaped. He was going back to the Senate. But he wasn’t going to go through this again. He could not. Something had to change.

  How do you change a life that has lasted fifty years? With difficulty, and mostly at the margins. But Dole was lucky. There was a woman in Washington, Elizabeth Hanford, whom he’d called from the road almost every night of that bitter campaign ... sometimes two in the morning—didn’t matter—he always felt better when he heard her.

  That election night, he was even later: he wouldn’t call till he knew he’d won. He told her he wanted to celebrate with her, back in Washington. He was crestfallen when she said she wouldn’t be there ... she was scheduled to depart for three weeks in Japan.

  Of course, that’s one of the reasons he liked her: she’d never be the type to sit home, waiting for him to finish his meetings. She never stayed home—unless she was sleeping, or working there. She was just as serious about work as he was. (Maybe more: she’d fret about next week’s work, or next month’s—as he never would.) She was a rising star in the capital, a member of the Federal Trade Commission. She was good-looking, soft-spoken, raised with the graces of the well-to-do in Salisbury, North Carolina (Lotta moneyy!) ... she was smart, well schooled (after Duke, aghh! Harvard!) ... she demanded perfection from herself (they had that standard in common)... she was a woman who achieved, who shined, in his Washington world. ... In fact, she seemed so polished, accomplished, he almost missed his chance.

  He’d met her in ’72, just months after his own divorce. Elizabeth was working as assistant to Virginia Knauer, the White House adviser on consumer affairs. Knauer wanted a consumer plank in the GOP platform, so she asked for a meeting with the chairman, Bob Dole. Elizabeth said, years later, that the minute Bob walked in, she thought: “My! What an attractive man!” Bob said, years later, that after the meeting, he wrote her name on his blotter. But what happened at the time was ... nothing.

  In fact, he saw her again at the opening of Nixon’s campaign headquarters in Washington ... and at the convention in Miami ... in fact, it was months before he called, and they talked pleasantly for forty minutes, about nothing in particular, a conversation that led to weeks of more ... nothing.

  After which, he called again, and they had another long talk—yes, they certainly did see eye-to-eye on many subjects! ... But at the end of that call, all he could muster was that it might be nice to get together.

  “Whah, yes!” said El
izabeth. She waited for him to name a place, a date ... something.

  But the poor man could not. There was thirteen years’ difference in their ages: she was only thirty-seven—would she be interested? He was, after all, a man divorced, not a raging success in affairs of the heart ... and she was the Belle of the Capital Ball!

  So she was ... but she was also, at that point, almost convinced that she had outpaced all suitors. There were men who thought she must be a tigress (and came on doubly strong to show their stripes); and plenty who thought she was great—if she’d only drop that government stuff; and men who never would get close enough to find out anything (it was the capital, after all, and she outranked them!)—to put it simply, she scared most men to death.

  Bob was shy (he finally did choke out an invitation to dinner at the Watergate Terrace) ... but not afraid. He was a man not unused to strong women (Elizabeth seemed a fragile flower next to Bina Dole). He was not worried about outranking her, out-politicking her, out-thinking, or out-talking her ... those were stripes he’d proved elsewhere. His concerns were more innocent (and winning): mostly he wanted to prove he could be a nice date.

  But he was! She was interested in what he really did ... he didn’t have to make small talk, make up hobbies, keep telling jokes. She understood his world, understood his talent in it. And still ...

  What he discovered, little by little (this was, perhaps, the hook that fetched him into the boat) ... she was a woman of surprising innocence. There was her faith in the system: she believed government—public service—could make lives better. There was her faith in the Lord, which she talked about with unaffected certainty that one did not often hear in Washington. There was her startling uncertainty about herself, wherein, slowly, one discovered the fuel for both her compulsive work and her faith in a Higher Power. ... When she got back from Japan, she found a gift of champagne and a dozen long-stemmed red roses. Bob Dole had a life to remake—he did not want to be alone.

  That was almost the turn of the year—1975, the year they would marry. Bob never did propose. They just started talking about their future, together. In fact, Bob said he’d known for more than a year ... before that election night. He said he was waiting, just to make sure he had a job.

  Of course, once he had a job, he had work to do. So they waited some more, until the Senate was out, that December ... which gave Elizabeth time to select a chapel (the Washington Cathedral) and to find a gorgeous white dress, a veil of lace, and the organist, and to ask the Senate Chaplain, Edward Elson, to preside. Elizabeth memorized and rehearsed her vows, Bob figured he could wing it. ... It was a Saturday, nearly evening, and the small guest list, mostly family, heard Dr. Elson’s welcome to the happy occasion, this solemn sanctification, this fulfillment of God’s plan, and His command ...

  Dr. Elson paused, perhaps for breath. He hadn’t yet turned to Bob and Elizabeth—much less, asked them anything. But Bob wasn’t waiting anymore. His prairie voice echoed in the Bethlehem Chapel:

  “I dooo!”

  84

  1975

  BY THAT TIME, DOLE was making speeches about opening up the Republican Party, repairing what he called its “antipeople image” It wasn’t enough, he said, to rail against welfare cheats. Everybody knew what the GOP was against. Republicans had to demonstrate they could also take care of the needy, that the Party was not against helping people.

  What had got into Dole?

  The shamans of the Washington tribe were confused: just when they had him neatly pigeonholed, the hatchet man went mooshy. (Was this some kinda trick? ...)

  Then he started in on food stamps!

  Dole was a member of the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition (most members were Ag guys) ... and he found out that people who needed food stamps had to apply for eligibility. They had to prove they were so poor, the government ought to sell them stamps worth, say, one hundred fifty dollars, for the princely discount of one hundred dollars. It took weeks, of course, to prove eligibility.

  So in ’75, Dole advanced an amendment: if people were hungry, sell them stamps now—let them self-certify. (If the paperwork didn’t square, next month ... well, time enough to deal with it then.) At the root of this proposal was a radical idea: feed the hungry—you could trust people, even though they were poor!

  Well, conservatives sent up a howl. They were promoting a bill by Senator James Buckley to knock thousands (or tens of thousands) off food stamps ... now Dole wanted to make the system work?

  But Dole didn’t stop there. With the Chairman of the Select Committee, he authored a complete overhaul of the program, a reform: for the first time, there would be an income limit for people who got food stamps (that was the bone for the conservatives) ... but at the same time, the government would just give the stamps away. Dole was acquainting his fellow Republicans with another radical truth: people who were hungry might not have a hundred dollars for stamps.

  Well, that sent up great clouds of ash from the op-ed volcano. It wasn’t just Dole’s radical ideas. It was his coauthor (to be precise, his coconspirator), the chairman of the committee, the Senator from South Dakota, and the right wing’s favorite piñata, George McGovern. This reform was called the Dole-McGovern bill.

  C’monnnn! ... What was Dole try’na pull?

  The wise-guy community was profoundly split on what everybody-who-knew was supposed to know:

  Some knew for a fact that Dole was playing clever hardball to win a bigger market for the Kansas farmer. (It was true, Dole saw this as a spur to markets ... but the Kansas wheat farmer didn’t give a damn about food stamps.)

  Some others descried a plan—a plot—to position Dole on issues of national substance, in furtherance of his overweening long-term ambition for higher office. (It was true, Dole meant to build a record of substance ... but if he were picking issues out of a hat—why not postal rates?)

  The Washington Post essayed the bold notion that Dole was actually trying to help people. A series of editorials commended Dole for his farsighted stand. (Of course, those truly in-the-know knew it had to be more than that—Dole was, you know ... trying to Be Nice!)

  Dole, himself, told anyone who asked: there was nothing miraculous here. Bill Roy almost beat him because voters didn’t think he cared about anyone ... wasn’t true!

  Well, how could the lunch-buddies accept that?

  Everybody knew Bob Dole was ... a hatchet man.

  (They’d all heard what he said to Senator Buckley. They held hearings on Buckley’s hard-line food-stamp bill. Dole asked—in open session!—“Agh, d’you put in a burial allowance ... f’the ones who starve?”)

  But Dole kept making speeches, affirming that people who were hungry should get food! ... In Washington, someone spotted him at a prayer breakfast. That was probably Elizabeth, got him to come ...

  Aha! ... Elizabeth!

  All at once, the official-secret story emerged. Elizabeth Hanford Dole (who was so nice!) was working on Bob.

  All at once, everybody knew the same story—most satisfyingly well known—how Elizabeth sat Bob down (at home—yeah, in the kitchen, with the little lady!) ... and made him watch tapes of himself ... and showed him how to Be Nice! ... She was making him Nice! ... She was his Nice coach!

  Well, Bob didn’t go out of his way to correct that. Seemed to him, if there had to be credit, Elizabeth ought to get it. He probably was nicer, liked himself better—once he got past reelection ... once the new Congress moved the capital past the Nixon bitterness ... once he got to flyin’ around the country ... come home, there’s Elizabeth—he loved coming home.

  Matter of fact, he was in love ... why wouldn’t he be mellow?

  For God’s sake, he’s getting good ink from the Post!

  Barbara Bush was in love with China. It was her first trip overseas ... such a wonderful adventure! There was the compound in Peking—a small building for the office, a larger house behind: first floor given over to reception rooms and a spacious dining room; family quarters above—q
uite cozy. ... There was a house staff of six (so interesting, with their Chinese ways, and strange Maoist stringencies) ... and a tennis court (with a Chinese pro), where she and George could team up for mixed doubles. ... There was a new community of foreign diplomats to woo and watch: receptions, reciprocal dinners, national days (such a grand and festive barbecue she and George mounted for July Fourth—the Chinese had never seen anything like it). ... There were visitors, occasional trips; wonderful food (their head cook, Mr. Sun, was an artist); lots of letters to the kids, who stayed at school in the states. There was an early-model VCR, with tapes of M*A*S*H from a friend at the network. There were daily lessons in Chinese (Bar picked up more than George) and three thousand years of history to learn. There were her bike rides through Peking, to ancient tombs, into strange corners of the city—with friends, or alone, or, best of all, with George.

  That was the great thing. Bar had moved into too many different houses (this one in Peking was her twenty-fifth) to fall in love with another pile of brick; staff she’d had, and would have more; new friends—there were always new friends. But in Peking, for the first time since Odessa, Texas (maybe the first time in her married life), she had George Bush to herself. He had no work in the evenings—often none in the afternoons. There were no long cables to write back to Washington, describing his contacts with the Chinese government. Save when Kissinger came to town (twice in their year-long sojourn), there were no serious contacts with the government ... unless you counted the tennis pro.

  So Bar and George did everything together. They’d pedal off, side by side, in the afternoons, on their way to the Ming tombs, or the Forbidden City, with George waving and smiling to the Chinese on the streets. ... “Ni-how!” he’d call, through a gap-mouthed grin. That was Chinese for “How are ya?” ... except with Bush, sometimes it came out like an indeterminate rodeo whoop. Anyway, if anyone really answered, they’d soon exhaust Bush’s stock of Chinese words. But still, they had to come away with a sense of his freshness, his eagerness to know them. What he brought to the historic reopening of U.S. relations with one billion Chinese was the same gift that carried him through every job—his person.