[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 180 (Tuesday, November 14, 1995)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2181-E2182]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           ``DOLE'S MOMENT''

                                 ______


                         HON. MICHAEL G. OXLEY

                                of ohio

                    in the house of representatives

                       Tuesday, November 14, 1995

  Mr. OXLEY. Mr. Speaker, I commend the following column by James 
Glassman from the Washington Post to the attention of my colleagues.

               [From the Washington Post, Nov. 14, 1995]

                             Dole's Moment

                         (By James K. Glassman)

       For two good reasons, Bob Dole's campaign people liked 
     having Colin Powell around. First, Powell took the spotlight 
     off Dole, letting him avoid the scrutiny that often destroys 
     early front-runners. Second, Powell took the spotlight off 
     the other candidates, depriving them of the publicity they 
     needed to raise money and get traction.
       Now Powell is gone, and the predictable stories have begun. 
     The front page of The Post yesterday carried the headline: 
     ``Out in Front, but Losing Ground. Polls Expose Dole's 
     Potential Vulnerabilities as Presidential Challenger.'' The 
     New York Times opted for a piece on how ``Moderates could 
     pass up Dole and hold out for an independent.'' Etc. etc.
       The hyperactive press demands novelty. It will never heed 
     Pascal's famous warning ``that all human evil comes from . . 
     . man's being unable to sit still in a room.'' And, 
     certainly, cynicism about politicians is nothing new. 
     Thumbing through some issues of the New Yorker in its heyday, 
     I found an article by Richard Rovere from June 1968 that 
     described the intense dissatisfaction of voters with the 
     presidential field at the time. What a field! Robert Kennedy, 
     Hubert Humphrey, Eugene McCarthy, Richard Nixon, George 
     Wallace and Nelson Rockefeller.
       But what about Bob? I suspect that 14 months from now, at 
     age 73, he'll be sworn in as president. He has a giant lead 
     in New Hampshire. Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.), who was supposed 
     to give him a tough race, is in single digits. And his other 
     top foes have never won an election--a reactionary pundit and 
     a rich supply-sider who inherited a magazine from his famous 
     dad.
       In the general election, polls show Dole and President 
     Clinton about even. But answers to two questions are ominous 
     for the president. A Time/CNN survey found 41 percent would 
     ``definitely'' vote against him. A Post survey asked, ``Which 
     party better represents your views on national issues.'' 
     Republicans got 55 percent, Democrats 25 percent.
       The White House, meanwhile, has adopted a weird reelection 
     strategy. Harold Ickes, the lead official on the campaign, 
     says that ``the overall issue is going to be leadership. . . 
     . People will make their judgments based 

[[Page E 2182]]
     on what they know about the person, what they think about his 
     character.''
       Bill Clinton running on character? Certainly, the lesson of 
     the Powell infatuation is that the nation desperately wants a 
     leader, but it's hard to see the current president as that 
     man--or Dole, right now. Still, if you look beyond the next 
     few messy weeks (in which Speaker Newt Gingrich, far more 
     than Dole, is taking the heat on the budget), you can catch a 
     glimpse of Dole's own story emerging. It is a powerful one, 
     and most Americans don't know it yet.
       I didn't know it myself until I read ``What It Takes,'' 
     Richard Ben Cramer's brilliant but unwieldy book on the 1988 
     presidential campaign. Now Cramer has collated all the bits 
     about Dole and put them into a single volume, ``Bob Dole,'' 
     recently out in paperback from Vintage.
       The story is the wound, suffered 50 years ago when, as a 
     21-year-old Army lieutenant, Dole's upper body was torn apart 
     by German gunfire on a hill in Italy. ``Whatever hit Dole had 
     ripped into everything,'' writes Cramer, ``You could see into 
     Dole through the jacket, through the shoulder, like a gouged 
     fruit. See down to the core.'' Dole was sent back home, 
     nearly died a few times, but hung on, fighting against what 
     Cramer calls ``his private vision of hell. . . . Sometimes, 
     he could actually see himself on Main Street, Russell, in a 
     wheelchair, with a cup.''
       In 1947, a Chicago surgeon named Hampar Kelikian, an 
     Armenian immigrant who had come to America with $20 in his 
     pocket, put Dole back together. Dr. K. refused to be paid, 
     but Dole had to get to Chicago, and the folks in Russell 
     chipped in, putting their dollar bills in a cigar box.
       Three years later, Dole was elected to the Kansas state 
     house, then county attorney, then U.S. representative, then, 
     in 1968, U.S. senator; in 1976, vice presidential nominee; in 
     1984, majority leader; in 1994, leader again.
       The trouble with this great American success story is that 
     Dole himself is reluctant to tell it. As Cramer shows, he 
     feels embarrassed about not being ``whole''--as if his 
     handicap should be hidden:
       ``If [Dole] ever let himself rest, that [right] arm would 
     hang straight down, visibly shorter than his left arm, with 
     the palm of his right hand twisted toward the back. But Dole 
     never, lets anybody see that--his `problem.' He keep a 
     plastic pen in his crooked right fist to round its shape.
       ``If he ever let that pen go, the hand would splay, with 
     the forefinger pointing and the others cramped in toward the 
     palm. . . . No matter how that fist aches or spasms, Dole 
     holds on--against his problem.''
       So what about Bob? He has few core beliefs, other than 
     balancing the budget (as Cramer writes: ``Bobby Joe Dole grew 
     up in Russell, Kansas. He saw people die from debt.''). He 
     may be uncomfortable with Gingrich and his passionate 
     conservative cohorts, but that doesn't mean he'll betray 
     them. As president, he'll be a moderating force, but in the 
     end, he'll sign, not veto.
       Up to now, he's been ignored and underestimated. That's 
     starting to change. Dole has to get through the Florida straw 
     poll later this week with a good showing and get through the 
     fight over the budget without serious damage. Then, it will 
     be time to tell his story and show his stuff. Will Americans 
     take to him as leader, as the last member of the heroic World 
     War II generation to lead this country? Don't bet against it.