[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 210 (Monday, December 6, 2021)]
[Senate]
[Page S8922]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                       Remembering Robert J. Dole

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, it is hard to believe it has been 25 
years since Senator Dole took leave of the Senate. It is even harder to 
believe he passed away this past weekend, not because it comes as a 
shock to say goodbye to an elder statesman at age 98 but because our 
colleague was still so energetic, so involved, and so forward-looking 
right through to his final months.
  If you didn't know Bob Dole, if you just read a summary of his 
impressive Senate career, his leadership tenure, his Presidential 
campaign, he might sound like a man of contrasts.
  On one hand, our friend from Kansas preached conservative values--
personal responsibility and fiscal discipline--but this son of the Dust 
Bowl and wounded warrior was also laser-focused on caring for the most 
vulnerable, notching landmark wins on subjects from food insecurity to 
veterans' issues, to the rights of disabled Americans.
  On the one hand, Senator Dole took pride in our Republican Party. He 
rose to key roles that were necessarily somewhat partisan, first 
leading our Senate Republican conference for many years and then 
leading a Presidential ticket. But he was also a consensus-finding 
legislator, an honest broker with deep friendships and working 
relationships that spanned the aisle.
  On the one hand, our colleague was earnest, unironic, and somewhat 
serious--a true ``greatest generation'' midwesterner. But he also 
wielded a charming, disarming, and self-deprecating sense of humor, 
whether he was cracking one-liners, often at his own expense, or doing 
a joint appearance with his comic impersonator.
  Allow me just one example of Bob Dole's comedic talent.
  In January of 1997, just after President Clinton had defeated Bob and 
won his reelection, the President graciously bestowed on Bob the 
Presidential Medal of Freedom.
  There they were, in mid-January, just 3 days before the day Bob had 
spent months hoping he would be inaugurated, but President Clinton 
would be reinaugurated instead. It was a gracious gesture and a warm 
event all around.
  The time comes for Bob's remarks. He walks up to the podium, looks 
around, and he begins:

       I, Robert J. Dole--

  The crowd is already cracking up.

       do solemnly swear--

  Then a theatrical pause.

       Oh, sorry. Wrong speech.

  Once the laughs began to die down, there came the self-deprecating 
punch line:

       [I thought] I would be here this historic week receiving 
     something from the President . . . but I thought it would be 
     the front door key.

  The thing is, there was no contradiction in any of it, no paradox. 
Bob's life and career were very, very consistent. The virtues and the 
values that led Bob Dole to raise his right hand, enlist in the Army, 
and fight bravely until he could not raise that hand any longer were 
the same virtues and values that compelled him to raise his left hand 
for a different oath in the Kansas State Capitol a few years later and 
then across the Rotunda in the U.S. House and then here in the Senate.
  The same virtues and values that animated Bob's passionate, pointed 
speeches in the 1960s about a citizen's duty animated his great empathy 
toward those who needed help.
  With Bob Dole, what you saw was what you got, and from his comrades 
in the 10th Mountain Division to his constituents in Kansas, to the 
whole Senate and the entire country, what we got was extraordinary.
  I cannot summarize in one speech the full life or legacy of our 
friend Bob Dole. There are the battlefield heroics, the hospital-bed 
friendships with fellow future Senators Phil Hart and ``the best bridge 
player at Percy Jones Hospital,'' Dan Inouye. There is the policy 
legacy that endures to this day. These remembrances will take Congress 
this whole week, and they will occupy historians for decades to come.
  Bob Dole had the same chief hero for his entire adult life: his 
fellow son of Kansas, a general, and then a President, Dwight 
Eisenhower. Bob didn't just like Ike; he idolized him. In Senator 
Dole's Senate farewell speech in 1996, he saved the second-to-the-last 
quotation for his hero from Abilene, KS.
  He kept his foot personally on the gas pedal for the Eisenhower 
Memorial here in Washington well into his nineties. He invoked and 
praised Ike constantly throughout his career.
  One such occasion was in late 1979. An event was held at Eisenhower's 
boyhood home, Presidential library, and the gravesite in Abilene on 
what would have been his 89th birthday. It so happened that only a 
couple of weeks later Mrs. Eisenhower would pass away and be laid to 
rest there as well.
  On that day, Senator Dole explained that America had gotten 
``lucky.''
  Why? Because ``when we were thirsty for leadership, we turned to a 
man from Kansas, a genuine hero who embodied in his own life the finest 
qualities of the American people . . . a man from grassroots America, 
steeped in the traditions of neighborhood and patriotism and service . 
. . a strong man who earned his strength in war yet never forgot the 
disease of poverty or the scourge of personal suffering.''
  Bob was always eloquent, and those lines of his certainly did 
describe Ike.
  But now that our friend's 98 amazing years have come to a close, we 
can say with certainty that Eisenhower isn't the only Kansan who meets 
those standards. Not only General Eisenhower but also 2LT Robert J. 
Dole was a genuine hero from Kansas who helped satisfy a nation's 
thirst for leadership, who was steeped in homespun American values and 
proud of it, who fought with great courage and valor on the 
battlefield, and whose concern for the most vulnerable in our society 
came right with him into the halls of power.
  I mentioned that Eisenhower was Bob's second-to-last quotation in his 
farewell remarks to the Senate, so I want to close today where he 
closed 25 years ago. Musing on both his past and his future, our 
colleague's final quote was from the midwestern poet Carl Sandburg:

       [Y]esterday is a wind gone down, a sun dropped in the west. 
     I tell you there is nothing in the world, only an ocean of 
     tomorrows, a sky of tomorrows.

  Now, for our remarkable friend, the Sun of this world has set at 
last. But we pray in faith that he now beholds an even brighter light; 
that the endless ocean of tomorrows now stretches before him.
  The entire Senate sends our prayers to Elizabeth and Robin and to so 
many family, friends, and former staff of Senator Dole. The whole 
country stands with you, not only in grief but in gladness and 
thanksgiving, for almost a century that was lived so patriotically, so 
gratefully, and so well.