This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu

ROBERT J. DOLE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview with

Sen. ROBERT J. DOLE

May 11, 2007

Interviewer

Richard Norton Smith

Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics 2350 Petefish Drive Lawrence, KS 66045 Phone: (785) 864-4900 Fax: (785) 864-1414 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 2

Smith: First of all, the major thrust of all of this is to look at your Senate career, but obviously you can’t isolate that, and that overlaps a whole lot of things. What I thought, before you were a senator, you were a legislator, obviously in the House and even before that in the Kansas House. How did you get into politics?

Dole: Well, we had a law librarian, whose name was Beth Bowers [phonetic], a Democrat who thought young people ought to be involved in public policy, politics, and she kept talking to us. We’d go down and study, and she’d talk to us, very nice lady, and I think she convinced—I think there were four of us—to run for state legislature. That was way back in 1950.

Smith: You were at Washburn [University].

Dole: Right. She was the Washburn Law School law librarian. So we gave it a shot, and I ran against a fellow named [Elmo J.] Mahoney, who thought he was going to be governor one of these days, and here I was some young upstart, didn’t know anything about politics, didn’t know much about parties, and here I ran against him, and I think largely because of my veteran status and all that, you know, I prevailed, plus even then Russell County was filled with Republicans.

Smith: But this was not something you thought about when you were in the hospital after the War?

Dole: No, no. Dan [Sen. Daniel K.] Inouye tells the story that we talked about this when we were in the hospital in Battle Creek, Michigan, that I laid out a scenario that what w-e ought to do is get out and get into public service and run for Congress, and I said, well, if he says so, it’s okay with me, but I don’t recall it. I remember when I was in Russell recuperating when I was on leave from Battle Creek Hospital [Percy Jones Army Medical Center, Battle Creek, Mich.], and then when I was discharged, both parties were looking for veterans to run for office, and I remember talking with the Democratic leader, a fellow named Clifford Holland who had made a run at Congress and lost, and a young attorney named John Woelk, Republican, and they both This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 3 wanted me to run in their party, but I somehow chose the Republican Party; I guess my relationship with Woelk.

Smith: Your parents, I think, had been Democrats.

Dole: Yes, I think they switched. Clifford Holland, when he ran for Congress, switched a lot of people in our little hometown, and in Russell whether you’re an R or a D didn’t really make much difference. I mean, you know, if you knew the person, they were your neighbor, they didn’t care whether it was Democrat or Republican. I mean, people were really active in politics, but most people then were pretty laid back and didn’t stay up all night watching the talk shows. There weren’t any talk shows. We watched what’s-his- name [John R.] Brinkley, you know, the goat-gland specialist. That was our radio show.

Smith: What was your first campaign like? I assume you didn’t have much money.

Dole: Had hardly any money. It was all—when you talk about grass roots, I mean, it was grass roots, I mean going from door to door, little town to little town, in and out of businesses, printing little cards that didn’t say much, have your picture, your name, “running for state representative.” I think it said “native, veteran,” something else. About three words. That’s about all you did. That was about it. Just a lot of shoe leather.

Smith: I assume you’re building an organization, family, friends, one person at a time.

Dole: [laughs] It wasn’t very big. Really, when I ran for Congress, we really had an organization, but in the early days, running for state legislature and then later county attorney, it was pretty much solo. I mean, you had some friends who were—but I don’t know, as far as people giving you money, I can’t even recall getting any money from anybody running for county attorney or state legislature. Somebody may have given me ten dollars or twenty dollars, which was—

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Smith: I remember you saying—I think it’s in the book, or one of the books—I think the first time you had to go up and knock on someone’s door, a stranger’s door, it wasn’t easy.

Dole: Wasn’t easy because in some ways I was sort of reserved anyway. You know, my parents taught us to respect your elders and keep quiet until you’re spoken to and all this. So to knock on someone’s door and say, “I’m Bob Dole. I’d like you to vote for me,” and da-da-da, it’s like anything else, right? After you knock on a hundred doors, it’s pretty easy. All you worry about is some dog coming around the corner, and I’ve had a few of those things happen, which always keep you awake but keep you alert. I didn’t know at the time, but I’ve learned since, probably only about every fourth door you knocked on in a primary voted anyway, so you knock on three doors, you waste a lot of time.

Smith: Were people generally pretty nice?

Dole: Oh yes, they were very nice. Coming back from World War II, having been wounded, you know, whether Democrats or Republicans, the whole country was united. It’s not like today. World War II vets were sort of up on a pedestal, maybe not all deserved, but that’s where they were. So everybody was nice to everybody because everybody had somebody involved, either raising wheat to feed us in the military or working in a little factory or being in uniform. So almost everybody, even the rationing, everybody participated in some way. Everybody made a little sacrifice as opposed to today when only the families and the people directly involved sacrifice.

Smith: Do you remember election night?

Dole: I kind of have a vague recollection of particularly the legislative race. I can’t remember how much I won by, but it was a pretty good margin, several hundred votes, as I remember.

Smith: Yes. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 5

Dole: I think I might have been in the old Russell Record Office. They kind of got the news. Or I might have been—I wasn’t at the courthouse. You’d call in the results to the county clerk, and the reporter would check with the county clerk. It was not very high tech those days.

Smith: It was more fun.

Dole: More fun. You’d have to wait for Paradise—sounds like a great place to get votes—Paradise get their votes in. They didn’t have very many people voting. Of course, Russell was always the key, and I lived in Ward 1. I don’t think he carried any wards in Russell. I’m not sure he carried any wards anywhere.

Smith: So what was Topeka like? I mean the whole legislative environment. You’re a freshman, newcomer, first office.

Dole: I didn’t have a clue about anything. Was in law school, and let’s see. There were at least two others elected out of the four. I think there were three of us, one Republican named [Clyde N.] Wilson and a Democrat—can’t remember his name. But I don’t know, Ed [Edward F.] Arn was governor then. It was a part-time legislature. I remember I was on Taxation Committee, equivalent to what we call Ways and Means or Finance Committee, and the chairman was a fellow named Tony Emmel [phonetic], who’s still alive and lives in [unclear], Kansas, a longtime friend. I was only there two years, and I can’t remember making any great speeches. I sort of recollect that I did get up one day and disagree strongly with the governor, which we didn’t do in those days. If you were a Republican and you had Ed Arn, the governor, whoever, you followed the party line or kept quiet.

Smith: In those days there were only two parties in Kansas.

Dole: Right. The Populist Party was long before.

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Smith: Were you nervous initially?

Dole: Oh, I think so. I had to be, yes, because what little I knew about politics could ride on the head of a pin.

Smith: Were there old bulls there, people who had been around, who took you or other newcomers under their wing? Did anyone give you advice?

Dole: Yes. I’m trying to think of some of the—obviously there were some who had been there a long time. I can’t remember how many new members we had that year, but there was a Townsley [phonetic] from Great Bend, brother of Russ Townsley, who was later the publisher of the Russell Daily News. Will Townsley was his brother’s name. He was there and I think he may have been in the Senate at the time, but he was kind of a big shot. Senator from Kingman, Paul [_____]—haven’t thought of these names for a while. Gray-haired, senatorial-looking. He was really a nice guy. I don’t remember who the Speaker of the House was. But, yes, we had a majority. Republicans had a big majority. I don’t know what the—

Smith: What kinds of issues would you deal with? I think Governor Arn was involved with the debate over the fair employment practices.

Dole: Yes, I remember that. I think I supported that. That was my first civil rights vote. Did that become law? I’m not sure.

Smith: Yes, it did. It was quite a fight.

Dole: Yes. I know most of it, seemed to me, we had hearings and we appropriated money. I don’t remember any major thing that sort of jumps out, and I don’t even remember anything that affected Russell County that I was active in.

Smith: Would there be the equivalent of constituent service, or did you hear from—

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Dole: I’d go home a lot. I kind of liked it. Once you get into it, if you like people—I almost said if you don’t like people, open a mortuary. Then you don’t have to talk to anybody. But I always kind of liked give-and-take and shaking hands and going from farm to farm, little town to little town. People become walking billboards. They have contact with you and they either agree with you or think you’re doing a good job. They’re telling other people. You don’t do it anymore, but used to work.

Smith: You miss that?

Dole: Yes, that’s the part—I keep telling Elizabeth that’s what she ought to be doing, going to North Carolina, getting out of the car. Forget about all the quiz programs every weekend and walk up and down the streets, shake hands. People will remember it forever. My slogan—that was later in Congress, “Young Men on the Move.” As we got older, we changed “Young Men on the Move,” to “Men on the Move.” I don’t know what the last one was. “Still Moving.” [laughs]

Smith: That’s about the time what [Dwight D.] Eisenhower is coming under pressure from a lot of Republicans to run, and comes home.

Dole: Came to Abilene. I was there in the rain. Right.

Smith: Tell us about—

Dole: Well, vague recollection, but Eisenhower’s my—even then, the person I looked up to as a great American and been our commander in Europe. I didn’t know then all the details how he got there and all that. Made us very proud as Kansans that he’d come from Abilene and lived there till he was, what, seventeen or eighteen, then went off and really never came back, but he still called Kansas home. Senator [Frank] Carlson was one of those. I think he even made a trip to SEATO or somewhere, talked to Eisenhower about being a Republican candidate, so he was very much in view that day.

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Smith: And he would be your predecessor in the Senate, wouldn’t he?

Dole: Right. He’s the one that quietly told me that he was going to leave and I should get busy before somebody else got busy.

Smith: How much in advance of the election was that?

Dole: Oh, like a couple of days, because former Governor [William H.] Avery, who had been in Congress, very fine guy, Bill Avery, was going to run if Carlson retired, and I think Carlson for some reason preferred me over him, because we had a good relationship. His hometown was about 110 miles from mine in western Kansas.

Smith: You didn’t run for reelection to the state legislature.

Dole: No. I’m a one-termer. I decided, “I’ve got to make some money.” I think we got five dollars a day, I think it was, plus two dollars per diem or something, some amount you couldn’t live on. So John Woelk again encouraged me to run for county attorney, so I decided to do it. I think I ran against seven attorneys in my four terms as county attorney, every attorney in town, and when I left, they had to draft someone to take the job. [laughs] So I guess there must have been gold under the courthouse. I never found it. But I had a very tough opponent, a fellow named Dean Ostrum. Just had a note from him the other day. His father was a very prominent attorney, they were very prominent in the Methodist Church, just outstanding family, and it was a horse race.

Smith: It sounds like what you’re saying is that at that level at that time, politics was really personal.

Dole: Oh yes.

Smith: Not ideological. It’s who you know and how long you’ve known them.

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Dole: I think if you could say a negative campaigning, running against Dean Ostrum, people would say, “Well, Bob Dole needs a job. This other guy, his dad’s got plenty of money.” That’s how tough it got. He was rich and I was poor, so give it to this poor guy. He needs a job.

Smith: It was effective.

Dole: Yes, it worked. Dean Ostrum later became general counsel of AT&T or the big phone company, so he did very well. Now lives in New York.

Smith: What were the duties of the county attorney?

Dole: Well, they were varied. You had to advise your county commissioners—three of those, generally mostly Republican. I was county attorney for eight years. You also had to deal with—we had no, in my time, any murder cases, but you had burglaries and drunk driving and things of that kind you had to deal with, sometimes with the Justice of the Peace and sometimes with a district judge. I remember arguing a case before the Supreme Court on a severance tax on oil issue, where we prevailed. And you had to also sign every check that was issued by the welfare department, you had to sign, and of course that’s where, as you know, my grandparents were on that list. So once a month I would sign the checks. I had an uncle and my two grandfathers and grandmother were welfare recipients.

Smith: There are people who think—and I’m one of them—have always thought that there’s a streak of populism in you, I mean that you clearly, while you may have been conservative, or however you define that, certainly conservative in economics and the like, long before people were talking about compassionate conservatism, that’s really what you were doing.

Dole: I think that and the way the people responded when I came home, and all the good doctors had taken off and I was still in the hospital, and they went around town raising money so I could go to Chicago to Wesley [Memorial] Hospital, to Dr. Kelikian . It This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 10

showed me that power really lies with the people, the goodness of the people, not government. Plus we had to a couple of times take children away from their families. That’s hard to do. I think when you kind of grow up seeing the real problems, you don’t grow up here [gestures]; you grow up here [gestures]. Everybody knows everybody. You don’t lock your doors at night. You don’t take your keys out of your car. Not anymore, but then. And we lived on the north side of the tracks, which is sort of the poorer side. Then, of course, there’s the other side of the tracks. We lived a block from the railroad, so the trains would wake you up every night. And my dad was a working guy, wore his overalls to work every day for forty-two years, and proud of it. He wanted them pressed and all this. My mother was—I think she was one of the first women pioneers out there selling sewing machines, giving sewing lessons, that kind of thing. So, you know, it was an average family, average probably low-income family that didn’t know you were a low-income family. Nobody told us we were a low-income family.

Smith: Yes. I famously said—

Dole: Wasn’t any poverty level.

Smith: [unclear] Americans, we didn’t know it.

Dole: We didn’t know it, so it didn’t make any difference. We thought we were okay.

Smith: Implicit in all that is, you look at people who work as hard as they can, and yet whether because of a drought or whatever, they can’t make it. It isn’t that poverty is a badge of dishonor; it’s they are life’s victims.

Dole: Yes, my one grandfather was a butcher, and he used to have the A-frame with his cows up there, a terrible sight to watch, but that’s how he made his money. When times are tough, people weren’t buying beef, he had no job. And my other grandfather was a tenant farmer. Of course, as he got older, they didn’t want him anymore. I think I This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 11 remember his landlady was Mrs. Campbell, very nice lady, but she had to have somebody younger who could work the farm. Robert Grant Dole. A good Republican name, you know.

Smith: You went through the Depression and the Dust Bowl.

Dole: Oh, the Dust Bowl. I used to deliver papers, the Salina Journal, which is a big, big paper in our part of the woods, and really it was so bad, my mother would put wet towels on the windows and the doors to keep the dust from coming underneath, and I would come home from my little paper route, just like somebody’d thrown mud at me, I mean just dust all over. It lasted for a long time. Of course, they talk about poor farmers, I mean they didn’t have any crops at all, and every little town relies on the farm economy, and there wasn’t any. So it was tough, tough, tough.

Smith: How did people survive?

Dole: Well, I think they probably increased the welfare load. My parents moved us into the basement so they could rent out the upper part of the house. People adapted or did what they had to do. But we also were lucky, in a way, because they discovered oil in Russell County even before, so that always was sort of a backstop. I mean, people could find jobs in the oil fields, and certain people in town were making pretty good money. We weren’t part of that. My dad tried a couple of things and lost both times.

Smith: Do you think those experiences shaped the kind of conservative you became?

Dole: Yes. It took me a while. When I first came to Congress, I think I was probably, looking back on it, probably a little too partisan. I came from a very conservative district, and my predecessor, Wint Smith, had been—oh, very, very conservative. He was a [William H.] Taft man, didn’t think Eisenhower should be president. He was a big supporter of Wisconsin senator—

Smith: Joe [Joseph R.] McCarthy? This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 12

Dole: Joe McCarthy. Oh yes. He thought he had gotten a raw deal. He was a big, big guy, brigadier general in the Kansas National Guard, had seen active service, real service, front-line service in World War II, and he sort of took a liking to me. I ran against a very good guy named Keith Sebelius, who’s kin to the present governor, of course.

Smith: What was his position at the time?

Dole: He was a lawyer in Norton, Kansas, been commander of the American Legion, so had had a lot of contacts with veterans. He had run against Wint Smith before, pretty close election. I think it was fifty-three votes or something, very close. So everybody thought this was the guy, and, of course, so when I decided to run at the urging of Wint Smith, because he didn’t like Sebelius, for obvious reasons—

Smith: This is 1960?

Dole: Yes, this is 1960. And there was another guy, named Philip Doyle, D-o-y-l-e, and Dole, D-o-l-e, and not many knew either one of us, and most of them didn’t care, so we really had a jazzed-up campaign. We served Dole pineapple juice, we had Dolls for Dole, we had covered wagons, we had round cards “Roll with Dole,” and all this stuff, had quartets called the Bob-o-Links. We’d have young housewives in white blouses and red skirts serving Dole pineapple juice as we’d go up and down the streets in all these little towns, and parades. After the election, I think Sebelius was quoted as saying, “He drowned me in pineapple juice.” [laughs] And I think we did. I can remember when people, instead of having coffee, we’d have juices. We’d go to somebody’s house for not coffee, a juice. When they couldn’t find Dole pineapple, I can remember a lot of times where they’d scrape the label off so I wouldn’t see, if I had to buy Libby’s or something else. The hostess didn’t want me to know, I guess, that it wasn’t Dole pineapple juice. It really was a lot of fun, and you really earn it, too, because you have to work hard.

Smith: A lot more shoe leather. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 13

Dole: A lot more shoe leather, and we didn’t have that much television. I remember going to Great Bend, Kansas, first time I’d ever even thought about being on TV, KGBG, I think it was, KGBG-TV, and did a little spot, and I was nervous and all this stuff. But that was—I can’t remember which election. But we didn’t have the money, so we had a lot of newspaper ads in those days and a lot of handouts and radio ads, plus just a lot of activity, every weekend or every time you could find a 4-H fair or a parade in Hoxie or wherever it was in the district, off you’d go. That first congressional race, we spent $19,000, not a lot of money.

Smith: Do you miss that? Do you think those kinds of campaigns are gone?

Dole: I think they’re gone. In the good old days, we used to go to Hill City, Kansas, for example, where they had big town hall meetings and everybody was invited. It wasn’t all partisan, all Republican. They’d do the same for the other candidate at a later time. You had a chance to get up and talk about Graham County, Hill City, what are you going to do for the wheat farmer. That’s a farm community. Federal aid to education was a big issue then, which I opposed. So it’s just different. I could walk in any town and probably know at least ten people or more, and I remember when Senator Carlson used to come to Russell, for example, he would have a fellow in front of him, one of his friends, named Rusty Miller, and he would say, “Here comes Bob Dole.” “Hey, Bob, how ya doin’?” Some guy was a spotter. I guess they called him a spotter. “There’s Linda Jones.” “Oh, hi, Linda.” “He knows everybody!” But he also knew a lot of people too. But I really knew their names. I knew their names and everything but their hat size.

Smith: You were county attorney for eight years. Do you remember when during that period you really began to think about running for Congress? That was the logical next step?

Dole: Yes, I think Wint Smith knew when he had that very close election that he was finished.

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Smith: That would have been in ’58.

Dole: Yes. So he started working on me, and I remember he would even send me extra stamps. They used to give stamps to members of Congress for official business or whatever. He would send me these stamps so I could write letters, because I didn’t have any money. County attorney was paid $242 a month or something, not very much. He would invite me to go places and show up with him. Of course, he wasn’t that popular. [laughs]

Smith: I was going to say, that was a bit of a double-edged sword, wasn’t it, to be his protégé?

Dole: He always ran against the Salina Journal. That was the biggest paper, and he would carry it around and wave it at people, and they’d attack him every day, just like the New York Times with [George W.] Bush. But he always claimed he survived because he took on the Salina Journal. Well, I didn’t particularly want to take them on. I was sort of new. The editor was Whitley Austin, and he kind of liked me. He didn’t want another Wint Smith. Later on, not initially, he became a pretty good supporter.

Smith: Of course, you’ve got a family—Phyllis and Robin. Were they active in the campaign as well?

Dole: Oh, they were very—Phyllis, of course, had a lot of great ideas, and Robin just— what was her little—“My Daddy for Congress” or something, her little outfit which she wore, a little apron. Yes, it was sort of a family affair, just a bunch of people from Russell, probably had a cadre of thirty or forty, and every weekend you could count on twenty, twenty-five of them, and they had a lot of fun, you know. In fact, I learned later that a lot of them had a lot of fun I didn’t know about; they were lacing their pineapple juice with vodka, had more fun doing that, I guess. But we’d always stop, maybe Osborne had a great restaurant there, have dinner on the way back. I think we won that election, the one with Sebelius and Doyle, by 980-some votes, so it was close.

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Smith: In those days, I assume winning the Republican primary was tantamount to winning the fall election.

Dole: Yes, it was a very Republican district. I don’t even remember who my first opponent was, a Democrat. But you had to work. Who was my first opponent?

Smith: William A. Davis. You won 59 to 21.

Dole: That’s when they put the two districts together.

Smith: It says ’60. Now, in ’62 was—

Dole: It was Bill Davis. Excuse me.

Smith: —[unclear] Breeding [phonetic].

Dole: That’s right. Bill Davis was a very nice guy, later became a supporter. He was a sugar beet producer in Goodland, Kansas. Bill Davis. But it was pretty Republican, but he was a very fine, decent guy. We never got personal, but I think I worked harder than he did.

Smith: What was the transition like to come to Congress?

Dole: Going to Congress?

Smith: Yes. First just to live in Washington or to come to Washington.

Dole: Oh, well, you can imagine. I had lived in Topeka, which is a pretty big town, and at K.U. at Lawrence, which is bigger than Russell. Most every place is or was. Then suddenly you’re thrown into Washington, and as I told my colleagues yesterday morning—former colleagues—I remember walking on the floor forty-six years ago, something like that, I didn’t have a clue. I didn’t know what was going on. I didn’t even This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 16 know where the men’s room was. I don’t think then they had these little courses where you come in and the newcomers have these little courses to sort of get you acquainted with what’s happening. I don’t remember even doing that. You always feel kind of proud that you’re there, but you’re not quite certain what you’re supposed to do. [laughs] My roommate across the hall was Don [Donald H.] Rumsfeld, in the Cannon Building. He wasn’t first term; he came later, two years later. Anyway, the thing I remember about that is, you know, Eisenhower was just leaving the White House as we were coming, and I had a chance to get my picture taken, which is on the wall there, with Eisenhower at the White House, and then later he invited the whole freshman class to come to Gettysburg, where he spent about three hours of personal tour, the battlefield, gave us lunch, put us on the bus and waved goodbye, which is still one of the most memorable events that I can remember. I mean, whether you’re Democrat or Republican, you still liked Ike, and Democrats probably liked him because he wasn’t there any longer, but we just liked him.

Smith: And he was still very impressive at that age.

Dole: Oh yes, yes. I remember visiting with him, too, on one of his last illnesses at Walter Reed. I’ve been in the Eisenhower Suite at Walter Reed as a patient, where there are a couple of his paintings on the wall. He was a pretty good painter. I think one was with [Winston] Churchill. Anyway, you know, the House was—I thought we were in the permanent minority Republicans. I don’t remember how many we had—160-some, maybe, 170, and [Sam] Rayburn was the first Speaker, and he used to—if you looked at the Speaker’s chair in those days, he used to dig his nails into the—you could see where—I guess it was tension or whatever, but he was very quiet, reserved. I’m not sure he ever knew I was in the Congress, because you didn’t jump up in those days first week and start espousing some great theory or some great legislation. You could make one-minute speeches; that’s probably about all I ever did. Then John [W.] McCormack followed Rayburn—straight, tall, very nice man, and of course he had his problem with the Southern conservatives.

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Smith: Although clearly you were in a party minority, there were times when ideologically obviously Republicans would make common cause—

Dole: Yes, like ’64 Civil Rights Act. Many of us voted for it.

Smith: Sure.

Dole: It wouldn’t have passed because it had all the Democrats in the South against it.

Smith: That’s true. Of course.

Dole: So even then we had to—bipartisanship.

Smith: But it went both ways. I mean, my point is that there you’re absolutely right, if it hadn’t been for Republican votes, civil rights bills would not have passed, but on a lot of economic and other issues, there was this sort of coalition between most Republicans and a lot of Southern Democrats.

Dole: Oh yes, sure. Of course, coming from pretty much rural districts except for Salina, but even they had a lot of elevators and a lot of people who dealt with farmers out in western Kansas, it was a big issue, agriculture. So I got on the House Ag Committee, which was almost a necessity. I had to show the flag for that district. And stayed on the Ag Committee all through the House and all through the Senate. I think I had thirty-five and a half years on the Ag Committee, and even if you’re asleep, you’re going to learn something in thirty-five and a half years. So I got to be a pretty good person on Ag.

Smith: Charlie [Charles A.] Halleck was the Republican Leader, wasn’t he, when you arrived. Joe [Joseph W.] Martin [Jr.] was still around.

Dole: Yes.

Smith: He’d been deposed, and of course Halleck would be [unclear]. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 18

Dole: Martin used to—I think he sat in the third row back, and he would just sort of sit there, never say much, but very pleasant. And Charlie Halleck, of course, was upended by President [Gerald R.] Ford with the help of three Kansas votes, which he never forgot, as you know.

Smith: What was Halleck like as a—

Dole: He was an excellent Speaker. He could get you to “rah, rah, rah.” Of course, we didn’t have any troops. [laughs] He gave a great speech, but what do we do now? We don’t have the votes. But he also had a little tippling problem.

Smith: Was that something—I don’t want to exaggerate, but more common in those days, do you think, maybe than forty years later?

Dole: Yes, because I can only remember in the Senate, in all the time I was there, and particularly in the leadership where you have to kind of watch those things, maybe seeing two or three senators who should have been home, and I think in the early days they used to do it more. I mean, Charlie always had happy hours in his office. I wouldn’t let that— I kept it out of my office. If they want to have a party, go somewhere else. And I don’t think anything evil about it; I think they just figure, well, it’s five o’clock.

Smith: Probably didn’t have that much to be happy about. [laughs]

Dole: I guess if you’re in the minority, you were drinking because you didn’t have the votes, and if you’re in the majority, you were happy. And there were a lot of friends. People always talk about all the confrontation, but there’s always people who become friends across the aisle, I don’t care how bad it looks.

Smith: Clearly it’s interesting, because that gets to the polarized nature of the Congress today. Everyone talks about—I heard President Ford so many times talk about how radically different the climate was, and part of it was you just spent more time together? This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 19

Dole: Particularly if you’re on a committee, you got to really know people like Graham [B.] Purcell [Jr.], who was just a great guy from Texas, later became a federal judge. And Robert Poage from Waco, Texas, probably the hardest working guy I ever knew, was our Ag chairman. Boy, when you went on a trip with him, I remember going to India, [Lyndon B.] Johnson sent us there with Bob Poage, myself, and Senator Jack Miller from Iowa, and Poage never stopped. I was twenty years younger and I was [pants] worn out. So it wasn’t a junket when he went. Yes, they were just good people. The name of the chairman when I first got there, from North Carolina, always had a cigarette holder. He used to bring more furniture back from overseas trips. We had some program where you could use certain funds to spend. And in those days, they used to bring the cash into the committee. I remember being in the—I think her name was Dorothy, the secretary, and somebody came in, “Who do I give this money to?” “Not right now. Wait a minute.” Some guy had a bag of cash he wanted to give to the chairman. But I don’t think that happens anymore.

Smith: I was going to say, were you shocked by anything you saw? Surprised?

Dole: Well, it was much different in those days, because even then, you know, if you’re a lobbyist, you’re out there in front, you’re passing amendments to the members. I assume I got some. “See if you can’t slip this in somewhere,” or, “No, we don’t want that. Do this.” Nobody saw anything wrong with it. I mean, it was sort of out in the open; it wasn’t somebody sneaking it under the door or something. They’d just pass it up. Now, of course, you’d probably be shot or executed, whatever. It was more convivial, or whatever the word is. But I remember—the name starts with a C, chairman. We had a congressman named [Ross] Bass from Tennessee, who was called “Big Mouth” Bass, and then there was Perkins Bass from New Hampshire, he was known as “Little Mouth” Bass. Bass from Tennessee, Chairman—not Coolidge, but I’ll think of it—Cooley. Chairman [Harold D.] Cooley. Didn’t really care for him, even though he was a Democrat, and he used to carry on, because Cooley wouldn’t recognize him. He’d keep hold of his hand. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 20

“Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!” He said, “Shut up. I’ll recognize you when I get ready.” But we had that kind of stuff in the committee.

Smith: There was a sense that you socialized across party lines much more than is the case today, and also you had party structures. Since people were much more accountable, whether it’s to a committee chairman or the party itself, [unclear].

Dole: Yes, we didn’t have all the staff either. We had what they call professional staff, which meant they were all Democrats, you know, and we weren’t entitled to any staff. These are staff, these people serve, and they were good, don’t misunderstand me, but they weren’t—and it wasn’t until, jiminy, I got into the Senate and in the Finance Committee we finally had one Republican staffer. It’s changed a lot now, but I think there was a feeling then in the sixties that Democrats were going to be in charge forever, and I think many of us sort of accepted it. “Well, we’re just sort of here for the ride. Maybe if we’re good boys, we’ll get an amendment adopted. You won’t get your name on any bill that passes. That’s not going to happen.” It’s changed a lot. I think it’s opened up more, there are more opportunities. Obviously members speak out more earlier.

Smith: Did you go home regularly?

Dole: Oh yes. And I didn’t want to miss a vote. I think I had 100 percent voting record for I don’t know how many years. I was so afraid to miss a vote, but I still got home. I think the first couple of years I was home every other weekend at least. TWA [Trans World Airlines], I about wore them out. They wore me out. They’re gone now.

Smith: Did the Congress pay for that travel?

Dole: They’d pay for so many trips, and the others we’d have to take out of campaign funds. Once you’re there, you know, in those days a five-hundred-dollar contribution was, boy, I remember getting a five-hundred-dollar contribution, a fellow named Bob Williams from Wichita, an oil man. I thought, “Jiminy, five hundred dollars.” That was This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 21 a lot of money. That would be equivalent now to probably five, ten thousand dollars. You didn’t get too many of those, by the way.

Smith: Did he want anything?

Dole: Not really. He was just a nice—he later moved into the Watergate and was my next-door neighbor years later. I’m not even sure he’s alive anymore. But you can pretty easily spot the people who want something, you know. Then you always get some money after the election, the people saying, “I’ve been meaning to send this to you for months,” after you win, of course. If you lose, they keep it. There’s always a few of those who get the message a little late, but they want to be remembered.

Smith: You must have had a very small staff.

Dole: Oh, I think we had seven. A fellow named Bill Kats was my AA [administrative assistant], and he was from Phillips County, probably one of the most Republican counties in Kansas next to Norton, maybe. But very fine, decent guy. He’d been there with Wint Smith. And I had an Armenian, Angelian or something, and, of course, she knew all about Dr. Kelikian and the operations and all that stuff. So I had a very small staff. I don’t think I had anybody in Kansas. I may have had. I was a Kansas guy. And, of course, I was young then, so it didn’t bother me any.

Smith: And you answered all the mail yourself.

Dole: Yes, answered all the mail myself. Kats would sometimes send in some samples. It’s always easy to edit, as you know, somebody else’s stuff, “this, this, this.” But he used to have one phrase that I never cared for, and I can’t remember it now. I used to cross it out. He’d put it in every time. I’d take it out every time. But he was the kind of guy, never made an enemy. You walk into your office and Bill Kats was there. He just made you feel at home. I remember when I got here, we wrote the Dole Company in Hawaii, saying, “A name like mine, we thought it would be great to serve Dole pineapple juice in the office, This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 22

and maybe you’d like to provide it,” da-da-da. I think our response was, they sent us a price list. [laughs] So at that point my profile wasn’t very high, and they didn’t see any reason to waste any pineapple juice.

Smith: A freshman congressman in those days must have been pretty much at the bottom of the ladder.

Dole: Huh! Yes, I was the last one. I think I was number 14 on our side on the Ag committee, very last. If we had fourteen, whatever it was, I was last. You have a hearing and they take turns, the chairman first, the ranking member. By the time they got to me, there was nobody left. But if you stayed long enough—in those days, you didn’t just duck in and out like they do now, because we didn’t keep track of everybody’s records, trying to catch them missing a committee so we could use it in a campaign. But generally you’d go to the hearing and just plan to spend two hours, three hours. You’d be there all day. That’s changed a lot, too, because people have so many committees, they have other things, 10 percent of them are running for president in the Senate.

Smith: This seniority system governed in those days—

Dole: It was terrible till you get some of it.

Smith: What was good about the seniority system?

Dole: Having it. [laughs] When you first get there, you think it’s—well, when you first get there, you don’t know what’s going on. It takes you a term to even know what’s cookin’. When you’ve been there a couple of terms, you begin to think, “Why is that guy—I’m as smart as he is, and he’s up here and I’m way down here.” Well, he’s been there eighteen years or ten years. I haven’t thought of any better way to fix it, but in the Senate and in the House to some degree we limited how long you could be chairman of a committee, so you could cut off the senior members. I’m not sure that was such a great idea. Slade Gordon from Washington’s idea. I think they exempted the leader, but everybody else—maybe it’s good. It seems to me it’s like any other job. One thing good This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 23 about it is when you really get into something and get to know it, you’re very valuable, and you have to give that up just because you’ve been there eight years and I’ve only been there two years? I mean, you can argue either way.

Smith: Were there some members who were too senior? Were there people who really maybe in the private sector would have been put out to pasture, but were still in Congress?

Dole: Oh yes. I remember a congressman from Iowa who was there when the Puerto Ricans invaded the gallery and shot up the House floor, and he had a wound in the buttocks. He used to get after us younger members. He said, “When I go home, it’s an event.” In other words, “You guys are running back and forth like errand boys. When I go home, it’s a big event.” What was his name? Ben [Jensen] something. He finally got beat. [laughs] But he had a badge of honor that carried him through several elections. [laughs] Wounded in action. But we had some great people. Ben Reifel, a Native American from South Dakota, Republican, R-e-i-f-e-l. And of course you can imagine his slogan was “A straight shooter.” In fact, they’re writing a book about him. I’ve got to call the author one of these days. Just the nicest guy in the world. I don’t know, I’d say he was a moderate, and there weren’t too many moderates in those days. Don Reigle was a moderate. The party got too conservative for him, so he left the party, became a Democrat. I was there when we had one lonely member from Texas in the House, named Bruce Alger, sort of “macho man,” you know, from Dallas. He was the one Republican out of I don’t know how many they had, eighteen, nineteen. So you see all these changes in how the South changed. I remember Senator [Rep. Howard Worth] Smith, very nice, courtly gentleman from Virginia, but anti-civil rights. He liked me. He used to say, “You know, Bob, you don’t understand. You don’t have many blacks living in Russell, Kansas. You don’t understand the problems. You shouldn’t be voting for this bill. You’ve got to understand,” da-da-da, this stuff. And I don’t think he was a bad person; I think he believed that. I guess when you’re raised that way, I guess you—but we had about four This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 24

black families, or five or six, in Russell, Kansas, all good people, and one guy about my age, Warren Cookse [phonetic], later became a Republican county commissioner. We used to play together and I’d go to his house, he’d come to our house. So that didn’t seem to be a big problem.

Smith: In much contact with JFK [John F. Kennedy]?

Dole: Not much. I remember going to the Christmas party, and I remember there’s a picture back here with me and Congressman Green [unknown] from New York. I can’t remember what we were doing there. But to say I really knew Kennedy would—

Smith: Because he would have been your contemporary, fellow World War II veteran. You once told me the story—I think maybe it was around the time of the inauguration, when you said to Rosemary—I think you went to the White House for a party. You said something to the effect—double parking or something, enjoy it while it lasts. I don’t know.

Dole: I can’t remember. I remember Phyllis and I going there. It was a big event.

Smith: Was that the first time you’d been in the White House?

Dole: Yes, I think so. I used to go down—sometimes they wouldn’t let your visitors in. You only had a quota. But if you came with them, they couldn’t keep you out. So I used to have busloads from Kansas, and I’d meet the bus at the White House. [laughs] I was probably a real pain in the rear. But those people never forgot it when they got home. Yes, I think that was probably my—no, I had been in the White House for my picture with Ike.

Smith: Were you campaigning constantly in those days? As a freshman, you had redistricting in ’62, didn’t you? That was the race with [J.] Floyd Breeding.

Dole: Oh, Floyd Breeding. Yes. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 25

Smith: What were the circumstances of that?

Dole: Oh, that was a tough race, because he was a very popular Democrat and had a lot of support in his district. They put our two districts together. I remember a picture in Time magazine showed him walking out of a building, said “Breeding Headquarters.” [laughs] I remember that. But he was tough.

Smith: Was he an incumbent congressman?

Dole: Yes. So we glared at each other for a couple of years. I think he had been there at least once term. He was more seasoned than I was. So when you go there knowing your district’s going to disappear in two years, that’s why you’re on the plane every weekend. You’re trying to get into Hutchison or Dodge City or some of these new territories. We had some tough congressional races because next in ’64 you had [Barry M.] Goldwater on the ticket.

Smith: You’d been a Goldwater supporter, hadn’t you?

Dole: Oh, I was one of the seventy-three, I think, House Republicans who he came over to meet with. Yes, I supported Goldwater. He wasn’t very popular in our district because of his position on farm subsidies. But anyway, that was a very close race. Then you had some easy ones too.

Smith: What kind of relationship did you have with the press in those days, and what was the press? I imagine the D.C. press didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to a young congressman. But what about back in Kansas?

Dole: I got a little attention. There was a guy named Billie Sol Estes, a friend of LBJ’s, who got into a big grain elevator scandal in Texas. He was skimming millions of dollars from the government. Wes [C. Wesley] Roberts, Pat Roberts’ father, who had been national chairman, had to be eased out because of some little something, and another guy This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 26 from North Dakota—Jimmy. They were sort of my coaches, and we went after Billy Sol Estes. We sent little bags of wheat around to every member of Congress with a little note on it. We had a lot of them. That got picked up in the press a little bit. Most the time in those days you relied on press releases. You’d put out a press release, “Today Bob Dole met with,” this group or “Bob Dole—this is what his position was,” or whatever, and it’d get picked up. You’d work on your weekly papers that come out once a week and be sure you had a little column there. That was about it. You’d maybe get on radio. It’s changed. But I think the Kansas City Star had a fellow there named Joe L______, and before him a fellow name [_____] Williams when I was in the House, was a good friend of mine. He’d mention my name now and then, stick it in a story. It didn’t mean anything.

Smith: And you sent out a lot of cookbooks.

Dole: Oh yes. Yes, we sent out a lot of cookbooks and baby books and anniversary letters. I remember once we sent a baby book instead of the anniversary letter to a couple. [laughs] They were pleased, but— So those little mistakes happen. I thought for kind of a one-man show, we were putting out a lot of stuff, but I assume others were doing the same thing. Even then we didn’t know what public relations really was. We knew that you could get your name out there and people see it on something coming in the mail or knocking on their door or being in their hometown, they’re going to at least think “This guy’s working. I may not agree with everything, but he sure works at it.” And I worked hard at it.

Smith: What was constituent service in those days, in the House?

Dole: Just being sure—we sort of had a rule, if the letter came in on Monday, there had to be an answer by Wednesday. And even if you had to write and say, “I’ve submitted your request to the IRS,” whatever, give them a response. Don’t leave them hanging out there till you get the response. It may take months. And the worst thing you can have is somebody out there saying, “You never answered my letter.” And we made mistakes. We didn’t do it and people’d get mad. You’d go to their hometown, “I never heard from This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 27 you.” They were probably right. But meeting the people who came, being sure you saw every Kansan you could get your hands on. I used to go out in the hall and look for them when I was Leader in the Senate. I’d go out in the hallway and pull ‘em in. People come all the way back here, and they’re generally small businessmen, they’re not a lot of rich people from the 6th District of Kansas or even the 1st District, and they’d like to get their picture on the steps. People used to accuse me of having an office on the steps. [laughs] That’s where I spent a lot of my time. But it pays off.

Smith: Do you remember where you were on November 22, 1963, or how you first heard the news?

Dole: It seems to me I was in the House cloakroom. I know on the Martin Luther King [Jr.] matter, I was on the way to Kansas and I heard about it in Chicago and came back. But I’m not positive.

Smith: And Lyndon Johnson becomes president. Had you had any contact with Johnson during his vice presidency?

Dole: Not really. I heard about what a powerful guy he was and what a great Senate Leader he was and I’d seen him from a distance, but first time I ever really saw him was this India trip when we went down there and he thanked us for going. Didn’t last very long. Then I’ve read Master of the Senate [Master of the Senate:The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro], but of course he had sixty-some votes. I mean, he could be a master of most anything. [laughs]

Smith: I have to ask you. Obviously we’re jumping out of sequence here, but you hear about what a legendary figure he was and what a dominant figure he was in the Senate, and I asked Howard [H.] Baker [Jr.] about this the other day. It doesn’t seem like any of his successors were able to exercise that kind of [unclear]. What was it either about Johnson or the rules or the culture that was different from when you held the job?

This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 28

Dole: The numbers, for one thing. And he had Everett [M.] Dirksen. They worked a lot, particularly on civil rights stuff. And then he was able to convince Hubert [H.] Humphrey—he got Hubert Humphrey on his side, particularly on the civil rights legislation, and he finally took on the southerners, Richard Russell. He finally realized that something’s got to give. Johnson made the statement “We shall overcome” I think in one of the—

Smith: In ’65. After Selma and the Voting Rights Act joint session of Congress.

Dole: I probably had that wrong yesterday. It was before the ’64 Act. It was ’65.

Smith: By that time, of course, you had a shift in your own party. You mentioned earlier the story of how Charlie Halleck was deposed.

Dole: Yes. Well, we had this great guy, a young guy from Michigan who was everybody’s friend, Gerry Ford, and he was on the Defense Appropriation Subcommittee and of course knew everything about every defense thing. He really had the finger on the button. And a lot of members, of course, had an interest in that. I had Fort Riley and some other things in Kansas, not that I’d ever bother him on it. I think there was a feeling—well, Bob Griffin was sort of the leader in the revolt.

Smith: He was a congressman from Michigan.

Dole: Yes. Good guy. And Al [Albin] Cederberg, another congressman from Michigan. I don’t know whether it was so much Charlie Halleck’s drinking, that’s what you hear, but I think that maybe it’s time for Charlie to get a fresh face, because we were pretty well stuck. They had the [unclear] and Charlie Show and all that stuff, but it didn’t get much press. So I don’t know all the inner workings, because we got into it rather late, when it was getting very, very close. What was the Whip’s name? Les—

Smith: Les Arends.

This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 29

Dole: —from Illinois, and all he worked about was the price of corn. He said, “Boy, it’s a dollar-seven today.” Or, “Dollar-sixteen today.” Every day he’d tell what the price of corn was. He was such a nice guy. I’d never met a nicer guy. He was obviously for—he liked Ford, but he was loyal to Halleck, and he kept working on me and [Garner] Shriver and Bob [Robert] Ellsworth and [Joe] Skubitz, but we finally decided that we were going to vote for a new face, somebody of sort of not quite our generation, but close.

Smith: I’ve often wondered whether in fact it was that more than anything else, that it was a generational—

Dole: No, I don’t think—you could hardly look Charlie Halleck in the face for a few days because you knew he knew, because they had the votes. They knew where the votes were. You never know for certain when you’re dealing with members.

Smith: Do people lie?

Dole: A lot of people—I don’t know whether they lie; they just don’t tell you the truth. [laughs] I mean, they shade the truth. “I’m for you. Good luck.” “That’s an aye? ‘Good luck’ is nothing.” But he got over it. Did Halleck retire then or did he—I don’t know whether he ran again or not.

Smith: That would have been ’66. I think he may have retired.

Dole: It really hurt, but, again, it turned out to be a good move.

Smith: In fact, he had done it to Joe Martin.

Dole: Yes.

Smith: There was a precedent, at least.

This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 30

Dole: Probably why Joe Martin was always so somber. He’d never gotten over it. He’d been Majority Leader for one term—83rd?

Smith: During that first Eisenhower—yes.

Dole: Didn’t last long.

Smith: And Don Rumsfeld was part of that effort, wasn’t he?

Dole: Probably was, because he arrived in ’63. That’s when he became my neighbor. He wanted me to run. He kept trying to get me to run for some leadership office in the House, and I didn’t think I could handle it. I was scared, you know. “I can’t do that. I can’t do that.” He was, “Come on. Come on.” We became pretty good friends. We’d always walk back and forth to vote. He was right across the aisle. I’d go over there and he’d come over to my place. Very smart, very bright, very Republican district. I think his predecessor had been Mrs. [Marguerite] Church, who won by 70, 80 percent.

Smith: Was he very conservative?

Dole: Yes, very conservative. So was John—the Independent.

Smith: John Anderson.

Dole: Anderson. I’ve been to Rockford a couple of three times. Oh, he was very, very conservative. Then he got this bug later on. I used to see him at church now and then, but I haven’t seen him for a while. Of course, I haven’t been there, by the way. [laughs] He’s probably been there.

Smith: ’64 was your last really tough House race, and that presumably was because of the Goldwater disaster.

Dole: I don’t know what I won by, but it wasn’t much. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 31

Smith: I think 51-49.

Dole: Yes.

Smith: When did it dawn on you that Goldwater was going to be a disaster? Were you at the ’64 convention in San Francisco?

Dole: Oh yes. I was wearing a big Taft button for VP.

Smith: Oh really?

Dole: Yes. Still got it, I think, somewhere.

Smith: You were a conservative. [laughs]

Dole: Yes.

Smith: Do you remember that night, Tuesday night, when [Nelson A.] Rockefeller was—

Dole: The big hullabaloo? Yes. I remember it vaguely, yes. I remember Goldwater being up on top of the hill. I don’t remember which hotel it was.

Smith: Fairmont or Mark Hopkins.

Dole: I think so. I think some of us got in there to visit with him a minute or two. But I don’t know, I think that one ad that Johnson had with the country blowing up, you know, the “Who do you want your hand on the button?” little girl with the daisy or whatever it was. Powerful stuff.

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Smith: Also remember even his acceptance speech when he had the famous line about “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”

Dole: Yes.

Smith: The story is, Richard [M.] Nixon at that point turned and said, “Oh, my god, he’s going to run as Goldwater.” [laughs]

Dole: Of course, I always thought most people didn’t understand what he was talking about, but they made it pretty clear later, I mean in their ads and stuff. But we did pick up some seats in Alabama that year, some House seats, Georgia.

Smith: That’s true. Goldwater was a transitional figure in terms of poaching on the old South.

Dole: Yes, and he was quite conservative in those days, but in his later years he was moving the other way.

Smith: Yes. How did he—because you obviously got to know him well.

Dole: He could be pretty tough, particularly in his last term. He carried a cane around, and if you didn’t stay away, he’d whop you with that cane if things weren’t quite going the way he wanted them.

Smith: Crusty?

Dole: He even endorsed, I think, Sam Nunn for president, a Democrat. He was pretty unpredictable there. But I went out to visit him, I remember, when I was running, met with him in Arizona, and he became honorary chairman, all that stuff. He was very popular, more popular when he was—well, like everybody, once you’re out of office, your numbers go up. People forget why they didn’t like you. I see right now [George W.] Bush and Congress are tied at 35 each. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 33

Smith: When did you decide you wanted to be a senator?

Dole: I think I decided that—well, I wasn’t quite as bad as some people. Some of these House members go over and check on their senator every week, “How are you feeling? You don’t look so good,” hoping maybe they’re going to retire. Had a senator from North Carolina, a Republican, and this guy in the House would drive him crazy. But anyway, I think probably in ’66. There was some evidence that Carlson might step down. I don’t remember how old he was when he stepped down. He could have stayed there forever, very low key, and he kept his good car here and at home he had a much older car he campaigned in. [laughs] But just a great guy. He started the Senate Prayer Breakfast, initiated that. I sort of got a heads-up. He didn’t tell me definitely until at least a few days or a few weeks before. He kind of swore me to secrecy, as I remember. He said, “You know, if I were you, I think I would start looking around the state.” I don’t think he ever told me he was going to not run, but he made it pretty clear he wasn’t going to run.

Smith: This would be a good time, if you could sort of describe to people who know nothing about it, the kind of political landscape of Kansas, because I sense even then the Republican Party had a conservative and a moderate to liberal wing. Did Carlson and Pearson represent those wings, or is it more complicated than that?

Dole: Carlson had a good in with federal employees. He was chairman of the committee at the time that dealt with federal employees. So he had some of that union support in postal employees and things like that that most Republicans didn’t have. But otherwise, he was pretty conservative. Andy Schepel [phonetic], who was there for most of Carlson’s time, from _____ City, was even more conservative. I remember him so well. He would come to the Russell Kiwanis Club, I remember one time, and he’d put his watch down, and he’d stand there very straight, look like a senator, and, “Let me tell you what’s going on in Washington.” Everybody would [gestures]—you know. And then he’d proceed to tell us what’s going on in Washington. But I remember at his funeral, his wife turning to me and said something about, “Don’t work so hard. The day after you’re gone, nobody This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 34

cares.” She felt pretty bad about—but anyway, Carlson obviously quietly sent the word around that Bob Dole would be a good successor. Bill Avery was—I think I won fairly handily in the primary.

Smith: What were the divisions? Geographical, ideological, or—

Dole: Really didn’t have any difference. If you compare our voting records, I think they’d probably be 95 percent. He was a farmer from Wakefield, Kansas, had been governor. He was a good congressman. In those days the big thing in Kansas was who would be the first member of Congress to announce there’d be plenty of boxcars for harvest. I would call Union Pacific and he would call Union Pacific. “You sure we have boxcars?” My dad used to need boxcars in his grain elevator, and there was always a shortage of boxcars, which meant you had to pile it on the ground, and it deteriorates and all that stuff. So it was always a contest between me and Avery, even in Congress, who’s going to announce first that boxcars are coming, you know. It was a big deal. But we liked each other. It wasn’t anything personal.

Smith: Explain that. Because I think probably today would find that hard to believe.

Dole: Yes.

Smith: That there was a time when you could run an intense—

Dole: I may have said things—I don’t remember anything, and I don’t think he said anything very bad about me. And, of course, there were other—Garner Shriver was in Congress, in Wichita, and he’d kind of like to be in the Senate too, and Bob Ellsworth, of course, had opted to run against Pearson and lost. He’d kind of liked to be in the Senate too. But when I got out there, I think within three days I’d covered half the state. I’d been in every—I started not in western Kansas, but everywhere else, southeast and other places, lining up county chairmen, getting organized. I just had a lot of support. I mean, people are receptive, and I’d been a good Republican, da-da-da.

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Smith: You had a pretty good statewide profile by that time?

Dole: Yes. I always showed up for Kansas Day and went to all the meetings. I didn’t go around to other districts much. Once the other members decided not to run, I was sort of there, like Joe Skubitz, 5th District, and he was very popular, and he didn’t get in an open fight, but he kind of let his people know that “Bob’s a good friend of mine,” da-da-da.

Smith: Did the local organizations mean more in those days? Was there more party organization to cultivate at the grass-roots level, either county or local?

Dole: Oh yes.

Smith: Party apparatus.

Dole: We had an apparatus, yes. In some places, let’s face it, in probably in every state the county chairmen, some of them don’t do anything. They don’t even want the job, but they missed the meeting and suddenly they’re elected. So we had Dole for Senate chairmen, who always worked with the county chairmen. “The chairman doesn’t have to take sides in a primary. We understand you don’t want to do that.” So we had our own organization in nearly every county, even though in some counties the county chairman was openly for us or maybe openly against us. But I was beginning to learn then how important it is to have an organization and somebody there to have things ready when you came.

Smith: I assume you’d never had an advance man before ’68.

Dole: I’m not even sure I had one in ’68, but we at least had some field people out there, and when I’d go to Parsons, they’d know what I was to do. If I was going to go to Hutchison or whatever, the State Fair, and I’d always have people with me, so we’d take down names of people we met and send them a note when we got back, all that stuff, which I still do. It’s hard to break the habit. But it was different.

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Smith: How does the state divide? Give us a primer on the Kansas political landscape.

Dole: The west is pretty Republican, and then you’ve got the big areas, Johnson County, the outside Kansas City area is pretty Republican. Southeast Kansas is pretty tough; it’s split, and Democrats that have had successes there. Wichita at one time was pretty Democratic, but the present congressman has changed that a lot and it’s become more conservative. We also have a Democratic governor who’s changed a lot. We have now two Democratic members of Congress out of four, where we never had any. The book, What’s the Matter with Kansas [by Thomas Frank], have you read it?

Smith: No, I haven’t.

Dole: Well, it’s too conservative. That was the matter with it.

Smith: I assume within the Republican Party there was kind of a cultural divide, wasn’t there, between, say, Johnson County and—

Dole: We have two Republican Parties now, unfortunately. We have the one—it’s all about abortion. That’s the key thing. It’s not about spending or things where you have some agreement. It’s pro-life, pro-choice, particularly in a place like Johnson County, where you have Republicans. We had the county attorney there change parties. Now he’s the attorney general. We had the state chairman of our party switch and he’s now lieutenant governor. Another lady switched and she’s now a member of Congress. You can’t have two Republican Parties and one other party. Can’t win. And we’ve got people—in fact, I’ve been talking to the director, how we can bring it back together. I mean, [Nancy L.] Kassebaum and I didn’t agree on that issue, but we never made a big deal of it.

Smith: That raises—it’s funny, because I remember talking to President Ford about this, and I think in many ways you’re very similar in this. It’s generational, it’s cultural, it was a different kind of conservatism forty years ago. It was on economics, America’s role in This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 37

the world, coming out of World War II, but there was also this kind of what I call just “Leave me alone” conservatism.

Dole: Yes.

Smith: Which is, there are certain issues—abortion being one of them—that I’m not sure I want—

Dole: Single-issue stuff.

Smith: to be political issues. Government should stay out of the boardroom and the classroom and the bedroom.

Dole: Right.

Smith: And those are just not issues to build a political party around. But clearly during the course of your career the social conservatives have become much more powerful.

Dole: They’re starting to fade a little, though, I think. They never trusted me in ’96, the [Pat] Robertsons and the focus on the family, [Lou] Dobson. Even though my voting record is all right, they knew I was reasonable, I guess, that I might listen to somebody else’s view and I didn’t want to make it a big issue. That’s all they want to talk about, one issue, one issue, one issue. And [Rudolph] Giuliani’s finding that out now. They get you on one issue and they…. We lived through that in the ’74 campaign with Bill [William R.] Roy. I mean, that was the first time that abortion had become a national issue because he was a doctor and apparently he had allegedly performed abortions. Some of the people that were supporting me were carrying around a fetus in a jar and all this stuff, and running these ads, “Vote for Death: Bill Roy. Vote for Life: Bob Dole.” I mean, not with our encouragement. Then the national press got interested in that race and they were out there. It became a big issue.

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Smith: I assume you didn’t have that much national press in ’68.

Dole: I don’t think Nixon ever had to answer the question on abortion, did he? Did it ever come up when Nixon ran for president?

Smith: That’s a good question.

Dole: I don’t think it ever came up—did it come up in ’76?

Smith: Well, of course, you’d had the Supreme Court decision in ‘73.

Dole: Roe v. Wade. I don’t know how Ford handled it.

Smith: Ford was pro-choice. He’s the last Republican nominee to be pro-choice.

Dole: So he supported the decision.

Smith: Yes. And, of course, out of office became more outspoken, I think with a little help from Mrs. [Betty] Ford, but—

Dole: But that wasn’t the big impact. It was the pardon.

Smith: Yes. In ’68, when you were running against Avery and going in in Johnson County, did you feel at any kind of disadvantage just because you were a western—

Dole: I’d never been in sort of the Kansas City area, where I don’t know what percent of the people live in that slice, a big percent of the people. I knew Wichita pretty well. So I had to go down and—even then we had one very, very, very conservative group, and other people, just Republicans, you know, conservative, anti-tax, anti-spending, except for their causes, and there weren’t many farmers there. I always did very well with farmers, but you get into Johnson County, that’s a big urban area, exurbs or whatever they call it. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 39

Smith: Were the Halls significant players at that point?

Dole: I think the Halls may have helped me with a little fundraising. I’d have to check that. Because they probably knew Avery well, too. And of course the elder [Joyce C.] Hall had been a great friend of [Dwight D.] Eisenhower’s.

Smith: Did you have any debates in the ’68 race? Did you debate Avery?

Dole: If we did, it wasn’t more than once.

Smith: Did you buy much television?

Dole: I’m trying to think how much money we raised. Yes, I think we had some television, but I don’t remember what we were talking about. I think I won because I was just perceived as—it’s tough to be governor. When you’re governor of a state, you’re always going to upset people, I don’t care where, and Bill Avery had been governor. I had the advantage, I hadn’t lost an election. He was a hard worker, too. We both worked hard. But I thought my own area was in pretty good shape out west, which it was, and if I was going to win, I had to get into Topeka and Johnson County and Crawford County down southwest, Central County, Wichita, so we spent a lot of our time there.

Smith: Vietnam [War] was clearly a big issue.

Dole: Vietnam was—I think Dave Owen was active in that campaign, and Huck Boyd.

Smith: Tell us about Huck Boyd. Was he your Jim Farley [phonetic]?

Dole: Yes, he was everything. I remember—I’ve told you, “You’ve gotta be careful now. We don’t want to elect another Jack Benny to Congress.” [laughs] “Gotta be careful now. Gotta watch it.”

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Smith: The point being, don’t be too funny.

Dole: “Don’t be too funny. There’s a good time and a place for that,” da-da-da-da. But he would get in his car from Phillipsburg and drive all the way to Kansas City, which is a long drive, just to go to some meeting so he could talk to me afterwards. Then whenever I called him at home, his wife was always on the phone. Marie was always listening in, because they would visit after we hung up, whether she agreed with him or not. But he was gold.

Smith: For people who don’t know, who was he?

Dole: He came from a family of big Democrats in the [Franklin D.] Roosevelt era, but they broke because of Roosevelt, became Republicans, and they published a weekly paper in Phillipsburg, Kansas, and they later bought other papers in Smith Center and Norton. He’d been a candidate for governor and our state chairman, lost in a close race for governor. I was very active in his campaign. I think that’s how we first sort of got acquainted. No, before that, he was a great friend of Wint Smith’s too. Used to have this little group of—when Wint would come to town, we’d meet in a little restaurant near Downs, Kansas, and there’d be about five or six of us—Mr. Voss, Huck Boyd, myself, Mr. [Dane] Hanson , and Mr. [Charles] Cushing . Five of us. And we’d talk about strategy and “We ought to do this,” particularly when he wanted me to run. These are my little Kitchen Cabinet, and they were all senior and all dedicated. If you wanted to see Dane Hanson, you had to drive to Logan, Kansas, and he would meet you after nine in the evening, so you’d drive all the way from Russell, walk into his office. He had this big cigar, he’d be rolling a big cigar around his mouth, and then you’d sit there and you’d talk about, “What are you doing? Where have you been? I think you ought to do this, you ought to do this,” and I think he probably gave me maybe a thousand dollars, which was a lot of money in those days. But he had a lot of influence, and now the Hanson Foundation. So I had this sort of group of these people. Charlie Cushing, a banker, and his son Ned, had been Young Republican national chairman, and people like Dean Evans in This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 41

Salina. Just had good people who were willing to do things. We had people who would fly me around. In those days you didn’t have to worry about paying if you could find a pilot who had a license. I remember once landing in a pasture and once landing—just ran out of gas just as we hit the runway. [laughs] So we were saving money, though. John Dart was the pilot of that plane. He’s no longer around.

Smith: A couple of things and we’ll let you go, because we’re right about perfect break to get you to the Senate. Your last couple of years in the House, George [H.W.] Bush was elected in ’66, from Houston.

Dole: Yes, and he got a spot on the Ways and Means Committee, which a lot of us thought was kind of “I guess it depends what your name is around here,” you know.

Smith: Did you have much contact with him?

Dole: No. I mean, he was a good guy. I don’t remember a lot of contact with him, social contact. Again, if you’re not on the same committees, you never really get to know these people. I remember campaigning for him when he ran for the Senate the first time and he lost. Then, of course, later on he succeeded me as chairman of the party. We’ll get to that later. I remember going to the U.N. and all that stuff, carrying out this charade.

Smith: That’s a good segue to your first encounter with Richard Nixon.

Dole: Oh, jiminy.

Smith: I think you said he campaigned for you in ’64.

Dole: Yes, he was on his way to [Herbert] Hoover’s funeral. You probably remember the date of that.

Smith: October of ’64. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 42

Dole: And he stops in Pratt, Kansas, made one other stop too, and I remember he was surrounded by bales of hay, really had a big crowd and I got a lot of press coverage. I can’t remember—we got on the plane and flew to Pratt or flew to some other larger airport. That was ’64, right? And he asked me then, “Have you ever thought about running for the Senate?” I said, “Well, I haven’t really thought about it, but I do look over there.” [laughs] Six-year terms, all this stuff. I think I’d met him before. I’m just trying to think.

Smith: You were impressed?

Dole: Let’s see. I don’t know where I met him, though, whether it had been—

Smith: He would have been just leaving Washington when you arrived.

Dole: Right. Well, let’s see. I must have had some contact with him even before he left. Maybe he campaigned for somebody in Kansas or I met him somewhere. I don’t think that was my first contact. I’ll think about it.

Smith: He sounds like a guy who was always thinking about politics.

Dole: Oh yes. I don’t remember him giving me advice that day, but he was already checking on my future. But he gave advice on football, as you know, to Coach Allen, and I’ve got that letter which you’ve read, the four or five handwritten letters saying, “If the economy’s good, you can’t beat Clinton.” He was right. But he said, “Don’t worry about your age. Your voice is strong.” I always had a good relationship with Nixon. I had good relationships with people around Nixon. A little thing, like he’d extend his left hand to shake hands with me. Just little things, you know, you remember. If I wanted to see him at a reception, “I’d like to come down and take five minutes.” If I went through C_____ or some of those people, never happen.

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Smith: This has intrigued people for a long time, because you were treated pretty shabbily. I mean, you took a lot of arrows in ’72 as Nixon’s hand-picked Republican national chairman, and what thanks you got for it. And there are a lot of people over the years who have wondered, given that reality—

Dole: It was even harder becoming chairman. You know, they decided in the middle of the night that maybe I wasn’t going to be announced the next day as chairman. That’s why I had to get Brice Harlow out of bed and we spent all night at the RNC. It was raining cats and dogs outside. I think a lot of this came from [H.R.] Haldeman and it came from people like [Sen. William B.] Saxbe and the Republican leader from Pennsylvania.

Smith: Hugh Scott.

Dole: Didn’t want me to be chairman, I might overshadow, because I was getting fairly vocal at that point. [laughs]

Smith: You were basically Nixon’s strongest defender.

Dole: They called me “the sheriff of the Senate.” But they finally got back on track. You know more about Nixon. Maybe it was his idea. I don’t think so. I think it was somebody else.

Smith: I wonder whether the relationship—I mean, on the surface you had a lot of things in common. I mean, you both came from very humble backgrounds. You both worked very hard to get where you got. Nixon had the Silent Majority, the connection with the millions of people who were maybe overlooked by the establishment—Eastern establishment, the press and all that. Did you feel a kind of cultural affinity with Nixon in some ways?

Dole: He was a progressive, too, you know. You look back at some of the things, welfare reform, Environmental Protection Agency, all the different things he was— This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 44

probably couldn’t get the nomination today if he were running for the primaries. He was pro-choice, too. I don’t think that was ever an issue. But I don’t know, I think it was just the fact that he always sort of treated me as an equal. He had these little ways about— you’d go down and get a picture. “Here, something to give to your secretary,” or something. He’d hand you some little necklace or whatever it was, whatever he was passing out for the day. But he seemed to me to be fairly accessible. If you wanted to see him, you could, and I didn’t wear out my welcome. I was chairman of the party and I did raise Watergate a couple of times, saying, “You know, everywhere I go, people are talking about Watergate.” I’d raise it a second time, and before I knew it, I wasn’t attending meetings. [laughs]

Smith: Were you surprised when you read the transcripts of the tapes—the language?

Dole: Yes. He never used that language—that was really, to me, tells you more about him than anything else, about insecurity or whatever it is. Some people use that to get attention. If we did that at home, we got our mouth washed out with soap, so I’ve never been one of those.

Smith: Al D’Amato would not have thrived in your home. [laughs]

Dole: Yes, that really surprised me. I couldn’t believe this was coming from the President of the United States. Pretty earthy.

Smith: Do you think that hurt him as much as anything?

Dole: I think with a lot of people, older people, maybe people even in their youth had done some cursing. But he held on to 25 percent, wasn’t it?

Smith: Did you buy into the notion, this kind of pop psychology notion, that there was sort of a darker side to Nixon and there was a lighter Nixon, in that the people like This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 45

Haldeman and [John] Erlichman and [Charles W.] Colson unfortunately really played to and reinforced whatever it was about Nixon’s insecurities or darker side?

Dole: I would say other than light or dark, there’s sort of medium most of the time. I never saw him when he looked like was really enjoying himself. He was always prepared. I remember taking senators up to see him in New Jersey when he was living up there, and he had his little yellow pad out, and he knew the senator’s father and where they’re from and how many votes he had gotten there. Five of us. I remember when he first came to the Senate, we invited him back up to meet with some Republicans, a sort of rehab program. He checked into the Circle 1 Hotel, spent the night there, and up until noon working out what he was going to say. When he came up there, of course, never had a note, and Robert [C.] Byrd invited him to meet with Democrats, who hated Nixon, really Nixon haters, and they left there with their mouths open. He just took them on a trip around the world, one of these foreign policy—he had a lot of qualities that just set the Party back I don’t know how many years.

Smith: Did he ever, in later years, around you discuss Watergate or—

Dole: I don’t think I ever—

Smith: —circumstances of his leaving?

Dole: The only time I’ve heard him discuss it was on Robert Frost, whatever his name is, the British guy [David Frost]. Interview.

Smith: Jonathan Aitken, who did the Nixon biography.

Dole: Did they discuss it there?

Smith: And actually it was a great line, because Aitken, who basically admired Nixon, said—Nixon said—this was at the end of the process, said, “How are you coming along?” And Aitken said, “Mr. President, I’ve decided that you are too complicated a person for This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 46

any one biographer to understand.” And Nixon smiled and said, “Now you’re getting somewhere.” [laughs]

Dole: I don’t know. He hated the press. He was a moderate Republican. And just threw it all away. I mean, you may know more about why he kept the tapes than anybody, I don’t know.

Smith: And you remember your last visit with him? Of course you spoke memorably [unclear].

Dole: I’m probably on the tapes. I haven’t seen one. And Johnson had them before he did.

Smith: And the irony is now that the Johnson tapes are coming to light, they’ve done more to improve Johnson’s posthumous reputation than anything.

Dole: Right. I’m not sure the Nixon tapes will do that. How much did they release?

Smith: They’ve released about two-thirds. But, of course, it’s disproportionate. They had to get out all the bad stuff first, all the criminal—everything related to court cases, which skewered the rest. So you have yet to really hear Nixon, foreign policy wizard. A couple quick things and then we’re done. Election night—well, first of all, the fall campaign. Basically were you pretty confident once you’d won Republican nomination in ’68 against Bill Avery, that the fall campaign was sort of a cakewalk?

Dole: Yes, I think I had some lawyer from Wichita, Robinson, Bill Robinson.

Smith: Yes, William T. Robinson. He won 60 percent of the vote.

Dole: Yes. So that was a pretty good—it’s a Republican state. And let’s see. And of course, in the Senate you can do about anything you want, you know. You can start This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 47 speaking the first day if you want. I didn’t do that, but I became pretty active on Vietnam.

Smith: Let me ask you, what, broadly speaking, was it difficult in any way transitioning from the House to the Senate?

Dole: You know the old joke. The first six months you wonder how you got there, next six months you wonder how the others got there. I remember Senator Carlson said, “When you get there, the first senator you want to talk to is Senator [John] Stennis,” from Mississippi, a very fine, decent—I didn’t agree with him on civil rights, but he was just a great gentleman. He used to tell me, after I lost my mother, said, “My mother’s been gone for—,” I don’t know, I think he said twenty-five years, and he still thinks of calling her on the telephone, maybe comes up once a week, once a month. He’s a good guy to know. Never partisan. He and Carlson were great friends. But it does kind of free you up a little bit because you don’t have an election facing you.

Smith: Was there anything that surprised you in those first days, first few days, first few weeks of the Senate? Was there anything you found surprising?

Dole: I knew a lot of the people, and you get acquainted with your freshman class. We did have orientation then, as I remember. Let’s see. How long did I—Howard Baker was already—was Howard—yes, Howard Baker, I think, was already there.

Smith: Class of ’66. In fact, you had—it was a very different Republican caucus in those days. You had Ed Brooke and you had [Jacob] Javits and Hugh Scott. There were liberal Republicans.

Dole: Oh yes. I remember voting with Javits on the New York City—he said, “Just vote with me on cloture. I don’t need your vote on final passage. I’ve just got to have your vote.” I said, “Okay.” And it kind of rescued the city. That’s when they said “Drop Dead,” the headline, which Ford never said. Ed Brooke and I were good friends, a lot of stuff. But Dirksen, see, he died—was it April? This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 48

Smith: It was September of ’69.

Dole: Was it that long?

Smith: Yes.

Dole: Wasn’t he sick part of the time?

Smith: [unclear], yes.

Dole: I remember a few meetings with Dirksen, and a few of his little oratorical spurts on the floor. What did we have, thirty—we didn’t have many Republicans, thirty-eight or forty-one. But you had more freedom there. You didn’t have the House rules and you didn’t have to—

Smith: Explain that.

Dole: Every senator, you’re equal. In fact, once you get the floor, it’s yours. You can keep it as long as you want, and there’s more opportunities for amendment. Rules aren’t as strict. They don’t have what they call closed rules, where you can’t offer amendments. You don’t have a Rules Committee, which say you can only offer certain amendments. They’ve got to be germane. But you just had more opportunities and you got a chance to meet more people on both sides, like the Humphreys and the others that you’d worked with, McGovern, stuff like that, you later worked with on food programs or farm programs or whatever. So it’s sort of like a—it’s a big change. You’re not running home every weekend either. I think I did probably early on.

Smith: And you presumably attract more attention than you did in the House, just because—

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Dole: I always felt that was unfair to the House members. Particularly on the Sunday talk shows, I mean, how many times do you see Congressman so-and-so? And they may know much more about it than Senator so-and-so. There’s something about the media that—well, senators are a little higher up the ladder. But I was on a lot of them. I still think I have the record on Meet the Press.

Smith: Do you remember the first time you ever appeared on a Sunday talk show?

Dole: No, but I was probably scared to death.

Smith: Last question for today. The staff—I mean, presumably you need a bigger staff than you had in the House. Did you keep most of the same people? And what were you looking for? What were the qualities you were looking for in people that you—

Dole: I think in those days I wanted to be from Kansas, I wanted somebody who knew my state and knew the issues and knew people when they walked in the front door. I later changed that, on the theory that you need a balanced staff. Suddenly in the Senate it’s not your district; it’s now your state. And after you’ve been there a while, it’s the region, and pretty soon it’s the country, you know, so you need to broaden out a little bit if you’ve got everybody focused on Kansas. I had the first woman chief of staff as Majority Leader, appointed the first woman secretary of the Senate, Jo-Anne [Coe], first Hispanic deputy sergeant-at-arms, so we had a pretty broad mix.

Smith: Had Jo-Anne worked for you in the House?

Dole: No.

Smith: She came in the Senate.

Dole: Yes. You’ll never find another one like Jo-Anne.

This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 50

Smith: How did you hook up originally?

Dole: I don’t know how she came to us. I think she had worked for Congressman [Harold D.] Cooley of North Carolina, and whether he lost or was defeated or something. He was from Raleigh. Somehow she came to us. Boy, that was—I still do things every day that Jo-Anne would have done in thirty seconds. I’m in there writing longhand responses to letters that I used to say, “Here you are, Jo-Anne. Here’s another load.” I don’t have anybody like that in the office who can—so I’ve got to laboriously write them out.

Smith: What did she do for you? What did she bring to the operation?

Dole: First, she’d run the office. People knew she had the authority. She knew people all across the country that she could talk to, some of these big CEOs of companies, when you used to be able to raise money without going over to the committee, and they would talk to Jo-Anne. They wouldn’t have to talk to me. Plus she just had this—I don’t know, she just understood politics and understood what it took. She used to caution me, “No, I wouldn’t do that if I were you. No, no, I wouldn’t get involved with that.” Then, of course, she ran my Campaign America thing for a while.

Smith: Totally loyal.

Dole: Loyal. Oh, loyal. Anybody said anything bad about Bob Dole, she’d [gestures] if she had a chance.

Smith: Tough.

Dole: She had an aneurysm. I remember I was in North Carolina, campaigning for Elizabeth, she called me and said, “I’ve got this terrible—.” I called her. “I’ve got this terrible back pain. You’ve got kidney problems.” This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 51

I said, “Jo-Anne, I don’t know what it is, but you’d better get to a hospital.” Well, instead of going there, she went to one of these NOVA clinics first, then by the time she got to the hospital six hours later, she was gone. Once that aorta breaks, whhhtt. All right.

Smith: Well, listen. Thank you very much.

Dole: We got some covered there, I guess.

Smith: It’s great.

Dole: What are you going to do with all this stuff?

[End of interview] This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 52

Index

1964 Civil Rights Act, 17

Alger, Bruce, 23 Anderson, John, 30 Arends, Les, 29 Arn, Edward F., 5, 6 Austin, Whitley, 14 Avery, William H., 8, 34, 39

B_____, Ed, 47 Baker, Howard H. Jr., 47 Bass, Perkins, 19 Bass, Ross, 19 Bowers, Beth influence on Robert J. Dole, 2 Boyd, McDill (Huck), 39, 40 Breeding, J. Floyd, 24, 25 Brinkley, John R., 3 Bush, George H.W., 41 Bush, George W., 14, 32

Carlson, Frank, 7, 8, 13, 33, 34, 47 institutes Senate Prayer Breakfast, 33 Cederberg, Albin, 28 Church, Marguerite Stitt, 30 Coe, Jo-Anne, 49, 50 Colson, Charles W., 45 Cookse, Warren, 24 Cooley, Harold D., 19, 50 Cushing, Charles, 40 Cushing, Ned, 40

D’Amato, Alfonse, 44 Dart, John, 41 Davis, William A., 15 Dirksen, Everett M., 28, 47, 48 Dobson, Lou, 37 Dole, Elizabeth, 7 Dole, Phyllis, 14 Dole, Robert J. 1950 campaign for Kansas state legislature, 3, 4 1953 campaign for county attorney of Russell County, 8, 9 1960 campaign for U.S. Congress, 12, 13, 14 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 53

1964 congressional campaign, 30 1968 senatorial campaign, 34, 35, 38, 39 1974 senatorial campaign, 37 advice to Elizabeth Dole, 7 appointed first Hispanic deputy sergeant-at-arms, 49 appointed first woman chief of staff, 49 appointed first woman secretary of the U.S. Senate, 49 as member of Kansas state legislature, 5 chairman of Republican National Committee, 43 county attorney of Russell County, 9, 10, 14 early days as member of House of Representatives, 15, 16 early interest in politics, 2 employment as youth, 11 family background, 10 first civil rights vote, 6 first day as a member of House of Representatives, 15 first television appearance, 13 grandparents of, 9, 10 in Percy Jones Army Medical Center, 2 influence of Beth Bowers, 2 influence of John Woelk, 2, 8 joins Republican Party, 2 member of Agricultural Committee, 19, 20 member of House Agricultural Committee, 17, 22 member of Kansas state legislature, 2, 6, 8 member of Senate Finance Committee, 20 on 1964 Civil Rights Act, 17 on abortion issue, 36 on Andy Schepel, 33 on Barry M. Goldwater, 25, 32 on being a politician, 7, 12, 13 on Ben Reifel, 23 on Bill Kats, 21 on Billie Sol Estes, 25 on Bob Griffin, 28 on Bob Williams, 21 on Bruce Alger, 23 on campaign contributions, 20, 21 on changes in U.S. Congress, 19, 20, 22 on changes in U.S. Senate, 19, 20, 22 on changes in U.S. South, 23 on Charles A. Halleck, 18, 28, 29 on constituent service, 12, 13, 24, 26, 27, 35 on Dane Hanson, 40 on Dean Ostrum, 8, 9 on decision to run for the Senate, 33 on Dole Food Company, 21 on Don Reigle, 23 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 54

on Donald H. Rumsfeld, 30 on Dust Bowl, 11 on Dwight D. Eisenhower, 7, 16 on Ed B_____, 47 on fair employment practices, 6 on federal aid to education, 13 on Frank Carlson, 8, 33, 34 on George H.W. Bush, 41 on Gerald R. Ford, 28 on Graham B. Purcell, Jr., 19 on Howard Worth Smith, 23 on Hubert H. Humphrey, 28 on Huck Boyd, 39, 40 on Iraq War, 4 on J. Floyd Breeding, 25 on Jacob Javits, 47 on Jo-Anne Coe, 49, 50 on Joe Martin, 30 on Joe Skubitz, 35 on John Anderson, 30 on John F. Kennedy, 24 on John Stennis, 47 on John W. McCormack, 16 on Joseph W. Martin, Jr., 18 on Kansas politics, 33, 35, 36, 38 on Keith Sebelius, 12 on Les Arends, 29 on lobbyists, 19 on Lyndon B. Johnson, 27, 28 on media, 13 on Meet the Press, 49 on Nancy L. Kassebaum, 36 on public relations, 12, 21, 26, 27 on requirements for staff members, 49 on Richard M. Nixon, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46 on Robert Poage, 19 on Russell, Kansas, 3, 4, 5, 9 on Sam Rayburn, 16 on seniority system in U.S. Congress, 22 on seniority system in U.S. Senate, 22 on the Dust Bowl, 11 on the Hall family, 39 on the media, 25, 26, 49 on the New York Times, 14 on Trans World Airlines, 20 on U.S. Congress, 48, 49 on U.S. Senate, 46, 47, 48 on voting record, 20, 34 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 55

on Watergate, 44 on William A. Davis, 15 on William H. Avery, 34, 39 on William H. Taft, 31 on William R. Roy, 37 on Wint Smith, 11, 12, 14 on World War II, 4 on World War II veterans, 4 parents of, 3, 4, 10, 11 uncle of, 9 Dole, Robin, 14 Doyle, Philip, 12

Eisenhower, Dwight D., 7, 16 Ellsworth, Robert, 29, 34 Emmel, Tony, 5 Erlichman, John, 45 Estes, Billie Sol, 25 Evans, Dean, 40

Ford, Betty, 38 Ford, Gerald R., 18, 28, 47 and abortion issue, 38 Frost, David, 45

Giuliani, Rudolph, 37 Goldwater, Barry M., 25, 31, 32 Gordon, Slade, 22 Griffin, Bob, 28 Griffin, Robert Paul (Bob), 28

Haldeman, H.R., 43, 45 Hall, Joyce C., 39 Halleck, Charles A., 17, 18, 28, 29 Hanson, Dane, 40 Harlow, Brice, 43 Holland, Clifford, 2, 3 Hoover, Herbert, 41 Humphrey, Hubert H., 28, 48

Inouye, Sen. Daniel K. and Robert J. Dole, 2

Javits, Jacob, 47 Jensen, Ben F., 23 Johnson, Lyndon B., 19, 27, 28, 31, 46

Kansas City Star, 26 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 56

Kassebaum, Nancy L., 36 Kats, Bill, 21 Kelikian, Dr. Hampar, 9, 21 Kennedy, John F., 24 King, Martin Luther Jr., 27

L_____, Joe, 26

Mahoney, Elmo J., 2 Martin, Joseph W. Jr., 18, 29 Master of the Senate The Years of Lyndon Johnson by Robert A. Caro], 27 McCarthy, Joseph R., 12 McCormack, John W., 16 McGovern, George S., 48 Meet the Press, 49 Miller, Jack, 19 Miller, Rusty, 13

New York Times, 14 Nixon, Richard M., 32, 38, 41, 43, 44, 45, 46 advice to Robert J. Dole, 42 on abortion issue, 44 on William J. Clinton, 42 Nunn, Sam, 32

Ostrum, Dean, 8, 9 Owen, Dave, 39

Poage, (William) Robert, 19 Purcell, Graham B. Jr., 19

Rayburn, Sam, 16 Reifel, Ben, 23 Reigle, Don, 23 Roberts, C. Wesley, 25 Robertson, Pat, 37 Robinson, William T., 46 Rockefeller, Nelson A., 31 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 40 Roy, William R., 37 Rumsfeld, Donald H., 16, 30 Russell Daily News, 6 Russell, Richard, 28

Salina Journal, 11, 14 Schepel, Andy, 33 Scott, Hugh, 43, 47 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Dole 5-11-07—p. 57

Sebelius, Keith, 12 Shriver, Garner, 29, 34 Skubitz, Joe, 29, 35 Smith, Howard Worth, 23 Smith, Wint, 11, 13, 14, 21, 40 Stennis, John, 47

Taft, William H., 31 Townsley, Russ, 6 Townsley, Will, 6

Voss, _____, 40

Washburn University, 2 What’s the Matter with Kansas [by Thomas Frank], 36 Williams, _____, 26 Williams, Bob, 20, 21 Wilson, Clyde N., 5 Woelk, John, 2, 8 influence on Robert J. Dole, 2