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. BOB PACKWOOD

July 20, 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

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[Sen. Packwood reviewed this transcript for accuracy of names and dates. Because no changes of substance were made, it is an accurate rendition of the original recording.]

Smith: But at his insistence, it’s about more than Senator Dole, and, when we’re done, we hope we’ll have a mosaic that will really amount almost to a history of the modern Senate, and, in a still larger sense, of the political process as it has evolved since Bob Dole came to this town in 1961, for better or worse; and that’s a debatable point. Let me begin by something Senator [John W.] Warner said in yesterday’s [Washington] Post. It was interesting; I think he came to the Senate in ’78.

Packwood: Yes.

Smith: What year did you

Packwood: I was elected in ’68; came in ’69.

Smith: Okay. He talked aboutit’s interesting. He talked about, in effect, the good old days as he remembered them, when freshmen were seen but not heard, when you waited until your second year to give your maiden speech, and when you had a handler to sort of guide you through the initiation. Does that ring a bell with you?

Packwood: Somewhat true. I think John may have overemphasized it, but there was a maiden speech concept in which other senators came to hear your maiden speech, so you worked on it and worked on it and worked on it, and it probably was a terrible speech, but certainly your fellow senator from your state came. But you’d always have at least seven or eight that would show up, and you were giving it in the afternoon when there’s no business of any kind. You’re not really commenting on the hottest issue of the day that’s going on. But what I do remember, the first day I got there, in the parking lot, I’d parked in the Senate courtyard, and pulling up next to me to park is Gene [Eugene] McCarthy, and he said, “Morning, Senator.” And I thought, “Wow! He called me senator.” This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 3

And he said, “I’m glad you’re with us. You know, he abandoned me.” It took me just a minute to understand I beat Senator Wayne [L.] Morse, and Morse had promised to support McCarthy in ’68 and had endorsed Bobby [Robert F.] Kennedy. McCarthy had not forgotten that, and he says, “You know, he abandoned me.” And, you know, I’m on the floor, and John [C.] Stennis said, “Senator Packwood, good to have you with us,” and whatnot. Took me about eight months before I realized, when they call you senator, you’d earned it; you got there. But only when they call you by your first name, have you arrived.

Smith: How long did that take?

Packwood: Oh, it took eight or nine months before the seniorI mean, the younger ones called you by your first—so your contemporaries, but the Russell [B.] Longs, the John Stennises, the Allen [J. ] Ellenders of that era, “He seems to be a nice young man. We’ll see how he does.”

Smith: Was it a much more hierarchical place?

Packwood: Oh, yes. Hierarchical in the sense, firststill, when I got there, an era when Southerners controlled almost all the committees

Smith: And they were still southern Democrats.

Packwood: Oh yes. Well, when I say Southerners, John Tower had been elected in about ’61 or ’62, and he was the first Republican from the South in the longest period of time. I think we elected Ed [Edward J.] Gurney from Florida in ’68, but Florida was already trending away from what I’d call a Southern state in the normal sense. But when you looked at the chairman of Appropriations, as I recall, was Allen Ellender, I think, and he died. I can’t remember the sequence, but Jim Eastland was Judiciary, John Stennis was Armed Services, Bill [J. William] Fulbright was Foreign Relations, you can just go right down the list. They were all Southerners, and, as opposed to now, Russell Long was chairman of the Finance Committee. You didn’t have the leadership, the strength that This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 4 you had. If you were a leader, you didn’t overrule a committee chairman; you didn’t take a bill out of committee; you didn’t cross a committee chairman. And I sense gradually the power is shifting both in the House and the Senate, to the leaders and the leaders’ coterie. You know, a good example, Nancy Pelosi is trying to do an energy bill in an ad hoc committee to go around John [D.] Dingell. That would not have happened; it may not happen this time. [laughs] I’m not sure. But no one would have thought of doing something like that. The minimum wage bill had passed, but basically taken away the finance parts of it and taken away from Max [S.] Baucus because Harry Reid and Max don’t get along. So that has been a change.

Smith: And it’s interesting, you mentioned Senator Stennis. Senator Dole has told us that Frank Carlson’s advice to him, almost his only real advice, was, “When you get to Washington, be sure to look up Senator Stennis.” And in effect, one had the sense that you almost should attach yourself to John Stennis; that he’s a kind of model senator. Why do you think that was?

Packwood: Well, John Stennis was so revered, liked by everybody, modest. But I’m surprised that that would have been Senator Carlson’s advice to Bob. Bob came in ’68, so that would be fair enough. Richard Russell was still alive, and, of course, he was the patriarch, but he was then sick, and he died seven or eight months after that. But you’re right, coming in ’68, in ’69, I think probably the advice to see Stennis was correct because it was clear Richard Russell wasn’t going to last much longer.

Smith: And that was notwithstanding his attitude on racial matters?

Packwood: Oh, no. No.

Smith: I mean, that didn’t enter into the respect with which he was regarded?

Packwood: No. First, race was never John’s big issue. I mean, did he vote with the South? You bet. As opposed to [James O.] Eastland, did he make an issue out of it? No. He was a man who justyou could not help but respect. On critical issues, on Armed This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 5

Services issues, he was bipartisanly good for seven or eight votes apart from what you get from committee and what you get anyway. He could influence seven or eight votes like Dick [Richard] Lugar can on Foreign Relations. And seven or eight on a close vote is a lot of influence.

Smith: And what are the sources of that influence?

Packwood: One is you know your subject very well, you don’t spread yourself thin. Sam Nunn was another one. You don’t spread yourself thin; you don’t shoot your mouth off on a lot of other subjects that you don’t know too much about; you’re not a publicity hound, and people will listen to you.

Smith: And presumably, part of that is you’re what would in London be called a House of Commons man. I mean, you’re someone who has a real identification with and loyalty to the Senate as an institution. Is that a factor?

Packwood: Yes. Very obviously, inyou know, it’s the old show horses and go horses. I think it’s probably not much different, though, in the board of directors of the YMCA or the PTA. The one that’s forever seeking publicity or who comes out of a meeting and immediately goes to the press is not as powerful on the inside as the publicity on the outside would give you the impression.

Smith: When you factor inI mean, we’re jumping ahead here, and I’ll go back to Senator Dole, but when you factor in all of the elements over the last thirty or forty years, particularly the media, and the Internet, and the 24/7 news cycle, and cable, and all of this, is it harder for people not to be publicity hounds? I mean, it seems as if there are more folks in Congress today who are playing as much to the cameras as they are interested in legislating.

Packwood: They are, and, on occasion it can work in terms of influence on a limited issue at a limited time, but that’s if you’re able, by going to the press, to stir up enough public opinion around the nation on your side that the pressure on the other senators to This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 6 bend, it doesn’t mean they like what you’ve done; it doesn’t mean you can do this on another issue. If you’re going to go that route, you’d better get the public with you. Smith: Do you think the Senate has deteriorated in thefor example, debate mattered thirty or forty years ago, didn’t it?

Packwood: Oh, yes. One of the great debatesBob was there, but it’s not in the Congressional Record because it was on a sensitive matter. I’ll kind of describe it to you. It’s the best debate I’ve ever seen in my life, politics or out of politics. It was the summer, I think, of 1969. We were voting on whether or not to authorize the ABM, the antiballistic missile. [Richard M.] Nixon wanted to trade it away in negotiations, but he couldn’t trade it away if he wasn’t authorized to build it. And also it became sort of a flashpoint for hawks and doves on the Vietnam War. So, finally we have a closed session of the Senate; no press, nobody there. The only outsiders are the guy that’s doing this, taking the notes. Ninety-nine senators, and the twoand there’s maybe ten that had not announced, and everybody knew it was going to be a close vote. And the two senators that were doing, the proponent, and the opponent were both Democrats, the proponent of the ABM was “Scoop” [Henry] Jackson of Washington; opponent was Stuart Symington, both on the Armed Services Committee, both bright, both reasonably good speakers, both access to the identical information. And ninety-nine senators were there for debate because with ten hours of debate equally divided, and Symington opened first, and he had some charts showing Russian SS missiles of some kind. He goes for an hour; not many notes and damn good. And I thought, boy, at the end of that, I said, “That’s going to be the end of the ABM. You cannot debate that.” And Scoop got up, and he went for an hour, too. “Let me take you just a few charts further,” my good friend from Missouri, he said. “Here’s the Russian SS-19,” or something like that, he says, “and these are the multiple warheads.” And he finishes, and I thought, “That’s it. We’re going to have the ABM.” Then they asked questions of each other, and it was like watching two great fencers. They knew the answers to the questions, so each of them tried to pin the other. This goes on for almost an hour, so they’ve now occupied three hours. And then other people got to ask questions, and about the fourth one in was Senator Fulbright. And, of This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 7 course, in those days, they did address to the chair, “Mr. President, will the senator from Washington yield to the question?” He didn’t turn to the senator and say, “Do you address the chair?” And I’m saying, “Mr. President, will the senator from Washington yield to a question?” Fulbright would have a tendency, on occasion, to do things like, “I don’t know if my colleague has had a chance to read the Chinese translation of the Russian copy of the treaty, but, if not, let me tell you what it says.” Because, you know, he was an academic and president

Smith: A little bit of showing-off?

Packwood: Oh, yes, and he was president of the University of Arkansas at one time. So, Scoop says, “Yes.” And Fulbright goes, “I don’t know if my good friend from Washington has had a chance yet to digest the remarks of Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko in Warsaw three weeks ago, in which he indicated that the Soviet Union wanted to reach a new era of détente, a new era of friendship, a new era of cordiality with the United States. And doesn’t my friend from Washington think that before we rush pell-mell into this unproven missile system, we should give just some little credence to the words of the Soviet foreign minister?” And you have to picture this. They’re standing. You stand, you know. They’re not ten feet apart. Scoop points at him like this [gestures], and he goes, “Let me call to memory for the senator from Arkansas.” And he moves his finger all the way around the semi-circle, and he says to the others who weren’t here that day, “The morning in October of 1962, when President [John F.] Kennedy called Foreign Minister Gromyko into his office and asked if the Soviets had any missiles in Cuba. No. Had any Warsaw Pact country missiles been transported on Soviet ships to Cuba? No. Were there any Soviet soldiers on the ground in Cuba assembling missiles from any place? No.” And then Scoop gestures like this [gestures], and the president opened the drawer of his desk, and Scoop took some papers out. Then the president opened the drawer of his desk and took out the pictures from the U-2 showing the Russian ships, showing the missiles on the decks, pictures so clear you could see the Soviet soldiers on the ground This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 8 and the chevrons on their sleeve. And he goes, “And Andre Gromyko left that room an acknowledged liar.” And then Scoop goes like this [gestures]. He said, “Now, if my good friend from Arkansas wants to rest the security of this country in the credibility of Andre Gromyko, that’s his business. But I wouldn’t ask anybody to sleep safely tonight based upon the believability of Andre Gromyko.” When the vote eventually came, it passed by one vote, and the answer to that question was what probably brought two or three people over. Now, you go look at the Congressional Record on this; first, there’s still big blanks in it because of security. Secondly, you get to this question, there is a question by Fulbright and an answer by Scoop, and it’s not this question and the answer. And so I talked to Dorothy Fosdick [phonetic], who was Scoop’s person on this, and I said, “Dorothy, what happened to this question and this answer?” She kind of smiled, and she said, “Well, afterwards, Senator Fulbright’s staff came and asked if we minded if the record could be corrected.” Now, you were always, in those days, entitled to correct your comments; you can’t correct somebody else’s. But Scoop had won; he was generous, so he agreed. So the question and answer is not the question and answer. So, unless you were there and heard it, there’s no record of it.

Smith: We mentioned Senator Stennis. Was Margaret Chase Smith sort of a conscience of the Senate? I mean, did she have that kind of aura, partly because of the McCarthyism and her independence?

Packwood: Yes, because of her speech about McCarthy was where it initially started, and she did have that. She was not a powerful senator, but she did have that aura, and maybe a part of it’s the fact you’re a woman, and the only woman in those days in the Senate. Yes, she did have that reputation, and she was admired. She was not a powerhouse.

Smith: You come into the Senate same time as Bob Dole.

Packwood: Same time Bob did, yes.

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Smith: How did you make his acquaintance?

Packwood: Oh, I can’t remember how. That whole freshman class got to know each other pretty quick, but I can’t remember how I made his acquaintance.

Smith: And also you wereI mean, obviously, from different parts of the country, but in those days, there were liberal Republicans. I mean, there was a

Packwood: Oh, there was lots of them.

Smith: I mean, there was a liberal Republican caucus.

Packwood: Oh, yes, I was one of them. But, yes, by the timein those days, even Dick [Richard S.] Schweiker was regarded as a liberal, and you had Jack [Jacob] Javits, and you had Ed Brooke, and you had Mark Hatfield. You had a fair number that were liberal.

Smith: And Ev [Everett] Dirksen was Leader until his death in the

Packwood: Yes. As a matter of fact, that’s where Bob and I first worked quite closely together. We worked to elect Howard [H.] Baker [Jr.] to that position in 1969,

Smith: Really?

Packwood: We didn’t win, but Bob and I worked together, and we’d be on the phone with each other constantly, “Have you talked with Marlow Cook, and what did you get?” We were reporting back and forth to each other.

Smith: Now, how much of that was generational?

Packwood: It was almost totally generational. Howard had only been there two and a half years or something like that, although he was the son-in-law of Everett Dirksen. And he was much more conservative than Hugh Scott, but the older Republican This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 10 conservatives could not abide the thought of somebody with only two and half years’ seniority becoming Leader. And we even used the argument of Lyndon [B.] Johnson, who became the Whip in just two years and became Leader in four years, but that didn’t seem to wash.

Smith: That’s fascinating, because what you’re saying is, at least then, perhaps contrary to what the public might think, ideology doesn’t trump generational loyalty.

Packwood: Oh, no. Philosophy, by and largeyou know, I don’t know what it’s like right now, but philosophy then did not trump blood and friendship.

Smith: And what kind of Leader was Hugh Scott?

Packwood: Nice guy. Of course he’s leading in the minority all of the time. Of all the Leaders I served with, Republican and Democrat, the ones that had thefirst, the problem of a Leader, poor devil, you know, he’s got a situation like this. One guy says, “Don’t vote till four; I’m coming back from Los Angeles. Don’t get in till four.” Another guy says, “You’ve got to vote before three; I’m leaving for Seattle. And if you don’t get my vote—.” And it’s almost impossible for any of them to think of long- term strategy. They’re just bedeviled.

Smith: They’re traffic cops?

Packwood: Yes. But the one who I thought had a greater perspective than all the ones I served with was Mike Mansfield. Part of it, he’d been a history teacher. I’m talking with him one time, when he was in military, he says, “I was in China.” And I’m thinking World War II; he meant in the twenties he’d been there. And he had a demeanor and a longer view and a patience that no other Leader had, nor did Hugh have it. Hugh was a nice guy, but of all the ones who was the most natural leader of men—I’ll say men— there was no question Bob was, in terms of a natural leader. Who would you follow into battle? I often said, “If I’m ever stuck in a bar-room fight and have to fight my way out, I want to fight out back to back with Bob Dole.” This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 11

Smith: And what were the qualities that contributed to that?

Packwood: They’re indefinable. Either you’ve got it or you don’t, and Bob had it.

Smith: Did he always have it?

Packwood: Yes.

Smith: Because there was a sense that he’sin many ways he’s evolved, like, hopefully, all of us do. I mean, you know, the sheriff of the Senate was in many ways a very different figure from the well regarded chairman of the Finance Committee, and a decade later, you know, the would-be president. I mean, there was a sense that

Packwood: Yes, but even among the freshman that came in, if you were to say who would have been the natural leader among us, it would have been Bob.

Smith: And who were some of the other members of that class?

Packwood: Marlow Cook was one; Ed Gurney from Florida. I’d have to go back myself, but there was more than the four of us. But I honestly can’t remember right now.

Smith: But he was clearly very much a Nixon man, right?

Packwood: Oh, yes. That was obvious at his funeral, at Nixon’s funeral.

Smith: Yes. On the [Clement F.] Haynesworth and [George H.] Carswell nominations, where were you?

Packwood: I voted against both of them. And that was a tough one because it comes in the summer, as I recall, of ’69 for Haynesworth. Here I’m a freshman senator. Bob, at least, had been in the House, and he had a little more grays than I did; and he was a little This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 12 older than I was. I was only thirty-six, and even though I was a freshman, I’d been down to the White House a couple times to meet with the president, but it was in a group, and it was usually a pep rally kind of thing. But I got a call from Bryce Harlow, could I come down and see the president about Haynesworth? And I said, “Yeah.” I assumed there’d be another group, and I get down there, that’s when I’m met by a young staffer, Lamar Alexander. And he takes me in, and it’s just the president and me. And I can’t recall whether Harlow sat over in the corner or not, but if he did, he didn’t say a word. So, the president said, “Thank you for coming, Bob. I want to talk with you about Haynesworth, Judge Haynesworth, you know. The problem is that people on the Supreme Court, they’re not following the law; they’re voting their own philosophy. And therefore, we’ve got to put people on the Court who share our philosophy.” And I said, “Mr. President, I agree with you, but I don’t share the philosophy of Judge Haynesworth.” And Nixon goes, “Let me try a different tack.” We went for about forty-five minutes, and at the end of it, he standswell, I assume I stand if he stands, and we walk to the door, and he puts his arm around my shoulder. He says, “Well, Bob,” he said, “I admire the strength of your arguments, but I would hope, as a personal favor to me as your president and as the leader of the party, that you could see your way clear to vote for Judge Haynesworth.” And I thought that’s as much pressure as I’m likely to be under. I had not announced, and I did not announce until it was quite close. But, yes, there was a lot of pressure on that. Carswell was easy. Carswell was not qualified.

Smith: In retrospect, do you think Haynesworth maybe got a raw deal?

Packwood: Yes. A couple things that were brought up. He owned a house with a racial covenant in Virginia. All the houses had racial covenants. If you bought a house in the thirties or forties , there was a racial covenant, or you didn’t buy a house. And charges like that are just unfair.

Smith: How well did you get to know Dole?

Packwood: Oh, very well. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 13

Smith: And how? What I’m getting at, I guess, through the back door is, you get a sense now that there are fewer real friendships in the Senate, and I’m curious to know why you think that is. What is different about the body now from then that makes that harder?

Packwood: One, believe it or not, it’s a lot easier now to get home quicker than it was then. When I went, there was no nonstop flights to Portland, for example. You had to flysometimes you had to do two stops. Well, you didn’t go out for a day and come back. Now it’s easier. Two, you used to have, therefore, lots more on weekends, bipartisan family parties. Two or three members from Republicans and Democrats and their wives get together, and that isn’t done much anymore. I don’t know if they still do it now, but was common for us to go into Dirksen’s office, even when I’m a freshman, for drinks at five-thirty or six, and there would be Democrats there and Republicans. I don’t know if they do that anymore or not.

Smith: I’m sure they don’t.

Packwood: It was a heavier drinking place in those days. But even the drinks cause a certain fraternity and conviviality.

Smith: Did you also spend less time raising money in those days?

Packwood: Yes, although I never spent any time raising money. I was just so fortunate; other people raised it for me. Now, I don’t know what I would do now, whether I would have to raise it or I could find others to raise it for me, but I never spentfrom 1980 onward, I was able to raise a lot of money by direct mail; that doesn’t take much time. You had to look at the letter and make sure it doesn’t say something terribly embarrassing. In my last race I raised about eight and a half million dollars, and about four and a half of it was direct mail. And that didn’t take me an hour a month to do that. Most senators couldn’t do that, though in those days. I could do it on a couple issues that I’d taken leads on. But I didn’t spend any time raising money.

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Smith: Were you on the Finance Committee from the beginning of your career?

Packwood: No. I went on in 1973 after I’d been there four years, and, of course, in those days—and here’s a change—you went on on straight seniority. There was no deviation. There was none of this exception and the Leader gets to appoint somebody. This is why [George] Voinovich can never get on the Finance Committee, because every time there’s a new Congress, the Leader gets to appoint either one or two, I can’t remember. And [Mitch] McConnell hates Voinovich. So unless there’s enough spots open that after the Leader has made his appointment, Voinovich could get on as the senior person wanting it. But, again, in those days it was straight seniority.

Smith: This is fascinating, because what you’re telling me really flies in the face—first of all, I’m learning things I didn’t know, but it flies in the face of this popular notion that one Leader after another has espoused about how powerless they are, about how they have no tools at their command. It sounds to me like they have maybe more tools than how they went on.

Packwood: They do, and you’re seeingone of the frustrations for Leaders on both sides is the filibuster. It wasn’t used very much. It was mainly a civil rights tool when I was there that started for the first three years. And you didn’t haveI’ll take a guess-- ten, twelve votes on a filibuster a year. Or maybe ten, twelve votes, of which four or five may have been on one issue. And now it’s just a common parliamentary procedure, which makes it infinitely more difficult for a Leader. So that tool has changed. But if you mean are we aggregating more power, House and Senate, in the hands of the leadership, the answer is yes.

Smith: Do you remember there was a vote, a critical vote, when Nelson Rockefeller was vice president, which reduced the cloture from sixty-seven to sixty?

Packwood: Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

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Smith: Do you remember the circumstances surrounding that? Because that was pretty controversial.

Packwood: It was very controversial. It had to with, as I recall, with whether or not, at the start of a new Senate, a new year, the old rules bound, or whether a majority could vote to change the rules. And we just about went through that last year on the judges, when the Republicans were getting close to, “Do we have the right to change the rules?” Yes, oh, I remember it very well. It was very controversial.

Smith: And his rulings from the chair were, frankly, directed toward lowering

Packwood: Oh, yes. Yes.

Smith: And that upset a number of Southern Republicans

Packwood: Oh, yes.

Smith: who didn’t forget it.

Packwood: That’s correct. He exactly made the rule that basically you could change the rules at the start byin essence, I think he was saying a majority vote, whereasand the interesting part, when I went there, the rule on filibuster was still two-thirds. They only changed it to sixty votes, may have been the first year I was there. There was a senior senator from Delaware named John Williams; in fact, he was serving the last two years of his 24-year term. He was opposed to the change, and he used a wonderful expression, and I think, in retrospect, he was right, and we shouldn’t have changed, he said, “You know, I’m opposed to the change for this reason.” He said, “Just by and large, Congress is a grassroots body.” And he said, “If the public really wants something, they’ll get it. It may take three or four Congresses, but that’s not a long time in the history of the Republic.” “But,” he said, “the filibuster prevents us from making mistakes.” He said, “I’ve come to the conclusion that we make more mistakes in haste than we lose opportunities in delay.” That’s pretty good advice. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 16

Smith: Yes. Conservative with a large and a small “C.” Tell me about the Finance Committee and its centrality in these years, in terms of public policy.

Packwood: Of course, everybody thinks their committee is the most important committee, and so when I got on it, I thought so, too, even though I was chairman of the Commerce Committee for a while before I was chairman of Finance.

Smith: By the way, was Finance regarded as a plum assignment?

Packwood: Oh, yes. There was the big four, really big three: Finance, Appropriations, Foreign Relations. Armed Services, at that time people were pooh-poohing Armed Services. Bill [William B.] Saxbe was another of our freshmen, by the way, from Ohio.

Smith: Yes, who had some unkind things to say about Bob Dole, remember?

Packwood: I’m surprised. Is that right?

Smith: He was the one who was credited with the line that Dole couldn’t sell beer on a troop ship.

Packwood: [laughs] Or was it ass on a troop ship?

Smith: Well [laughs]. That’s interesting, because it’s like the [unclear] line with, “It’s not worth a pitcher of warm spit.” That’s the line that got printed, anyway.

Packwood: Okay.

Smith: Was that just kind of a personal animosity

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Packwood: It actually wasSaxbe, you know, he only served one term and didn’t run again, and he used his whole first term to go to funerals and India and things like that. He loved ithe just traveled around the world. He was the one--this is the one time when we violated seniority. Karl Mundt was the senior member on the Appropriations Committee, and he had a stroke. He was out for about six months; he couldn’t perform his duties. So a motion was made to take his seniority away. I mean, he couldn’t perform. He wasn’t there, and even this, now, is almost an unheard of thing to do this, but they went ahead. And so Saxbe was detailed to go out and tell Mrs. Mundt, and he went out and told her. And he got back, and somebody said, “How did she take it?” He said, “I was about as welcome as a turd in a punchbowl,” he said. [laughs

Smith: So it’s safe to say he was a plain-spoken Westerner.

Packwood: Oh, yes. As I recall, was he attorney general?

Smith: He was attorney general for a brief period.

Packwood: And this is where they asked him to do something in Watergate, and he said, “I told ‘em to go piss up a rope.” And that was on live television. [laughs] Yes, he was very colorful.

Smith: But Finance was a real plum.

Packwood: It was a plum. The reason I said Armed Services, for a while it was not a plum. When we went around in seniority and everybody picked the committees they wanted, there were still two spots on Armed Services, and Saxbe wanted to know if he went on it, could he have two votes. Yes, Finance and Appropriations were the plums. Foreign Relations, if that was your interest. But you meant the other two, yes, and it has become infinitely more powerful. Gordon Smith, one of the current senators, could have gone on Appropriations or Finance two years ago, and he chose Finance, and the reason is, even in those days, it had jurisdiction over taxes and over trade and Social Security, This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 18 but also, just a few years earlier, we had added Medicare and Medicaid to its jurisdiction. Now, in 1973, those two had not become overlooming issues yet. The costs were vastly underestimated, and we were just into it. But as the years went on, it got tougher and tougher and tougher. Nobody would leave. It got tougher and tougher to get onto it. And now today, when you add Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to it, let alone taxes and trade.

Smith: Was Russell Long Chairman throughout until Dole—

Packwood: Until the Republicans took over, yes.

Smith: And how did Long run the committee? I assume he ran the committee.

Packwood: He was the funniest guy.

Smith: Did he ever talk about his dad, by the way?

Packwood: I talked to him very briefly once about his dad, and it was Richard Russell, before he had died, had said to me, he said Huey Long was the smartest man he ever met and that Russell was not half a step behind. Russell would cover it with sort of buffooneries, but he was no buffoon; this was an act. Here’s a typical guy. He would never, never, never, never go on those Sunday morning talk shows. He was an insider and would not go on those shows. But the Committee, when I first went on it, the senior Republican was Wally Bennett of Utah, the father of the current Senator [Robert F.] Bennett. There was no partisan staff, nor did Senator Bennett want a partisan staff. And so it was a very small staff. I don’t think there was half a dozen professionals altogether for all the subjects they had. And, of necessity, therefore, because Russell insisted that the staff serve everybody, and if a minority member wanted something and the staff didn’t get it, Russell would raise hell that, “You’re not the Democratic staff. You’re everybody.” When I was working with President Nixon on a bill that he was going to introduce that was mandated health coverage, employer mandated health coverage, I was carrying This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 19 the bill for him in the Senate and working on it, and two of the professionals on the Committee were detailed by Russell Long to work with me for an extensive amount of time and period on drafting this bill becausefor two reasons. One was Russell wanted to make sure that we got served; two, you wanted to make sure it was drafted in a way that the Finance Committee got the bill. He didn’t want this thing slipping over to some other committee. And you have to be careful; if you had a bill that covers a number of things, the parliamentarian will send it to the committee that has the most in it.

Smith: What is the role of the parliamentarian?

Packwood: In those days, it was Dr. Riddick, and it was very powerful, and you did not challenge his rulings. He was scrupulously nonpartisan. It is very powerful. I sense, as we’re going along, though, we’re going to start to see more and more challenging of the ruling of the chair. You know, the parliamentarian will whisper, “The motion’s out of order.” And the presiding officer, “Chair rules the motion’s out of order.” And somebody, “I appeal the ruling of the chair.” You got fifty-one votes, you overturned the chair, but you’ve now set a precedent, which the Senate is very wary of precedents.

Smith: A quick interjection here. I mentioned about Rockefeller. I’m writing a biography of Nelson Rockefeller. Dick Parsons was his guy.

Packwood: I didn’t know that.

Smith: And Dick Parsons, throughout this whole debate, Dick ParsonsRockefeller, of course, was dyslexic, so he wanted charts. So Dick Parsonsand, you know, the arcane rules of the Senate would have, you know, baffled anyone, and then a new vice president. Dick Parsons did two things. First of all, he made a chart that took Nelson through the entire—you know. And he was so impressed with it, he took the chart to the White House to show the president, who actually had a little more experience on Capitol Hill This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 20 than he did. But then Parsons sat in the gallery and signaled the vice president, basically, how to rule

Packwood: Oh, I didn’t know that.

Smith: throughout this debate. And when it was over, Strom Thurmond was, in particular, unhappy about this, and he’s in the cloakroom, “Mr. Vice President, I want to talk to you.” And he was cordially but unmistakably expressing his dissatisfaction. And Rockefeller said, “Well, Strom, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you talk to my counsel. He’s here, right here.” Well, in those days, Dick Parsons, you know, great big guy, had a big afro.

Packwood: Oh, no. No, no, no.

Smith: Nelson said, “Strom, let me introduce you to my legal counsel.” And Thurmond took one look atand that was basically the end of the conversation.

Packwood: Well, Strom’s the guy. One time, in our Tuesday luncheon, the Lipizzaner horses had been here. They’re born black and they turn white. And Strom says, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if people did that?”

Smith: Oh, god.

Smith: Did Thurmond ever change in his

Packwood: In this sense, he was one of the early ones to have blacks on his staff and wooing the blacks. And in his last campaigns, he did relatively well for a Republican, with blacks. No, he changed in that sense.

Smith: Without naming names, were there out-and-out segregationists?

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Packwood: Oh, Eastland was; there’s no question about it. I think probably both Allen Ellender and John McClellan from Arkansas were. I remember when EastlandI was in one of those sessions having drinks in the Leader’s office, although maybe in Hugh Scott’s at this time the trend kind ofthe theory continued. Eastland was there, and Mac Mathias, which is another one of the class of ’68, and somebody else introduced a bill that all members of Congress have to live in the District. And Eastland says, “Never pass.” Somebody said, “Why not?” He goes, “Niggers.”

Smith: What do you sense about the Dole-Long relationship? There’s the famous story that Dole tells after the ’80 election, but, I mean, up until that point, when Republicans were in the minority, I mean, how did they work together, and how did the minority work?

Packwood: Well, as I recall, Bob did not become ranking member till ’79, didn’t he? Wasn’t Carl Curtis—yes. So, in that sense, at least Russell didn’t have to deal with him as the ranking member until the last two years. But Russell got along with everybody. Of course, in those days, no sunshine; everything was run in secret. It still is, as a matter of fact. Even with sunshine laws; you meet in the back room; you don’t have votes that count; you just have votes that count. And then you go out and have a formal vote. But Russell, I found, got along with everybody. But I don’t know what the special relationship may have been between the two of them.

Smith: Also, I don’t want to overlooknow ’74, you were both up for reelection in ’74?

Packwood: Yes.

Smith: And, of course, he had a very, very tough fight.

Packwood: Yes, that was against that Roy, wasn’t it?

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Smith: Yes, against Bill Roy, and, of course, the pardon comes along in the middle of it. Describe the political atmosphere of that unique year, and what did you face and

Packwood: I faced the same thing, but I faced it, fortunately, in a slightly different situation. Believe it or not, interesting history; in 1966 Mark Hatfield is elected to the Senate running against a very competent Democrat named Bob Duncan. Duncan had been a two-term Speaker of the House in Oregon and then a two-term congressman, and he was running against Hatfield. It’s 1966. Hatfield is a dove. At the National Governors Conference he’s the only governor to vote against supporting Lyndon Johnson on the War, and he was a hero to the anti-Vietnam people. Duncan was a hawk, a World War II fighter, and would rather fight them on the banks of the Meikong than the banks of the Columbia. Wayne Morse crosses party lines and supports Duncan.

Smith: Or rather, supports Hatfield.

Packwood: I mean supports Hatfield. Supports Hatfield , which irritated lots of Democrats what helped me when I ran. So now, in ’68 I beat Morris. Believe it or not, in 1972, when Hatfield’s up for election, Morrris runs against him. Hatfield is not anti- war enough, and Mark just clobbered him. In 1974, he files to run against me. Now, he’s now seventy-four, and our polls had us way ahead. But in midsummer, he dies, so the Democrats have to pick a new nominee. And they pick a woman state senator who had run for governor but had lost the primary slightly, and she was still in the state senate. And they picked her, and she didn’t have a lot of money, and there was only three months to go, and she was totally out of her depth on national issues, just so much so that when we had a debate at the Jewish Community Center and somebody asked a question about Israelif you could picture somebody saying this at the Jewish Community Center, she said, “Oh, that’s not a front- burner issue for me.” You just don’t do things like that. So, my race was a different race in that sense. But the same issue was there. The pardon was there, although I had opposed the pardon, so it helped a bit.

Smith: When did you think of Dole as a national candidate? This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 23

Packwood: Very early on. I mean, course he’d already run for vice president.

Smith: Well, he would in ’76.

Packwood: Yes, yes. But, just, to me, he was just a natural leader. The one thing that you could see could hurt him, and then it hurt him terribly when he ran against [William J.] Clinton because he didn’t keep doing it, he had that wonderful tart tongue, and most of us enjoyed it. On occasion it could cut the wrong way. So, in ’96 I guess he was just told to shut up, and then you didn’t see the real Bob Dole. This is one of those where you can have nine outrageously funny things, and the tenth one bombs. And the nine are forgotten; the bomb is remembered.

Smith: Would “Democrat wars” fit in the category of things you wish you could take back?

Packwood: Oh, yes. Oh, every war in this century? Oh yes. I mean, first, when you’re talking about World War I, who knows? When you’re talking about Korea, everybody knew. But I don’t think they really blamed it on Harry [S.] Truman, per se. We did in 1952. But by and large, the public is pretty supportive. By that time, we’re out of Vietnam. The public’s pretty supportive of America when it’s in war, and I don’t think they took kindly to that kind of a remark.

Smith: That brings up this large issue that’s sort of dogged Dole for much of his career. I think he’s long since put it behind him, but this notion that there’s almost this Nixonian dark side. How do you assess that?

Packwood: It’s wrong. I knew Nixon slightly. He had to deal with me a fair amount, and there was a dark side to him. I would say Bob’s was more a tough side, not dark. You didn’t sense Bob was devious, and you have no sense that he would put a knife in your back or abandon you. In fact, when I was going through my ethics problems in the This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 24

Senate, he stuck with me to the very end. But he did have a tough side, and, on occasion, an unforgiving side.

Smith: Really?

Packwood: Yes.

Smith: How would that manifest itself?

Packwood: I remember one timeI don’t know what the issue was, but Jack Danforth was on the other side, and we’re having a meeting, and Bob said to me, “Who’s coming?” I said, “Danforth will be here.” And he says, “Do you have any real Republicans coming?” [laughs]

Smith: I can hear him saying it. [laughs]

Packwood: See, but it’s a flash comment, and that’s the kind of thing that can hurt if he says that publicly.

Smith: Yes. Were you surprisedon election night in 1980, you’re up again.

Packwood: Yes.

Smith: And it’s a Republican year.

Packwood: Yes.

Smith: Were you surprised that you were going to be in the majority?

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Packwood: Absolutely. I could see a chance to get there, but I didn’t think it would happen in 1980. 1980 was the reverse of last November. We won every close race. In November, last time we lost every race.

Smith: Which also meant that you brought in some fairly weak

Packwood: Oh, god. You talk about Roger Jepsen and Admiral Denton and Paula Hawkins. Oh, god.

Smith: One-term wonders.

Packwood: That’s the same year, I think, that Steve Symms came in.

Smith: Yes, beat Frank Church.

Packwood: Yes. Symms was amazing.

Smith: Well, and Larry Pressler. Didn’t he

Packwood: Yes, he beat

Smith: He beat George McGovern.

Packwood: No, Jim Abdnor.

Smith: Oh, that’s right.

Packwood: Another weak one. But Symms, he was a funny guy. Idaho only has two congressmen, and Idaho is really divided north and south. North is Anaconda [Copper Mining Co.], mining, union, tough. The south is Mormon, Boise, gentle, conservative. But anybody who knows those hard-rock union miners, these are hardly liberal people. They may vote Democrat, but are they liberal? The answer is no. Symms is a This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 26 congressman from that district, from this tough district. And in 1980 he’s running against Church. One of the issues in Idaho is always guns. And one of Steve’s slogans was, “America was made great by three boxes: the jury box, the ballot box, and the cartridge box.” [laughs] And he says, “And if the first two fail, you should use the third.” [laughs] Idaho loved it. And Symms won in ’86, and I rememberwhat happened? It’s another one, we were in session maybe mid-October, ’86. You’ve got all these weak candidates that are there. Steve Symms goes home at Labor Day, and he says to Bob, “If you need me, send a plane. I’m going home to campaign.” He got reelected.

Smith: That night, I mean, it dawns on all of you, beginning with Howard Baker, that you’re going to be in the majority. You were surprised?

Packwood: Oh, gosh, yes. You could start to see some numbers, and you thought, “Oh, we could get pretty close to a majority.” But I don’t think any of us thought—all of us professional politicians—that we could win every close race, and we did.

Smith: And suddenly Bob Dole is chairman of the Finance Committee. I was around then, and I remember hearing him talk about the difference between being in the minority when all you had to do was put out press releases. And now, all of a sudden, there’s this kind of sobering reality that sets in that you’re responsible.

Packwood: And I thought Bob made one major mistake in 1981, ‘82 on the original tax bills. He excluded the Democrats, and, by and large, it was a Republican effort.

Smith: And was that a deliberate choice?

Packwood: Yes.

Smith: Really? And why do you think that is?

Packwood: I don’t know why, and I thought it was a mistake; and I told him at the time I thought it was a mistake because, first, we didn’t have that big a margin. As I recall, the This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 27

Committee may have been 11-9. But I said, you know, Harry Byrd before Russell Long never did it, and they ran on a bipartisan basis, and you can get an awful lot ofI mean, the Democrats on it were not liberalwhen you start going down the line, you had Russell, you had David Boren, you had Max Baucus, who was not all that liberal. You had any number of people you could get on things, but he excluded them. The finalnot so much on the hearings, but kind of the way the Democrats in the House excluded the Republicans on the Ways and Means Committee for years and years.

Smith: By the way, now that the roles were reversed, how did Dole and Russell Long work together?

Packwood: He always, very wisely, treated Russell practically as if Russell was still chairman, and that was a very smart thing to do.

Smith: That suggests the perks didn’t matter, the trappings of his new power.

Packwood: Oh, yes. In that sense, Bob cared much more about real power than the trappings of power, which probably makes you all the more powerful.

Smith: Now, he was not a supply-sider.

Packwood: No. Neither was I at the time. That’s correct. But I can remember Bob on balanced budget, balanced budget, balanced budget.

Smith: I mean, was there anythere must have been some sortmaybe if only a creative tension internally between kind of the orthodox faith and this new religion being brought in by

Packwood: Yes, although, you recall, as soon as the recession started, we end up raising taxes again that next year.

Smith: Well, the next year, right. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 28

Packwood: Yes, the next year. Yes. Which is not something Jack Kemp wanted to do, but the supply-siders were just starting to gain control. Literally, they had been academics during the Democrat reign and during the [Jimmy] Carter reign, and they didn’t have a strongholdI can remember Kemp coming to me long before he went to [William] Roth and wanting me to co-sponsor hiswhoever was going to be with himKemp-Roth it ended up, or, as Roth would call it, the Roth-Kemp bill. But the supply-siders hadn’t yet gained the credence, and it may be wrong credence, hadn’t gained the credence that they did subsequently.

Smith: That ’81 bill, first of all, how muchI realize this is speculative. The impact of the assassination attempt on [Ronald] Reagan and the aura that grew out of that, how much did that increase the president’s power?

Packwood: Tremendously. Tremendously. Especially the way he handled it, you know, saying to the doctors, “I hope you’re all Republicans.”

Smith: Yes.

Packwood: I mean, you could not dislike Ronald Reagan. This was one of his great strengths. He’s the president I dealt with more than anybody else because I was chairman of the Commerce Committee for the first four years of that administration; and in that era we deregulated a great many industries. And then I was chairman of Finance for two years when we did the tax reform bill in 1986, so I dealt with him more than any other president. And I’ve come to the conclusion that he understood the presidency better than anybody else. And he regarded the function of the presidency was to inspire the country, and you hire people to run the government, and so you get some bad eggs on occasion. But he was never the detail man that Jimmy Carter was or almost any otheror Bill Clinton, who I dealt a little bit with, or anybody else you’ve ever seen. But you go to these meetings in the Cabinet room, leadership meetings, and I was in the leadership all during that time, either as a committee chairman, a chairman of the Senatorial Campaign This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 29 here, the Republican Conference or something like that. So you go to these meetings, and I’m sure the president is saying, “Why do we have to have these meetings?” And his aide is saying, “Because the members of Congress want to be included, and they want to be able to say that they’ve advised you and you got the [unclear].” It’s just useless. I’m sure every president must think that. So the meeting will start out, you go in, and you all have your assigned place at a table about this size, and you all have your assigned place when you go in. There’s a name. The president comes in after you’re all there, and we all stand up, and he goes around and shakes hands. Now, this meeting is going to last an hour. He goes around and he shakes hands and comments; that takes maybe five, six minutes and, then he sits down. He sits right in the center, just like you see the pictures of President [George W.] Bush. And he actually has the three-by-five cards, and he says, “Now the things I’d like to talk about today,” and goes through and just kind of reads them. I’d say that takes him five or six minutes. And let’s say it’s a bipartisan meeting, so you’ve got Tip [Thomas P.] O’Neill and whoever the number two person for the Democrats was at the time over there. And then you have Bob Michel, the Republican Leader in the House, and his number two. And then you had the Senate Leaders and their numbers, so now you’ve got eight people. And the president said, “Now, Tip, you have anything to say?” And Tip would say something, and then he would turn to Bob Michel, “Bob, you have anything to say?” Hell, by the time these eight had finished saying something, there’s not fifteen minutes left in this forty-five minute meeting. And the president would say, “Any other comments or questions?” And there might be one or two. One time Jack Kemp asked him a very good question, and he goes, “Jack that is a very, very astute question. And I see Jim [James] Baker here, and I’m going to ask Jim to answer that question.” [laughs] And by this time the meeting’s over, and we all go out and, you know, the press is out there. “How was the meeting?” What are you going to say? Waste of time, waste of his time, waste of our time? “Oh it was a very significant meeting. I think we really,” you know. And I think he understood that’s what the function of this meeting was. He was such a personable guy, you could not dislike him. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 30

Smith: Was he underestimated?

Packwood: Yes.

Smith: Including by some on his own side?

Packwood: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. He was driven by lower rates. I mean, if he had anythingof all the things, whether it’s the evil empire, what drove him was lower rates. At his zenith in Hollywood, the top rate was 91 percent. I don’t think he had an accountant. I think he must have paid 91 percent on whatever his last 100,000 dollars of income was. So from that time on he was driven by lower rates. When he came in, the top rate was 70 percent. We cut it to 50, and then in 1986 we cut it to 28. But in 1986, he may or may not have been a supply-sider, but his insistence in the 1986 tax bill is that it had to be revenue-neutral, so the only way you could get there would be by closing billions of dollars of loopholes. But he never wavered. It wasn’t a question of his telling us how to get there. His goal was lower rates, “Now you figure out how to get there. As long as you get the lower rates, I don’t care how you get there.”

Smith: What did you sense his relationship was with Dole?

Packwood: I think it was pretty good. Dole becomes Leader the last four years. But I sense it was pretty good with Reagan. It was hard to have a bad relation with Reagan. You might have irritated him on things or voted against him, but mano a mano, it would have been hard to have a bad relation.

Smith: Of course, there is that school that says it would be hard to have a relationship with Reagan, that he was remote, that he was detached. All of those euphemisms.

Packwood: Oh, well. Yes, but I think this is allyou know, people always love this joke, well, the trouble is, you go into the grocery store and you got these food stamps, and you get money back, and you buy a fifth of gin.” He’d tell stories like that. Or, he This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 31 said, “As George Murphy said when he and I were in Hollywood.” You know, he’ll do things like that, but I think this is deliberate. This was not a dumb guy.

Smith: So, in ’81, apparently, I mean a bidding war breaks out in terms of tax cutting.

Packwood: Oh, god, yes. Oh, yes.

Smith: How did that evolve?

Packwood: First you got the president; the House makes the president’s bill worse, or more. The Senate now makes it more than the House, and now we go to conference and damn near making it more than everything put together. That was the bidding war. We had one bill—it was called 10-5-3—I don’t think it passed, I mean in that form, depreciate buildings over ten years, equipment over five and cars over three, depreciate them to zero. I mean, buildings last more than ten years. The big capital formation was critical. We need to increase our savings rate and we need to increase our investment rate, and that was the big push.

Smith: So then, in ’82 with TEFRA [Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act], is this attempt to take some of the ornaments off the tree.

Packwood: You got it.

Smith: And apparently the president was not happy.

Packwood: That’s correct.

Smith: And Dole is clearly pushing this.

Packwood: Dole, you’re right, he was not a supply-sider. Most of the people that came up in that era were not supply-siders. The academics of that didn’t start till Paul Craig Roberts and the others of the late seventies or evenand I don’t know what the Doles’ This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 32 relation with the president was at that time, but I don’t sense that the president intruded himself that much. I’m trying to remember if I had any calls from him where he and I would be at cross-purposes, but I don’t find he interfered a lot with Congress. A good example was abortion. Every year on the anniversary of Roe versus Wade, he would speak by phone to the Right to Life people, by phone. I don’t recall that he ever involved himself in any of those battles. “Are we going to cut off Medicaid funding for an abortion?” I don’t think he ever said a word or called anybody or sent a letter. And he obviously would have done more on taxes, but I don’t recall any pressure on me, and I was supporting Bob.

Smith: How difficult was that, I mean in ’82? In effect, you’re reversing yourselves to some degree. You’re all but saying, “We made a mistake.”

Packwood: We went too far. Yes.

Smith: Yes, we went too far.

Packwood: But I think we went too far in 1981. Danny [Dan] Rostenkowski had just become chairman of Ways and Means. Bob has just become Chairman of Finance. So you got these twoand both of them are pretty powerful guys, and each of them are going to prove their manhood, if necessary, at the expense of the other.

Smith: What was that relationship?

Packwood: Mine was sensational with Danny when I became chairman. But Danny, first, he excluded all the Republicans, for all practical purposes, on Ways and Means, so you don’t need to worry about having to deal with the senior Republican; you’re going to have to deal with the chairman. I mean, this is how powerful Danny was.

Smith: Is that just because that’s how they did it in Chicago?

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Packwood: Damned if I know. I don’t know if that’s the way Wilbur Mills ran the committee or not when Wilbur was chairman. Interesting little bit: I’m told that Wilbur knew the tax law backwards and forwards and that they really didn’t have votes in the Committee. Wilbur said, “I think we can do this and that,” and the Committee went along. And up until the Watergate year when the rule was changed, up until that year, the Ways and Means Committee was also, for the Democrats, the committee on committees. So Wilbur Mills not only was chairman of the Ways and Means, he decided who got to go on all the other committees. That is power. Here’s an example of Danny. From time to time, there’s been a provision in the Tax Code that the employer provides prepaid legal benefits like health insurance, that they’re not taxable as income to the employed, just like health insurance is not taxable. There were a couple unions that had some prepaid legal contracts with employers, and this law would normally expire every two or three years; it wasn’t a permanent one. They always wanted to get it extended, and I would help them, although it was a union issue, but it wasn’t one that divided employers; employers didn’t care because it was deductible for them, no matter what we did. The issue was, is it taxable to the employee? I got it extended a time or two, and finally the unions came to meand it would always have to be in a Senate bill; Danny would never put it in a House bill. I finally said to them, “Listen, you union guys, can’t you get some Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee to support this issue, so that it doesn’t have to come here, because then I’ve got to go to conference, and in order to keep this, I’ve got to give something up.” And I said, “Okay, they got Charlie Rangel to agree.” So we’re in conference, and Danny is chairing it, and I go, “Mr. Chairman, on this prepaid legal, I really think it’s fair provision, employers don’t oppose it, these unions want it, doesn’t cost much, and I think the House ought to recede to the Senate and accept our provision.” Charlie Rangel raises his hand; he goes, “Mr. Chairman, I think Senator Packwood’s correct. I think probably it is a good provision, and I think the House ought to recede.” Danny goes, “All right. Everybody on this side who wants to recede, raise their hand.” Charlie doesn’t raise his hand. That’s how powerful he was. It was not fifteen seconds after he said, “We ought to recede.” [laughs] This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 34

Smith: He had a change of heart. Rostenkowski, it’s interesting, said once to meBill Clinton, at the time of the government shutdown, Clinton was looking, you know, for any kind of advantage, and he called up Rostenkowski and said, “Tell me something about Bob Dole that’ll give me a leg up.” And Rostenkowski said a lot of complimentary things about him, but then he said, “He’s the most impatient guy in Washington. At some point, he’ll give you what you need just to get out of the room.” Exaggeration?

Packwood: A bit, but true. Bob was impatient, and he would be impatient with other senators who weren’t prepared to quite go along or wanted a little more time. But this is also the frustration of a Leader; he wants to move. I’m saying, “Well, you know, Mr..” It’s seven o’clock at night and he’s hoping he can get the bill done and finished by eight o’clock. “Well, you know, Bob, I’d rather do it tomorrow.” “Goddamn it, why can’t we do it now?” “Because I’ve got some other things I.” “Can’t you say them now?” “Well, no, I’d rather.” He was impatient in that sense, but Leaders are driven to that. But you’re right, and he was impatient. I’ve seen him been willing to give things in conference. Sometimes they were things important to me but not important to him that he’d give away. But he wasn’t going to give away the very important things. Yes, he was impatient.

Smith: Take us into a conference because, you know, most people will never see it and have no idea of how it functions and what the individual dynamics are. What would someone like Dolehow would he work

Packwood: Let’s say you’ve got a typical Ways and Means-Finance conference on a bill of modest importance, not unimportant, but not the big tax bill of the year. So let’s say you’ve got ten or twelve House conferees and six or seven Senate conferees. Well, first, This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 35 eighteen to twenty people in a conference is not going to reach any conclusion, so the staff will clear out all of the chaff where everybody can agree, or even ahead of time, House staff will say, “We’ll recede on two, four, six, eight and ten, if you recede on one, three, five seven, nine,” and the staffs agree, so that’s all cleared away. And then you get down to the really tough stuff, and the question becomes, it’s kind of a game as to what is really important to them and what will they give to get what is really important. And they’re thinking of the same thing. What’s really important to us, and what will we give? It is interesting bargaining, and at the end, a lot of it is determined by the two chairmen.

Smith: Presumably, there are, obviously, party differentials there, but to what extent are there also differences between the Senate and the House?

Packwood: There are differences between the Senate and the House, but you also see geographic differences. On trade, tremendous geographic differences, and that became even more pronounced as we went on. If you’re from an industrial production state that’s losing competitively, you don’t like trade anymore. If you’re from a shipping state that has a lot of it going in, going out and shipped here, that has nothing to do with party; that would be one. You would normally get a partisan division on, “These taxes favor the rich,” and usually the Democrats would say that. And the Republicans say, “No, we balanced it out.” But you could figure the parties’ lineup on something like that.

Smith: And there’s also going on, throughout this period, throughout the eighties and into the nineties, this internal shift, some of it generational, some of it cultural, some of it geographic, within the Republican Party, and I’m wondering, it’s personalized in some ways by, say, a Kemp versus a Dole, although, of course, later on, they became good friends, and

Packwood: I’m not sure they ever became good friends.

Smith: How did that manifest itself? Of course, Kemp, in effect, raised the curtain to [Newt] Gingrich, I mean, you know, where the party went. And Dole, who was, This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 36 ironically, when he came to the Senate, perceived as kind of a hard conservative partisan. Did he change, or did the Party change?

Packwood: The Party changed. Oh, there’s no question the Party changed. I mean, when you look at the fact that the Brooks and Hatfields and the Javitses and Saxbe was quite liberal, and Hugh Scott was literally a liberal, this is all before Roe versus Wade. Abortion is not an issue. Guns are not a big issue. Taxes are an issue only in the sense that they’re always an issue because taxes are always too high. This is not supply-side; they’re just, taxes are too high. But the Party dramatically changed. Again, Bob’s big issues were not guns and abortion. Did he go along? Did he vote with me? You mean did he take a lead on those? He’s kind of like the president on those; this wasn’t his thing. Plus, when you are in leadership, you are forced to the center, unless you’re unusual. Newt was unusual. Newt was able to set the agenda and get the people to vote for an [unclear]. He’s the guy that in a meeting would spin off a hundred ideas, and you’ve got to jettison ninety-five of them. But other people don’t spin off any ideas.

Smith: What was the chemistry between Dole and Gingrich?

Packwood: Well, Newt really didn’t become what I’d call a major factor till about 1990. I can’t remember when Bob Michel finally left and Newt took over. We were not yet in the majority over there. I’ve sat in some leadership meetings when Dole and Newt would be there, and otherI can’t remember how many others. It wouldn’t have been a conference because they weren’t on the same committees, as I recall. Newt would talk ten times as much as Bob. Bob would listen, Bob would comment, but Bob was not a talker. I mean, Newt is just nonstop and brilliant in some portions of it, irrelevant in other portions. But for any of us that talk like that, we get taken with our own ideas and we think they’re all important. I don’t know what the personal relationship was between them.

Smith: When Dole ran for Majority Leader, you were very active in that

This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 37

Packwood: Oh, heavens, yes. I supported him all the way along. It was a close race, as I recall.

Smith: It was, yes. What, decided by a vote?

Packwood: Yes. Wasn’t Ted Stevens the other one?

Smith: Yes. And this is sensitive. I would think Ted Stevens was not Mr. Congeniality.

Packwood: He still isn’t, never was, and probably that’s what killed him. Considering how close it was, he is a smart guy, and had he been as tough as he’d been and congenial, he might have beat Bob.

Smith: Is it fair to say that senators will tell you one thing, and as long as they have a secret vote, reserve the right to change their minds?

Packwood: Oh, you remember the famous Moe Udall comment when he was running? I can’t remember who he was running against for number two position, and I think there was two hundred andlet’s say there was two hundred, and he had a hundred and nine people pledged to him. And the vote comes, and he gets ninety-one. And he says, “I want to thank very much the ninety-one who voted for me and the eighteen who said they’d vote for me.” [laughs] You want to be careful, though. You don’t darelet’s say you’ve got two people running. You don’t dare tell both of them that you’re going to support them, because they’ll have a list, and then they’ll start comparing their lists with other people. They won’t compare it with the guy they’re running against. But let’s say I’d be supporting Bob, and I’d say, “Bob, I got these sixteen people.” And maybe I might be talking to the opponent’s number two guy. I’d say, “Listen. We’ve got these sixteen. Let me see your list.” And I say, “Let me see your list.” And there would be names on both lists. [laughs]

Smith: How do you run for a leadership position? It’s a very unique electorate. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 38

Packwood: Oh, yes. You’re talking about fifty, fifty-five people usually. And this is peer group. This is why a show horse could never win a race like that. This is an insider. You try to think to yourself, when is the last time that an outsiderBob [Robert C.] Byrd beat Ted [Edward M.] Kennedy for the number two spot in the Democratic Party after Kennedy had been elected to the number two spot, but you go through the Leaders that were there, of course Everett Dirksen was a showman. I’ll give him credit for that. But Mansfield, Scott were not. Bob Byrd certainly was not; Howard Baker wasn’t a showman. Tom Daschle was not a showman. George Mitchell, who was, in my mind, the toughest Leader we had to face with, because he was so good in debate, and most people in debate don’t realize this, you want to be very careful with granting your opponent’s premise, you know. You have to be sort of like, “Can we start out this debate by at least agreeing that we will not allow babies to be thrown in the gutter and trampled on by horses?” You better not agree to that premise, because you’re dead. And he was an expert at doing that. He had the capacity in lay language to sort of one, two, three, four; and you’re not quite sure where you got trapped. But Leaders inside, if you think you have a chance to be Leader, and you want to run for it, you do. I did a couple of times. I finally got beat once.

Smith: What is it you have to offer to win over the undecided?

Packwood: It’s almost personal. You don’t say, “If I’m elected, I’ll guarantee that more of you get on Meet the Press.” First, you can’t generate that, but you don’t say, “If I’m elected, I’ll make sure the Republican Conference makes the television studio available to all of you on a free basis,” when you know you haven’t got the money to do that. It isn’t that kind of a race.

Smith: What were Dole’s strengths as a Majority Leader?

Packwood: His strengths are that he was the natural leader of the Caucus. That was his strength. His weakness was he did not have a long-term strategy in mind. Most Leaders This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 39 do not have long-term strategy in mind; they are swept up with the minutia day to day. Mansfield’s the only one that I recall that could look at things on a little longer basis.

Smith: And that’s doubly interesting in that presumably he was interested in running for the presidency. You would think that if only to further that objective, you would develop kind of a larger scenario.

Packwood: You might, yes. But the kind of strategy I’m talking about is the kind that Newt attempted to lay out. You know, the Contract for America. Here are the goals. Bob never seemed to have that capacity. We had short-term strategy about, “What are we going to do next week when the Democrats are filibustering?” That’s just a tactic; that isn’t strategy.

Smith: That’s very interesting you say that, because it does get to the heart of, in a sense, speculatively what kind of president he would have been.

Packwood: Well, when you are president, I think you’re in a better position to at least set the goals. You can even set them better when you are not the Leader in the Senate. When I was just two years chairman of the Finance Committee, I was much better able to set the goals of what I wanted to do in the Finance Committee than a Leader would have been able to set the goals in the Finance Committee, because he’s got a hundred other things to think about. All these people dinging on him about, “This is the most important thing, Bob, you’ve got to do. You don’t realize how important this agricultural bill is.” Well, of all the things Bob would realize, he probably realized how important this agricultural bill is, but he also has got to worry about the trade bill and the tax bill, and he irritates the guy whose only interest is the farm bill.

Smith: Yes, that’s interesting, because someone who had, to the public, the reputation for having a temper, for almost having a short fuse, this would seem like the worst job in the world.

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Packwood: That’s right. It is. And being impatient to boot. It is a doggy, thankless job. You can get on the Meet the Press a lot if you want, you can make a lot of comments and you can get news coverage, but it is a frustrating job. I’ll come back again; I think of the Lugars and the Sam Nunns and the Scoop Jacksons, none of whom were Leaders in the elected leadership sense, all of whom exert more influence in the areas that they chose to work in than any Leader did.

Smith: What was your observation of the Dole-[George H.W.] Bush relationship when clearly they’re both aiming to an ’88—I mean, that must have colored the relationship, and then, of course, at the height of the ’88 campaign, there was that confrontation that took place on the Senate floor. Were you around then?

Packwood: I don’t remember. Refresh my memory.

Smith: Well, at the height of thebefore the New Hampshire primary

Packwood: Is this the one where Bob says, “Quit lying about my record”?

Smith: Well, that was the night of the New Hampshire primary on television, but I think actually, before that, just a few days before that, there had been stories in the press that the Bush campaign apparently was flogging about some kind of questions being raised about Elizabeth [Dole]’s trust fund and investments and all this kind of thing. And he confronted the vice president on the floor.

Packwood: You mean confronted personally? The vice president was on the floor?

Smith: Yes, on the floor.

Packwood: I must have missed that part. Inevitably you’re starting to see it now on the Democratic side. Inevitably, races lead to this kind ofyou start out, you can almost have a gentleman’s agreement where you’re not going to have any negative campaigning. It won’t hold, because your opponent will do something; they don’t think it’s negative, This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 41 and you go, “That son of a bitch. My god, if that’s where we’re going to drag this.” And then you say, “He’s dragging me through the gutter.” And then the opponent says, “I didn’t drag you through the gutter. I said, ‘He voted for that bill.’” And it degenerates.

Smith: I’ve always wondered whether there was anymaybe this is too easy, but whether there was actually kind of a cultural clash. I mean, Dole, coming from his background, totally self-made, having overcome a number of obstacles in his life, looking at George Bush as a kind of privileged character, whether there was awould you agree that there’s a bit of the populist in Dole?

Packwood: Oh, in many of those people from the South and from rural states, there is a lot of populism in them. All of these southerners were conservative, were conservative on race, but if you mean, if you think people like Huey Long, let alone his son, Russell, were conservatives, or Herman Talmadge, my god, they would spend money on agriculture and they would spend money on social programs. They would outdo Jack Javits on those kind of things. Bob comes from a bit of that tendency; there was a bit of populism in him. But almost anybody that comes from a heavy agricultural state will have a bit of populism in him. It’s sort of the William Jennings Bryan background.

Smith: I just often wondered whether—everyone knows about the impact of the War. I’ve often thought that people underestimate the impact of growing up in the Dust Bowl, you know, and the scars that it must have left.

Packwood: You bet. You bet, because he was ten years older than I am, so he grew upI was born at the start, but he grew up in the Depression and the Dust Bowl, and I just assumed that everybody that had any connection or anything to do in Kansas in the thirties had a hell of a time.

Smith: Remember that line, I think he’s credited with it, with the line of well-heeled lobbyists outside the Gucci Gulch?

This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 42

Packwood: Yes, where he feels sorry for all those lobbyists out there in their Gucci loafers, wasn’t, roughly, that it? Yes. Bob didn’t have a lot of sympathy in that sense for a lot of these absolutely egregious loopholes that people wanted to add. He was much more interested in broad-based programs than he was—because so much of what they wanted was comparatively small as an earmarked special interests for whatever it might be, and I think that finally got to Bob.

Smith: You were talking about tax reform and the role that you played. Was he supportive?

Packwood: Oh boy, I’ll say. He just pretty much left me on my own. We did have a key meeting in his office midway along, where I wanted him to understand the others were kind of with me, and I wanted them to say it in front of him; but he never faltered. But here’s the difference: The tax reform, as we know it, with the lower rates and getting rid of all the loopholes, almost did not come to pass. The House had barely passed a bill in almost Christmas of 1985. It wasn’t a bad bill; it got the rates down to 35 percent. And then Congress never does much till mid-February of the following year. I had some desultory hearings, but when I started markup on the bill, it just got worse and worse. I was losing ten, twenty billion dollars a day and new loopholes, and I was outvoted. So, on a Friday, and I remember this so well, at about eleven o’clock a.m., I just wrapped the gavel and said, “We’re done.” Somebody says, “We’re done for the day?” I said, “We’re done with the bill. I’m pulling the bill.” This is a Friday. I call my chief of staff and say, “Let’s go to the Irish Times and get drunk.” And we didn’t get drunk, but we each had two pitchers of beer and big cheeseburgers, and that gives you lots of courage. And we go back about two-thirty, and we keep saying, “My god, they want tax reform, we’ll give ‘em tax reform.” We had the head of the Joint Tax Committee come over, and we said, “Give us a bill that has 25 percent, 26 percent and 27 percent low rates. Give us some alternatives.” He said, “You go 25 percent, you’ll have to get rid of the mortgage interest deduction.” I said, “Well, what about 26 and 27?” [laughs] This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 43

He said, “Let me see what I can do.” So he comes back about Monday or Tuesday, and he’s laid it out, and it’s pretty tough. What we’re going to have to get rid of, because the president all along is saying it has to be revenue-neutral. Now, we were only doing five-year estimates in those days; they do ten years now. To pretend you’re going to be revenue-neutral ten years from now or five years from now, when half of your neutrality depends upon how fast the economy is growing, you tell me, in 2010, is it going to grow 2 percent, 3 percent, 5 percent? You don’t know; I don’t know, they don’t know. So you have two choices. You just accept the best estimate you can give, realizing they’ll be wrong, or you say, “Well, we don’t pay any attention to any estimates.” So it had to be revenue-neutral, but at least I had an outline of how we could get there. I’ll tell you a wonderful story, by the way, of Admiral [Hyman] Rickover. You know who Admiral Rickover was? He’s kind of a legend, and the Navy always tried to retire him. We passed a special bill keeping him on active service, which irritated the Navy no end. 1969, he comes into my office, no appointment, by himself, comes into the reception room. “Hello, ma’am, I’m Admiral Rickover. Any chance that Senator Packwood would be free?” The receptionist talks to my secretary, and I said, “Oh my gosh, send him in.” So he comes in, we chat about forty-five minutes, and he leaves. Six months later, same thing. So he comes in again. I said, “Admiral, let me ask you something. You’re not very popular in the Navy. We have to pass a bill every couple years to keep you on active duty.” He says, “You understate my unpopularity.” [Packwood says to Rickover] “And they didn’t really want nuclear subs. They were perfectly happy with diesel. How did you ever get them to come to where you are?” He says, “It’s very easy.” He says, “Whenever a committee is established to study a subject you’re interested in, get on the committee.” He said, “That’s not hard to do. Volunteer to take the minutes,” he says. “Make the minutes long and obtuse and totally confusing, and about page sixteen, put in a sentence or two about your project. At the next meeting, the chair will say, ‘I move that the minutes be adopted as read.’” He said, “At those minutes, expand your sentence or two to a paragraph.” He said, “You will This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 44 discover that by the eighth meeting they have adopted your project.” And he says, “No one, especially in the Navy, will admit they never read the minutes.” So in doing this tax reform, I’m sort of thinking of this. So we have the outline of this thing on a Tuesday. On Thursday I call the Finance Committee together. Bob had almost no input on this because it was going so fast. I sort of laid out the outline of it with the head of the Joint Tax Committee, sort of explaining some of the details. And I was surprised; I said, “There’s not a markup. [Unclear] a hearing, just public wants to hear what he’s saying.” And as the meeting broke up, most of them, “That’s a pretty good idea. There may be something there. That was interesting.” So that’s a Thursday. The following Tuesday, I started the meeting in my office at seven-thirty with staff. At eight-thirty with [Daniel Patrick] Moynihan, [Bill] Bradley, and Mitchell on the Democrat side, and with [Malcolm] Wallop, [John] Chafee and [John] Danforth on the Republican side, seven of us, but I’d already met with my staff at seven-thirty. I had my Admiral Rickover outline. I go over it with them and make sure they’re on board. And then when you go to a committee meeting at ten o’clock to really start considering some things or possibly voting on things, you’ve already got seven people out of the twenty with you, and they’re somewhat informed. And so we start on Tuesday and a few things passed, and we’re sort of getting rid of some deductions. We have a big chart up there as to what you have to do to get to the goal. There’s a few lobbyists outside. We meet on Wednesday and there’s more lobbyists outside. By the time we get to Friday, it is packed. This is where the Gucci loafer statement may have come in. They are outside; you can’t get out to go to the bathroom without them stopping and stuffing a piece of paper in your pocket with an idea on it, “Please take care of this.” And it’s packed, and it’s hot; it’s May. I’ve got a terrible primary election against a nut Baptist minister who’s good- looking, doesn’t have any money, thank god, but he’s good-looking, and my campaign chairman wants me to get home. The primary’s in May, and I’m still back here in early May trying to get this bill out. So, on Friday afternoon, I go out, and I announce to the lobby, “Committee’s done for the day. We’re not going to meet this weekend.” And cheers. They can go golf or they can go sail. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 45

And then I went back and said to the committee, “We’re not going to have a formal committee meeting, but if any of you are interested in talking further about this, we’ll meet here tomorrow at nine-thirty.” All twenty members show up and not a lobbyist in the hallway. And on Saturday and Sunday we finished the outline of the bill, and it was ready to go until the oil industry people—and Bob was one of them, and Russell Long and Lloyd Bentsen and David Boren and Max Baucus and one or two others, had a little amendment for oil and gas. We had about a hundred billion dollars in loopholes that we’re closing, and their thing cost seven hundred and fifty million. And I thought, they could possibly upset this whole thing if they’re not with me, or maybe I can beat them twelve to eight. So I gave it to them. And on Tuesday night about one thirty in the morning, this bill passes twenty to nothing, and the Committee had only seen it twelve days earlier in an outline form. And that’s why I say Bob hardly had any input. We were a runaway train. And it passed.

Smith: But he could have intervened if he had wanted to.

Packwood: Oh, yes, he was with me. He liked what we were doing because we were getting, all of a sudden, very good press on what we were doing. And, finally, on the weekend before the final vote, both the Washington Post and the New York Times editorialized in favor of it. So Bob loved what the Republicans are doing. But again, we also did it twenty to nothing in committee. So, was he supportive? Absolutely. Was he particularly involved in the day-to-day details? No, but I say it was going so fast. I use this on occasion to say Congress can really move on major things when it’s ready and wants to.

Smith: Let me ask you a couple things. Presumably, part of the leadership is a kind of self-restraint and ability to look beyond past personal rivalries and the like. Did that apply to Dole? I mean, did Dole manage to get along with everyone out

Packwood: It’s hard for me to say because he got along with me. I actually adored the guy, and we got along sensationally. When I was chairman of the Commerce Committee and he was chairman of Finance and there would be conflicts in schedules, and I’d say, This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 46

“Bob, I can’t be at Finance. I’ve got a Commerce markup and I’ve got to be at it. Would you do me a favor and put off till tomorrow this issue because it’s big?” He’d do things like that for me. But I got along with him fine.

Smith: But in terms of as a Leader, when he was in the Leader’s job, presumably everyone doesn’t get along with everyone, but that didn’t impair his effectiveness?

Packwood: No. I think his comments on Danforth like, “When are the real Republicans coming?” That was a snap comment on some hot issue. I didn’t find that he carried grudges, but, more importantly, you know, it was Russell Long’s philosophy, no permanent friends, no permanent enemies. Just temporary alliances. And don’t irritate the guy that wasn’t with you last week. You’re going to need him next week.”

Smith: Whatagain, maybe speculative. Again, there is this kind of pop culture notion that Dole had evolved, that somehow the marriage to Elizabeth was a significant factor, that she had softened Bob and all this.

Packwood: That I don’t know, although I knew her. I knew her before she was married to Bob and almost before, I think, she maybe even knew him. That I couldn’t comment on. I have no idea. I think, if anything that mellows him it’s the fact that you’re a Leader, and at the same time you’re impatient; you also realize, somehow, “I am the Leader, and somehow I’ve got to move this cat along. And that’s going to require some compromises I don’t like,” which makes it impossible, on occasion, for you to have this long-term strategy. You can’t. It’s not your fault. It’s just you’re in a different position.

Smith: But he’s also an interesting conservative who didn’t see government as necessarily automatically the enemy, and who, in fact, wanted to make it work, which put him at odds with this emerging generation of almost nihilists.

Packwood: The government doesn’t work and shouldn’t work and shouldn’t have. I agree, but that was coming along later in both of his and my career. That’s a generation twenty years younger than we are, and, in his case, thirty years younger than he is. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 47

Smith: Does that get back to what we were talking about in the beginning, being generational as much as anything else?

Packwood: Yes. Let me stop a minute. Just want to check my office to see if a phone call is coming in that I’m hoping to get. What time is it now?

Smith: Eleven-forty, and we’re almost done.

[Tape recorder turned off.]

Smith: —vice president running. Were you squeezed by

Packwood: No, I wasn’t at all. No, I was clearly in Bob’s corner. And, for that, again, I didn’t dislike George Bush, and I got along fine with George Bush. But blood is thicker than water. And I liked Bob, and he was a good Leader; and that was no problem for me.

Smith: Let me ask you a question, kind of a perennialwhy is it that people are so reluctant to elect members of Congress to the presidency? What are the factors that militate—I mean, it’s been argued, for example, that, first of all, you learn a different kind of persuasive skills that aren’t the same called for in trying to move the country. Secondly, that there’s a lingo; there’s a language that you speak that, sort of, inside the Beltway

Packwood: You mean like, “My distinguished colleague” type of thing?

Smith: Well, but I mean the minutia of the legislative process that you kind of slip into, that outside the Beltway sounds like a foreign language.

Packwood: Well, you’ve also got, if you’ve been in Congress any length of time, a long voting record. And anybody that’s got a long voting record is going to have eight or ten This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 48 things, at a minimum, that an opponent can take a shot at if they have not had to vote on the same things. That is one reason. Secondly, unless you’re going to abandon your duties—and some of the senators are—you’ve got a job to attend to while you’re running for president that a Mitt Romney doesn’t have to worry about, that a [Rudolph] Giuliani doesn’t have to worry about. Even a governor, by and large, has a little more control over his own schedule in terms of running.

Smith: Do you think there is a fundamental difference, though, between the legislative skill set, say, and a gubernatorial executive

Packwood: Oh, yes. Yes, and you’ll have any number of governors who come to the Senate who are not very happy there. Oh, yes. First, you know, a governor is the titular head of the state. A senator is not the titular head of anything. And the governor has two functions. One, like a president, he’s supposed to inspire his state, and, two, he’s got to run a government. And it’s a different skill than managing an office of twenty-five employees or thirty employees that you’ve got. And that’s the sum total of your staff, and it really is not a management job in any circumstances. There is a little bit of coalition-building, but that isn’t management.

Smith: How important were staff to Dole?

Packwood: Oh, Sheila [Burke], sensationalgosh, she was a good staffer.

Smith: And what made her good?

Packwood: One, she had Bob’s confidence; two, she’s extremely bright; three, he would listen to her. Rod [Roderick A.] DeArment was another. Yes, he had good staff, and he would listen to his staff, and Sheila could speak for him.

Smith: It’s interesting that he was comfortable being, in many ways, surrounded by strong women. I mean, Jo-Ann Coe was certainly that.

This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 49

Packwood: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Now, he and I shared that. Almost all of my significant people from about 1974 or ’75 on were women, my chiefs of staff and press secretaries and legislative directors. I don’t know about Bob, but what I discovered; they were often women who wanted to prove themselves, and they would work harder than men just to prove that they’re “as good as a man.”

Smith: Interesting. Do you think that’s a generational thing? Do you think we’ve, in some ways, moved beyond that or are moving beyond it?

Packwood: Yes, I think we have because, when Bob and I startedwhen I graduated from law school and after clerking a year went to a law firm in Portland, no law firm had ever hired a woman. I mean major law firm. Finally, one hired a woman and relegated her duties to probate for widows and uncontested divorces for women, and the opportunities were slender. So if a woman in that era was given an opportunity, she really wanted to perform. You know, now they’re lawyers and they’re doctors and they’re heads of universities, and they have options they didn’t have then.

Smith: We talked earlier about the gradual disappearance of the liberal Republican, and all that is reflected in this shift, this tidal shift in terms of the Party’s center of gravity. You experienced it yourself in Oregon.

Packwood: Oh, yes.

Smith: How did it feel to be part of this shrinking caucus, and how did Dole deal with that?

Packwood: It hadn’t even shrunk that far. I mean, it’s almost gone now. You’ve got no more—the two women from Maine and Arlen Specter, and if there’s one moreLincoln Chafee was one. You hardly have anybody left. But even in my last term, there were at least enough of us that we could be a factor; that if we were really badly treated and wanted to band together, we could probably join with the Democrats and kill something, or support them on breaking a filibuster. It simply has gotten now where they’re almost This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 50 insignificant, but part of the difference came, and it’s just a lack of civility that now exists on both sides, and most of this I blame on Newt because from the time he took over after Bob Michel left, and he would have beaten Bob Michel I think, Newt was basically saying, “Gang, we’re not getting anyplace being nice guys. They’re in control, and they get three things and you get one, and they get three things and you get one. We’re never going to be in the majority. We’ve got to hit ‘em. We got to attack ‘em. We’ve got to have a program and we’ve got to ‘em down.” And they bring Jim Wright down. And then the Democrats say, “Well, by god, if that’s the way it’s played, we’re going to bring Newt down.” And it became hardball in the House. About a third of those are now senators. About a third of the Senate, Republican and Democrat, came from that milieu. And it has hardened the lines and the civility is infinitely less than it was now. And part of this is, they don’t have drinks at five o’clock and they don’t have parties with each other on Saturdays.

Smith: You left the Senate when?

Packwood: ’95.

Smith: By which time Dole was clearly gearing up to run.

Packwood: Oh, yes.

Smith: Couple things. Were you surprised when he made the decision to leave?

Packwood: Yes, I was. I thought at his stage he could have taken as much time off as he wanted and nobody would have objected. I was surprised when he left.

Smith: So you also were there for the government shutdown?

Packwood: Oh, yes. Oh, god, yes.

Smith: What was that like? This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 51

Packwood: Well, I was one of those, I could see it coming. I was opposed to it. I could say, you know, “You think you’re going to get a shutdown in the government? You’re going to have all these news stories about outrageous things that have finally been stopped,” I said. And I almost predicted it. “What you’re going to have is some family that wanted to see the Washington Monument and has been planning for this trip for a year with their two kids.” That’s almost the story that came out, but you could see it coming. It was so simple. God, did we get killed on that.

Smith: Why couldn’t Gingrich see it?

Packwood: I don’t know.

Smith: Was he so wrapped up in the philosophical ideal

Packwood: Damned if I know. To me, it was so simple. I guess it was simple because I’m thinking, if this were to happen, this is the way I would play it from the other side.

Smith: And it must have driven Dole up the wall.

Packwood: The shutdown?

Smith: Yes.

Packwood: Oh, I would think so. It was such bad politics. And secondly, you can picture what the press is going to pick on in something like that; the poor fellow with his family.

Smith: You mentioned your troubles. What was Dole’s relationship to you during that period?

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Packwood: He absolutely stuck with me right to the very end. When I finally was thinking of resigning; initially thinking of it, he counseled me against it. I finally did resign.

Smith: Did he?

Packwood: Yes. Oh, yes.

Smith: He came to you and tried to talk you out of it?

Packwood: Well, I would talk with Bob Dove, the parliamentarian, the guy that Bob relied upon then for parliamentary stuff, and I talked with Sheila about it, what I was thinking about. And I think Sheila said to me one time, “The Leader wants to talk to you.” I went over and talked to him about it, and he said, “Bob, don’t do that yet.” He said, “There may come a time when you may want to. But what do you need from me?” There’s nothing he wouldn’t have done. There wasn’t much he could do, but there was nothing he wouldn’t have done that was in his power to help me, even, if necessary, he would have helped me raise money for a legal defense fund.

Smith: Really. That’s friendship.

Packwood: That’s correct.

Smith: Have you had much relationship with him in the years since you left the Senate?

Packwood: Very little. I see him about once a year at some function.

Smith: One last big question, then I’ll let you go. People don’t know how the Senate works. I mean, people don’t know how Congress works, and I’m trying to get a sense of—behind closed doors, is it a kind of sixth sense that a successful Leader has in knowing just when to push something, to bring people together, to detect the makings of This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 53 a deal? What are the qualities? I mean, we’ve all read about Lyndon Johnson and his legendary mastery of the Senate, which suggests it’s a psychological gift as much as anything else. What was it in Dole’s case that made him

Packwood: You’re born with it. I mean, first, you have to be sufficiently immersed in the business that you understand when there’s an opportunity for something like this. An amateur couldn’t do it until they’ve been at it for a while. Once you’re in it, you can intuitivelyI’ll give an example. Twice I was chairman of the Senatorial Campaign Committee, and I would go around the country and I’d meet with people who are thinking of running for the Senate. And I’d say, “Let me see your structure and talk with a couple of your people.” They’d all have the pyramid, and, “Here’s the chairman and here’s the press secretary,” and they had it all laid out. And I could tell in fifteen or twenty minutes whether they understood what they were doing or not, because I’d been at it so long. Anybody in politics understands the inside on the things they’re working on, but it’s an intuitive sense of when is the iron hot. And you can’t teach it. Bob, by and large, had it. As I said, the thing he lacked, but it’s not his fault, is long-term strategy because the job doesn’t lend itself to that because almost everybody that is badgering him is thinking about today and the vote tomorrow and my issue.

Smith: And is there also another element, I mean, just in terms of knowing, maybe through long exposure and/or intuition, what it will take to persuade that particular senator in that particular circumstance? Is it a knowledge, a kind of really intimate knowledge of your colleagues, or is that a lesser factor? I mean, Johnson really had

Packwood: It is a factor, but what you might know in terms of trying to put together a coalition is, “I think I can get Jim Abdnor if I was willing to give him this thing on the farm bill.” And it’s unrelated to what you’re trying to put together now, but you know that that’s very important to Jim Abdnor. And it’s a little thing, but it’s important to him; and he’ll give you this big thing in exchange for it. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 54

Yes, Lyndon Johnson may have been the best in the world at understanding that, but after a while, you know that certain people are interested in certain things. Their record shows it; their speeches show it. If you’ve got good staff, your staff knows it.

Smith: How do you think Bob Dole should be remembered?

Packwood: Honest, decent, patriotic. He’s very much an American.

Smith: Lyndon Johnson was famously called a master of the Senate. Was Dole a master of the Senate?

Packwood: Not in that sense. I’ve read [Robert A.] Caro’s books. An example of what Lyndon Johnson could put together, in his passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, he had to do some compromising, and the liberals, led by Wayne Morse, Dick Neuberger and some others in the North, did not want the compromise he had. But they very desperately wanted a bill passed to build a very high federal dam in a place called Hills Canyon on the Snake River between Oregon and Idaho. The Southerners hated this concept of this dam, but somehow Lyndon talked the senators into voting for the dam in exchange for these liberals agreeing to a tempered-down civil rights bill, Lyndon knowing full well that the House would reject the dam when it got there. Caro’s book is full of that. I never saw any Leader that had that kind of a capacity. He just knew where the opportunity was. He was operating, in my mind, in a much more difficult circumstance than Leaders now. He was operating when committee chairmen were inviolate, when you just didn’t cross committee chairmen. So you had to be extraordinarily devious and far-sighted and clever because you didn’t have the powers that are now devolving upon the leadership.

Smith: So it’s a unique

Packwood: It’s a unique quality.

Smith: to Lyndon Johnson’s personality, temperament. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 55

Packwood: Yes.

Smith: Could it happen againI mean if you

Packwood: It can always happen again, especially if you’re giving the Leader more powers. I say, early on, when Johnson becomes Leader, and the Democrats increased their numbers tremendously in ’58, as I recall, and he’s trying to give each freshman a significant part on a significant committee, and if the Senate’s following strict seniority, so he’s got to talk to every senior senator and say, “What about if you were to switch to this committee?” He’s got to get all these pieces moving, because he doesn’t have any authority, like the Leader does today, to put two people on the Finance Committee. So he’s got to persuade, cajole, beg, berate, threaten to get all this done.

Smith: Amazing.

Packwood: You’ve read Caro’s books?

Smith: Yes, yes.

Packwood: The first two I find interesting. The one on the Senate is incredible. I’m looking forward to the one on the presidency, but the one on the Senate was amazing. I mean, even at the very end when he’s vice president, so he’s now, in theory, president of the Senate, and he attempts to get the senators to vote for him still as the Leader while he’s vice president. And powerful as he was, the senators saying, “Lyndon, you’re not here anymore. This is our club.”

Smith: Is it less of a club now?

Packwood: Oh, yes. As I say, part of it’s just jet travel, and you can get places, and you’re not there all the time. Part of it, and, you know, in those days, you had three networks. That was it. Part of it is the tremendous press everybody can get, everybody This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 56 tries to get. And you’ve got to work at getting press. The insiders who work hard hate the show horses who don’t work hard.

Smith: Another division, line of demarcation.

Packwood: Every now and then, either The Hill or Roll Call puts out who’d been on the Sunday morning talk shows. It isn’t very often that it’s a real insider that is a factor. It has to irritate the House members no end that obscure senators can get on when powerful House members, who really are a factor, cannot get on.

Smith: How much of a rivalry is there between the Houses?

Packwood: Oh, there’s great rivalry, and the House often can outwit the Senate in this sense; they’re more specialized. The senators are trying to cover as many committees as the House is covering. They serve on at least two committees, sometimes three, and on a select committee of one kind. And you cannot do that as well as a House member who has the Ways and Means Committee, one principal committee. If you’re a genius and work hard at it, you can stay even with them, but they so often are just more knowledgeable just of necessity. They’re not any smarter, just they’re more knowledgeable in that area.

Smith: Is liberal Republicanism dead, or could it revive?

Packwood: Oh, no, it’s bound to revive, because if we keep going the way we’re going and end up losing 55 percent of the women and 70 percent of the Hispanics and 90 percent of the blacks and 52 percent of those under thirty, we can’t last very long. The nice thing about democracy, unless a party shoots itself in the foot like the Whigs and just disappears, is that finally a party gets tired of being beaten, and they change. The classic example in English politics is [Benjamin] Disraeli and the English Reform, the second Reform Act, where the liberals have got a bill, but Disraeli and the conservatives not only have a bill, they leapfrog them in terms of the Irish Nationalists and go for a reform bill that the liberals cannot buy, and they win. And the description of Robert Blake’she This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 57 gets the conservatives to vote for things they would never vote for because of the thrill of beating the liberals.

Smith: But that presupposes that the Republican Party, certainly the conservative Republican Party, has to have a pretty severe drumming administered.

Packwood: Well, they had one this last election. When we can lose Montana and Virginia—and, you know, I realize that each of our candidates have warts. And maybe we’ll get them back, therefore. But I don’t see the future looking great for us for the next election. Forget the presidency. Who knows? We might win that. But I look at the numbers in the House, I look at who’s up in the Senate, and it doesn’t look optimistic to me.

Smith: Yes. Do you thinkwell, we can turn this off. Do you think Senator Warner is going to retire?

[End of interview] This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 58

Index

Abdnor, Sen. Jim, 25 Alexander, Lamar, 12 Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Senate debate on, 6

Baker, James, 29 Baker, Sen. Howard H. Jr., 9, 26, 38 Baucus, Sen. Max S., 4, 27, 45 Bennett, Sen. Robert J., 18 Bennett, Sen. Wallace, 18 Bentsen, Sen. Lloyd, 45 Blake, Robert, 56 Boren, Sen. David, 27, 45 Bradley, Sen. Bill, 44 Brooke, Sen. Edward, 9 Burke, Sheila, 48, 52 Bush, George H.W., 47 Byrd, Sen. Harry, 27 Byrd, Sen. Robert C., 38

Carlson, Sen. Frank, 4 Caro, Robert A., 54, 55 Carswell, George H., 11, 12 Carter, Jimmy, 28 Chafee, Sen. John, 44 Chafee, Sen. Lincoln, 49 Church, Sen. Frank, 25 Clinton, William J., 23, 28, 34 Coe, Jo-Ann L., 48 Cook, Sen. Marlow, 9, 11

Danforth, Sen. John, 24, 44, 46 Daschle, Sen. Tom, 38 DeArment, Roderick A., 48 Denton, Sen. Jeremiah A., 25 Dingell, Rep. John D., 4 Dirksen, Rep. Everett, 9, 13, 38 Disraeli, Benjamin, 56 Dole, Robert J., 10, 11, 23, 24, 26, 31, 34, 41, 42, 45, 50, 53, 54 and Bob Packwood, 9, 52 and Rep. Newt Gingrich, 36 and Richard M. Nixon, 11 and Ronald Reagan, 30 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 59

and Sen. Russell B. Long, 27 as Senate Majority Leader, 38 Duncan, Rep. Bob, 22

Eastland, Sen. James, 3, 4 Eastland, Sen. James O. racism, 21 Ellender, Sen. Allen J., 3 racism, 21

Fosdick, Dorothy, 8 Fulbright, Sen. J. William, 3, 6, 7

Gingrich, Rep. Newt, 35, 36, 39, 50, 51 and Robert J. Dole, 36 Giuliani, Rudolph, 48 Gromyko, Andre, 8 Gurney, Sen. Edward J., 3, 11

Harlow, Bryce, 12 Hatfield, Sen. Mark, 9, 22 Hawkins, Sen. Paula, 25 Haynesworth, Clement F., 11, 12

Jackson, Sen. Henry (Scoop), 6, 7, 40 Javits, Sen. Jacob, 9, 41 Jepsen, Sen. Roger, 25 Johnson, Lyndon B., 10, 22, 53, 54, 55

Kemp, Rep. Jack, 28, 29, 35 Kennedy, Sen. Edward M., 38 Kennedy, Sen. Robert J., 3

Long, Sen. Huey, 18, 41 Long, Sen. Russell B., 3, 18, 19, 21, 41, 45, 46 and Robert J. Dole, 27 Lugar, Sen. Richard, 5, 40

Mansfield, Sen. Mike, 10, 38, 39 Mathias, Sen. Charles, 21 McCarthy, Sen. Eugene, 2 McClellan, Sen. John racism, 21 McConnell, Sen. Mitch and Sen. George Voinovich, 14 McGovern, Sen. George, 25 Michel, Rep. Bob, 29, 36, 50 Mills, Rep. Wilbur, 33 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 60

Mitchell, Sen. George, 38, 44 Morse, Sen. Wayne, 3, 22, 54 Moynihan, Sen. Daniel Patrick, 44 Mundt, Sen. Karl, 17

Neuberger, Sen. Dick, 54 Nixon, Richard M., 6, 11, 12, 18, 23 Nunn, Sen. Sam, 5, 40

O’Neill, Rep. Thomas P., 29

Packwood, Bob on Clement F. Haynesworth, 12 on Congressional conference committees, 34 on Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981 (ERTA), 31 on Elizabeth Dole, 46 on George H.W. Bush, 47 on Idaho politics, 25 on liberal Republicans, 9 on Lyndon B. Johnson, 54, 55 on Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, 32, 33 on Rep. Everett Dirksen, 38 on Rep. Newt Gingrich, 36, 50 on Republican Party, 36 on Republican political prospects for 2008, 57 on Robert J. Dole, 9, 10, 11, 23, 24, 26, 27, 30, 31, 34, 36, 38, 41, 42, 45, 50, 52, 53, 54 on Robert J. Dole as Leader, 53 on Ronald Reagan, 28, 30, 31 on Sen. George Mitchell, 38 on Sen. Howard H. Baker, Jr., 38 on Sen. Hugh Scott, 10, 38 on Sen. J. William Fulbright, 6 on Sen. John C. Stennis, 4 on Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, 8 on Sen. Mike Mansfield, 10, 38, 39 on Sen. Robert C. Byrd, 38 on Sen. Russell B. Long, 18, 21 on Sen. Sam Nunn, 5 on Sen. Stuart Symington, 6 on Sen. Ted Stevens, 37 on Sen. William B. Saxbe, 17 on Senate Finance Committee, 16 on senators as presidential candidates, 47 on Sheila Burke, 48, 52 on tax legislation, 42, 43, 44, 45 on the 1995 government shutdown, 51 on Tom Daschle, 38 This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Packwood–07-20–07–p. 61

on U.S. House of Representatives, 35, 56 on U.S. Senate, 2, 3, 5, 6, 8, 10, 13, 14, 35, 55, 56 on women staff members, 49 Parsons, Richard D., 19 Pelosi, Rep. Nancy, 4 Pressler, Sen. Larry, 25

Rangel, Rep. Charles, 33 Reagan, Ronald, 28, 30, 31 and Robert J. Dole, 30 Reid, Sen. Harry, 4 Rickover, Hyman, 43 Riddick, Floyd M., 19 Roberts, Paul Craig, 31 Rockefeller, Nelson, 14, 19 Roe versus Wade, 32 Romney, Mitt, 48 Rostenkowski, Rep. Dan, 32, 33 Roth, Sen. William, 28 Russell, Sen. Richard, 4, 18

Saxbe, Sen. William B., 16, 17 Schweiker, Sen. Richard S., 9 Scott, Sen. Hugh, 9, 10, 36, 38 Senate Armed Services Committee, 17 Senate Finance Committee, 16, 17 Smith, Sen. Gordon, 17 Smith, Sen. Margaret Chase, 8 Stennis, Sen. John C., 3, 4, 8 Stevens, Sen. Ted, 37 Symington, Sen. Stuart, 6, 7 Symms, Sen. Steve, 25

Talmadge, Sen. Herman, 41 Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, 31 Thurmond, Sen. Strom, 20 racism, 20 Tower, Sen. John, 3 Truman, Harry S., 23

Udall, Rep. Moe, 37

Voinovich, Sen. George, 14

Wallop, Sen. Malcolm, 44 Warner, Sen. John W., 2 Williams, Sen. John, 15 Wright, Rep. Jim, 50