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. WILLIAM E. (“BILL”) BROCK, III

June 26, 2007

Interviewer

Richard Norton Smith

Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics 2350 Petefish Drive Lawrence, KS 66045 Phone: (785) 864-4900 Fax: (785) 864-1414

This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 2

[Senator Brock edited this transcript. Consequently, it may be at variance at a few minor points with the original recording.]

Brock: The two parties probably sometime in the last twenty years, I don’t know when, entered into this unholy alliance. “I gave you all of your party. You give me all of mine. We’ll carve up the districts accordingly.” And when I’m running, I don’t have to worry about competing for the vote of the other party, because I’ve got to lock in my own district. More importantly, I don’t even have to worry about the centrists in my own party. I have to worry about the party extremes. If I’m on one side, it’s the left. On the other side, it’s the right. But these are the single-issue ideologues who are not reflective of the body politic, but, boy, they vote—

Smith: The counter theory, at least, would be absolutely, that’s exactly what’s happened in the House of Representatives, but that as a candidate for the Senate, you have to pay attention to a broader constituency.

Brock: That’s true, but think about the fact that—and my House friends will kill me for saying this, but think about the House as a farm team for the Senate. If you think about it that way, look how many people run for the House, get elected, establish a reputation. This is what I did. I ran for the Senate after eight years in the House and got elected to the Senate. Yet the composition of your value system and your philosophical approach to campaigning is set in the House, where you had to focus and worry about the people on your ideological extremes. And what’s happening is that the parties are being drawn further and further apart.

Smith: It’s interesting, because both you and Senator Dole served in the House before you went into the Senate.

Brock: And we were both national chairmen. [laughs]

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Smith: What’s different between the two bodies? And did you ever have any doubt when you went into the House that you’d like at some point to be in the Senate? Is that a natural progression?

Brock: It was fairly natural for me because I was the new kid on the block. I was the first Republican to be elected to my district in , and within two years [Sen.] ’s seat was available and people were asking me to run. I said, “I’m not ready yet.” I was going to wait for another six years, as it turned out. But people were talking about me running for the Senate almost immediately because I was the first breakout. Tennessee has these first two districts over in the east part of the state that always had Republicans, but the rest of the state had always been Democratic, and to have somebody break out of that, you became the obvious conversation piece.

Smith: What year were you first elected? Brock: 1962.

Smith: Boy, you were an early bird.

Brock: An early bird. I was thirty-one. When I decided to run, the people that had any sense about politics said, “Come on, Bill. Run for the State House, then maybe for the State Senate in a few years, then for Congress.” I said, “Man, I’m thirty-one. I can’t wait that long.” [laughs] And here I am seventy-six, but that was a different perspective.

Smith: You went to Washington and John Kennedy was in the White House.

Brock: Yes.

Smith: Did you get to know in the House?

Brock: Just a little bit, but Bob was moving on and up already by then. :I was an active, as was he, I think, player in the Gerry [Gerald R.] Ford movement. We changed leaders. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 4

It was a fairly famous little contest. The younger guys—me, [Rep. Donald] Rumsfeld, people like that—said we really needed a more active and aggressive leader, and Gerry Ford was their guy, so we did work together in that effort.

Smith: Maybe that answers my next question. Was it mostly a generational—it wasn’t an ideological thing as much as a generational.

Brock: There was no ideology here, because Gerry Ford and [Rep.] Charlie [Charles] Halleck, were both centrist Republicans, mainstream Republicans, but it was generational. I mean, our young guys, we were chaffing at the bit. We wanted to challenge the system. We wanted to go after it and do some different things. We wanted to start addressing the budget deficits, which is my continuing theme. I never stop. Bob Dole doesn’t either, by the way. [laughs]

Smith: Where were you in the [Sen. Barry] Goldwater campaign?

Brock: I was with Goldwater, because he was the one that was striking a chord with young people, and that was my crowd. When I ran, I had virtually nobody over thirty supporting me. We were all kids, and we were the ones that didn’t know that you couldn’t win, so that was the fun of it. Goldwater really struck a chord with us, that age group, and he was saying, “Stand for something. Stand for something. Care about it enough to put your neck out there.” And I loved that.

Smith: Because you almost got your neck chopped off, or at least a lot of Republicans, in ’64 did.

Brock: It was probably the toughest campaign, because Goldwater was running 35 percent in my district and I’d gotten elected with 51 percent in ’62.

Smith: And he was talking about selling the TVA [Tennessee Valley Authority].

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Brock: You’re talking about abolishing Social Security and selling TVA? [laughs] In the heart of my district. But I just loved him. I respected him so much for his integrity. I took my billboards, the last October—and Tennessee’s a big billboard state. We didn’t have a lot of money, so we did those things. But I took my name off all the billboards and put his on, trying to pull him up. Didn’t help. We got clobbered. I got reelected 53 percent, so it worked okay, but it was hard.

Smith: At what point did you decide you wanted to be in the Senate?

Brock: Probably 1964—

Smith: And why?

Brock: —in ’64, working statewide for Goldwater. I was his statewide chairman. I got a taste of working across the state. I got excited about building a new kind of Republican Party. We really had a split in the Republican Party in those days. We had the old traditional Republicans and then the rest of us that were sort of Goldwater-fervent people that really wanted to address some of the big issues, and we thought stronger security issues and deficit reduction, federal spending, local control, those were important things to us. I had a chance to run again in ’66, but [Sen.] Howard [H.] Baker [Jr.] had earned that right because he ran in ’64 and lost, and I would not run in ’64. I didn’t think I was ready. So he won that right and he was elected in ’66. So I had to wait until ’70 when my opportunity came up to take on [Sen.] Albert Gore.

Smith: So you arrived in the Senate. Bob Dole was a relatively junior member of the Senate. Tell me about the relationship.

Brock: Bob Dole and I think so much alike that it’s just sort of a natural alliance. I can’t recall an issue on which we differed. I’d have to dig into the records, but there was nothing of great consequence that we disagreed on. It was just an easy, comfortable relationship. Both of us shared values, we both came out of states that had pretty similar This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 6

values in Tennessee and Kansas. Tennessee is not a Deep South state; it’s more of a rural state with a lot of industrial development in my area, in Chattanooga. So the combinations were very similar, and I just had a huge respect for him because he was a guy that stood for what he believed in, and you never doubted that. You never doubted his integrity. You never doubted his willingness to fight. Even if you had to lose, you stood for—

Smith: Let me ask you something, because it intrigues me. Again I’m wondering about this whole generational issue, because that’s when he was being called the sheriff of the Senate. [Brock laughs.] The [Richard M.] Nixon loyalist who was prowling around, enforcing.

Brock: Well, he and I were on the team. I was one of the core Nixon guys, as was he, and you stood with your guys. You stayed with the team.

Smith: That raises now—[Sen.] was really kind of a different kind of Republican in many ways, partly geographical, partly ideological, but I sense also largely generational. Were there tensions at all within the Republican Caucus—was there a sense that you and the younger Turks were really eager to move the party in one direction and that there was sort of resistance—

Brock: There was a bit of that. I think it wasn’t ideological so much as it was fervor, aggressive fervor, getting into the fray, being willing to challenge the status quo. Hugh Scott was a terrific human being, and I grew to love him, as I did people on the Democratic side. I got close to [Sen.] Hubert [H.] Humphrey, people with whom I had very little philosophical ties. Pat [Sen. Daniel Patrick] Moynihan later on, people like that, because I came to trust and respect their integrity. If they came to a different conclusion, they’d come to it honorably. That’s important to me.

Smith: Is that one of the best things about the Senate, that you can have those kinds of relationships?

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Brock: Yes. I love that about the Senate. I also think you can do it in the House; it’s just you have to work a little bit harder at it. But in the Senate it never occurred to me to introduce major legislation without a Democratic sponsor. I wouldn’t have thought about it, because it just made sense to me. I’m not trying to solve a Republican problem; I’m addressing a national issue. I think that’s the way we thought. But where the younger guys were in those days in the Senate, we wanted to get more active, more aggressive. We wanted to establish a presence in the country, and we were all getting caught up in the overriding issues, not dissimilar from today, these poor guys that are trying to handle Iraq. We were trying to deal with the overriding issue at that time, in the early seventies, of Vietnam, and we said, “There are other things that are going on in this country that aren’t being addressed, and we need to talk about those and get more active.” Nixon was a good president in that sense, that he kept bringing up new things that we ought to be talking about. We were saying, “Let’s get our running shoes on and get out there and start marketing these ideas.”

Smith: For example, I assume you would have supported all of the Nixon Supreme Court nominees.

Brock: Sure.

Smith: Certainly [Clement] Haynesworth and [G. Harrold] Carswell.

Brock: Sure.

Smith: Whereas some of the northeastern Republicans, I think Scott included—I think Scott voted against at least one of them, the [Sen.] Margaret Chase Smiths and [Sen.] Ed Brookes and folks like that. I mean, there was still a liberal Republican caucus.

Brock: I guess I can’t say I supported all of the Nixon nominees. Carswell was pretty much of a disaster. Haynesworth intellectually was a superior candidate, as best I knew, and I thought that the hit on him was totally unfair and, frankly, biased because of his coming from the South, and I thought that was unfair. I don’t think High Scott opposed This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 8

Haynesworth. I think he did oppose Carswell, if I remember, and I’m not sure that I disagreed.

Smith: [laughs] Carswell was a much tougher choice to defend.

Brock: Yes. But that was Nixon. Nixon would get so mad that he would do it in your face to sort of test you. [laughs] That was not his strongest characteristic.

Smith: What were Nixon’s strengths as a president?

Brock: Mostly an incredible mind. The guy had a strategic vision, a strategic capability that is really rare in American politics. He saw the big picture. People give Henry Kissinger credit for the breakthrough with China, but I think at least it was equally Nixon. It’s easier to view Nixon favorably now, after we’ve gone through a couple of decades since the Watergate thing, but his strengths were, he made good, clear sense of the importance of the , the importance of our role in the world, the importance of establishing alliances that would, frankly, break up the old Soviet bloc, and that’s why the Chinese thing was so important. His weakness was he didn’t care so much about the domestic side, and that was troubling, again, for a lot of the younger guys. But we had the advantage of really terrible Democratic opposition in their choice of candidates, and it made it easier to support Nixon. I was his National Youth chairman in 1972, so I was a believer. He was the one guy that would come to Tennessee for me, and he did that in 1964 when I needed help, and I respected that and I appreciated it and I tried to repay.

Smith: Did you have much contact with [Bob] Haldeman and [John] Erlichman?

Brock: Some, but not too much. It would be in the rather intense political settings. There were a few of us, six, eight, that would meet with Nixon and really sort of think through what was happening in the political realm, and usually one or both would be in that, more Bob than John Erlichman. Actually, Bob Haldeman’s brother and I were This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 9

shipmates in the U.S. Navy for two or three years; Tom. So I came in with respect for him and his family, which I hold today.

Smith: Were you surprised by the language on the tapes?

Brock: I was stunned. That was hard. That was hard. I had to do something that I never thought I would do. I had to send the president a note and say, “If the Senate has to vote on impeachment, I cannot support you.” And, man. And I had been with him until the tapes came out. I could not believe that he would have countenanced anything as stupid as that ridiculous break-in, much less the destruction of the tapes. Well, frankly, I couldn’t believe he’d be taping, and then that he would countenance the things that he did after that, which, I thought they were so out of character, but maybe not. But, boy, those were hard days.

Smith: Well, and of course, that’s when Bob Dole was national party chairman.

Brock: Yes.

Smith: Pretty unattractive job. He wanted the job, obviously, but—

Brock: Well, Bob and I have an incredibly poor sense of timing. [laughs] You may not remember, but at the same time that Bob wanted to be national chairman, here I was as a freshman Republican running for and getting elected as chairman of Senate Campaign Committee.

Smith: Leading up to [unclear: Watergate?]. [laughs]

Brock: So I was chairman of the Senate Campaign Committee for 1973-74, for the debacle. I don’t know how Bob Dole and I got this defective gene. [laughs]

Smith: Did you ever compare notes or cry into your beer?

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Brock: Why, sure. Sure. But we were both out there trying to salvage what we could in a horrible, horrible situation. We just got clobbered.

Smith: How much did the pardon add to your problems in ’74? Was it a determining factor in some races, do you think? I mean in terms of the congressional race. The pardon came in September of ’74, the Ford pardon of Nixon.

Brock: Yes.

Smith: And the general consensus has been it was obviously going to be a terrible year, but at that point Ford had those sky-high numbers.

Brock: It wiped us out.

Smith: Yes.

Brock: It was an unbelievably enormous factor, and I don’t know how you overcome something like that. People were so profoundly angry at being deceived by the President of the United States. We hold these people up very high, and it’s scary to be an American and know you’ve been lied to, because our whole system is grounded in trust. And if you can’t trust your leaders, we’ve got a real problem.

Smith: Of course, one of the most endangered incumbents in that ’74 cycle was Bob Dole. He spent most of the campaign behind. Do you remember any discussions?

Brock: No, I don’t. I think I just believed in Bob Dole and his ability to hang in there, (a), because he’s got such a terrific state, well grounded and deeply rooted, and rural values are solid. That’s my bias, and I just trust that.

Smith: Let me ask you. Let me step back, because there’s this notion, or some people say it started with his marriage to Elizabeth [Dole], this notion that he’s changed over the years, that the Dole of the late sixties and early seventies was a much harsher, much more This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 11

partisan figure than maybe a generation later. How would you say he’s evolved in the time that you’ve known him?

Brock: I think that’s baloney. [laughs] Well, you know, we’re talking about a friend that I respect, but I know him. I really do. The Bob Dole that served the people of Kansas in the Congress and in the Senate was never a mean-spirited, bitter person. He wanted to get to the issues. He loved the process. He was so good at it, whether as an individual member or as a Leader. We can get to the times I worked with him as Leader when I was in the executive branch. But I think where the hit comes on Bob is in terms of the quality of some of his campaigns, and in that sense Bob couldn’t engage in the kind of relationship-building that made him such an effective member of the House and the Senate, where people knew him and trusted him and you would go into the quiet of a room and sit there and say, “Now, Bob, I’ve got to get this and you’ve got to get that. Let’s cut it and make it happen.” And as long as the integrity was intact, you knew you had a deal and you never had to worry about his word or where he was going. You tend in campaigns to get so pressured that you can say things that then come back to haunt you, and I think maybe that’s fair, and it’s fair for all of us. But in terms of Bob Dole being a different human being, not so. Not so. Period.

Smith: When he was put on the ticket with General Ford, was it a surprise?

Brock: Stunned. [laughs]

Smith: You were at the convention, I assume.

Brock: Sure. Sure.

Smith: How bitter was that Ford-[Ronald] Reagan division at that point? Was it really pretty intense?

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Brock: I should have been a Reaganite coming out of Tennessee, being the Goldwater guy back in the sixties, but I loved Gerry Ford. I knew him as a human being. I had worked with him for years. I trusted him with my life. I couldn’t believe that the Reagan people couldn’t wait four years. Let him have his time in the sun. Ford had been was a good president, he was a caring, decent, honorable human being. I didn’t get the sense that it was bitter, but there were those of us who felt pretty strongly that the Reagan crowd was pushing their luck.

Smith: The [Sen. Richard] Schweiker nomination. In retrospect, they would have been much smarter to go to you, to ask you to be on the ticket. I mean, in light of the southern delegates that the Schweickart nomination apparently pushed away rather than—

Brock: [laughs] He turned them off. Yes, he did.

Smith: Yes.

Brock: There were plenty of choices.

Smith: Was that a John Sears special?

Brock: Probably. I don’t know. I don’t know. They wanted somebody that would obviously help in a state like Pennsylvania. They thought they had a chance of holding it.

Smith: And they must have thought that might be persuadable, that he was the significant figure in Pennsylvania, and although he was for Ford, that maybe he could be flipped?

Brock: Could be. All this is assumption on my part. I wasn’t part of that inner core. The Reagan people—I really was interested in the composition of that team. Other than John Sears, there was nobody, other than California, and they thought they had a—

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Smith: Your point about no one, other than John Sears, the entire Reagan team was California.

Brock: Absolutely. And again in ’80, pretty much, other than Charlie Black, one or two.

Smith: Yes.

Brock: The Reagan candidacy was a regional candidacy, and his appeal was purely ideological. “Give me a real conservative. Give me a true blue.”

Smith: Right.

Brock: As if Gerry Ford were not.

Smith: Yes.

Brock: And, you know, a lot of us thought he was a terrific governor and a terrifically attractive candidate, probably the best I’ve ever seen on the Republican side, certainly the best I’ve ever seen on my side of the aisle, but the hunger to get in and take it away from a guy that had really pulled the country together, I didn’t get that. So I didn’t like it, and I was pretty aggressive in supporting Ford and I was able to hold my own state and some others.

Smith: So the discussion about the vice presidency—let me back up, because I assume you had known .

Brock: Sure.

Smith: And seen him in action. Remember, were you in the Senate that day? There was a great controversy fairly early in his vice presidency. I think it had to do with a vote on cloture, and either he failed to recognize maybe Senator Allen from Alabama, as I recall, This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 14

but there was a real brouhaha over he misinterpreted the rules or was seen to be imposing his own views. Does that ring a bell at all?

Brock: No. I remember the case. I’m not sure that I was sitting there at the moment. I find it hard to believe that he was abusing the rules. When you’re in the chair, the clerk or the staff, you’ve got people that really know every dot and tiddle of those rules, and they say, “Mr. Vice President,” or senator, if you’re the one in the chair, “this is what the rules require.” I have no doubt that that was inadvertent.

Smith: It’s funny, I’ve never really thought about this. Are vice presidents a factor to be reckoned with? Do different vice presidents have different approaches to their not only formal presiding over the Senate, but whatever relationship they try to establish with the senators?

Brock: [laughs] I’m sitting here looking at the morning newspaper and reading about Dick [Richard B.] Cheney, and I’ve got to say, yes, there are some differences, because my experience with vice presidents, most don’t have a great deal of influence. They can be part of some sort of mediation on occasion between factions, usually in their own party. They can pull people together back in that little VP’s office and you can have a pretty good conversation and work things out. But in terms of raising any ideological cast to the debate, I’ve never seen that work. They may want to, but I’ve never seen that happen. More often than not, it’s the ceremonial role in the Senate, the more important role, come when they are the person sitting beside the president and quietly counseling. They make a difference there.

Smith: To get back to ’76 and the vice presidential selection process, I assume, I mean from research that’s been showing ’s name was in the short list, would that have precluded a fellow Tennessean from being considered? Was your name mentioned?

Brock: Probably by my brother. I’m not sure. [laughs] You have little inklings of those things, but you don’t take it very seriously.

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Smith: You were surprised when you heard that Dole had been selected?

Brock: Yes. Not a bad choice. It was just a surprise because the norm is to go for a big- state person or something that somebody has great regional consequence, and we were fairly comfortable that we were going to carry that part of the country, but Bob was a very natural choice. He certainly epitomized the center of the party, and maybe that was not a bad thing to do right at that point.

Smith: Do you think Senator Baker would have liked to have been on the ticket?

Brock: Sure.

Smith: Did Dole get, do you think, unfavorably criticized for the subsequent defeat?

Brock: Yes, that was totally unfair. Look. We were going to have an uphill battle under the best of circumstances. It was a very hard slog. I don’t know what could have changed. The pardon was such a kiss of death. But the public reaction, I mean, after the election, as you know, I lost, and I ran for national chairman because I needed work. We were somewhere between 18 and 30 percent in any poll you wanted to run in terms of the Republican Party standing with the American people. I don’t care who is your presidential candidate, that is a big load to carry. True story. Early in 1977, we were so far down that there were a few people who said maybe we ought to just change the name of the party so that people wouldn’t remember who we were. [laughs] Mary Louise Smith was my predecessor; she followed Bob. She was a phenomenal lady with great common sense, and she gave me my line that I used for the next four years and even subsequently. She said, “Bill, tell ‘em that we don’t have to change the name of the party; we have to live up to it.” That became my mantra for four years as national chairman. “We have to live up to what the Republican Party is supposed to mean in terms of its integrity and its belief in—.”

Smith: Wasn’t she wonderful, Mary Louise?

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Brock: Oh my gosh, I just loved her.

Smith: I got to know her well in Iowa.

Brock: Oh dear, what an incredible, good, gifted, decent human being. But that’s what you really miss today.

Smith: And yet, even she, even then, was a target for an awful lot of vitriol directed at her.

Brock: Absolutely. But, you know, I guess it goes with the territory. You look back in the 1800s, the vitriol was much more mean-spirited than even today. Today is worse than it was then, I think.

Smith: Today it’s anonymous, a lot of it. It can be anonymous.

Brock: That’s true, and that’s worse.

Smith: When you became chairman, again something that Dole had been previously. under difficult circumstances, did you compare notes at all?

Brock: I’m sure we did. I don’t recall a particular occasion. But both of us were facing really serious challenges. I had an advantage that he did not have. He had to carry a White House that was desperately in trouble. I had a White House that was an opportunity area, because had come in and things were tumbling downhill. Inflation was going through the roof, interest rates were going through the roof, top marginal taxes were 70 percent. People forget these things. We were mismanaged by the majority that took total control of everything. Democrats had all of it, and they made a mess of it. So that made it a lot easier for me.

Smith: Did you get along well with the Reagan folks as you approached 1980?

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Brock: No, no. [laughs] I was in fairly constant hassle with the Reagan folks. Naturally, they wanted me to lean to Reagan, and I thought they were—you know, Californians, you can’t say this, but I thought they were smoking something strange. [Smith laughs.] I wasn’t going to do that. I thought he was a terrific candidate, but I thought he had terrific opponents, and I was not in the least interested in—they wanted me to have a convention in Dallas. I said, “If we go to Dallas, it’ll be hot, 108 degrees, and the women will be coming with their hair all puffed up, wearing diamonds and furs. That’s not the image we want to have for the Republican Party.” I wanted to go to Detroit because I wanted to have a blue-collar working party image for our comeback. They were furious about that. They wanted me to fund a bipartisan assault on the Panama Canal, and my friend Howard Baker was carrying the Panama Canal Treaty in the Senate, and I wasn’t going to do that. Two or three things. So when Reagan got nominated, there were a whole lot of folks ready for me to get out of there. They even asked me to step down as chairman after the convention, and I said, No. And they said, “We’ll have to beat you,” and I said, “Then count your votes, because if you are shy of beating me, it will be a hit on your candidate for the presidency. So be very sure that you can beat me. If you can’t beat me, you’d better support me.” And three or four weeks later, the governor asked me to come back to California and talk about coordinating the campaign.

Smith: Really.

Brock: Yes.

Smith: Do you distinguish at all between the relationship, the personal relationship you had with Reagan, as opposed to those around him?

Brock: Sure. Sure. And frankly, within a couple of years after we won the White House back and I had been in the Cabinet with him, those relationships got to be much better. I don’t think I’ll ever forget a conversation I had with—maybe the most meaningful conversation I’ve had in politics. Lyn Nofziger came up to me after a Cabinet session. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 18

We’d had a pretty strong debate on a particular course of action, and he asked me to stick around after the Cabinet, and he said, “I owe you an apology.” I said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “You know I opposed you taking this job. I wanted you out as chairman even before that.” He said, “Nobody in this Cabinet has been a better, stronger friend and supporter of than you have.” And he said, “I want you to know that I feel that way and I was wrong, and I want you to know I appreciate what you’ve done.”

Smith: Wasn’t that typical of Lyn, though? What a standout—

Brock: It was typical. What a guy.

Smith: Yes.

Brock: This was guy was simply—he was fair. He was special. He was a real special— his integrity was just always on his sleeve, never questioned. But you never forget those things. My minor contretemps with the staff were just that, and after the election it was—

Smith: You said something tantalizing. You talk about the hard sort of intellectual debate that had taken place in the Cabinet. Can you refute sort of the popular notion that Reagan was an uninvolved bystander to his own Cabinet meetings?

Brock: Yes. The Democrats have to believe that because they can’t believe the American people really wanted somebody that conservative in office, so they’ve convinced themselves that he was sort of a really good-looking, very articulate, very decent—and he was all of those things, of course—person without a great deal of depth. I cannot tell you the number of conversations we had in the Cabinet where we would be going back and forth. When people couldn’t agree on issues, it always bobbed to the Cabinet level. That was his rule. He created these Cabinet councils where we were supposed to work it out. If we couldn’t reach an agreement among those who were This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 19

affected by the policy change, it came to the Cabinet. Well, his rule was to each side, “state your case,” “state your case,” and then he would state his case. Happened to me on California wine. There were people who wanted to limit wine, and he said, “The reason we’ve got a problem with surplus wine in the United States is not because of the Argentines or the French or the New Zealanders; it’s because U.S. tax laws subsidize every doctor and every lawyer in California to plant a vineyard, and they’ve all done it. So we’ve got too much wine in the country. The problem is the U.S. laws, not the people in other countries that are growing their grapes. We’re not going to put any limit on it. We’re going to try to change the law. And that’s the end of the conversation, gentlemen.” And he turned to me and he said, “Bill, I guess I was supposed to let you make the case, but this one got my attention, and I’m not going to have anything to do with this.” He said, “By the way, if anybody ever tells me that I’m supposed to do something because people gave me money, it will be the last word they ever utter in this office or this building or any other government office.” This guy was real to the core. I wish we had more like him, all the time.

Smith: It’s interesting, because Dole, obviously Dole becomes this pivotal part of getting the Reagan program through, although no one would suspect him of being an original supply-side Republican. More a kind of good soldier?

Brock: Well, you know, I think Bob decided that this guy had some answers that maybe we hadn’t thought about before. A lot of us did. When I was national chairman, I started advertising for the first time for a national party, and I ran ads to try to establish what the Republican Party stood for, to make sure the people knew that it would make a difference. We had some ads poking fun at the Democrats; the gas ad with Tip [Rep. Thomas P.] O’Neill. But we also talked about tax cuts and things like that. When Reagan got in, as I’ve said earlier, the top marginal tax in the United States was 70 percent under Jimmy Carter. People forget how they had gone after people of any means, and that was hitting middle-income people, not just the rich. And the country had come to a crashing halt. We just were stagnant. Reagan said, “Take the lid off. Open it up.” Well, Bob Dole could understand that. You didn’t have to be a right-wing This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 20

conservative; you just had to be somebody that understood a little bit of economics, and he clearly does that. He understands what makes the system work.

Smith: Do you think there’s a little bit of a populist in Dole?

Brock: Well, sure. But I’m going to tell you, if there’s not a little bit of populist in any of us, we’re wrong. You’ve got to have a little bit of that core down there. We do have to reflect the body politic of this country, and we do have to respond to it. Otherwise, we’re a bunch of smart-alecks sitting up here telling them how to live their lives. That won’t work. That will not last. And Bob, sure, sure. I love being a little bit of a populist, and it’s fun. [laughs]

Smith: One senses a balanced budget was almost an article of faith for Dole.

Brock: It was.

Smith: How difficult was it for Reagan, who had always been pretty traditional in his economics, to accept these widening deficits?

Brock: It was hard, but Reagan believed in his core that we were sloughing, we were sagging as a country in terms of our spirit, in terms of our economic core. Inflation was eating us up. Nothing was really working. And he bought the argument, as did I, and I think, as did Bob, that unless we get this country back on track, back believing in itself, proud of itself, not just in defense terms, but in terms of our basic instinct as optimistic Americans, that you were not going to solve the deficit by cutting things. You had to solve it by growing. And we’d stopped growing. Reagan proved his point.

Smith: It’s off the side, but I’d be fascinated to know what you think. Should have been fired?

Brock: Yes.

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Smith: Not just taken to the woodshed.

Brock: Fired.

Smith: Was Reagan disinclined to fire people?

Brock: He hated it. He loved everybody. This guy was really such a sweet, loving, caring human being. He was warm. Stories about him and Tip O’Neill, those are real stories that absolutely happened. Get the Reagan diaries. Oh my gosh, they will make you weep to sense that we had somebody that loving of his wife, that caring of people in the other party in the presidency of the United States. My gosh, how much would we give to have that all the time?

Smith: Didn’t that in some ways put Mrs. Reagan in a difficult position, that she almost had to be his s.o.b., that she had to compensate for his tendency to think the best of everyone, I’m not sure whether to trust everyone, but certainly to give everyone the benefit of the doubt? And let’s face it, there’s a lot of folks around town who probably don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Brock: I don’t know how to answer that. Nancy Reagan had one priority in her life, and that was Ronald Reagan. That was to defend the mind, the body, and the heart of this man. And I must say I cannot give anything but respect for the way she did that. Having said that, I can understand her and, frankly, others around him. I mean, when Reagan went to Reykjavik to cut that deal with Gorbachev, he had people right in the heart of his circle that were saying, “Oh my gosh, Mr. President.” He was right. But he scared the bedickins out of a lot of people in terms of who he was willing to do business with, and it turned out, as history has judged, that he was right. And I think it’s right to always think the best of people. I mean, that’s my life experience, and maybe because I watched him do it to such advantage.

Smith: How important was Bob Dole as Finance Committee chairman?

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Brock: He was crucial. Oh my gosh. We could not have moved without Bob Dole’s leadership. This guy, he is so respected among his colleagues. They know him. They know he does not lie. They know he does not game the system. They know he won’t say one thing to one person and something else to somebody else. If they got a deal with him, it’s a deal. They don’t ever have to look over their shoulder. My problem—not my problem, my opportunity was being with Bob as chairman of the Finance Committee when I was U.S. Trade Representative. All my trade bills had to go through him. When I did a free trade agreement with Israel, first we ever had with any other country, who did I talk to? Bob Dole. You bet. And then Bob says, “Okay, you need to talk to this and this and this,” and we could team. But having him there with his depth of knowledge and his leadership skills, he could bring people together and make things happen. I’m not sure— I don’t know; you can’t say that something wouldn’t have happened if somebody else had been leading the Finance Committee. What you can say is it made it pretty certain that if he was going to be supportive of an action, you were going to be okay.

Smith: So you had the tax cuts in ’81.

Brock: Right.

Smith: And the competition, and before you know it, they’re hanging all sorts of things on the Christmas tree. And you’ve got these deficits. In ’82, Dole wants to take a few ornaments off the tree and has this thing called TEFRA [Tax Equity & Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982], which is very controversial. [Brock laughs.] It must have been a real tough sell to the president.

Brock: I’d say it was more than that. [laughs] Sure, it was a tough sell. Reagan didn’t want to do that, and he didn’t for a while. He finally came around to some modest shifts back, recapture some of those revenues, ’83 or ’84, I’ve forgotten, but either way, yes, you bet it was tough. And both were right, interestingly. Bob was saying, “This deficit is blowing. It’s just going through the ceiling. We can’t live like this. We have got to cut back.” And the president was saying—again, this is all in the room. You’re having this conversation. We’ve got a deep recession going on in ’82, we really had not made sure This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 23

that we had made that upturn yet. Reagan was saying, “We’re not ready for this. Let’s get some momentum back into the economy. Let’s get some growth and then we can take a look, but not now.” So both were right. Reagan was right, it was too soon. Bob was right, we needed to recapture some of those—

Smith: Do you have a sense of what their relationship was?

Brock: When I was in the room, it was just totally respectful. I mean, they really seemed to be absolutely comfortable with each other. They trusted each other so much.

Smith: Did it make things at all awkward—I mean, I never really asked him—having your wife in the White House in an important job, in all sorts of discussions that might be secret, and being married to the chairman of the Finance Committee, was that at all awkward?

Brock: I never sensed it. Elizabeth is unique and her own person. I don’t think you have to worry about anything being awkward. She wouldn’t have been involved in anything that she shouldn’t have been involved in, and whatever they said at the pillow wasn’t going to go anywhere else, you know that. [laughs]

Smith: You talked about your job as Trade Representative. Were there issues that you were working on as secretary of Labor, where you and the senator had a lot of interaction?

Brock: Yes. For example, we really had a pension system that was getting awry, and I needed to rewrite those laws, and it was a pretty contentious issue. I had to work with the Senate, particularly. Bob was right there. Again, going to somebody that understands how the process works, it’s just life-changing. When you’re looking at it from outside, it’s easy to say, well, it’s sort of chaotic and everything, but inside it’s not chaotic. There’s a system there. There’s a process. There are relationships that you have to use and build upon. I just think we were really lucky that Bob is, of all things, a true parliamentarian. He really understands the Senate, he respects the institution. He knows This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 24

how it works, he knows how to make it work. He trusts it. He trusts his colleagues and they trust him. All of that makes it possible to get where you want to go.

Smith: Why do you think it’s so difficult to communicate that to the public? There’s such an ignorance about both houses, but certainly the Senate. It’s very difficult, and I’ve known him for thirty years, and I couldn’t tell you in a sentence or two, sort of capture the essence of what it is about Bob Dole that can make this institution respond. Clearly there are personal qualities. From what you’re saying is the Senate, clearly rises or falls on personal relationships, for starters. What else is needed in a role as Majority or Minority Leader to make the place work?

Brock: I don’t know how many times I’ve used this word, but I will never overuse it, because it is the single-most important word of all, and that’s trust. You can’t have a relationship with your wife or your husband without trust. It’s the undergirding element of that relationship. And once you establish that you can trust somebody, then almost all things work. The thing about Bob is that you never, ever, ever saw him do anything to violate that trust. If he was going to take a position different from you, he didn’t blindside you; he told you. That’s the way those of us that believe in the institution got excited about working there. You knew that you had to work across party lines, you had to work across ideological lines. You had to be willing to listen to somebody and understand that their life experiences, maybe their education, had led them to a different conclusion, and respect that. Bob Dole never questioned the integrity of somebody’s having a different conclusion. He said, “Okay. They came to a different conclusion for their own reasons. I can work with that.” That’s how you establish trust, it’s by understanding that people that are honorable, most of those people are truly there for a reason, they’re honorable. They may be very different in terms of their ideology, their convictions, their background, their experience, but they’re honorable people. If you listen to them—and he’s a good listener—and respect those differences, you then can say, “Okay, here’s where you are. Here’s where I am. Now how do we work this out?”

Smith: It’s almost a sixth sense that comes into play, isn’t it?

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Brock: Yes, there is a sixth sense, and it’s the sense that—again, this is the thing you were saying it’s hard to explain, but it is grounded in the institution. You work there for a while, and even from outside, when I was working from the executive branch, you get a sense that that process, that there’s a little bit of bubbling going on in the pot all the time, and you’ve got to pay attention. You’ve got to listen to the vibes. You’ve got to feel the vibes. You know when you can move and when you can’t. It comes from really loving the place.

Smith: Which suggests what a wrench it must have been for him to walk away from the place, even for a shot at the presidency.

Brock: Yes. It was. You hate that.

Smith: Now, of course there’s the ’88 campaign. What’s the background to that in terms of your being involved in what is Dole’s second campaign for the presidency?

Brock: Well, background is that his campaign was in trouble, and I think Elizabeth talked to my wife and said, “What’s Bill doing these days?” or something to that effect. [laughs] I was secretary of Labor; she knew what I was doing. But somehow the conversation got started.

Smith: Can you date, even roughly? Are we talking ’87?

Brock: Yes, we’re talking late ’87. The campaign was a mess. A lot of the money had been spent, with no discernable impact. Bob was trying to be the best senator in Washington and campaign for the presidency, and you can’t do it. We sat and talked, and I had met with George [H.W.] Bush, the vice president, met with , and I just decided that Bob Dole’s principles, values, and relationship were closer to mine, and I would never, ever, ever fault any quality in George Bush. He was a wonderful human being—is a wonderful human being and a good president. I just didn’t know how to say no to Bob Dole.

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[Begin Tape 2.]

Smith: Okay. Let me ask you, first of all, how do you devise a winning strategy to take on a popular vice president, a very popular president? That’s an uphill venture at best.

Brock: The right question. Obviously we didn’t have an answer. We tried to draw on Bob’s reputation, his strengths, particularly in the Midwest, and we thought that if we could get Bob out and let people see him, listen to him, that they would sense that strength of character that defines him, that they would come to trust him as I did and as we did, and that we had a shot.

Smith: In some ways—

Brock: I wasn’t part of the decision for him to run. To be truthful, I’m not sure that I would have supported that decision. So he came to me long after that decision was made, and at that point I felt an obligation to support him because I believed in him. Still do.

Smith: In some ways the calendar favored you because of, of course, Iowa leading off. On the other hand, isn’t it true that the victory in Iowa was at least somewhat—

Brock: It wasn’t going to mean so much.

Smith: Because of Pat Robertson? First of all, yes, because it was next door, but also the media, the story was Pat Robertson beating the vice president, wasn’t it?

Brock: Yes. It took the total wind out of our sails. [laughs] Pat Robertson—forgive me for—I’ll control my tongue. [laughs]

Smith: Were you surprised by his showing?

Brock: Yes. Truthfully, I thought he was going to run strong. I didn’t think he would run that strong. And I guess that just shows that you can’t let your personal feelings This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 27

govern your judgment, because I just could not believe that he would run well in that state or anywhere else. Obviously there’s a core there, but to beat George Bush? My goodness. The vice president with Ronald Reagan.

Smith: In a state that he had won.

Brock: Yes.

Smith: Eight years earlier.

Brock: And for us to challenge George Bush was good enough. [laughs]

Smith: Then comes a very eventful week. I mean from Iowa to New Hampshire there’s a real roller coaster in terms of the perception, the momentum, the pollster apparently telling Dole that “Basically you’ve got this—.” At least the legend is that [Dick] Wirthlin told Dole at some point during that week that “You’re going to win.”

Brock: It looked good.

Smith: And then it just went south. Can you reconstruct that week at all in terms of, first of all, the immediate impact of Iowa and then, of course, the [John] Sununu-[Jack] Kemp was obviously a significant factor in New Hampshire as well.

Brock: All of those things were there. I guess the story coming out of Iowa was Pat Robertson, which obviously distracted so much of what we were trying to do. The optimism about New Hampshire was, we thought, well grounded. I didn’t in any way underestimate John Sununu’s capability, because his leadership in the state was obvious, and his organization was very good. We thought that the turnout would solve that problem.

Smith: Also you got some endorsements that week. I think Al Haig endorsed you. I think Jeanne Kirkpatrick endorsed you. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 28

Brock: Yes. Al Haig’s endorsement didn’t mean much, but we thought Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s did. I’m not denigrating Al Haig; it’s just that I didn’t think he had the consequence that she did with the conservative community. We were trying to draw from that, of course. It was just a very bad day in Black Rock.

Smith: The tax issue. Remember he wouldn’t sign the “no taxes” pledge.

Brock: That’s why I was for him. He simply would not do that sort of thing. He was right. George Bush shouldn’t have signed it. He was wrong. Yeah, but he was president. [laughs]

Smith: And remember they get the ad, the Senator Straddle ad onto the air. The Sunun people went to the New Hampshire stations? Could you have responded? Was there time to respond? Was there any bit of complacency at all arising out of these reports?

Brock: I don’t know. Maybe. Twenty-twenty hindsight. I really don’t know. Whatever we did was not enough. My own experience in fifty years in politics is that a last-minute response is almost never very effective. When you get hammered between the eyes with a two-by-four—and we were, I thought unfairly—

Smith: The two-by-four being?

Brock: The ad. I think not fairly, not honorably, but there you have it. That’s politics. And when it happens in the last couple of days, you can scramble and put something together, but the damage is done. I can cite an awful lot of campaigns where I’ve seen that borne out. So I’m not sure that we could have done anything about it.

Smith: What was his mood going into that primary? Did he believe that he was going to win?

This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 29

Brock: I think we felt not cocky, but I think we felt like we had a really good shot, and that that would turn it and we could rock and roll. We were really shy on money. We needed a break. We had spent most of the campaign resources before I got there, so we were scrounging and we needed something. Instead, we got the two-by-four. It was hard.

Smith: And then, of course, the Tom Brokaw joint interview with Dole and Bush, and “Stop lying about my record.” Did the campaign ever recover from that?

Brock: Not really, no. We were down. We were down. We had that one shot in Illinois that might have put a little life back into the campaign, but I think we were whistling “Dixie” at that point.

Smith: And about to move south. I mean, you had coming up.

Brock: Yes.

Smith: Was there a debate about getting out of the race? How did that campaign end?

Brock: Horribly. [laughs] I don’t know. What do you say? We took our hit in Illinois and said, “That’s it.” No money, no hope. You lick your wounds, pack your bags. We did the best we could. It hurts. Hurts a lot. But again, you know, that’s the system that makes this country special and different. Winners and losers. Pack your bags, endorse the winner, go to work, get him elected.

Smith: And needless to say, his political career had a long way to go. What kind of relationship did you have? Did ’88 damage your relationship in any way, for any period of time?

Brock: Not for me. You might ask Bob. [laughs] I don’t think so. I hope not. I don’t think either one of us thought that the other one didn’t do their best. I still think he is a very remarkable, special human being. I think he would have been a terrific president. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 30

Smith: Were you surprised at all when he became Majority Leader, when he won election to that—

Brock: No. People look for that kind of leadership. They know the qualities are there. They’ve seen them demonstrated time and time again.

Smith: Do you think it’s a job where personal qualities, at least then, were more important than ideological purity?

Brock: Yes, but remember that despite the fact that Reagan was an active, grounded conservative, we didn’t have the bitter divisions that were pushing the party out to its edges. We’ve got too much of that now. Most Republicans thought of themselves as Republican. Back to the Mary Louise quote. We were living up to the party. We were acting out its basic core values and philosophies, and Bob Dole epitomized those better than anybody living.

Smith: There’s a fascinating paradox here, because at the beginning we were talking about your generational kind of upsurge, and I look at Dole, particularly in the later eighties and early nineties, in some ways there was this new generation of very activist, very conservative Republicans, many of them in the House, but some in the Senate as well. [Newt] Gingrich would become the face of all that.

Brock: Yes.

Smith: That clearly was not a naturally harmonious kind of relationship.

Brock: Yes, but it was a different kind of a thing. It’s not moderates or centrists or liberals or conservatives anymore. It’s economic conservatives and social conservatives. It’s a different span than we had until basically the last ten or fifteen, maybe twenty years max. That’s testing the party’s value set. I don’t know where we’re going to come down yet. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 31

Smith: And actually there’s one more group, which is sort of vaguely numbered, but the whole Libertarian element, which is clearly light-years removed from the social conservatives.

Brock: Well, that’s right, but—

Smith: But isn’t that the price you pay for being a majority? If you are in this country, with its extraordinary diversity, I mean, if you look at the Roosevelt coalition, it was crazy quilt; it made no sense what was there. And in some ways, the very success of Ronald Reagan in making conservatism a majority viewpoint also ensured that there were many rooms in the conservative mansion and that at some point there would be strains and stresses within that majority coalition.

Brock: The way you put that is important. Many rooms in the mansion. When I was national chairman, we didn’t have the luxury of worrying about divisions. Whether we were 30 percent of 28 or 34, we had to recompose the majority. I was starting programs for blacks and Hispanics and labor union members and blue-collar workers and ethnics and women, particularly women and young people, and I kept getting these smart-aleck comments from someone on the committee, “Brock, what are you smoking? You’ve got to hunt ducks where the ducks are. There aren’t any ducks out in that field.” And I’d say, “Now, if you can show me mathematically how I can compose a party with a majority, and that majority’s composed of white, Anglo-Saxon, middle-income, Buick- driving, northeast-living males, then I’ll listen to you. But if you can’t show me how to get the math, then I’ve got to talk about broadening this party and getting that tent big enough so people feel comfortable in it.” To me a political party is the place where we connect the individual to their government. It’s the access point. And if we’re not bringing people in with a diverse range of views, we’re not creating a party that has the capacity to develop ideas, because ideas don’t come out of one ideology; they come out of the conflict, the conversation. What we’re not having today is enough of that conversation. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 32

The Democrats have got the same problem, by the way. Both parties are struggling for their identity at the moment, and that’s bothersome, because we ought to be a little more clear about what our core values are. I’m more on the Libertarian economic conservative side, but for gosh sakes, I couldn’t possibly compose a majority out of Libertarians in America or economic conservatives or social conservatives. I can compose a party that’s got a bit of all three, but that means there has to be some give-and- take. I have to give on some and then get on some, and everybody else has to bring something to the table. We’re not doing that right now, and that’s what people are worried about and it scares them, because they don’t know who to trust, they don’t know who to listen to. If there’s somebody out there that is more eloquent on this subject than [Sen. Barack] Obama, I’d like to know who is. And here’s somebody on the other side that’s talking about inclusion and values.

Smith: Let me ask two last questions, and maybe it’s not fair and you don’t have to answer it, but I remember sitting next to you at a dinner a couple of years ago in Washington and talking. I was talking about my Rockefeller book and had come to the conclusion that contrary to what everyone thought, everyone believed that in fact he was very torn about wanting to be President of the United States.

Brock: Rockefeller?

Smith: Yes. And he thought that at some level Dole entertained similar—not maybe identical, but that it wasn’t just ambition to be president, that it was more complicated than that. How would you describe that? Because there are people—there is a school of thought that says, for example, in ’96 that for Bob Dole, of course he would have liked to win. He was a great competitor, if nothing else. But that the honor of being nominated by his party would at least be consolation for not being in the White House. I mean, the popular view of most politicians is they’ll do whatever it takes to win, but they lie awake at night wondering what it is. And my sense is that you didn’t think that was necessarily the case with Bob Dole.

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Brock: I don’t. I don’t today. First of all, I know he would not do whatever it took to win. If it violated his basic instincts, values, integrity, that’s an easy call; he wouldn’t do it. I’ve watched politics for a long time. I think some people run because their heart is in it, their gut is in it, and whatever it takes, they would do, and a lot of them would not violate their integrity, but they would make any sacrifice necessary to win. I’ve seen other people run who just want to be—“I want to be president.” “I want to be governor.” “I want to be a congressman” or senator. And they’re a blight on the system, because they have no reason other than that they want to be. And then there are people like, I think, Bob. I think Nelson Rockefeller, on occasion, was someone like this too, and a lot of others I’ve known. Gerry Ford, maybe. Who want to do because they believe that there’s some reason to be there and to do that, but they can’t do whatever it takes because that would make them do something that goes against the grain.

Smith: Including becoming something that they’re not.

Brock: That they’re not. Because that means that they’re doing it for the wrong reason, and something way down deep says, “No, I can’t do that.”

Smith: There’s a price they won’t pay.

Brock: Sure. That’s probably who we want to elect. [laughs] But they’re harder to elect.

Smith: Why is it so difficult for senators—I suppose I’ll extend that to members of Congress—to go from the Senate to the White House? What is it about the institution, including—I mean, it’s been argued that there’s even a lingo that, you know, in some ways the more successful you are, the longer you’re there, you speak this foreign language that outside the Beltway, at least, is a foreign language. But what is it? It’s been suggested that the art of persuasion on the Hill is very different from sitting in front of a camera and arguing to 200 million people. What do you think are the qualities that, paradoxically, may make you successful in one job and almost disqualify you? At least the way it’s come to be seen. This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 34

Brock: Yes, a number of things. When you’re in the Senate, you really do sit and reason together. You may do it in committee, you may do it in a private office, you may do it over a beer, but you talk to a human being and say, “You know, Joe, Mary, Sam, we’re not addressing this problem. You’ve got an answer different from mine. But we’re not addressing the problem until we find some way to get to it. What do we need to do to make that happen?” Can you imagine somebody saying that on television? What happens in American politics today is if you can’t make your point in twelve seconds, maybe fifteen, you’re not going to get on the evening news. If you don’t make the evening news, you’re not important enough for people to pay attention to you. So a lot of things are driven by that process. One, you oversimplify. You have to, by definition, speak in sound bites. It is an insult to the American people. We treat them as if we could give them a solution to healthcare or education or the defense of America in twelve, fifteen seconds. They know better. But that’s the way they’re getting their messages. We have ten people on a stage debating the Republican nomination or the Democratic nomination, and they have no time to have a serious conversation. It is an exercise in irrationality and it is inexcusable, and it is a threat to the survival of a free people. It is just wrong. I’ll get off my high horse. But what happens is in the Senate and to a degree in the House, to a large degree in the House, is that we don’t do that. We don’t speak in sound bites because nobody will talk to you if you speak in sound bites. You sit there and you say, “Pat Moynihan, I’ve got a problem and I know you care about it. What do you think we can do to get from here to there and solve the problem?” And that conversation began with me loving Pat Moynihan as a human being and as somebody I can trust with my heart and soul, and saying, “I know you care about this country. I know you care about this issue. Let’s find an answer,” and you deal with that. You can’t do that in a presidential campaign. I wish we could, but you can’t. And even the presidential debates one-on-one in the fall are pretty much sound bites.

Smith: Is it fair to say—maybe here’s an oversimplification—one way of defining the difference between governing, in effect, or legislating and running for president in the This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 35 modern media age, is on the Hill success is judged by identifying differences and narrowing them.

Brock: Yes.

Smith: Whereas running for president, you’re rewarded for exploiting differences.

Brock: Sure. Sure. [sighs] Look at what we do with our candidates, both parties. Both are complicit and both are exercises in immorality, unethical behavior, in the way we talk about each other. We draw inferences that lead to conclude that you’re questioning their basic morality for taking a position, rather than the fact that their life experiences led them to a different conclusion. Wow. That’s wrong. That’s dangerous. And we do it, and we do it every single day, and we’re doing way, way too much of it, and it’s breaking down the process of government. Even the Senate it’s harder to govern today than it was when I was there. The House, more so. Somebody has got to kickstart a movement back to human relationships, and, frankly, I would give a lot to have any presidential candidate say, “I’m tired of this. Let me talk to you about how I’d like to sit with the other side.” How do you get the Republican nomination when you say, “I’d like to sit with the Democrats for five minutes”? I mean, that’s just irrational. But I’d love to hear it. Oh my gosh, would I love to hear two people running from each party saying, “If I get the nomination and get elected, I am going to get down to the Senate and I’m going to sit with Ted [Sen. Edward M.] Kennedy and I’m going to sit with the Bob Doles,” or whatever.

Smith: Do you think that’s the kind of president Dole would have been?

Brock: Yes, because Bob Dole knows how to work within that kind of a conversational setting. He’s a problem solver. The country’s got issues. We’ve got people who are hurting. Part of that is something the government can do something about. Not all of it, but some of it. Okay. Let’s see what we can do to work on answers to that.

Smith: How do you think he should be remembered? This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 36

Brock: As somebody that gave everything that he had to his people, to his country, never, never left a shred of his integrity on the floor, held his values all the way through, and made an enormous difference. He’s a guy that made the system better by being there.

Smith: Not a bad epitaph. Listen, thank you so much.

Brock: Thank you.

Smith: I mean it. This has been absolutely one of the very best interviews by a–

[End of interview] This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 37

Index

Atwater, Lee, 25

Baker, Sen. Howard H. Jr., 5, 15, 17 Black, Charlie, 13 Brock, William E., 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35 Brokaw, Tom, 29 Brooke, Sen. Edward, 7 Bush, George H.W., 28

Carswell, G. Harrold, 7 Carter, Jimmy, 16, 19 Cheney, Dick, 14

Dole, Elizabeth, 10, 23, 25 Dole, Robert J., 4, 9, 10, 11, 15, 19, 24, 29, 33, 35 1988 presidential campaign, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29 and , 10, 23 and Gerald R. Ford, 3 and Richard M. Nixon, 6 and Ronald Reagan, 23 and Tax Equity & Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, 22 and U.S. Senate, 23 and William, 5 chairman, Republican National Committee, 16 chairman, Senate Finance Committee, 22

Erlichman, John, 8

Ford, Gerald R., 3, 4, 12, 33

Gingrich, Rep. Newt, 30 Goldwater, Sen. Barry, 4, 5 Gorbachev, Mikhail and Ronald Reagan, 21 Gore, Sen. Albert Jr., 5

Haig, Al, 27 Haldeman, Bob, 8 Halleck, Rep. Charles, 4 Haynesworth, Clement, 7 Humphrey, Sen. Hubert H., 6

This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu Brock 6-26-07—p. 38

Kefauver, Sen. Estes, 3 Kemp, Rep. Jack, 27 Kennedy, John F., 3 Kirkpatrick, Jeanne, 27 Kissinger, Henry, 8

Lewis, Drew, 12

Moynihan, Sen. Daniel Patrick, 6, 34

Nixon, Richard M., 6, 7, 8, 9 Nofziger, Lyn, 17, 18

O’Neill, Rep. Tip, 19 Obama, Sen. Barack, 32 O'Neill, Rep. Tip, 21

Reagan, Nancy, 21 Reagan, Ronald, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21 and Mikhail Gorbachev, 21 and Robert J. Dole, 23 and Tax Equity & Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982, 22 Robertson, Pat, 26, 27 Rockefeller, Nelson, 14, 32, 33 Rumsfeld, Rep. Donald, 4

Schweiker, Sen. Richard, 12 Scott, Sen. Hugh, 6, 7 Sears, John, 12, 13 Smith, Mary Louise, 15, 16 Smith, Sen. Margaret Chase, 7 Stockman, David, 20 Sununu, John, 27

Tax Equity & Fiscal Responsibility Act of 1982 (TEFRA), 22

U.S. Congress, 34, 35 U.S. Senate, 24, 25, 34, 35

Watergate, 9 Wirthlin, Dick, 27