Mr. Dole, a Kansas prairie boy who was left for dead on a World War II battlefield, went on to become one of the Republican Party's longest-serving leaders.
In 1996, Bob Dole was elected to the U.S. Senate. He was the final member of the post-World War II generation to earn the Republican presidential nomination.
Bob Dole, the plain-spoken boy of the prairie who rose from Dust Bowl poverty in Kansas and graves war wounds in Italy to become the Senate majority leader and the last of the World War II generation to earn his party's presidential nomination, died on Sunday. He was 98 years old at the time.
The Elizabeth Dole Foundation announced his death. It didn't specify where he passed away. In February, he revealed that he had Stage IV lung cancer and that he had begun treatment.
Mr. Dole, a Republican, was one of the most enduring political personalities of the twentieth century. In 1976, he was nominated for vice president, and 20 years later, for president. He served in the Senate for a quarter-century, and until Mitch McConnell of Kentucky overtook him in June 2018, he was his party's longest-serving leader.
Mr. Dole, a lieutenant in the Army's legendary 10th Mountain Division who was wounded so severely on a battlefield that he was left for dead, came to personify the tenacity of his generation as the veteran soldiers of World War II faded away. He devoted his post-political career to soliciting funds for the World War II Memorial in Washington, where he spent weekends receiving visiting veterans.
In one of his final public appearances, in December 2018, he stood in line at the Capitol Rotunda to pay his respects to former President George H.W. Bush, a former political foe and fellow veteran. Mr. Dole saluted the flag-draped casket of the last president to have served in World War II as an aide assisted him up from his wheelchair, using his left hand because his right had been rendered useless by the war.
Mr. Dole was a politician for all seasons, lasting in the highest echelons of his party for more than three decades, despite ideological differences with other Republican leaders.
In the early 1970s, he served as national Republican chairman under President Richard M. Nixon; as Gerald R. Ford's running mate in 1976; as chairman of the Senate Finance Committee during Ronald Reagan's presidency in the 1980s; and as presidential standard-bearer during Newt Gingrich's "revolution" of the mid-1990s, when the Republicans captured the House for the first time in 40 years and shifted the power dynamic on Capitol Hill.
After his favored candidates fell by the wayside, Mr. Dole, nearly alone among his party's old guard, backed Donald J. Trump for president in 2016. He was the only past Republican presidential contender to attend the party's convention in Cleveland, where Mr. Trump was nominated, on the day of his 93rd birthday.
Mr. Dole campaigned for President three times, winning the nomination in 1996 but losing to President Bill Clinton after a historically catastrophic campaign. He had left a safe position in the Senate to pursue the president, despite the fact that, as he admitted, he was better suited to the Senate.
He helped negotiate concessions that determined much of the country's domestic and diplomatic policy as the Republican Party's leader.
He was most proud of his role in saving Social Security in 1983, getting through the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, and rallying a majority of hesitant Republicans to accept President Bill Clinton's unpopular decision to send American soldiers to Bosnia in 1995. (Mr. Dole was not a fan of the deployment, but he had always felt that a president, whatever of political affiliation, should be supported once he made a decision as significant as sending soldiers abroad.)
Mr. Dole was a superb legislative mechanic who knew what each senator wanted and could live with, and he relished the art of political trading.
He was so at ease in the Senate's marble halls that he had to continuously remind Americans during his last campaign, in 1996, that he wasn't "born in a blue suit" — Dole jargon for meaning he had a past before coming in Washington in 1961. In truth, the dual experiences of growing up impoverished in Depression-era Kansas and surviving the devastating wounds of war had deeply affected him.
To make ends meet, the Doles relocated into the tight basement of their home and rented out the upstairs to make ends meet when dust storms blackened the skies of their little hometown, Russell, in north-central Kansas, and destroyed the wheat industry.
Mr. Dole's life was altered as a result of the conflict. He had planned to become a physician after lettering in football, basketball, and track at Russell High School and being voted best looking in his class. Instead, he returned from the European battle in a body cast, largely crippled.
He was in and out of surgery for 39 months, much of it as a patient rather than the surgeon he had planned to become. Instead, he became a lawyer and politician, despite the fact that his infirmities prevented him from participating in many of politics' most basic rites. He couldn't shake hands since his right hand was so injured, so he would grasp a pen in his fist to deter people from attempting. He avoided political gatherings and ate at home since he couldn't cut his steak with a knife.
Mr. Dole began his political career as a conservative and matured into a pragmatist, forming friendships with famous liberals in the process. He enlarged the food stamp program with South Dakota's George S. McGovern, and he made school lunches a federal entitlement with Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey. Both measures were praised by Kansas farmers.
His personal convictions were not often obvious since he was such a brilliant negotiator. Mr. Dole had cast almost 12,000 votes at the conclusion of his long career, representing both sides of numerous issues.
He opposed several of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society policies, although he backed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Given his hardscrabble upbringing, avoiding fiscal deficits had been his guiding principle. Mr. Gingrich dubbed him "the tax collector for the welfare state" because he occasionally favored tax increases. "I'm happy to be another Ronald Reagan if that's what you want," he told party officials in 1995, attempting to portray himself as a tax-cutting Republican. He subsequently signed a vow as president not to raise taxes, something he had previously refused.
In an interview for this obituary in 2009, Richard Norton Smith, former director of the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas, observed, "It lends a particular poignancy that he found himself following the caboose of movement conservatism at the height of his career."
Mr. Dole flourished as chairman of the Finance Committee, a prominent post that drew in large corporate donations looking for favors. He raised more money from special interests than any other senator at one point. Dwayne Andreas, chairman of Archer Daniels Midland, the huge agribusiness, was a particularly prolific fundraiser; the firm got millions of dollars in tax advantages and federal subsidies over the course of two decades.
Mr. Dole frankly told The Wall Street Journal, "When these political action committees donate money, they expect anything other than good governance in return," pointing out why the system favored affluent interests over poor ones.
From 1985 until 1996, his fellow Republican senators chose him as their majority and minority leader for a total of 11 years.
On the balcony off the Republican leader's office, he did a lot of his negotiating with other senators. His colleagues overwhelmingly supported a resolution calling the balcony the Robert J. Dole balcony after he departed the Senate in 1996. It provided him with "the second-best vista in Washington," overlooking the National Mall and the Washington Monument. Because he frequently retreated to the balcony to soak up the sun and replenish his everlasting tan, it was dubbed "Dole Beach" unofficially.
Mr. Dole, on the other hand, was a fish out of water away from Capitol Hill. His insider tactics and deal-making abilities did not transition well to the presidential campaign trail.
He was chastised during the 1996 election for having no overall vision, either for his campaign or for the country. He resented handlers who sought to package him, and he never adjusted to the television age's scripted politics. He frequently used legislative jargon and referred to himself in the third person during speeches. As a candidate, he was distant, more of a witty critic than an enthusiastic participant.
Mr. Dole complemented himself in front of reporters after one campaign event for "staying on topic," but went on to criticize the process: "Every time I do that reconnect the government to values' nonsense, I feel like a plumber."
Mr. Dole became a lobbyist for the big international law firm Alston & Bird after his final bid for the presidency. Despite his status as a well-connected Washington insider, Mr. Dole developed a new identity, one that was uncharacteristic of a guy with Mr. Dole's dark complexion and mordant wit: that of a self-deprecating loser.
In his 2005 memoir, "One Soldier's Story: A Memoir," he stated, "Playing up the image of the depressed also-ran was tremendous fun." In 1997 and 2001, he appeared in Super Bowl advertisements for Visa ("I simply can't win") and Pepsi, and subsequently had a cameo in a Pepsi ad with Britney Spears. He spoofs earlier advertisements he'd done for Viagra, a male potency medicine for which he'd been a spokesman after undergoing prostate cancer surgery.
"People like you once you lose," he told The New York Times.
Mr. Dole, who had long been associated with the scowling Nixon, had taken a startling turn. He had defended Nixon so vehemently that one critic dubbed him Nixon's "hatchet man," a moniker that stuck.
Mr. Dole, like Nixon, had to overcome adversity early in his life. And, like Nixon, he was enraged by individuals for whom he assumed things were simple.
When he announced his resignation from the Senate in 1996, he declared, "I trust in the hard way, for little has come to me except in a hard way."
His rage was channeled via partisanship, which he frequently conveyed in sarcastic asides. It erupted in public during a vice presidential debate in 1976, when he blamed Democrats for all of the twentieth-century conflicts, and again in 2004 when some fellow Vietnam veterans questioned Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts' military record. Mr. Dole, who had been awarded two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star with an oak leaf cluster, chimed in, asking if Mr. Kerry deserved his Purple Hearts.
"Three Purple Hearts and never bled that I know of," Mr. Dole remarked of Mr. Kerry.
Wounds and Recovery
Robert Joseph Dole was born on July 22, 1923, in the home of his parents in Russell, the second of four children of Doran and Bina (Talbott) Dole. His mother was a skilled seamstress who sold sewing machines, while his father worked in a creamery until eventually becoming the owner of a grain elevator.
During his collegiate years, Mr. Dole enrolled in the Army Reserve and was summoned to active duty in 1943. The Germans opened fire on his unit on April 14, 1945, in the Italian Alps near the little hamlet of Castel D'Aiano, some 65 miles north of Florence. Mr. Dole went to bring a fellow soldier to safety when he saw him fall. However, he was wounded by flying metal as he scrambled away. His right shoulder and arm were blown apart, and numerous vertebrae in his neck and spine were broken.
Before being evacuated, his soldiers carried him back to a foxhole, where he lay slumped in his blood-soaked uniform for nine hours. He was only 21 years old at the time.
For one of Russell's most promising young men, it was a terrifying turn of events. He believed he was condemned to a life of selling pencils on the street since he couldn't eat or care for himself.
He endured at least seven surgery and spent more than three years rehabilitating. To regain his strength, he developed a makeshift weight-and-pulley device in Russell. The village came together to support him, pooling their nickels and dimes to pay for his care.
Russell was a blip on the flat Kansas prairie, but it took on mythological significance in the Dole biography. Russell was portrayed as the maker of fine, small-town qualities, and Mr. Dole as their manifestation, in his political campaigns.
He was frequently moved to tears when he remembered that time and the goodwill of his neighbors. He praised the citizens for their support after the war at his first visit with President Ford in Russell in 1976, with 10,000 well-wishers jammed into the central business district. He then began to cry and was unable to continue. The audience was stunned into silence. Mr. Ford finally rose up and started clapping, and the audience followed in.
Mr. Dole regained his calm and remarked, "That was a long time ago."
Despite the fact that Russell and his recovery had become a staple of his origin narrative by 1996, he could barely speak about it without crying up. When his image-makers mentioned it in his prepared remarks, he would frequently skip over or shorten such sections to prevent the inevitable tears.
However, he couldn't escape them throughout the last stretch of his presidential campaign, by which point it was evident that he would lose. Senator John McCain, a veteran naval aviator and Mr. Dole's wingman in those final days on the road, paid him a spontaneous homage at a bowling alley in Des Moines.
"This is the final struggle of a great warrior," Mr. McCain told a tiny gathering, "a member of a generation of Americans who went out and made the globe safe for democracy so that we could have lives that were far better for ourselves and our children."
Mr. Dole, who was standing nearby, was in tears.
He met Phyllis Holden, an occupational therapist, during his recovery after the war and married her three months later, in 1948. On the G.I. Bill, he went back to school. He already had credits from his pre-med studies at the University of Kansas. In 1952, he graduated from Washburn Municipal University (now Washburn University) in Topeka, Kan., with a dual bachelor's and law degree thanks to Ms. Holden's assistance. Robin, their daughter, was born in 1954.
Mr. Dole had to change his career goals from medicine to law because he couldn't use his hands, he said. He described his existence as "an exercise in compensations."
In 1950, Russell Republicans approached him about running for the Kansas State Legislature, seeing him as an easy sell as a native military hero. Mr. Dole, on the other hand, had not yet chosen a political party, despite the fact that his parents were New Deal Democrats. He subsequently admitted that he joined the Republicans after being told that most Kansas voters were Republicans.
He gained a House seat in Congress in 1960 and climbed to the Senate in 1968 after serving in the legislature and as the Russell County attorney.
Nixon's Influence
Nixon was elected president the next year, and he became a major political figure in Mr. Dole's life. They were soul mates in Mr. Dole's eyes. Nixon was from California, and both were self-made individuals who were dissatisfied with their party's aristocratic Eastern leadership.
Mr. Dole earned a name for himself as a passionate Nixon defender, particularly when it came to the president's ongoing prosecution of the Vietnam War and his contentious Supreme Court selections. Senator William B. Saxbe, a Republican from Ohio, famously mocked him as Nixon's "hatchet man," saying that he was so repulsive that "he couldn't serve beer on a troopship."
Even Nixon was concerned that Mr. Dole's desire to fight might damage his ability to do so. Nixon said in a secret letter that it was "essential that we not let Dole undermine his usefulness by having him stand up to every hard, quick one" in a memo that was made public years later.
In 1971, Nixon appointed him head of the Republican National Committee. Mr. Dole embraced the position as he raked in political cash. He and Phyllis separated in 1972 as a result of his travels, which kept him away from home.
He married Elizabeth Hanford, a federal trade commissioner at the time, three years later; she went on to become a cabinet secretary, president of the American Red Cross, and a senator from North Carolina. They established themselves as one of Washington's first power couples.
He is survived by Elizabeth Dole and Mr. Dole's daughter, Robin Dole. Phyllis Holden Macey, his first wife, died in 2008.
Nixon fired Mr. Dole as party chairman after re-election in 1972, as the Watergate investigation loomed, claiming the senator was too independent. Mr. Dole, on the other hand, was a staunch supporter, even attempting to shut down live television coverage of the Watergate hearings.
Mr. Dole wept as he characterized the disgraced former president as a "child who heard train whistles in the night and dreamed of all the distant places that lie at the end of the track" when Nixon died in 1994.
He also remembered Nixon's counsel that "the greatest tragedy is not to try and fail, but to fail to try," and that "the greatest grief is not to try and fail, but to fail to try."
Mr. Smith, the historian, believes Nixon had a political motivation in asking Mr. Dole to deliver the eulogy as part of his funeral arrangements. Mr. Dole was anticipated to grow upset, according to Mr. Smith, and that his "genuine expression of pain" would reveal Mr. Dole's human side and maybe help his presidential campaign.
Democrat Wars
Nixon's vice president and successor as president, Gerald Ford, offered Mr. Dole his first opportunity at the national office in 1976 when he chose him as his running mate. Ford sought to bolster his support among conservatives, and he thought that the choice would appeal to farm-state voters. However, Mr. Dole's performance against Democratic contender Walter F. Mondale during the vice-presidential debate on Oct. 15, 1976, was so caustic that some observers believe it contributed to Ford's defeat to Jimmy Carter.
Mr. Dole wandered off subject in answer to a query regarding Ford's 1974 pardon of Nixon, saying, "I counted up the other day, if we totaled up the slain and injured in Democrat wars this century, it would be approximately 1.6 million Americans, enough to fill the city of Detroit."
Mr. Mondale was taken aback by Mr. Dole's decision to frame the fight against Germany and Japan in partisan terms. "Mr. Dole has thoroughly earned his reputation as a hatchet guy," he remarked. Even Republicans, including Mr. Dole, participated in the post-debate condemnation.
He subsequently said, "I went for the jugular." "It's all mine."
He sought out an image consultant and hired her to help him look more pleasant because the reaction was so bad.
Despite this, he campaigned for president in 1980, a disastrous campaign that ended nearly as quickly as it began. In 1988, he ran again and won his party's Iowa caucus, but he couldn't defeat Vice President Bush's forces in New Hampshire, where Bush had the governor's critical backing and launched a TV campaign saying Mr. Dole would raise taxes.
Mr. Dole was enraged by the commercial, telling Bush to "stop lying about my record." Mr. Dole's remark merely added to the notion that he was unfit to be president.
However, by 1996, his party appeared unable to deny him the nomination. At the time, President Clinton was popular, the country was in the midst of a period of peace and prosperity, and the most powerful possible Republican candidates, including General Colin L. Powell, had declined to run.
Mr. Dole defeated a weak primary field that featured Texas Senator Phil Gramm, former Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander, and conservative broadcast journalist Patrick Buchanan. However, Mr. Dole conducted a poor general election campaign, giving people little reason to vote against Mr. Clinton's second term. He made no pretense that he was taking his job seriously at times.
"We're trying to capture excellent photographs," he told reporters aboard his campaign jet the day after resigning from the Senate to focus solely on his presidential campaign. "Don't be too concerned about what I say."
One of Mr. Dole's biographers, Richard Ben Cramer, asked him in 1995 to specify the first thing he would do if he became president.
He answered in clipped Dole-speak, as recounted by Mr. Cramer, "Haven't considered."
"If I get elected, you know, at my age," he trailed off, betraying a lack of presidential ambitions. "I'm not leaving the house." It isn't a set of goals. "All I want to do is serve my nation."
His lack of preparedness contrasted sharply with his wife's proclivity for overplanning. In 1996, during the Republican National Convention in San Diego, Mrs. Dole gave a polished star performance for her husband. Her orchestrated perfection, on the other hand, just served to emphasize how much her spouse was winging it.
"Watching Bob Dole campaign for president is a fascinating and disorienting experience, like washing dressed or dining nude," writes journalist Michael Kelly in The New Yorker.
Mr. Smith, the historian, was always perplexed as to why Mr. Dole, who had been campaigning for the nomination for such a long time, appeared to take it so lightly and "wasn't willing to adjust himself to the new media milieu," according to Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith came to the conclusion that this was a testament to Mr. Dole's honesty. He remarked, "He couldn't jackknife himself into a character that was fundamentally at odds with the genuine thing."
Others speculated that his objective was not to win the presidency, but rather to obtain the nomination and demonstrate that he could rehabilitate himself politically in the same way he had physically.
Mr. Dole received 41% of the vote, while Mr. Clinton received 49% and Ross Perot, a Reform Party candidate, received 8%. Mr. Dole's defeat was magnified by the fact that he received just 159 electoral votes to Mr. Clinton's 379.
Mr. Dole presented his stunning defeat in a way that would have made Nixon proud in his biography over a decade later.
He added, "Losing implies you were in the race at least." "It implies that when the whistle blew, you weren't on the sidelines watching the game."