60 minutes rewind if bill clinton has learned one lesson during his first nine months in office
it's unless you do business with bob dole you may not be able to do business at all
whether it's challenging the president's economic stimulus package or the president's budget or the
president's health care program the minority leader of the senate has taken center stage in
washington this week he was in the spotlight once again threatening to tie the president's hands
on sending troops to haiti at 70 bob dole the second most powerful man in washington
is at the top of his game cutting deals wielding power and having the time of his life
this is bob dole's idea of having fun
pounding away on the treadmill and watching c-span
got to keep moving get those legs in shape clear out those arteries get ready for business and
these days like the energizer bunny he's everywhere face the nation meet the press
he doesn't hunt doesn't fish or play poker except in politics there's no private bob dole only
senator bob dole and he has seen it all watergate the vietnam war nixon ford carter reagan bush and
now clinton the biggest wrap on you is that you're much more interested in partisanship and gaining
political advantage than you are in doing what's right for the country you know senator gridlock
the fact that you are sort of the party leader it's like you're the lightning rod and if you you
know the lightning's going to strike now and then and sometimes it shouldn't sometimes it may not
be deserved but that's the way it goes senator judd greg from new hampshire right behind you
to most republicans he has taken a beaten divided and demoralized party and kept it
from becoming irrelevant largely with his caustic wit and his mastery of the legislative process
to most democrats he's the dark prince of american politics a political hatchet man with the most
famous mean streak since richard nixon i think they know that if they they got off pretty easy
this time democrats rarely get off easy with bob dole in the 1976 vice presidential debate
he blamed them for every war in the 20th century along with the deaths of 1.6 million american boys
and he doesn't confine the barbs to democrats there was his less than gracious concession
to george bush following the 1988 new hampshire primary i think sometimes you show
your normal human being that you do have a little little feeling you're not always smiling so you
know stop lying about my record you know don't do it again you know you get mad bob dole gets mad
a lot whatever else he may be dole is human sometimes to a fault in a city of carefully
filtered calculated conversations he says what's on his mind even if it gets him into trouble
sometimes he seems unable to control himself it's what makes him perhaps the most interesting and
complex figure in american politics you want me to sign that for you but ask anyone in washington
what makes him tick and you get one answer down for me watch him sign an autograph or shake hands
it's world war ii the injury the wound that still causes pain you always keep pen or roll up paper
or something in in that hand why why i guess it's sort of a protective thing it's sort of
a signal to people you know that hand's occupied i don't make any difference but it's just gotten
to be a habit now i assume when i die there'll be a pen in my hand if you look in the casket
i hope so if anybody's listening i want that done by now the war wound is a familiar story but to
get the full impact you have to go home with bob dole to the house he grew up in and still owns to
russell kansas 1300 miles from the marble halls of washington people know you well enough here if
they think you're getting a little high pollutant or or whatever they won't mind telling you
he grew up here on the wrong side of the tracks in the middle of the depression a local hero and star
athlete who went off to the university of kansas wanting to be a doctor and hoping that the war in
europe would end before he got there it didn't two months before germany surrendered he was assigned
to some of the heaviest fighting in the war just days after this picture was taken in italy's po
valley dole was hit with machine gun fire while trying to rescue his radio man did you realize how
badly you were wounded no i didn't i didn't have any idea i just knew i couldn't get up and uh i
couldn't i remember raising my head a time or two his right shoulder was shattered his neck broken
the doctors were convinced that if he lived he would never walk again he lost a kidney and
nearly died twice from high fevers and blood clots in his lungs he spent more than three years in
army hospitals the longest loneliest years of his life i remember my dad coming up one christmas he
had to stand all the way on the train trains are so crowded got up there his ankles were swollen
but he made it when the army sent him home for good he was still far from whole
he had gone from 194 pounds to 122. his right arm was useless and there
was little feeling in his left hand it must have been incredibly difficult having left
an athlete a basketball star a football star yeah and to come back
in the condition that you came here that basket case yeah it's kind of hard to adjust and
and you don't know what you know you don't know how you're being accepted by people
you know obviously they are sorry it happened and there's pity and a lot of good will particularly
in this town it was the people of this town who made it possible for bob dole to adjust
they raised eighteen hundred dollars to send him off to chicago for seven more operations as he
wheeled himself back to health but there were long bouts with depression best described perhaps in
richard ben cramer's book on the 1988 campaign in which he describes a despondent bob dole worried
over the prospects of living the rest of his life a [ __ ] kramer wrote how could he ever let that
worm bore to his center what the hell would he do then play bridge all day like the guys in the ward
with his cards held in a special rack and after that what would he do sell pencils on main street
sometimes he could actually see himself on main street russell with a wheelchair and a cup
that was his private vision of hell the spur to get him up to try again
yeah i think that's that fairly fairly accurate i remember the first time i looked in the mirror
i couldn't believe it was me i got me out of bed one day and the bathroom door was
open there was a mirror on the far wall the shaving cabinet i couldn't believe that was
bob dole and so i didn't look in the mirror i still don't look in the mirror except to shave
so i guess it just sort of sticks with you why don't you look in the mirror well
i do have to put my t-shirt on but not before it's just a while look in the mirror it's uh you know i
think i've faced reality but just some you know i don't need to be reminded of it every day so
but selling pencils was not really what i had in mind i don't remember when it started but
one day you get up and you say okay let's get out of here let's start thinking about the future
instead of the past and maybe bob dole can do something else the story will continue after this
it turned out to be politics a profession kind to war heroes the state legislature county attorney
congress the senate three runs at national office but not even bob dole would deny that the pain is
still there one of the things people say about bob dole and and they've been saying it for years is
he's got a real mean strength and some people say it's because of what happened in 1945 1948 that
there's still a bitterness about it a resentment that this horrible thing happened to you and that
you've never quite been able to deal with it to deal with it yeah i've never been able to
determine that i mean i mean i've said things that probably i shouldn't have said but i don't think
anybody who's ever known bob dole said he has a mean streak i mean it's pretty much the obvious i
uh i don't think i'm a mean person the people that think you're still
bitter about it it's a driving key aspect of your person i think i'm very competitive
in my view if i hadn't been competitive in high school and thought i was a pretty
hot shot athlete i wouldn't have been back in my feeding and i've been out there selling pencils
but i had my parents and everybody in this town sort of rallied around me and it seemed to me that
i had to prove something well here we are again and there's no doubt he's still trying to prove it
whatever it is while dole continues to cross swords with the clinton administration over
foreign policy he's been generous in his praise for the first lady and her efforts on health care
promising bipartisan cooperation there are so many more areas of agreement agreement sometimes we get
credit we've got a few hang-ups what are the big ones you think well we're going to talk about that
i don't want to debate those here we wouldn't have any fun later do you approve of the strong
role that the president's given her in his administration certainly i'd be happy to to
waive the rule or introduce a piece of legislation that says she couldn't be appointed the cabinet
because of the so-called nepotism statute my view is that if the president has a role for
the spouse whether it be a man or a woman that person should not be inhibited because of that
dole is used to dealing with strong women after all he's married to one elizabeth dole who's his
second wife held cabinet positions in both the reagan and bush administrations currently she
runs the american red cross could waving that nepotism rule eventually benefit the dolls well
you never know i mean if elizabeth gets elected president she might appoint me to something
whether there ever is a president dole mr or mrs in the white house doll's relationship
with the present occupant has at least become more civil it began this summer when former
democratic party chairman bob strauss one of dole's closest friends arranged a suppertime
summit at a public restaurant in washington is this beginning of a wonderful friendship no it's
the middle of it in the middle of it he's a pretty tough customer tough customer but he's smart
worthy adversary and i think we'll be allies on a lot of things we haven't already
what do you think of president clinton i think he's pretty bright smart articulate
he's doing a little better job now but in a way don't you want to see his policy fail don't you
want to see the economy not get better so the republicans can pick up a majority in the senate
in 94 and maybe oh i guess white house i guess sometimes when you say well jimin if he does this
and it works it's going to be curtains for us i mean you think about those things but in the
real world you don't dwell well on that every day you have to go out and do what you do and he does
what he does and then somebody measures at the end of the year the end of the month or whatever but
you can't sit here and honestly tell me that you want president clinton the democrats to succeed
i want him to do a good job but you don't want him to succeed do i want him to be
re-elected see that's the difference i want him to do a good job but not be re-elected
now that's the difference that's the bottom line that's what politics is all about it's all about
plotting strategy something he does from the balcony next to his office overlooking what he
calls the second best view in town the second best view in town this is the best view in town right
which of course begs the question would a then 73 year old bob dole make one more run for the
white house in 1996 i'm a very vigorous person in good health and uh alert mentally and if i
still feel that way after the 94 election i might have plans for 96. you still want to be president
i think so