- Bob Dole, the longtime Republican Senate leader
and World War II veteran, has died.
- I know who I am, and I know where I'm from.
And I know where I want to take America.
- He served 8 years as a representative and 27
as a senator for the state of Kansas.
Dole was born in 1923,
growing up during the Great Depression.
He was the first person in his family to go to college,
but he left the University of Kansas
to serve in the Army in World War II.
- Night closes down on the Italian front,
and the live guns stab at the Nazis.
- While fighting in Italy in 1945,
Dole was critically injured in the shoulder
during what surviving members of his unit
would describe as a suicide mission.
His right arm was left paralyzed.
He spent 39 months in hospitals as he recovered.
He finished college under the GI Bill,
then returned to Kansas to practice as a court attorney.
In 1960, Dole ran for and won his first election to Congress.
Eight years later, he was elected senator.
Dole fought a particularly contentious
re-election campaign in 1974 against William Roy,
a Democratic congressman and doctor
who also performed legal abortions.
- He says, "Bill Roy, tell people
how many abortions you've done."
And I got up and said, you know,
"I think abortion comes about as a result of failure,
and abortion is a tragedy" and so forth and so on.
He then shouted, more or less, at the audience,
"You heard him. He's for abortion on demand."
- The campaign became more pointed with Roy's ads
directly calling out Dole's previous support for Nixon
and Dole accusing Roy of mudslinging.
- Bill Roy is still trying to make Senator Dole look bad.
Says he's the big campaign spender.
Calls him a friend of inflation.
- Dole narrowly won re-election,
but it also shaped the way he approached politics.
He began to emphasize bipartisanship as a lawmaker.
- When I became majority leader, the one committee I kept --
I have enough to do without a lot of committee hearings --
but I kept the Nutrition Committee,
which deals with food stamps
and WIC and the school-lunch program,
because I believe it's an important committee.
- Throughout his years in Congress,
the Kansan used his time to advocate
for people with disabilities,
child nutrition and food stamps, agriculture and veterans.
- I think we have essentially a pretty good farm program,
but I must say, like any other farm program,
we've been unable to figure out a way
to target the benefits to the family-size farmer.
- But he also focused on building coalitions,
rather than advocating for policies.
He helped engineer President Reagan's tax cuts in 1981
but pushed through a tax-reform plan
that repealed some of them the following year.
He initially voted against Medicare
as a congressman in 1964 but later voted to expand it.
In 1975, Dole married his second wife, Elizabeth Hanford.
She would go on to be secretary of Transportation
and secretary of Labor and a senator herself in 2002.
- Bob Dole served as the Senate leader of the Republican Party
from 1984 until his retirement in 1996,
when he left to seek the presidency.
- I must leave Congress that I have loved
and which I have been honored to serve,
many of my friends here today.
And some might find this surprising,
given the view that Congress has been my life,
but that is not so.
With all due respect to Congress,
America's been my life,
and I will seek the presidency with nothing to fall back on
but the judgment of the people and nowhere to go
but the White House or home.
- Dole won the Republican nomination in 1996.
- I'm a plain-speaking man,
and I learned long ago that your word was your bond.
And I promise you tonight that I'll try to address
your concerns and not try to exploit them.
It's a tall order, but I've been winning
against the odds for a long time.
- He was 73,
the oldest non-incumbent to ever run at the time.
- I've never seen a crowd this big.
This is larger than Russell, Kansas.
[laughter]
-He lost to President Clinton. - But I had a dream
that I would be here this historic week,
receiving something from the president.
But I thought it would be the front-door key.
- Clinton awarded him the highest civilian honor,
the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Free from serving as a public official, he appeared in ads.
- Take a check? - Of course, Bob.
Can I see some ID?
- For Visa, Pepsi, and, famously, Viagra.
- I hate to see this misinformation being spread.
I know a little about Viagra.
Bob Dole knows a little about Viagra.
And my vision is perfect.
It's 20/20.
And you ought to know better, Jay Leno.
Yeah.
- Clinton recruited him to lead a volunteer group
that raised $175 million to build a World War II memorial
on the National Mall in Washington, DC.
Until his death, Dole campaigned for causes
affecting World War II veterans.
In 2018, Dole received the Congressional Gold Medal.
- You do not lay claim to the office you hold.
It lays claim to you.
A Kansan, an American, just a man,
but I will be the same man I was when I walked into the room,
the same man I was yesterday and the day before
and a long time ago, when I rose from my hospital bed
and was permitted by the grace of God
to walk again in the world.