With today’s announcement that former U.S. Sen. Bob Dole has stage 4 lung cancer, it’s worth recalling not just how amazing it is that he still survives at all, but also what a superb public servant he was.
Dole easily ranks among the very greatest senators of the 20th century and also as one of the most successful at effectuating conservative policy.
First, though, we should consider with wonder what Dole did to survive, a full three-quarters of a century ago, after grievous injuries in World War II. I wrote about it at length in these pages two years back, but the short version is that doctors didn’t think he would survive the night he was wounded, then didn’t think he would survive the flight home, then didn’t think he would ever walk again, and at one point were sure he was hours away from dying of pneumonia. And all of that was 75 years ago — and since then, he also has survived an abdominal aortic aneurysm and numerous other serious health scares, only to come back strong and sharp.
Now at age 97, he’s facing another great challenge. Let’s wish him well. But as he fights, let’s correct the myth that has grown up that Dole was some sort of squishy-moderate deal-maker unwilling to battle for conservative ends. Instead, he was one of the most consequential conservatives of the modern era.
Sure, Dole for a dozen years was on the wrong side, sometimes fiercely, of the intra-party battles over supply-side economics. Yet, Dole never received proper credit for one of the greatest contributions to tax-limiting policy ever adopted. It was Dole, not Reagan or supply-side popularizer Jack Kemp, who insisted that the lower tax rates be permanently indexed for inflation. Dole had made that his personal crusade since at least 1979, and it was he who would not budge from that position during negotiations over Reagan’s famous tax cut bill. The tax rates have fluctuated significantly since then, but Dole’s achievement in ending “bracket creep” has remained.
Meanwhile, except when it came to farm subsidies or veterans affairs, Dole was as strong a fighter against deficit spending as anybody this side of famously debt-averse Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas. I saw this firsthand when I was press secretary for then-House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob Livingston of Louisiana as Livingston led heroic efforts to trim a then-unimaginable $50 billion from domestic discretionary spending (and $100 billion in “projected” spending) in just two years in the mid-1990s. At every step of often contentious negotiations with the Clinton White House, Dole had Livingston’s back (although he wasn’t always on the same page tactically with Speaker Newt Gingrich); and I particularly remember one crowded hallway outside of a Conference Committee room where Dole flashed Livingston a thumbs-up across the crowd, with a huge smile on Dole’s habitually serious face. Dole loved to save taxpayers’ money.
But back to Reagan’s 1980s. Although Reagan and Dole didn’t always agree, Reagan’s unabridged presidential diaries are replete with references to Dole’s indefatigable efforts at implementing Reagan’s agenda. Reagan’s respect for Dole ran deep. Indeed, back in 1976, Reagan himself had recommended Dole, seen as a solid conservative, to Gerald Ford when Ford asked Reagan’s advice on a running mate. Ford complied.
Always a tireless advocate for a strong military and for veterans, a committed anti-Communist, and an old-fashioned patriot, Dole left his mark, with wisdom and skill, in an almost incomprehensible number of small details of hundreds or maybe thousands of pieces of legislation. America is vastly the better for it.
