Because, Bob Dole said, “we won’t get anywhere denouncing each other in public.” It was an oddly hypnotic moment. Everyone seemed to listen, and quiet down. The Democrats agreed–for the night, at least–to present a dignified, solemn face to the public. “I love Bob Dole,” one Democrat said, leaving the meeting, impressed by Dole’s ability to find even a tiny consensus in a bitter moment. “Well, maybe I should just say I admire him.”
It is one of the enduring enigmas of American politics, one that looms as a central question of the coming election year: why is Bob Dole so awkward outside the Beltway–and so revered inside? How can a man who is considered cold, distant, bitter and intemperate by much of the public be treasured by his colleagues, of both parties, for his honesty, decency and patience? “I love Bob Dole,” says Lawrence O’Donnell, a former Democratic chief of staff of the Senate Finance Committee. “No one I know in the real world understands that. But Dole is the best-loved member of the United States Senate.” Why? “Why?” O’Donnell splutters. “Why? Because . . . because he’s just so damn good.”
Everyone splutters when asked this. Dole splutters. He’s never been quite able to describe what he does, why he’s good at it, why it should qualify him for the presidency. He can sound ridiculous trying: “It’s about leadership,” he will say. “It’s about getting things done.” It’s also about . . . intangibles. It’s about being the ultimate guy in the ultimate guy’s club. It’s about understanding the code. “It has to do with the way men of that generation communicate with each other,” says a woman staffer, a generation younger. “A few weeks ago, Bill Cohen [the Maine Republican] voted against the budget. And everyone just knew that Dole had a vote to spare, and Cohen was running for re-election, and it was his turn to have some leeway–rather than, say, my senator, who might have wanted to vote no but didn’t, out of respect for Dole and because it wasn’t his turn. But it’s strange: you never see these decisions getting made. They just happen. And Dole choreographs it all.”
They don’t just happen. They happen like this: you are a senator concerned with welfare reform. You are called to a meeting in the majority leader’s office, along with the half dozen other crucial senators on this issue. Dole walks in–blithely, always–and says: “How’s it goin’? Got that solved yet? You’ve had half a day.” He says this with a smile. He knows you want to kill each other. And then he will sit, and listen, as everyone says his piece. Sometimes he won’t sit–sometimes he’ll bounce away, orchestrating as many as four such meetings, simultaneously, on different issues. “You’re always amazed at how much he takes in,” says his close friend Sen. Alan Simpson. “He’ll hang out in the cloakroom and be able to remember precisely the details of three different conversations going on around him.” He is a man for the margins, not the minutiae. He usually isn’t very interested in the details of a bill, but will have an exact sense of what’s important to each of the members involved-what the traffic will bear. “When he thinks the time is right, he’ll say, ‘Look, here’s where I gotta get on this one’,” says Simpson. “And he’ll usually get there–without ever pleading for a vote. I have never seen him beg.”
He is, to hear his colleagues tell it, sort of like Babe, the sheep-herding pig: ever civil, ever patient, with an almost mystical power over his flock. “He’s not confrontational,” says Sheila Burke, his chief of staff. “It’s rare that he throws his weight around–unless he’s pushed. He’s not a guy who burns bridges.” It is very rare that he will lose patience. “I remember him getting angry once,” says former senator Warren Rudman. “I’m not going to tell you about it. I’m saving it for my memoirs.”
But if he’s not a screamer, Dole can be flagrantly disdainful–especially with people he thinks are greedy or sneaky or crude, like John Sununu (who seems now, in his ideological pride, an avatar of Gingrichism). “I was standing next to Dole one day when Bush’s budget-negotiating team–Nick Brady, Dick Darman and Sununu–came walking down the hall,” said one Southern Democrat. “And Dole said, ‘Here they come: Nick, Dick and the prick’.” Sununu’s sin was arrogance, a lack of respect for the customs of the Senate. It is, in a way, the ultimate sin. Dole is an etiquette junkie. He judges people by how they behave rather than how they think.
His code is stark, western and prim. It has three basic tenets. First, and most important, you keep your word. Second, you respect your colleagues. “He has never tried to argue me out of a position, even when he desperately needed my vote,” says Sen. Nancy Kassebaum. It is almost as if Dole assumes that each senator knows his or her own mind, or should, and that it would be insulting to jawbone a vote. It’s an odd quirk–Dole is comfortable making a deal but uncomfortable making a sale. That discomfort flows from the third tenet of his code: he hates grandstanding. He disdains colleagues who blow hard behind closed doors, who indulge themselves in grandiloquent statements of principle. He distrusts rhetoric. “Some folks up here’ll make the same speech over and over again,” he said last week, in his office, staring at the ceiling, embarrassed to be talking about the sort of thing people just shouldn’t talk about. “They all watch him,” Lawrence O’Donnell says. “They want to be like him, to have his respect. Behind closed doors, they hang on his every word. If Dole makes a little joke under his breath, you see the young guys nudging the fellows next to them, asking, ‘What’d he say? What’d he say?’”
Of course, the very qualities that make Dole so compelling within the Senate tend to be disastrous in presidential politics, where salesmanship is everything (and dealmaking is worse than irrelevant–it seems squishy and suspicious). But the senator, apparently, can’t bring himself to do in public what he won’t do in private: he hates posturing. He can’t be trusted to make a speech without a text–he’ll drift off into the safety of platitudes. He will suffer a text, suffer the rhetorical flourishes, wince and mumble his way through. “You can see the discomfort in his eyes,” Simpson says. “He seems to be winking at it.”
When asked about this last week-about his tortured efforts to communicate with civilians-Dole first listed a series of legislative accomplishments, things that gave him “credibility” to run for president. But that didn’t quite answer the question and, when pressed again, Dole admitted: “Pretty hard to go out there and just go on and on and on because that’s what someone says you oughta do.” And then he did a curious thing. His mind skipped from the rhetorical malarkey of the presidential campaign–directly to the Republican freshmen. He suddenly insisted there was a “different attitude” among those who used to think, “Bob Dole, he’s not one of us . . . Now they’re beginning to see I’m pretty tough, I’m a conservative.” The non sequitur was telling: the “revolutionaries” in the House were linked in Dole’s mind with the distasteful, excessive salesmanship- the phoniness – of presidential politics.
Which, of course, they are. Gingrich, like Clinton, is a permanent campaigner. And Dole has had to live with that, in close quarters, these past few weeks. But while the public dog-and-pony shows on the Hill have been uncomfortable–Dole seems a reluctant chaperon for an increasingly unpopular revolution-the private meetings have been, sources say, a quiet education for Gingrich and his horde. The speaker and several of the other House conferees have lost their temper at times, trying to reconcile the House and Senate versions of the seven-year balanced budget; Dole hasn’t. At one point, Gingrich tried to bully Dole by getting angry at him: the House had given up too much, been pushed too far by the Senate. His freshmen wouldn’t take it. Dole gave him a calm, steely look: “When we’re done,” he said, “we’ll make a list and see who gave up what.” And Gingrich backed off. “I’ve never seen Dole glare once,” insisted Gingrich’s spokesman, Tony Blankley. “He’s funny. His eyes twinkle. He’s usually the most cheerful person in the room.”
Well, maybe not as cheerful as all that. His body language was all frustration last week–as Gingrich made a fool of himself, and Clinton demagogued Medicare, and the government shut down, and the GOP presidential hopefuls nipped at his heels. His time would come: inevitably, they’d stop talking and start haggling. There would be a deal. But, for the moment, Washington was full of blowhards selling, and no one dealing–Dole hell, for sure.
