ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, June 10, 1996 TAG: 9606100053
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
AFTER 35 YEARS and 20,000 votes, the Kansan has made his mark on D.C.
He came to Congress during the same cold, snowy January that John F. Kennedy came to the White House. So long ago that Jimmy Carter was still a peanut farmer, Ronald Reagan was nominally a Democrat - still giving speeches for General Electric - and George Bush was just another Texas oil man.
There had been no civil rights revolution, no Great Society, no Vietnam War. The federal government's annual outlays totaled a mere $92 billion, about what it spends every two weeks now, and the budget showed a $300 million surplus.
Thirty-five years later, as Bob Dole prepares to retire as majority leader and senior senator from Kansas, historians can record that he played a part in almost every significant Washington decision made during an era of profound change for the government and the country. As congressman, senator and party leader, Dole had a hand in every battle over taxes and the budget, Medicare and welfare, defense and foreign policy, peace and war.
But unless his current bid for the White House succeeds, Dole's place in history may be cloaked in shadows: well regarded by specialists in congressional leadership, but little remembered by the wider audience of future generations. He may rank no higher than a Joe Robinson or a James G. Blaine - earlier masters of the legislative game who forged the compromises and moved the ball forward but created no lasting monuments.
``It is significant that there is no major piece of legislation known as the Dole Act,'' said Rutgers University political scientist Ross Baker. ``It tells you what kind of leader he's been. His mark can be found on so much, but his influence was extensive, not intensive. He became a kind of legislative virtuoso, a master of the process, not a visionary or a high-concept man.''
Dole's legislative record is immense. As he once told a group of New Hampshire voters: ``You take a look at my record. You'll probably find some votes you don't like. I've voted 11,000 times. There's some I don't like.'' That was in 1987; by now, the number of votes Dole has cast in Congress probably exceeds 20,000.
Three strands form the rope of the legislative career that Dole plans to bring to a close Tuesday:
First, he was an intensely partisan battler, reflecting both his temperament and the status of the GOP in Congress for much of his career.
As a junior member of Congress during the '60s, when congressional Republicans appeared likely to be a permanent minority, lambasting the opposition pleased Dole's overwhelmingly Republican constituents back home and offered an avenue for advancement within his party nationally.
Second, despite the sometimes cutting intensity of his partisanship, Dole became an increasingly savvy player of the inside game on Capitol Hill. That role flourished during the long period of divided government in the 1970s and 1980s, when, except for the four years of Carter's presidency, neither Democrats nor Republicans ever commanded both Congress and the White House.
Third, in establishing his positions on major policy issues, he has followed the evolutionary path of traditional Republicans, instinctively opposing liberal innovations the first time around, but gradually accepting them within some bounds as time wore on.
Thus Dole, who is 72, opposed the creation of Medicare, Medicaid and almost all the other liberal social programs of the Kennedy-Johnson era; but years later he blunted the slashing attacks on those programs by radical ideologues in his own party.
In keeping with traditional conservative economic principles, he also was the prime mover behind the massive 1982 tax increase, the biggest ever, relative to the size of the economy, which ended the Reagan administration's romance with supply-side economics.
To be sure, Dole has sometimes been among the vanguard. As a young congressman, he voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965; he was also a co-sponsor of the legislation making Martin Luther King's birthday a national holiday. Repeatedly, Dole has argued that the GOP should do more to open its ranks to minorities.
Dole also played a crucial role in expanding food stamps and other federal nutrition programs for the poor during the mid-70s - programs that, of course, also benefited farmers. from places like Kansas who grew the food As thoroughgoing a liberal Democrat as former South Dakota Sen. George McGovern, the prime mover on such legislation, still speaks admiringly of Dole's steadfast help in lining up Senate majorities to support greater government effort.
And he took a leading role in passage of federal legislation for the handicapped. He supported the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, even though many business people and others considered its provisions costly and intrusive.
From the beginning of his career in Washington, Dole made it clear that he did not intend to be an anonymous backbencher. He was elected president of his freshman class and served four terms in the House, from 1961 through 1968.
While in the House, Dole began traveling all over the country to help fellow Republicans campaign or raise money. The ceaseless campaigning helped to build a network of contacts and obligations that would prove invaluable in Congress and help finance his bids for the GOP presidential nomination in 1980 and 1988 as well as in 1996.
In 1968, encouraged by GOP presidential candidate Richard Nixon, he sought and won the Senate seat vacated by retiring Republican Frank Carlson.
As something of a Nixon protege, Dole defended the administration's policies in Vietnam, excoriating antiwar Democrats and Republicans alike.
On most bread-and-butter issues, Dole was a down-the-line Midwestern Republican, supporting programs that benefited his predominantly rural constituents, even if that meant voting for government subsidies. But his devotion to reducing the deficit did once lead him to offer to accept cutbacks in farm programs if other senators would swallow reductions in programs dear to their hearts.
He won appointment to the Senate Finance Committee in 1973 and plunged into what are among the most sensitive and far-reaching decisions made by any government: the writing and rewriting of tax laws. Probably nowhere else in government does so much money hang on the smallest change of word or phrase; nowhere else is the lobbying more intricate or intense.
And Dole, although in the minority until the Reagan landslide of 1980, became a player.
Critics point out that, on more than one occasion, he proposed or supported obscure bits of legislation designed to benefit important businesses or individuals - including Archer, Daniels Midland Corp., an agribusiness giant, and the winemaking Gallo family.
Such narrowly focused policymaking has a long history in America, of course, and opinions differ on whether it is all bad. At least so far as current evidence is concerned, the most that can probably be said about Dole is that he played the game as he found it.
On larger issues, much the same is true: He was a loyal Republican soldier most of the time, fought for partisan advantage where he could and, at the end of the day, often looked across the aisle for compromise.
The eventual success of the 1982 Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act may rank as the crowning achievement of Dole's legislative career.
Emblematic of his success, Dole succeeded Howard Baker as Republican leader in the Senate in 1985, a step up that was also a step deeper into the legislative process.
As a result, Dole, like 19th century Republican leader Blaine before him, is in danger of being remembered by most people more for what he failed to do than for what he did.
Blaine sought and failed to win the Republican presidential nomination in 1876 and 1880. When he finally captured the nomination in 1884, he lost the general election to Democrat Grover Cleveland.
His popular epitaph is a derisive campaign chant that referred to his brush with a railroad bribery scandal: ``Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine. Continental liar from the state of Maine.''
Only scholars recall that Blaine served as secretary of state under three presidents, helped found the modern-day Republican Party and, as a highly partisan speaker of the House from 1869 to 1875, substantially strengthened its institutional leadership.
``The great parliamentarians tend not to be remembered,'' said Rutgers professor Baker. ``Their fate, unfortunately, tends to be submerged.''
LENGTH: Long : 149 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. Sen. Bob Dole of Kansas, his wife, Elizabeth, andby CNBtheir dog, Leader, walk the halls of Capitol Hill. Dole ends his
distinguished career in Congress Tuesday to focus on his bid for the
presidency. color. KEYWORDS: PROFILE POLITICS PRESIDENT