Profile from a different time

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Former Kansas Senator Bob Dole was honored a couple

of weeks ago with the Congressional Gold Medal, a ceremony

that presented a chilling contrast – a wizened and

renowned leader evincing an institution he once led with a

keen pride, against a Senate now divergent and shriveled,

unresponsive.

On stage was Dole, a Senate leader for more than 20

years, once one of the most powerful men in government.

Even at age 94, gaunt and frail and wheelchair-bound,

Dole carried a radiant history, of an era when Congress

was an institution of accomplishment, of magnificent

potential.

Now not so much, if at all. The institution that awarded

Dole the medal, its highest civilian honor, has withered

nearly to inconsequence. In Dole’s time and before, the

Congress was to affect the agenda of the majority party,

at times to compromise with the minority, and to seek

accommodation and transformation in a divided country.

That capacity is now a tarnished heirloom with Dole

presenting it only through history’s mists. The current

Congress, like a crowd of delinquent youngsters at a

parade, is left to scoff at Dole’s history, those old bands

that marched in cadence and fashioned glorious music at

the same time.

“Kansas sent us to Washington to do a job, not call

each other names,” Dole said a year and a half ago at a

forum in Lawrence. It was one of the last times he spoke

at length in public. An overflow crowd had come to the

Dole Institute at Kansas University to hear from him and

another former senator, Nancy Kassebaum. They were of

the prior generations, legislators who took seriously the

complexities of democracy and discipline, when public

service involved far more than a primal, venal urge to

prevail.

Dole’s record is long, from the 1950s as a county

(Russell) attorney and state legislator, eight years in the

U.S. House and after that the Senate from 1969-96. He

was the chamber’s Republican leader for more than 20

years, and was twice majority leader (1985-87 and 1995-

96). He left the Senate in 1996 to become the Republican

nominee for president.

Dole’s appeal to citizens and legislators and his commitment

to service stretched over the nation and much of

the globe. For the same reasons he appealed to Kansans he

appealed to others. We had to share him.

His mission, as he saw it, was to improve lives rather

than to control or dominate them, to put public interest

above self preservation. There were differences, conflicts,

and just as we’d had enough of the man’s acidity and were

about to cut him loose he would pull back and sling out

the humor or manage something brilliant across the Senate

aisle. Even his adversaries remained confident of his

character and his judgment, if his politics didn’t always

coincide with theirs.

Such a profile is almost unheard of today, one that

defied convention for a common good, one that saw conservative

Bob Dole and liberal George McGovern joining

to work for food stamps; or Kassebaum and Ted Kennedy

on labor reforms; Kennedy and Dole for the Americans

with Disabilities Act, and for the Martin Luther King holiday.

These profiles and more gave our nation lift, helped

citizens and communities to have better lives. The profiles

today, as the Congress lurches along in fits and spasms,

are of the weakest kind, reticent, elusive and shadowy,

often mercenary.

To be sure, Dole could be ruthless, even savage. During

the 1976 presidential campaign, incumbent Gerald Ford

took the high road and left the role of attack dog to Dole,

caricatured as a Doberman, a candidate also known

as the “Merchant of Venom.” His comments about all

the “Democrat wars…” and “abortion doctors…” hardly

softened the image. There were other dark moments,

his service as GOP national chairman at the time of the

Watergate break-in, or his two failed campaigns, in 1980

and ‘88, for the party’s nomination for president.

But through all his years of campaigning on the streets

or in the Senate, Bob Dole never failed to hone his knack

for wit to a fine edge. During one long meeting years ago

in Hutchinson, he sprinkled several zingers over the discussions.

Among them:

– Dole said Ted Kennedy would be the Democratic candidate

for president. “I nominated him a couple of weeks

ago,” Dole said. “So far he hasn’t declined. Even his staff

approved.”

– “I didn’t start hacking away during the 1976 presidential

election entirely on my own. I did have some direction.

Gerald Ford favored the Rose Garden campaign; I

got what was left – the briar patch.”

– “When people remind others that I was GOP national

chairman during the Watergate years, I also remind them

I was forced out of office by the White House. President

Nixon invited me to Camp David to commend me for my

service as chairman. He gave me a Camp David jacket

and a noose.”

– “In my campaign for the GOP nomination for president,

many have asked about Howard Baker, and my

chances against him. I continue to emphasize my record,

my ability, my experience, the proof that I can get the job

done … and that I am six inches taller than he is.”

– “Do we really need more bureaucracy in the form of

energy agencies? Consider the proposed Energy Security

Corporation, to run independent of the government. That’s

like asking people to buy gasoline at the Post Office.”

– “One of Ronald Reagan’s detractions as a candidate

is his age. He’ll be 69 on the eve of the New Hampshire

primary in February. We’re considering sponsoring a big

elaborate birthday with lots of publicity – and lots of

candles.”

And so forth.

It was always a wonder how any candidate or office

holder could keep a sense of humor in what has become

such a humorless profession. The shame is that Dole’s

legacy of collaboration, even with its dark side, has no

heir.

***

We could build, but not a wall


Remember the summer of 2014? By the end of July

the count was at least 57,000 for the number of unaccompanied

children from Central America who crossed the

border into the United States.

There was great posturing, foaming and fear-mongering

from dimwit politicians about these youngsters as dope

runners, or terrorists, or spies, or fraudulent voters. They

left Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, or some other venomous

hell hole, because being there was more a matter of

dying than living. They came terrified and alone, moved

only by a thin reed of hope that they could escape the murder

and misery that poisoned life in their homeland.

There were great pronouncements about sending them

back. Denial, the Republicans said, would show Central

American leaders that America is no free lunch for

vagrants, no matter how young they are.

President Obama wanted to persuade Central American

leaders that the humanitarian crisis was incubated deeply

in their own land, and that its terrors must be exposed and

eradicated. Poverty, drugs, corruption, and murder are

among the components of misery that comprised life’s

litany for our neighbors to the south. In the 3ó years since,

the sorrow and suffering have only escalated.

We can help, but not by building a border wall. We can

build something else, in Mexico or in Central America.

Anything. It doesn’t matter. A building. A highway. A port.

Farms or ranches. Bridges. Whatever we build, make it big.

It should mean jobs in Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala

or Mexico or wherever. The United States would provide

the resources to put up something that would take years to

build, including the roads to it. The cost would be a pittance

compared to the blood and billions we have poured

down the rat holes of drug wars, border fences and beating

the desert sage to roust tired, hopeless immigrants.

When the first project is finished, start another. And

so forth, until the building and maintaining and ancillary

supply-and-demand sprout and self-perpetuate.

People leave a place because there is no reason to

remain. We could give them one, or several. We could

help them want to stay there, rather than wasting more

billions to make them unwelcome here.

 

JOHN MARSHALL

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