“Bob Dole, who overcame disabling war wounds to become a sharp-tongued Senate leader from Kansas, a Republican presidential candidate and then a symbol and celebrant of his dwindling generation of World War II veterans, died Sunday. He was 98.” AP News
Both sides praise Dole’s record of public service and ability to work across the aisle:
"When mourners gather this week to share stories about Bob Dole, what a feast they will have as they reminisce about the venerated politician's friendships, humor and, above all, his commitment to country. One of the GOP's longest-serving leaders, Dole could be a partisan. (He'd blamed his opponents, for example, for causing ‘Democrat wars.’) But like the relationship between Tip O'Neill and Ronald Reagan, Dole might joust with an opposing president by day and call a truce by night if it was in service of the American people. He had many adversaries in Washington, but few enemies."
David Gergen, CNN
“Dole could play hardball with the best of them. But he understood that America’s constitutional democracy, with its elegant system of checks and balances, requires our leaders to form a new majority on each issue. And he worked endlessly to find those majorities at a time when both parties still believed in compromise too…
“In the 1970s, he teamed up with George McGovern to establish the school lunch program. In the 1980s, he and Patrick Moynihan joined forces to put Social Security on a sound financial footing for another generation. In 1990, he worked with Democratic Majority Leader George Mitchell to pass the Americans with Disabilities Act. Long after leaving the Senate, he worked with former adversary Tom Daschle to promote health care reform that could win bipartisan support.”
Scott Reed, The Dispatch
"Mr. Dole was a sometimes controversial figure occasionally given, especially early in his career, to irritated outbursts. None of that should obscure the substance and significance of his accomplishments. He led — as minority and majority leader — with a sense of the need to get things done. We didn’t always agree with him, but on big matters such as the vital civil rights bills of the 1960s and later on expanding food stamp coverage, he took strong and principled stands in favor. And he worked with members of both parties…
“‘The Senate does not reward extremes,’ said a colleague, Bill Bradley of New Jersey, when Mr. Dole left that body in June 1996. Mr. Dole, he continued, ‘knew how to use power because he understood how to make things happen in the center of this institution. And that is ultimately built on a couple of personal facts. I mean, he always kept his word. He listened very carefully. He never held a grudge.’ This was, keep in mind, a prominent Democrat discussing the leader of the Senate’s Republicans, and it was barely 25 years ago. Kind of makes you wish there really was a bridge to the past.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post
“By the time of his presidential run, Dole was certainly less than a movement conservative. He had become more of a legislative technician, and moderate to the younger Dole’s conservative. In later years he referred to himself as an Eisenhower Republican, putting great store in compromise and amity with Democrats, even when the other side didn’t reciprocate…
“But while conservatives may have been disappointed in some of the positions that Dole took in his late career, and disappointed in his lackluster 1996 campaign, there are still reasons to celebrate this man and his life. Man and boy, young conservative firebrand and older moderate, Dole was always a patriot, never a doubter of America’s greatness, and always a booster of its people and its values… RIP Bob Dole, a man who long served his country with courage and distinction.”
Larry Thornberry, American Spectator
Other opinions below.
“Congress really was less dysfunctional during the 1980s and ’90s when Dole was at his prime. But just as the famous Ronald Reagan/Tip O’Neill working relationship is overrated (Tip in his memoir: ‘It was sinful that Ronald Reagan ever became president’), so too was Dole not just some huk-yukking back-slapper…
“Dole pushed hard for welfare reform while the left howled that he was shredding the social contract. He called welfare ‘a grand failure that has crushed the spirit, destroyed the families and decimated the culture of those who have become enmeshed in its web.’ At the 1996 Republican National Convention, he trashed the Clinton administration as a ‘corps of the elite who never grew up, never did anything real, never sacrificed, never suffered and never learned.’…
“So why the present attempt to reinvent Dole as a sepia-toned Angus King? The reason is partisan gamesmanship. The Times is ever eager to paint the current GOP as a pack of foaming zealots in great contrast to their statesmen of yore.”
Matt Purple, Spectator World
"When Bob Dole bid for the presidency in 1996, the very conservative Republican from Kansas ran a campaign that proudly announced he ‘supported the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965’ and ‘played an instrumental role in extending the Voting Rights Act in 1982.’…
“Dole’s passing comes at a moment when conservative justices on the US Supreme Court have done severe damage to Voting Rights Act protections, when Republicans in the Senate are blocking action on the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and when Republicans in the states are actively supporting extreme gerrymandering, voter suppression initiatives, and schemes to challenge election results that fail to favor them…
“The cruel truth of our times is that the record that now earns Bob Dole praise for his ‘distinguished service’ would make him an unwelcome figure as an active participant in the political battles of [today’s] Republican Party.”
John Nichols, The Nation