What if Dole had been president?

The July/August issue of The American Enterprise magazine has an interview with Richard Norton Smith, former director of the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics in Lawrence and current director of the new Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Ill. Here’s what he said about what sort of a president Bob Dole might have made:
"Dole would have been a congressional president. There wouldn’t have been a lot of state dinners, but he would have spent much time on Capitol Hill jawboning his former colleagues. It would have been a nonideological presidency, and that would have caused problems in his own party. Dole’s philosophy is not much more complex than making things work — and for a majority of Americans, who are essentially pragmatists, that’s not a bad philosophy."
We could use a little more Bob Dole in Washington, D.C., these days.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee

2 Comments

  1. dan newland
    Posted July 3, 2005 at 6:55 am | Permalink

    Amen. Would you rather be led into War by Dole or Cheney? I’m a democrat and I’d follow a man who has been to war – We prefer to fight those who attack us first.

  2. W. R. Locke
    Posted July 3, 2005 at 8:51 am | Permalink

    Excellent point, newland. I tend to be liberal in my social views but I’m an unaffiliated voter and I vote for the candidate, not the party. While Dole had his shortcomings, he would have made a first-rate president (unlike the current resident of the whitehouse). Dole would have been a true uniter. His talent for making deals was legendary.