Minds That Matter | Minds That Matter: Bob and Elizabeth Dole

(upbeat lively music) (audience applauds) - [Elizabeth] Oh let's see, I'm right here?

- Over here.

- Okay, all right.

We need you on here.

- On here.

- [Bob] Oh, that's a chair.

- [Bill] Do you like 'em?

- Not surprised really.

- [Elizabeth] Thank you.

- It's great to have you here today for what is a program I've been working to organize for a long time.

But it's a sad day for Americans, because of the passing of a good friend of the Doles, Secretary Jack Kemp.

And I just wanted to ask both of you to share a story or an insight on Secretary Kemp and what he meant to America.

- Yes, well, let me say that just a few months ago, when I was running for reelection to the Senate, Jack Kemp was with me in North Carolina, traveling on a bus through the mountains and he was so full of energy and enthusiasm, and just a great example of the public servant, who has that passion for what he does.

And so we enjoyed being together.

And then just a short time later, we learned that, of the illness.

And so we've been in close touch with him and it's heartbreaking.

I remember back in the early days when I was assistant to the president for public liaison, I worked on the very issue that Jack was sponsoring in the Congress and that was the 25% tax cuts over three years.

And I was trying to work on it for President Reagan, he was working on it from the Congress.

And of course, there've been many times when we've had those opportunities to work together.

But he will be truly missed.

And he is the epitome of a person who is passionate, full of enthusiasm and believes in what he's doing with all his heart.

- I remember writing Jack a note about three weeks ago now.

In fact, earlier, when he learned that he had this very serious problem, he called me and Elizabeth one night and told us that, "I've got cancer and the prospects are not very good."

And so you didn't, you wanna go visit, but he can't have visitors.

And then he couldn't talk, which for Jack Kemp is-- - [Elizabeth] It's tough.

- Not being able to talk is a tough sentence in itself, because Jack's wife used to put on his coattail to get him to stop talking.

(laughs) But he just a good guy and a good friend.

And as a Republican, he was one of those Republicans who wanted to make the party bigger for the right reason, right reasons.

And he never gave up hope reaching out to different groups.

And I think that was the part that I really give Jack credit for being one of the first Republicans to reach out to other people.

And if we're gonna have a two-party system, our party is gonna have to get busy.

But Jack was a great friend and I'll miss him.

- I'd like to add just one thing, though.

When Bob Dole was the Republican national chairman, and this is when we met actually, he actually took the door off of his office as a signal of outreach to try to bring more people in, independence, people who might have-- - I took the door off of the building, not my office.

(all laugh) - Well, Senator Elizabeth Dole, let me ask you this.

You've had this incredible career in public service, what, how did it get started?

What developed this motivation?

- I wanna say, first of all, my first job in elected politics was when I was elected president of the third-grade bird club, okay?

And then a few years later, I started an organization, a junior book club, and I found the minutes recently, Bill, and they're great.

We had all kinds of good speakers come in and all.

And I was just a kid, but I made myself president.

I made myself present.

(audience laughs) I have learned a little more about democracy since those days.

And then I think, in high school and at Duke University, I was, I became very much involved in student government and also majored in political science.

And so I think the whole world of public policy, politics was like a magnet to me.

I really loved what I did.

And the elections that I lost, I learned probably more from than the ones I won, but I had the privilege of serving as my student government president my senior year.

And to be able to preside over a town hall meeting once a month to interact with students and faculty and alumni, the trustees, and mediate between all the needs, I learned a great deal and I really think that was what led me then, ultimately, into this as a career.

- Senator Bob Dole, you were a student here at KU before you went to the army.

What were your days here like?

- Well, I wasn't going to class, I can say that.

(all laughing) - Oh, Bob.

Oh.

- We had all these farewell parties.

Everybody was leaving for the Army, Navy, Air Force.

So every night you'd be up half the night at somebody's farewell party and you didn't feel like going to class.

(audience laughs) - [Elizabeth] Oh gosh.

- I remember Dean Woodruff, some, how many remember Dean Woodruff?

That'd be a few.

Call me in one day and he said, "Bob, I've been checking and you're not doing much academically.

(audience laughs) Have you ever thought about the army?"

(audience laughs) And I said, "Yes, I've thought about it.

In fact, I've enlisted and I'll be going fairly soon."

But it's one of those things that I think it's a lesson to a lot of young people.

I didn't apply myself.

I had no discipline.

But when I came back from World War II, I knew it was time for me to do something.

And from making Ds and Cs, I think I only made one B at Washburn, in law school and the other.

And I don't say it in a boasting way, but I say it to students, who sometimes get a little depressed and their grades go down and, but I found that if you really are sort of your back against the wall and you know it's time for you to do something with your life, you can do it.

And it worked for me and I'm sure it'll work for you.

And I've always thanked Dean Woodruff for giving me that little shove out the door.

(audience laughs) - Well, senator, you first ran for Congress in 1960.

But you'd run for, you'd been, served in office before, what got you interested in public service?

- A Democratic law librarian.

In law school, in Washburn, convinced I think four of us, three of us, name is Beth Bowers, wonderful lady, she passed away about seven years ago, said, "We need," just like I'm saying to people now with the Dole scholars and others, "We need more public service, more young people," and that was her theme, "We need to have more young people involved."

And so she talked to three or four of us into running for the state legislature and we didn't know anything about politics, we didn't even know what party we were in.

(laughs) I went home and counted and there were more Republicans than Democrats in Russell, so I became a committed Republican.

(audience laughs) Beth Bowers was the spark.

And I think two of us out of the four elected were elected and we sort of been in politics since.

- The rest is history.

- Definitely.

- That shows that one person can make a difference in your life that lasts forever.

- Senator Elizabeth Dole, you were part of the pioneering generation of women in the '60s and '70s, women leaders in the '60s and '70s, what unique challenges did you face?

- Well, it's interesting, because my career sort of spans this last wave of the women's movement and you think about all the qualified women who have come into the workforce over that time.

But back at the point that I went to law school, as was mentioned earlier.

I entered Harvard Law School in the fall of '62 and there were 550 in the class and 24 were female.

And the very first day of class, I can still, I remember where I was standing in Langdale Hall library and one of my male classmates came up to me and he said, "Elizabeth, what are you doing here?

What are you doing in this law school?"

He said, "Don't you realize there are men who give their right arm to be here?

Men who would use their legal education."

Now that's how I was greeted.

Those were the first words I heard.

That man is now a senior partner in a Washington law firm and every now and then I tell that story around town.

(audience laughs) In fact I-- - [Bob] She won't give me his name.

- I love to tell that story around town.

And then the guys will call up and they say, "Elizabeth, please, tell me I'm not the one who said it.

Tell me I didn't say it."

(audience laughs) I'm just letting him sweat it out.

(laughs) But I remember that vividly, of course.

And then as I came along through, when I was on the Federal Trade Commission, I was one of five commissioners and yet I never thought of it, and I don't think they thought of it, as being the female commissioner.

We just work together.

I got to the Department of Transportation and I had 100,000 in the workforce and I said, "Okay, how many are female?"

And they said, "19% of your staff are female."

Okay, this is 1983, and I said, "In 1967, when the Department of Transportation was established, how many women were in the department?"

18.5%.

From '67 to '83, they'd come up a half a percentage point.

So we went to work and the women thought, "Oh sure, every secretary says they're gonna help the women."

So we got the women to work with us to put together a 10-point program, rotational assignments.

If you were at the Federal Railroad Administration, maybe go over to the FAA or the highway safety administration.

Rotational.

And we had rewards structures, we had developmental programs, sort of like in the corporate world to help women move up the ladder into managerial positions.

And, Bill, one of the things that I love, this has happened to me twice, going through an airport and someone comes running after me, "Secretary Doles, Secretary Dole!"

And I stop, and she says, "You know, I'm now the manager of this airport and it's because I went through your women's program at DOT."

So we still have to help and network and do these things.

One more, this is an interesting little story.

I was working one-- - How long is it?

(audience laughs) - That's not funny.

You better watch out.

You're gonna get in big trouble.

(laughs) You're gonna be in the doghouse pretty soon.

Who's gonna fix your dinner?

- I'm glad I'm not on the jet on the way back.

(all laugh) - Well, I was working for a Democratic senator one summer and Margaret Chase Smith was just down the hall and I had the gall, I was just a young Duke graduate then, and I asked to see her and I went in and she was wonderful.

She really helped me and she was the one who inspired me to go to law school.

But she was known as the conscience of the Senate, wonderful woman, but she told me this little story.

She said, "You know, I was just with a group of female reporters and they were asking me, 'Senator Smith, if you woke up one morning and found yourself in the White House, what would you do?'"

And she said, I replied, "I'd do right away to the president's wife and apologize.

(audience laughs) And then I'd go home."

(audience laughs) See how things have changed over that period of my career really.

So I think being the first woman to head a branch of the armed services was an interesting challenge.

But I find people in the Coast Guard now, who tell me they really loved those days and so, I don't think they looked at me differently because I was a woman.

And of course, all of it has been changing enormously so that things really are quite different now.

We've not reached with the millennium, but we're getting there.

- Senator Bob Dole, you've lived since the war, you've lived with a disability, how has that motivated you?

How have you used that to motivate you, but also how has that affected your attitudes towards others with disabilities?

- Well, let's see, there's a saying, "Strength through adversity."

And I think of these, I spent a lot of time visiting young soldiers now, and a lot of time visiting soldiers my age, 85, 86, 82, 84, because we never wanna forget our veteran, and not only forget our veterans and everyone forget our generation because not everybody could wear a uniform.

Somebody had to teach and farm and all these things.

But I wrote a book called "One Soldier's Story" and it's really, I mean, one in the act of bravery that I did, that I had one round left and there were 500 coming at me and all this stuff, but I think I conducted myself as patient.

If there's any heroism, it was how I handled my recovery, because, let's see, I couldn't walk, I couldn't feed myself, and a lot of people have gone through this, not just me, and so it takes a lot of patience, a lot of perseverance and a lot of help from your friends and your family.

And so then I was able to walk and later I could, with a buttonhook, buttoners, shirt and things like that.

So as long as you, there are incremental steps, they're not big steps you take, as probably some know in the audience.

And with these little step, you're encouraged to try to take the next step.

I think I have two heroes.

One is Eisenhower and one is Roosevelt.

Eisenhower, for reasons different.

But Roosevelt because of what he did with a disability, his disability.

And at that time they kept it from the press.

I think the only three photographs public of Roosevelt were these braces on.

The public press wasn't, I don't wanna say anything, but the press didn't-- (audience laughs) Privacy, they believed in privacy.

And he was entitled privacy.

So those are sort of my two heroes.

But we do a lot of work with the disabled, did a lot of work with the American Disabilities Act.

And now I need to find somebody in the audience who can fix my knees.

(audience laughs) - He also visits veterans' hospitals everywhere he goes.

Everywhere.

And just no press, just quietly.

We were on vacation in North Carolina and the first place he wanted to go was the Asheville Veterans Hospital.

So it's just a matter of, it's just a part of Bob Dole to do those things and to, at the World War II Memorial, to meet people coming in on Honor Flight, Honor Air, the Honor Flight Network.

These are veterans who've been provided a charter plane and they come in and they visit their memorial for the first time-- - Doesn't cost them a dime.

- World War II.

- I met 400 veterans yesterday.

- And that's about the 76th time he's been at the memorial to meet them.

(audience applauds) - But I might put a plug in there, because if you're father's living or your grandfather, there's no greater gift.

I can tell you, I've seen thousands of these World War II veterans who felt that they were forgotten, that they were old and they were sort of out of the mainstream, nobody ever did anything with them or for them.

And so they started this program where you can, had a group in Kansas two days ago come to Washington, see the memorials, have lunch, tell war stories, whatever, get back in the plane.

You do it all on one day and it doesn't cost you one cent.

And it's all money given by people like you.

Well, Elizabeth, tell them about the letter that this one person wrote.

- Yeah, it's a beautiful letter.

He just wrote in and he said, he said that he was in his 80s, mid-80s I think, and he said, "I've just been kind of going through depression.

I just wonder, has my life really meant anything?"

And he said, "I got on this plane flight to Washington to see the World War II Memorial," and he said, "You know," he said, "I realized I think I really have accomplished something in life.

There's a legacy that I'm proud to leave to my children."

I remember when Bob was working so hard to get it built and there was a group called Save the Mall and they didn't want it to be built on the mall.

And that was just outrageous.

I mean, who saved the mall?

The men and women of World War II saved the mall.

There wouldn't be any mall without... (audience applauds) So I think he has a great legacy to pass on.

That's the point.

- This man, he says it's the most exciting thing that happened since his wedding.

(audience laughs) Now, that may not be-- - I don't remember that part of the letter.

- May not be unanimous in the room.

But it just changed his life.

And he probably, see, thought he got a few years left and he finally convinced himself that he did make a contribution.

I don't know what he did.

He could've been a private, he could've been a general.

But he was there when he was called and then things sorta drifted away and he thought like nobody cared about him.

- It's a great legacy.

- It had changed his mind.

- How did the two of you meet?

Talk a little bit about that, your courtship, but also talk about what it was like as essentially newlyweds, less than a year later to be in a vice presidential campaign?

- Shall I start?

Yeah, I think I will start.

- She can start but there's a time limit, yeah.

(audience laughs) - We all know that.

I'm gonna talk very fast.

I was working in the White House Consumer Affairs Office and I had a wonderful mentor, a woman who was just terrific, and she wanted to go up to talk to the chairman of the Republican National Committee to get a consumer plank in the platform, the 1972 platform.

And so I went with her and we walked in to this gentleman's office, who was in the Senate, and he was not at his desk, he was over on the Senate floor.

So the door opens up and in comes Bob Dole.

First time I'd ever seen him.

I looked up and I thought, "Gee, he's a good-looking guy."

He says he wrote my name on the back of his blotter.

But anyway, this was, I think it was about, oh maybe four months later.

He was traveling the country at that point.

And I saw him again at the convention.

And then he called me.

And we talked for 40 minutes.

We had all this mutual interests and friends and so on and then he said goodbye.

And then about two weeks later, he called again and we talked for quite a while and he said, "Well, maybe we could have dinner sometime."

And I said, "Well, that would be very nice."

And he said goodbye.

(all laugh) And it was on the third call that he asked me out to dinner.

And what I realized was he's a little shy, and I like that.

He's not somebody chasing women around Capitol Hill.

I really liked that very much.

- I think it's looking for a nice, cheap place too.

(all laugh) - But one other point here that I have to make.

Bob came down to North Carolina to visit my parents.

- [Bob] Don't tell that one.

Is that your mother?

- Yeah.

- No, I don't like that.

- Oh no, I do.

(audience laughs) I've already started.

I have to tell it now.

(audience laughs) Plus it ties in with the last question that Bill asked you.

Bob, unbeknownst to me, went down, he left his room one morning and went down where my mother was fixing breakfast in the kitchen, and he had a towel over his arm that had been disabled in the war, and he went up to my mother and he said, "Ms. Hanford, I think you ought to see my problem."

And mother said, "Bob, that is not a problem.

It's a badge of honor."

I think that said a lot about both of 'em.

(audience applauds) - Senator Elizabeth Dole, you served in cabinets for two presidents, but you chose to put your husband first and resigned from the cabinet to support the 88 presidential campaign, why?

- Well, it was an easy choice.

And some of the women's organizations really gave me a little grief on this and said, "Why are you leaving your career to be the good little wife, to stand by your husband's side and smile?"

And so I tried to make a point out of this that I did not have to do this, I chose to do it.

And I think that's what we women have been fighting for, is to have the right to do what we feel is best for ourselves and for our families.

And it doesn't have to be a paid job that you're in.

In fact, my career continued.

Because, as it turned out, I had my own airplane and I had a staff and I was out there answering the questions and being a part of the campaign and so I learned and grew a lot by having that particular responsibility.

And can you imagine saying to your husband, "Well, you're gonna run for president, goodbye, good luck, and I'll see you when it's over."

I mean, I wanted to do this.

I wanted to be a part of the campaign.

And to me, it was an honor to do so and it also was a great education and I think that's what it's all about.

Being able to make the choice that you feel is best and having the ability to do that, to feel that you can be flexible.

And certainly that's, I've been, I took a leave of absence when Bob was running for vice president from the Federal Trade Commission and they were understanding.

We checked it out that it was okay with the hat Jack for me to do that.

And I had a couple of months leave of absence there so it's worked fine for me to sort of, be able to step out and to be a part of his campaigns.

- Yeah, I really wanted to be president.

I used to drive by the White House a lot.

(audience laughs) And look in the windows in the street, see if I can see anything (audience laughs) going on.

- Senator Bob Dole, you faced lots of really tough decisions in your career, but I know one of the toughest that you had and I'd like you to speak just a little bit about it.

Was your decision to actually resign your Senate seat and your leadership to run for president in '96?

- Yeah, and some of my Kansas friends haven't forgiven me yet because I could've stayed, I could've worked it out and, had I lost, gone back as the Senate leader.

But it seemed to me that once you're nominated for whatever, doesn't have to be politics, your student body president or whatever, when you've kinda reached the high point in any career, then you shouldn't try to have it both ways and say, "Well, I'm gonna figure out a way I can protect myself so I can go back and be the Republican leader in the Senate."

We could've done that very easily.

Plus, to be very frank about it, I thought it would resonate with the voters because the voters generally justified and thinking that people in politics never have enough, they always want more of this, more of this, more power and then they don't properly use it.

And I thought, "Well, here's one guy who's gonna give up something."

And I know it would frustrated some of my friends because it was good for Kansas to have me as the majority leader and to decide what was gonna happen, what the agenda would be and what was gonna pass or not pass.

And I knew that I was probably letting people down in a way, but I felt that, well, if it works, then they'll forgive me.

If it doesn't work, they'll forgive me after a few years.

(audience laughs) And one thing I learned is that when you get out of politics, your numbers go up.

(audience laughs) People get why they're mad at you.

And they said, "Well, that guy wasn't so bad after all," things like that.

But I certainly owe the people of Kansas a big debt of gratitude to think that somebody, and probably somebody here from Russell, but somebody from a small town, let's put it that way, could get elected to the legislature and then the Congress, and once we had to do it by serving Dole pineapple juice, because one of my opponents was named Doyle and people didn't know him and they didn't know me, so we had ladies with white blouses and red skirts serve Dole pineapple juice up and down Main Street and Keith Sebelius, who I beat by 900 votes, said he was drowned in pineapple juice.

(all laugh) Well, we had it covered, we had a lot of fun.

We had covered wagons and everything.

But just to think that I was elected six times, and by you, probably not all of you, I'll talk to you later, (audience laughs) and I really think that the longer I serve, the better senator I became, because I recognize that there are problems in other states that we don't have in Kansas.

And if I'm gonna turn a blind eye to their problems, they're gonna turn a blind eye to our problems.

But-- - I'll just break in to say, he was also elected six times by his Senate colleagues to be their leader and I think that's huge.

(audience applauds) - Now to stop, the important thing is to be elected by the people out here.

I'd be their leader.

And it was hard when you disagree with friends that I knew for a long time on a particular issue.

And hopefully we were able to work it out.

Because when you're the leader, you have to do things that you might not normally do to help your colleagues.

I mean, if you don't wanna be leader, there are a lot of people who do.

And if you don't wanna carry the flag for your party, there are 50 others who'd be happy to.

But in any way it was a great opportunity and experience and I enjoyed every minute of it.

And some days when I watch C-SPAN, I wish I were back.

(laughs) (faint voice talking) - How has... (audience applauds) How has partisanship and civility changed since both of you went to Washington, D.C.?

- Well, during the years that I was serving in the executive branch, and also at the Red Cross, and by the way, when we're talking about the challenges earlier, I need to add a footnote there because I got to the Red Cross in 1991 and you know what I found out?

I was the first woman to head the Red Cross since Clara Barton in 1881.

(audience laughs) Clara and me.

- I wanna add.

- We're going off the subject, but we'll be back.

- You didn't take any pay the first year because you wanna demonstrate that if you're gonna be a volunteer, the president ought to be a volunteer too, which I thought was a noble act.

- Well-- - I could have used the money.

(all laugh) - But during those years, I can remember going up to the Congress and talking with Senator Stevens, Ted Stevens, and talking with Senator Inouye, who'd actually been wounded in Italy and just very near where Bob was wounded, and they both ended up in the Senate.

And he's a Democrat from Hawaii.

I can certainly remember many times working on the age 21 drinking rule when I was at the Department of Transportation, working with Senator Lautenberg of New Jersey, Democrat, and we just worked together.

These were issues that were important, that were critical.

Selling that freight railroad, which took us three years.

I mean, you had to have a lot of support on both sides of the aisle.

And then it seems to me, in recent years, that it's become much more ruckus and less civility and this thing of, and when something is said that really is unkind, such as referring to the president as lying.

That's beyond the pale, that's over the top for me.

You respect the office.

So I can tell you that two senators, who were, one had a lot of seniority and has recently left, but he said, just in the last 24 months, that he'd never seen anything like the way the Senate had spiraled down; and another person who's been there for quite some time has said, "I've never seen, this is the worst I've ever seen."

So I think we need to do an awful lot to join hands, to work together for the good of the people, to remember that public service is a noble profession.

I mean, you feel like it's almost combat now and it's, yes, you have your differences and you can argue about it and you can even get upset with somebody, but before dinner's over you're probably talking about the next issue.

And so I do think we have to work hard at getting that civility back the way it should be.

- I'll give you a good example.

- But I'm not quite finished.

(audience laughs) I got one more thing.

And that is that right now, in terms of putting healthcare going on reconciliation, we all hear that, what that means, if that happens, is that the other side, the Republicans, will not have a chance to be involved at all in how the healthcare plan will come forward.

They won't be able to offer amendments.

They won't be able to pass with 51 votes instead of the 60, which gives you a chance to offer amendments and so on.

I think that would be a big mistake.

- Well, I think, just following that point, I went back and checked all the major piece of legislation, Social Security Act of 1983, the American Disabilities Act, some of the farm legislation, some of the cruelty to animals legislation, things that I was active in, school luncheon and things with George McGovern, another loser, and, (audience laughs) but a great friend.

- Presidential loser.

- Yeah, but there's some people, I think, compromise is, they say, "It's either my way or the highway," if I can't have everything, I'm not gonna bode for anything.

Now, Ronald Reagan used to tell me, I was a Republican leader, he said, "Bob, if you can get me 70%, take it.

I'll get the next 30% next year."

We've got people in both parties who are purists, they won't vary, totally rigid on any issue and there are some issues you gotta be public, totally rigid.

But you can't be a one-issue person in either party and say, "Well, I'm not a Republican because of the abortion issue."

That's a good example.

And I don't think either party was built on one issue.

When I started politics, after Frank Carlson, if you remember him, conservative main stream, middle of the road, I don't know, whatever, was someone who believed in keeping your taxes low and restraining spending.

And that was it.

And now, you've got all these other things, same-sex marriage and abortion issue, and we've had busing and you all can make a list of 20 things that are sort of litmus test.

Both parties believe in what they believe in and my only hope is that we have more participation by people in this room.

It's not a spectator sport.

You can't sit on the sidelines and then complain after it's over, that this happened or that happened.

But we're the greatest country on the face of the earth, don't let the evening news tell you anything different.

We are the greatest country.

(audience applauds) - I have one last question then we're gonna open it up to our community questions with the student members of the Student Advisory Board.

But the GOP suffered two devastating defeats in the last two elections and just this week a friend of both yours, Senator Arlen Specter switched parties.

What's the future of the Republican Party?

- And you're looking right at me, so I'll start off.

First of all, I was disappointed.

And obviously it makes it difficult for the Republicans because it brings it close to that 60 votes.

And of course, the Norm Coleman race is still out there being appealed.

But you look back through the years and after Goldwater was defeated and they said, "Oh, the party's dead," well, the party came back.

And then after Watergate, the party's dead.

Well, the party came back.

The same thing happened in 1992 with that election, and yet the party came back.

And so I think it's a matter of the ideas and being able to articulate them well.

And one thing that I feel very strongly about, I think that we need real reform.

When I was on the Federal Trade Commission, we went through all of our regulations, everything, and we found that some of them were no more relevant anymore.

I mean, some of them are regulating industries that didn't even exist anymore.

But there were some that just had outworn their usefulness.

And I think it's time that we do that, that we go through and do it from America's perspective, not Republican perspective, but really go through.

And when times are tough, and they certainly are economically now, we've got a difficult time, this is the time when we could really do somethin' like that and try to reign in a lot of the excessive spending where it isn't doing anybody any good.

It's outdated, it's irrelevant, it needs to be dropped, that program, or change.

So I think we should do this.

(audience applauds) - Somebody mentioned Arlen Specter, who's a friend of mine.

He went to high school in Russell, in Kansas.

He was on the state debate championship team.

I thought Nixon should've hired him during Watergate.

In fact, I went to the attorney general, John Mitchell and said, "You oughtta hire this bright young attorney in Philadelphia and he'll clean up this mess and you can still be president."

But I couldn't sell it to him because he was a Democrat, and my view was it shouldn't make any difference what party you're in.

So when Arlen announces, I sent him an email, because when you drive to Russell, there's a sign there, Bob Dole, and I told him we'd remove his name, (audience laughs) "Your name has been removed in the sign and we're gonna put up pictures of these other people tomorrow.

And then I'm headed for Pennsylvania, where I'm gonna announce as a candidate for Senate in the Republican Party."

(all laugh) But Arl and I are good friends and he has a great sense of humor.

But he called me up and he said, "Bob, we've been friends forever."

I said, "Arlen, I'm not serious."

(laughs) And then he never voted with us anyway.

The bottom line is that we really don't lose much because he's a very independent person and he'll give the Democrats fits just as he gave Republicans fits.

(audience laughs) But I think he is so smart.

If I ever got in trouble, I'd run all the way to find him.

But he happens to be a liberal.

If I live in Pennsylvania, I might have a different philosophy too, and big labor unions and other things.

But Arlen has made a lot of contributions in the health area.

He'll do the same as a Democrat.

He'll vote about the same.

He told President Obama, "I don't get the feeling I'm gonna be an automatic number 60."

He's my friend.

And I don't like what he did, but he's still my friend.

- Very good.

(audience applauds) We should have a member of our Student Advisory Board walking out at any second and we'll start our questions from the community.

- Are you concerned that because of the increasing hostility in today's political debates, many highly qualified people will simply opt out of competing for public service positions and in turn the public will have to select from a lesser qualified slate of candidates?

- Well, I certainly want to urge young people to consider public service and to come in and make a difference.

I think people are focused now, I really do, on what this has become in terms of the rancor and so on and there's a determination to try to do something about it.

I know friends of mine in the Senate feel, "Okay, this is it.

We've really got to have a better environment."

And it takes some of the joy from public service.

So it's now highlighted, it's focused on.

And I can't tell you what a great gift it can be to feel that you're involved in something bigger than yourself, that you found a sense of mission, which inspires you and just, I think about Jack Kemp, he had such enthusiasm because he was really devoted to what he was doing, he believes so much in his cause.

And so when I'm on campuses, I often say, "Find that which turns you on.

Find that which gives you that sense of mission and that sense of passion."

And I do believe that public service is a noble profession and that you can find it there at many levels, the state level, local level, becoming involved with a candidate that you feel is a person of integrity, a person who is gonna go about it the right way and then really working hard for that person.

And then you'll find you'll be noted, they'll note what a good job you've done and the next thing you know opportunities are opening up for you.

So we can't let this set us back.

We've got to move forward and be determined that we're gonna get it right.

- Oh, let's say in the field I was in, in politics, I never thought it was, how I voted, I mean, voting is important, but I never thought people in Russell, Kansas were waiting with bated breath to see I voted on the Chinese treaty or something.

What they wanna know is if I answered their mail and if I'd worked on their VA or their welfare or their Social Security problem.

- [Elizabeth] Yeah, good point.

- And we had a rule that we had to have a letter in the mail, we call it a 36-hour turnaround, even though we didn't have the answer, that person knew we were checking on it.

Now we may have made mistakes in some cases.

And so we're representative, we're your errand boys so to speak, and we're not there to make these grand statements, some are, some had the responsibilities in their committees, but I think some people get carried away with, I have the record of being on meet the press.

Well, what did that do for me?

(audience laughs) - I wanna tell the airbag story real quickly, okay?

- Oh, yeah (mumbles).

- Okay, Bill?

Okay.

Bob accompanied me when I was to go before the Senate Commerce Committee for my hearing, when I'd been nominated to be secretary of transportation.

And so what does he say?

He says, "I regret that I have but one wife to give for my country's infrastructure."

(audience laughs) Paraphrasing Nathan Hale.

Now, that was fine, he's okay.

But then he says, "I think the Federal Highway Administration might be able to use Elizabeth's biscuit recipe for filling potholes."

(all laugh) And that's when I said, "I know all about airbags, because I have been driving around with one for years."

(audience laughs) (audience applauds) He stole my story.

- We gotta have a little laugh.

- A little fun.

- A little fun in life.

- That's right.

- [Bill] Okay, let's have our next question.

- In the Senate, you were well-known for your great sense of humor, which of your colleagues made you laugh the most?

(man laughs) - Pat Roberts.

- Yeah.

(audience laughs) - I mean, I gotta keep reading up to keep up with him anymore.

But Pat Roberts, Dale Bumpers from Arkansas, Alan Simpson from Wyoming.

But they told these long, long stories.

I don't like to tell those.

I like to get it over with.

(audience laughs) But we've written, well, we compiled a book on humor.

It's called "Great Political Wit," and the subtitle is "Laughing almost all the way to the White House."

And it's a book that we compiled that it became a best-seller.

And we had so much fun with that.

We wrote another one called "Great Presidential Wit" and the subtitle was "I wish I was in this book."

(all laugh) So I don't know, I've always had-- - Winston Churchill and Lady Astor.

- Pardon?

- Winston Churchill and Lady Astor.

- Yeah, yeah, well, that remind me of the one book, the greatest line was, probably not true and you probably heard of it, but apparently Winston Churchill was having a big dinner and he and Lady Astor with the same table and they got in a big, big verbal fisticuff and she finally, in desperation, looked at him and said, "Winston, if you were my husband, I would poison your coffee."

He said, "If you were my wife, I would drink it."

(audience laughs) That good, clean fun.

And like Reagan said, he walked into a room like this, he said, "Boy, am I getting a lot of flak lately, since I ordered those B-1s."

He said, "How was I to know they're airplanes?"

(audience laughs) He said, "I thought they were vitamins for the troops."

And whenever you think of Ronald Reagan, he got more votes because of his personality and he's willing to laugh at himself, not somebody else.

But to poke fun at himself, it just sorta swayed people.

If they were kinda on the fence, he could bring 'em to the White House and chance their mind.

- [Man] This question is for Senator Elizabeth Dole and was submitted anonymously.

- [Elizabeth] Uh-oh.

- Over the course of your distinguished career, you have worked both inside the government as cabinet secretary and US senator and outside for the Red Cross, which sector is more rewarding and where do you think a person can have the most impact?

- Oh, that's one where I simply would not want to choose one or the other because I think that Red Cross really is another form of service to the public.

And each of the positions were challenging, no question about it.

And I would, I'd say that in terms of volunteering, Bob mentioned that my first year at the Red Cross I served as a volunteer because I had so much respect for the volunteers.

You couldn't have a Red Cross without the 1.3 million volunteers.

So there's an opportunity right there to become involved now while you're still in school or whatever else you might be doing.

But we had to undertake a number of changes at the Red Cross.

For example, our chapters had never been rechartered.

And so we had a set of standards.

You must meet this standard or you're gonna lose your charter.

And a lot of them lost their charters.

We had a new field service and every five years now they have to be rechartered.

And also with disaster relief, we went through disaster revitalization because we needed to have like a war room where it never shuts down and the press can be, they can call and find out what's going on and you can move your people and your equipment wherever its needed with all these disasters because Red Cross handles about 66,000 disasters a year, from the big earthquakes to the house fires.

And we also had to change the blood program and this took seven years.

It was very decentralized.

And this went back to World War II.

That's when the Red Cross first started collecting and testing and distributing blood.

But it needed to be centralized, to change the whole way it was done so you had standard operating procedures.

And we were regulated by the FDA.

So I think each of the jobs was challenging in its own right.

Labor department was, child labor laws were being violated.

There were all sorts of things that we needed to do.

But you go into a position and you look at, "Okay, what are the five or six or seven things that cry out for change that need to be done," and then you assemble an excellent team around you, people who share your passion for getting these things done.

And then, come hell or high water, you're gonna make those things happen.

And I would say that certainly government offers that opportunity, politics and so does the American Red Cross and many other wonderful charitable organizations.

- Okay, next question.

- Hello, my name is Chelsea Mertz and I am a junior from Hoyt, Kansas.

This question is for Senator Bob Dole and it is also anonymously submitted.

You have accomplished an awful lot since leaving the Senate in 1996, including writing a memoir and raising money for the World War II Memorial on the National Mall, which activities are you particularly proud of?

- I think raising $195 million for the World War II Memorial.

(audience applauds) Now let me make it clear, I didn't raise it by myself.

We had a lot of volunteers, people in Kansas.

But our generation is a little different.

And I'd see some people in our generation, we said, "If we can't raise the money, we're not gonna build it.

We're not gonna go up to Congress and take money away from some double amputee.

He'll get less if we take money for bricks and mortar."

And so that was our goal and it was hard to reach and we were sued as, by a couple of veterans who said we shouldn't build this memorial on sacred ground.

So they had a group called Save the Mall.

Our defense was we already saved it in World War II.

How many times do you wanna save it?

And the judge finally ruled in our favor, but it costs us $30 million for legal fees and all that.

- That's terrible.

I didn't know that.

- So the point is the government gave us $5 million for start-up, and we have interest of course, and so we raised a lot of money.

But anyway, it's built, it's wonderful.

And we have this great program called Honor Flight, where if your father or grandfather or somebody wants to make this trip, it's the most emotional thing that ever happened.

- It really is.

- And there'll be tears in your eyes all day.

But I try to meet every flight that comes.

Yesterday we had, I think, six states.

A week ago, in Saturday, we had 11 states with 800 veterans.

But just such a wonderful thing to be there and to see these, I don't wanna say old guys, fellows who've gotten older, (audience laughs) what fun they're having.

It's not all gloom and doom and people sit around with a box of Kleenex.

They generally do.

But-- - That too.

- They have a lot of fun and they're proud of what they did.

Where would we be without that generation?

I know there are a lot of young people that have doubts about our country.

I was there 37 years and I never got a single letter or a phone call or a meeting, somebody stop me, saying, "Bob, get me out of this awful country."

I never got one, not one letter.

(audience applauds) And so that tells you something.

- [Elizabeth] A couple more questions, I think.

- But I've had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of letters saying, "Bob, can you help get me into this country?"

So don't be, we still have basic values and we still live by those values.

We all make mistakes and we try to redeem ourselves.

So I'm very happy being an American.

- [Elizabeth] Yes.

- Well senators, thank you both so very much today.

This has been a fabulous afternoon that we'll never forget.

We really appreciate it.

- Oh, thank you.

(audience applauds) Thanks.

Oh, Monroe is great.

Oh, look at this, it's so nice.

(upbeat lively music)

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