Word: dole
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Dole had wanted to be President ever since running with Gerald Ford in 1976. He tried hard in 1980 and harder in 1988 but failed famously, as Ronald Reagan and George Bush won the G.O.P. nomination in those years. "I never thought I'd be doing this again," Dole said in the summer of 1995. "But things just kind of came together to make one more try for the thing...
...Dole's mind, the most promising development was the very one that would eventually help undermine his candidacy: his party's recapture of both the House and the Senate a year earlier. Dole was once again majority leader. Back at the "center of the action," as he described it, Dole thought anew about the White House and wondered, as others...
After the tortured decision to make the race (everything he does involves an agony of self-induced second-guessing), Dole moved first to develop a decent working relationship with Newt Gingrich, the Republican revolution's commander, who had effectively supplanted Clinton as America's dominant political force. Dole's relations with the new House Speaker were cordial, but the two men were neither close personal friends nor ideological allies...
Every presidential campaign begins long before the first primary votes are cast. The early maneuvering constitutes an invisible primary all its own. Money is raised, operatives are employed, momentum is gained--or isn't. For Dole, Gingrich's endorsement mattered most. "Newt had called Dole the tax collector of the welfare state," said Scott Reed, who was Dole's campaign manager. "Not only was [Gingrich] noodling about running for President himself, but he had the power back in '94 to diss Dole and end his chances. To win the nomination, we had to get well with him first...
...primary electorate of one, Gingrich was courted assiduously. Dole listened to his advice and deferred to him in meetings. "The only term to describe how we acted toward Newt" in those crucial preprimary months in 1995, says Reed, "is butt kissing." That alone may have been enough, but there was a good deal of self-interest involved too. Gingrich knew that supporting Dole could preclude a younger pretender from emerging, thus preserving the Speaker's post-'96 options if Dole lost. And if Dole won, Gingrich could function as the new Administration's chief policymaker, or so he reasoned...