Word: doled
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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These men-Howard Baker, George Bush, Philip Crane, John Connally and Robert Dole-spent years of their lives in their efforts. They used up tens of millions of dollars of other people's money (plus a fair amount of their own), traveled hundreds of thousands of miles, gave tens of thousands of largely repetitive speeches, ate uncounted meals of numbing mediocrity, and largely abandoned their families and their usual pursuits. All in vain...
Each of them entered the race believing he had a reasonable chance of winning. Says Dole: "I have a really good record in the Senate as far as food stamps, handicapped, or nutrition or health care. I thought naively you could build a constituency with farmers and business people and health professionals and the handicapped and whatever, but we could...
Pressure from single-issue political groups was also a strain. "I regret even going to that gun thing," Dole says of his appearance before a New Hampshire gun owners' group, at which then Republican Candidate John Anderson was booed. "What I should have done, at least someone should have done it, was to get up and reprimand them for their treatment of Anderson. They were outright rude to Anderson because he had a different view . . . I resented, after I left, that sort of quizzing in public, trying to lock us in on every little detail that the National Rifle...
...limiting the time during which private contributions will be matched by federal funds and limiting the time when the federal funds can be spent. Baker also believes the endless campaign puts officeholders with other obligations at a disadvantage, while those without jobs can devote years to the campaign. Dole agrees, lamenting that he felt obligated to spend much of his time in the Senate. Says he: "I could have left the Senate. But you can't have it both ways. I learned that...
...believe we were propelled into the race," says Dole. "I think we just sort of kept trudging along, probably feeling right along that we would take a stab at it, hoping that Reagan wouldn't run." Unable to travel fulltime, Dole believes, he failed to get enough attention from the press and from television, and thus failed "to hit a home run" in the early caucuses and primaries. His, he thinks, was a failure caused by circumstance, not his own flaws. Says he: "I don't think I was ever really rejected, because I was never out front...