At 72, Dole Has Healthy Respect for Age Issue

One day last fall, as he contemplated his third and probably final bid for the White House, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) asked longtime political strategist Lyn Nofziger whether age would be an issue in the 1996 presidential campaign.

“If I were your opponent’s adviser it would be,” said Nofziger, with typical candor.

“Well,” Dole told Nofziger with a wry smile, “we’re going to be talking a lot about maturity.”

Bob Dole will turn 72 today, celebrating his birthday with a $150,000 fund-raiser hosted by New York investment banker Henry Kravis and David Koch, the billionaire industrialist from Wichita, Kan.

If elected, Dole would be the oldest man ever to win the White House--older on taking office than Ronald Reagan was when he sought a second term. Dole is a prostate cancer survivor, his prostate was removed 3 1/2 years ago, and he still struggles with the effects of a devastating wound to his right arm caused by a grenade during World War II.

But he also is an energetic workaholic--one with virtually no interests outside political life--who looks much younger than his years.

Friday, Dole’s campaign office released the report of a recent physical examination and made Dole’s personal physician available for interviews. Dr. Charles Peck of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Dole’s doctor for the past 10 years, said the candidate was in “excellent health and good physical condition.”

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Peck said that nothing in Dole’s medical history would in any way affect his ability to withstand the rigors of a presidential campaign or the presidency itself.

In a recent lengthy interview, Dole said that before deciding to enter the race, he carefully considered the possibility that his age and medical history might become problems but that he now believes his opponents will not try to make the subject an issue. Dole stressed that he had not missed any work and has been in good health except for “that little kidney stone back in ’81 and the prostate thing” and he pledged that he would withdraw from the race if a serious health problem develops.

Despite Dole’s assertion that his age should not become an issue, references to it have already emerged on the campaign trail. Last weekend at the Republican National Committee meeting in Philadelphia, Lamar Alexander, the former governor of Tennessee, subtly hinted that Dole might be too old to be President.

“This is not a campaign about hot buttons or about whom we don’t like or what we’re against or about the presidency of Washington, D.C., or even a thank-you for a long-serving senator,” Alexander said. “It is a campaign about the future of this country. It comes at a time when we’re electing a President in 1996 who will be the President of the United States in the year 2000.” In the year 2000, Dole will be 77.

In addition to that sort of subtle gibe from rivals, Dole must contend with polls that have shown a significant percentage of voters have reservations about electing to the presidency a man already in his 70s.

At one point before he entered the race, Dole considered, but discarded, the idea of committing himself in advance to running for only one term in the White House. Asked now whether his age and medical record could have a bearing on the question of seeking a second term, he said:

“I don’t think so. Something could develop, but I try to be fairly realistic. It’s a very important thing we’re doing here. I’ve thought about it a lot. I’ve thought about who I am and how old I am and where I’m going. If I detected some problem, I’d be candid about it.”

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In the past, Dole has been especially sensitive about such personal matters as his physical condition. Self-conscious about the appearance of his scars, he exercises in private. When he travels, he frequently has a treadmill installed in his hotel room. And while he has been a senator for 26 years, he says he doesn’t “even know where the Senate gym is.”

The combination of sensitivity and temper has hurt Dole’s past campaign efforts. This time, however, he appears to be more comfortable as a candidate and more fatalistic in discussing such matters as his health.

Still tart-tongued, but more inclined to make a joke at his own expense than to gibe at others, Dole is calmer, more relaxed than the candidate whose temper led him to self-destruct in the past. He is now a man better prepared to go into battle because, more than in the past, he appears single-minded and passionate about his mission.

Always a hard-driving politician, today Dole eats, sleeps and breathes almost nothing but Senate politics and his presidential campaign. He seldom socializes and when he watches television, it’s apt to be news or political talk shows on C-SPAN or CNN.

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Even his marriage to Elizabeth Hanford Dole, who served in the Reagan Cabinet and now heads the American Red Cross, has developed a comfortable, undemanding quality that suits two people who thrive--first and foremost--on public lives and their separate schedules.

Bob and Elizabeth Dole have no children. On occasions when the Doles are together in their Watergate apartment in Washington, they may order Chinese food and watch old movies on cable. They seldom go out together; their schedules don’t mesh well enough for that, although he says, “she tries to drag me off to the movies now and then.”

The two also seldom travel together, but do take brief vacations together at their condominium in Bal Harbour, Fla. The senator has no hobbies, but loves the sun and works on his tan both in Washington and in Florida. On vacation he often walks an hour or so along the beach, usually alone and wearing bathing trunks and a shirt.

“We have a rich and full marriage,” Elizabeth Dole said. “Our careers mesh. We often can’t travel together, but we both love what we do. We feel passionate about it and don’t consider it paying a price to do public service.”

Dole’s first marriage was far different because, while his wife Phyliss remained at home caring for their young daughter Robin, Dole was constantly on the road. “I was one of these young congressmen that was going to save the world, I guess, by speaking every weekend somewhere,” he says now.

The marriage ended in divorce in 1972. The following year Dole began dating Elizabeth Hanford, then President Richard Nixon’s deputy assistant for consumer affairs. They were married in 1975.

Elizabeth Dole, who will be 59 later this month, is a highly regarded political figure in her own right. She has indicated she would eventually take a leave of absence from her post as president of the American Red Cross to campaign for her husband.

Recently, she has had serious medical problems. She is now recovering from an eight-hour operation performed July 6 that removed scar tissue that resulted from surgery last December. Aides said that the original operation had successfully removed a buildup of plaque in a carotid artery in her neck and that the most recent surgery also was successful.

Sen. Dole’s own health is a subject on which he is now far more philosophical than in the past. Sickness, he pointed out in the interview, is not confined to older people.

“Look around,” he said, “people get sick.” He cited younger colleagues such as Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.), 57, who was hospitalized briefly for chest pains earlier in April, and former Vice President Dan Quayle, 48, who was hospitalized twice earlier this year for treatment of blood clots in his lungs and removal of his appendix.

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“I guess with age it’s a bit more apt to happen,” Dole said, “but I sort of figure I had all mine and it will be smooth sailing. It took care of me early.”

Dole said his PSA (prostate-specific antigen) level now is zero, reflecting an absence of cancerous cells. “I check it [through blood tests] every six months.”

The senator’s cancer was detected early because of a PSA test. And since his surgery, he has made numerous speeches urging older men to undergo regular PSA tests. Because of his work promoting early detection, he jokingly referred to himself as the nation’s “prostate pinup boy.”

According to the report of his physical exam, Dole’s prostate cancer has shown no signs of recurring since his surgery in 1991. Beyond that, he has a moderately elevated cholesterol level, which is controlled by medication; suffers from diverticulitis, a common condition marked by a polyp on the colon, which is treated with a high-fiber diet and Metamucil, and takes Zantac twice a day for “gastroesophageal reflux”--heartburn, according to the doctor who conducted the physical, John F. Eisold, the attending physician for Congress.

Dole had a hernia repaired in December, 1994, without complications, the doctor said. His blood pressure is within the normal range (104/70) and he shows no signs of heart disease. He quit smoking more than a decade ago and drinks only occasionally, Eisold noted.

A trim 6-foot-1 and weighing 175 pounds, Dole has kept in shape for years by using a treadmill. A year ago he also bought a rowing machine although his wife told him she didn’t believe he could use it because it would require two good arms.

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“That’s the one motion I can do with both arms and I think I can strengthen my upper body with it,” declared Dole, who has gone on to build up his chest with the rowing machine.

The war injuries that crippled his right arm and hand also cost him his right kidney, came close to killing him and left him hospitalized for nearly four years. To this day, Dole sleeps with a roll of gauze in his right hand to keep the fingers separated. During the day he keeps a pencil in that hand and uses his left to shake hands with others.

In everyday life he doggedly tackles chores that normally require two good arms and sometimes finds even the most mundane tasks frustrating.

The senator, in a 1988 book he and his wife wrote, “The Doles/Unlimited Partners,” said that physical limitations had taught him “perseverance and humility.”

“Since I have trouble enough lining up shirt buttons with the proper holes, breaking a fingernail can be a minor crisis,” he wrote. “That’s when a buttonhook becomes handy. I’ve long since gotten over my early feelings of embarrassment. Often these days I write to youngsters who are themselves disabled. Every time I sign my name I’m reminded of my mother’s old axiom, ‘Can’t never could.’ ”

Times staff writer John M. Broder in Washington contributed to this story.

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The Age Factor

Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.) would be the oldest candidate to be elected President.

Oldest Presidents

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Term Age at inaug. Age at death Ronald Reagan 1981-89 69 -- William Harrison 1841 68 68 James Buchanan 1857-61 65 77 Zachary Taylor 1849-50 64 65 George Bush 1989-93 64 --

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Youngest Presidents

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Term Age at inaug. Age at death Teddy Roosevelt 1901-09 42 60 John F. Kennedy 1961-63 43 46 Bill Clinton 1993- 46 -- Ulysses S. Grant 1869-77 46 63 Grover Cleveland 1885-89 47 71

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On Average

Average age of a President at inauguration: 55

Source: Information Please Almanac