Dole Resigns From Senate

Regardless of his motives, and discounting the expected spewing of political partisanship, Bob Dole’s resignation from the Senate to run full-time for the presidency is a rare highlight to be dwelled upon (May 16).

Those elected to public office are certainly privileged and powerful enough, with the super-advantage of incumbency. They should be required to stick to the job, give us a day’s work for a day’s pay and tacitly rely on their past performance during election time. Anything beyond that must be accomplished on their own time.

Dole is making an honest run for the political roses.

DANIEL B. JEFFS

Apple Valley

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I admire Dole for pursuing his vision, but I don’t think that he should have quit his day job.

GENE HERD

Van Nuys

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(As usual) Dole has it backwards. He should have resigned his futile campaign for president, to focus on his legislative duties. (On second thought, we’re probably better off without him in the Senate, too.)

MARK FLETCHER

Los Angeles

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Dole was an ineffective leader of the Republican anti-consumer, anti-worker and anti-environment agenda in the Senate and wouldn’t do any better in the White House. The voters need to keep repeating to Dole, “There’s no place like home,” and come November, he can grab Toto, click his heels and go back to Kansas.

BRUCE W. McKELVIE

Long Beach

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As a 69-year-old lifelong Democrat, I strongly resent William Bradley’s subtle-as-a- rain-wreck belittling of President Clinton (Commentary, May 16), especially in connection with, of all people, Dole. He is no doubt too young to remember the Dole of 1976, shamelessly and with relish playing the Spiro Agnew role of hatchet man for Gerald Ford, bashing Democrats right and left as soft on communism, warmongers, socialists and on and on. Or the Dole of 1965 who ferociously fought to stop enactment of Medicare as a member of the House of Representatives. The same Dole who’s being criticized today for his “lack of an agenda and vision.”

Dole doesn’t dare spell out his real agenda, because it coincides with that of Newt Gingrich and the rest of that Republican wrecking crew. That agenda is nothing less than the dismantlement of every progressive measure begun under Franklin Roosevelt and continued by other Democrats.

CARROLL C. GEWIN

Fullerton

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Michael Genovese (Commentary, May 13) feels there should be an age limit on the presidency since an adversary might become “emboldened” and/or the country might be “devastated” by a stock market slump should the president become ill.

During my half-century of observation, in every case the “emboldening” of our adversaries has been the direct result of having a healthy wimp in office. We’ve had many brief presidential-illness stock slumps but none came within orders of the magnitude of being “devastating.” I also seem to recall that by and large the older presidents have turned in the best performances!

JOHN K. WILSON

Rosamond

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I was angered to read “Prescription for Dole: Do Less, Talk More” (Column Right, May 12). George Will’s advice to Dole is to “voice America’s anxieties about the coarsening of the culture and the Balkanizing of the citizenry.” What exactly does “coarsening of the culture” mean? Will underlines these code words by describing Hawaii’s pending Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriages and California’s racial preferences ban on the November ballot.

Why does he metaphorically compare these American democratic processes of negotiating citizens’ rights with the warring factions within the former Yugoslavia (“Balkanization”)? Does the refinement of American culture depend on the suppression of the diversity in America? He does a disservice to reasoned con- servatism.

JUDITH KADOYA

Walnut