EXCERPTS: ‘Leadership Is a Combination of Background and Backbone’

Here are excerpts from Bob Dole’s final address to the Senate:

I want to thank all of my colleagues. And I want to go back 136 years ago this summer, a committee arrived in Springfield, Ill.--Sen. Simon probably knows the story--to formally notify Abraham Lincoln that the Republican Party had nominated him to run for president. And history records that Lincoln’s formal reply to the news was just two sentences long.

And then, as he surveyed the crowd of friends, as I survey the crowd of friends here in the galleries and on the floor, who had gathered outside his home, he said, “And now I will no longer defer the pleasure of taking each of you by the hand.”

So I guess as Lincoln said then, 136 years ago, if all of us who are leaving this year--and I’m only one--I know we have the same thoughts and the same emotions, if we could all go out and shake hands of all the people who are responsible for us being here, it would take a long, long time.

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I’ve learned one other thing that we’ve all learned in this chamber and this town; your word is your bond, and if you don’t keep your word around here, it doesn’t make much difference what your amendment may be or whatever it may be . . . .

It’s true in any business, any profession, but it’s more true in politics, because the American people are looking at us and they want us to tell the truth. Doesn’t mean we have to agree. Doesn’t mean we can’t have different motivations. And I learned that leadership is a combination of background and backbone. . . .

So I would just say that we all know how the political process works. And some people are cynical and some people think it’s awful and some people don’t trust us. But the people who watch us, I think, day in and day out have a better understanding.

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And I think sometimes around here we think we have to have everything, we’ve got to have total victory. ‘I won’t settle for less, it’s got to be my way or no way.’ Well, Ronald Reagan said once, ‘If I can get 90% of what I want, I’d call that a pretty good deal.’ Ninety percent isn’t bad, you get the other 10% later.

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And I’ve also been proud to be involved in nutrition programs. . . . I remember working with Sen. McGovern, and that crops up now and then in conservative articles, saying that I can’t be a conservative because I know George McGovern. I think George McGovern is a gentleman and has always been a gentleman. . . .

And I think, as I look at it, no first-class democracy can treat its people like second-class citizens. And I remember standing on this floor, managing the Martin Luther King holiday bill. We had the majority. It was a proud day for me. It’s now a national holiday.

And the first speech I ever made on the floor was April 14, 1969, about disabled Americans. And I--there are a lot of people in this room who’ve worked on that program . . .

We stood with many who couldn’t stand on their own, and the highlight was passing the Americans With Disabilities Act. Forty-three million Americans--they’re not all seriously disabled, but there are many in wheelchairs, many who can’t even sit up, and it was a very impressive sight to be at the White House the day that bill was signed by President Bush. . . .

We had a bipartisan commission on Social Security. We had met week after week, month after month, and it was about to go down the drain. . . .

And Sen. Moynihan and I, I think just by chance or fate or whatever, happened to meet in this aisle on my right. And we said, ‘we got to try one more time to rescue Social Security--one more time.’ It wasn’t a partisan issue. And we did. . . .

So we’d reached across partisan lines.

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So, I would close with--my hero was Dwight Eisenhower because he was our supreme commander. He also came from Abilene, Kan.; born in Texas, but quickly moved to Kansas. . . . this is his quote:

‘As we peer into society’s future--we, you and I and our government must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow.’

And I think those words are just as good today as they were 35 years ago when President Eisenhower spoke them. We can lead or we can mislead, as the people’s representatives, but whatever we do, we will be held responsible. We’re going to be held responsible and accountable. I’m not talking about 1996; I’m talking about any time, or the next century.

So the Bible tells us to everything there is a season, and I think my season in the Senate is about to come to an end. But the new season before me makes this moment far less the closing of one chapter than the opening of another. And we all take pride in the past, but we all live for the future. And I agree with the prairie poet Carl Sandburg, who told us, ‘Yesterday is a wind gone down, a sun dropped in the West. I tell you that there is nothing in the world, only an ocean of tomorrows, a sky of tomorrow.’ And like everybody here, I’m an optimist. I believe our best tomorrows are yet to be lived.

So again, thank you. God bless America, and God bless the United States Senate.