Dole Marks 73rd Birthday: How Sweet It Is

He gave away his first congressional pension check--$6,650 for one month’s retirement--and blew out far too few candles, but it was the thought that counted Monday as Bob Dole celebrated his 73rd birthday with a four-cake campaign swing that ended here in his hometown.

Dole and his wife, Elizabeth, started the day with a “reverse” birthday party at Sarah’s Circle, a Washington senior center named for the biblical figure who was said to have given birth for the first time at age 91. In what has become a tradition for the Doles, they gave away presents at the center instead of receiving them--lamps and toaster ovens and electronic date books, a retirement check and gardening tools.

Cracking the first of many age-related quips that would mark his day, Dole told the center’s low-income residents: “You always feel a little older in the morning. By noon, I’ll feel about 55.”

The couple continued to a Dearborn, Mich., meeting of the Council of Great Lakes Governors--a small group whose ranks were thinned Monday because two of its members, George Pataki of New York and Thomas J. Ridge of Pennsylvania, were attending memorial services in their states for victims of TWA Flight 800.

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The Dearborn stop gave Dole a chance to make a few overtly partisan remarks on a generally nonpolitical day. First, he took a swipe at President Clinton’s earlier vetoes of welfare reform legislation. (The GOP-controlled Congress is expected to send the president a revised measure within the next few days.)

“We know we have a totally failed system,” the putative Republican presidential candidate said. “With President Clinton’s failure, we’ve spent about $5 trillion--trillion--and we’ve failed the people we’ve served.”

Dole then segued into his current favorite topic: reports of past illegal drug use by current White House aides and what he called the lack of a Clinton administration policy on drug abuse.

“We don’t have a real White House policy on drugs,” Dole said. “Maybe it’s because of the problem they have at the White House they don’t want to push a strong drug policy. When I am president of the United States, anybody who uses drugs will not be in the White House.”

And it gave the three Midwestern GOP governors attending the council meeting--John Engler of Michigan, George Voinovich of Ohio and Tommy G. Thompson of Wisconsin--a chance to sound like the vice presidential possibilities that they are. “I want to certainly wish you a happy birthday, Bob,” Thompson said, “and talk to you about a subject near and dear to our hearts, economic development, the transformation of this whole region.”

Engler and Voinovich chimed in with similar remarks.

But the real emphasis Monday was Dole’s birthday--a subject he did his best to harness, even as it was celebrated. Dole was a study in birthday blase.

Surveying the crepe paper-draped campaign plane, littered with noisemakers and unopened streamers, he joked: “You know what they say, it’s better than the alternative.”

At Sarah’s Circle, where he and Elizabeth--who turns 60 next Monday--blew out a paltry 11 candles on a cake, he said: “I’m always happy when the day passes on and it’s somebody else’s birthday.”

And in Dearborn, he joked:: “To anyone else who has a birthday today, happy birthday. You can have mine.”

Aware of the spotlight his birthday would put on his age, Dole and his advisors tackled the subject head-on late last week. They released his medical records, which testified to his good health, and made his doctors available for interviews.

Despite such efforts, a poll released Sunday found that one-third of those interviewed think that Dole’s age would be an obstacle to his effectiveness as president, But at Sarah’s Circle on Monday morning, those Americans were not in attendance.

Beulah Rivers, 67, jaunty in a motorized cart with a Chihuahua in the wire basket, got an electric broiler through the Doles’ reverse-birthday celebration and gave a hearty endorsement of the older-than-her statesman in return:

“Mr. Dole? He’s just had more time to get a little more wisdom and a little more sense than the others,” Rivers said of the candidate, who would be the oldest man to assume the presidency if elected in November. “I hope our next party will be in the White House.”

Dole and his wife have celebrated a decade’s worth of occasional birthdays and holidays at Sarah’s Circle, located in an ethnically mixed, downtown Washington neighborhood.

Along with the birthday cake at the senior center, Dole received others at his Washington campaign headquarters and on the plane trip between Michigan and Kansas.

But the biggest cake--and the biggest birthday bash--awaited Dole in Russell, where marquees on some of the local businesses carried such exhortations as “Give ‘Em Hell, Bob.”

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At the town’s Lincoln Park, under skies that threatened rain, several hundred local residents waved American flags and sang “Happy Birthday,” accompanied by the high school marching band, complete with tuba.

“Bob, it’s great to have you back in Russell, and we’re real happy to celebrate your birthday with you,” Russ Townsley, former editor of the local paper, said before they rolled out the three-tier cake and the man of the hour swiped a finger full of icing.

Flanked by Elizabeth and his daughter, Robin, Dole chatted up the crowd, cut the cake and went public with his birthday wish:

“Maybe next year, wouldn’t it be nice if you all came [to Washington] not for the birthday party but for the inaugural parade, marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, hand-in-hand with Bob Dole, president of the United States?”

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The Year He Was Born

Life in 1923, the year Bob Dole was born on July 22.

1923

PRESIDENT: Warren G. Harding (who died Aug. 2. Replaced by Calvin Coolidge).

NAMES IN THE NEWS: Mexican bandit Pancho Villa was killed ... Babe Ruth leads American League with 43 home runs ... Adolf Hitler arrested after failed “Beer Hall Putsch” in Munich.

HIT SONGS: “Down Hearted Blues” sung by Bessie Smith ... George Gershwin writes “Rapsody in Blue.”

LITERATURE: Robert Frost publishes poem “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” ... Ernest Hemingway publishes his first work, “Three Stories and Ten Poems,” in Paris.

TOP BASEBALL TEAM: The New York Yankees, who were on their way to their first World Series championship.

FILM STARS: Charlie Chaplin, Greta Garbo, Rudolph Valentino.

HIGH FASHION: full-length raccoon coat.

ILLEGAL SUBSTANCE: Alcohol. The 18th Amendment outlawing booze was in full effect. Bootleggers, like Chicago gangster Al Capone, ran illegal bars called “speak-easies.”