Spotlight on leadership

1st Dole Institute award honors Giuliani

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani picked up a leadership award.

Bob Dole and former President Jimmy Carter joined to say there needs to be more civility in government.

And more than 400 political leaders and Dole admirers gathered Monday at a $500-per-plate dinner at the Lawrence Holidome.

It was all part of the events accompanying dedication of the Dole Institute of Politics at Kansas University.

The institute presented Giuliani — mayor during the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on the World Trade Center — with its first-ever Dole Spirit of Leadership Award.

“I saw over and over and over again what I think are the qualities of real leadership,” Dole said of Giuliani after the attacks. “I don’t know what New York would have done … if it wasn’t for the leadership of Rudy Giuliani. I don’t know what the people would have done. When the people needed encouragement, he was there.”

In the hours after the attacks, Giuliani said he wondered whether the United States had the same resiliency as the “Greatest Generation” did after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

He said he found the answer in an unlikely source — the construction workers who flocked to the World Trade Center site to lend help.

“I could look in their eyes and see the same strength was there,” the former New York City mayor said. “It’s because you passed on, Senator Dole and Senator McGovern. You served as role models.”

From left, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, former Sen. Bob Dole, former President Jimmy Carter and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani show off their Families of Freedom Jayhawk T-shirts during a news conference at the Lawrence Holidome. Later Monday, Giuliani received the first Dole Spirit of Leadership Award.

Among those at the Giuliani awards dinner were Carter, former senators George McGovern, Nancy Kassebaum Baker, and Sens. Arlen Specter, Pat Roberts and Sam Brownback. Specter, like Dole, is a native of Russell.

Another lesson Giuliani said he learned after the attacks: the importance of bipartisan leadership.

“All of it is nothing except the things that unite us,” he said. “Like Pearl Harbor or other events of history, that part goes away.”

A thrill and a tribute

John Bush, owner of Lawrence Realty Associates, attended the banquet. He said he admired Giuliani’s leadership after the World Trade Center attacks.

“It’s good in the light of the current situation we’re in,” Bush said. “The first battle we fought was on his ground, and he provided the first leadership of these times.”

Specter called being involved in the dedication of Dole’s new institute “a great thrill.” He noted that others at the banquet also were from Russell, including millionaire KU benefactor Philip Anschutz.

“It’s a tribute to the city,” Specter said. “Dole and I just happen to be on C-SPAN more.”

Dole also announced Monday that McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, will receive the Spirit of Leadership Award next year. He credited McGovern’s efforts in ending world hunger for the decision.

Opponents turned admirers

Before the banquet, Dole and Carter appeared at a news conference. Dole, a Republican, and Carter, a Democrat, are former political opponents.

Sen. Elizabeth Dole talks with former President Jimmy Carter at the Legacy of Leadership dinner at the Lawrence Holidome. The two dined Monday at the 00-a-plate banquet.

The two squared off in 1976 when Carter, a former governor from Georgia, ran for president against incumbent Gerald Ford, who picked Dole as his running mate.

The Ford-Dole ticket nearly overcame the shadow of Watergate, Richard Nixon and a 30-plus percentage point deficit in the campaign, only to lose by 2 percent in one of the closest elections in U.S. history.

But seated side-by-side at the news conference in a hotel ballroom, the two former opponents praised each other, questioned some current controversies and criticized the tone of modern politics.

Carter said he opposed the war in Iraq, but stopped voicing his disapproval after U.S. troops were sent there.

“Now, we need to jointly, collectively, all Americans, support our troops there to hope that the violence and losses of life are quickly ended,” Carter said.

Former Sen. George McGovern will share his war memories today during a Memory Tent presentation as part of the Dole Institute of Politics dedication. It was announced Monday that McGovern, the 1972 Democratic presidential nominee, will receive the Dole Spirit of Leadership Award next year.

Carter also said he disagreed with President Bush’s policy of pre-emption — a doctrine that says the United States must attack nations that are thought to be planning aggression against the United States.

Dole did not criticize Bush’s decision to go to war, saying he wasn’t privy to intelligence Bush acted on, but he noted questions about how sound that intelligence was.

Dole agreed with Carter that Americans should support the troops in Iraq.

The two also decried the negativity of politics, saying it was turning off voters, especially young ones.

“The thing that worries me; it’s almost the politics of destruction,” Dole said. “The last person standing is elected. It has gotten to the point, if you just go out and say everything negative you can think about, about your opponent, well you’re probably going to win. I don’t know we can change that.”

Dole was known as a tough campaigner, winning several close elections with hardball tactics in the closing days of the election.

But Carter said that when he was president, and Dole was the Republican leader in the Senate, he worked well with the Kansan.

“In retrospect, I got along as well or better with the Republicans in the House and Senate, as I did the Democrats because my main challenges came from the left wing of the Democratic Party,” Carter said.

The two elder statesman were joined at the news conference by Giuliani and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.

Giuliani said Carter and Dole were role models for young people.

In the days after the terror attacks, he said, “There weren’t Democrats or Republicans. We were all standing together as Americans. If you focus on a life like Senator Dole or President Carter, young people can get a sense of what being an American is all about, what participating in a democracy is all about, and maybe we can overcome some of this cynicism.”