National coverage of dedication suffers from network partisanship

Kansas University Chancellor Robert Hemenway’s remarks at Tuesday’s dedication of the Dole Institute of Politics:

On behalf of the faculty and staff, students and alumni of the University of Kansas, it is my privilege to welcome you to the dedication of the Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics.

KU is proud to claim Bob Dole as a Jayhawk, and proud to be the home of this architectural and historical landmark, named for a great native son of Kansas.

We are also honored to be joined today by many of those who served with Bob Dole in World War II.

May their lives of service — represented by Senator Dole — provide us all with a lesson and an inspiration.

In 1925, on a similar occasion, the dedication of a memorial to British sailors who died in World War I, Winston Churchill made a statement that also applies to veterans of the second world war.

Mr. Duncan Sandys, a great-grandson of Britain’s wartime prime minister, is with us today and is perhaps familiar with these words.

“We are often tempted to ask ourselves,” said Churchill, “what we gained by the enormous sacrifices made by those to whom this memorial is dedicated. But that was never the issue with those who marched away.

“They only saw the light shining on the clear path to duty. They only saw their duty to resist oppression, to protect the weak, to vindicate the profound but unwritten Law of Nations.

“They never asked the question, ‘What shall we gain?’ They asked only the question, ‘Where lies the right?'”

That is how Bob Dole and many in this audience — as well as those who are not with us today — approached military service to their country in wartime.

That is also how Bob Dole approached his career of public service, a career and an ideal that are now — on his 80th birthday — lifted up and honored in this stunning new addition to the campus.

Again, welcome to the University of Kansas, and thank you for showing your love and appreciation for Senator Dole by joining us today in this ceremony of dedication.

Now it is my privilege to introduce the emcee for this ceremony.

For the past 20 years, Tom Brokaw has been the anchor and managing editor of “NBC Nightly News.” It is the pinnacle of an award-winning career in journalism that began after his graduation from the University of South Dakota in 1962.

More recently, he has also chronicled the lives of average Americans born in the 1920s — men and women who came of age during the Great Depression, fought in the second world war, and went on to build our country. The results have included three best-selling books — “The Greatest Generation,” “The Greatest Generation Speaks” and “An Album of Memories.”

Because the events surrounding this dedication have been called the “Greatest Generation’s Greatest Celebration,” it was only fitting that the man who coined the phrase should serve as the emcee. Please welcome Tom Brokaw.