Lou Cannon said he wasn’t quite sure how Bob Dole made it through the Watergate scandal with a political image strong enough to spend nearly three decades in the U.S. Senate.

As Republican national chairman, Dole was one of President Richard Nixon’s most vocal supporters in the early stages of the break-in that eventually led to Nixon’s resignation.

Lou Cannon, biographer of Ronald Reagan, will speak on the former president tonight at the Lied Center to kick off the 2005 Presidential Lecture Series. Former Kansas Sen. Bob Dole and Reagan are shown in a photograph above Cannon's head.

“It was a thankless job,” said Cannon, a biographer who is in Lawrence this week. “The media thought he was a puppet for the White House. The White House and Nixon gang eventually thought he was disloyal. That he kept his equilibrium speaks well of him.”

Cannon, who is best known for his 30-plus years of coverage and biography of Ronald Reagan, delivers a lecture at 7:30 tonight at the Lied Center. The speech is the kickoff for this year’s Presidential Lecture Series at the Dole Institute of Politics.

Cannon got to know Dole while covering the senator’s re-election campaign in 1974 for the Washington Post, where Cannon worked 26 years. The race, which pitted Dole against challenger Bill Roy, is still thought of as one of the most bitter campaigns in Kansas political history.

Cannon said Reagan wasn’t “buddy-buddy” with anyone in the U.S. Senate during his time as president. But he did look to Dole for occasional political support.

“(Reagan) really respected Dole’s ability to get things through the Senate,” Cannon said. “He respected his ability to take the temperature of the Senate.”

And on a personal note, Cannon said, he enjoyed interviewing Dole for his humor.

“I always got along very well with Dole,” he said. “Dole could be difficult with people, but I wasn’t the recipient of that. I liked the fact he had a sense of humor. I found him fun to cover.”