photo by: John Young

Former U.S. senators and longtime friends Nancy Kassebaum and Bob Dole speak about the time they served in Congress, as well as contemporary politics, on Saturday afternoon at the Dole Institute, 2350 Petefish Drive.

In an appearance Saturday at the Dole Institute of Politics, former U.S. senators Bob Dole and Nancy Kassebaum shared stories of their years together in Congress, while lamenting the current lack of bipartisan effort on Capitol Hill.

The two Republicans, with 40 combined years of service in the Senate representing Kansas, fielded questions from moderator William Lacy, director of the Dole Institute, for 90 minutes in front of an overflow crowd.

Kassebaum, the daughter of 1936 GOP presidential candidate Alf Landon, served in the Senate from 1978 to 1997. After eight years in the U.S House of Representatives, Dole was first elected to the Senate in 1969 and served until he resigned in 1996 to devote his energy to his presidential campaign.

The event concluded with the presentation of the 2016 Dole Leadership Prize to Kassebaum. The award is given annually to an individual or group whose public service has inspired others. Past winners include Congressman John Lewis, Nelson Mandela, the Wounded Warrior Project and former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Elections both past and present came up in the conversation. Dole demonstrated his famous wit with a quip about the Kansas election landscape during his political career.

“You can’t win (elections) unless you have people working for you in every county,” he said. “Douglas County was a tough one. Both people who voted for me in Douglas County are still alive. We had protection for them.”

The talk about the current presidential race was more serious, however, as Kassebaum voiced her disappointment with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. She acknowledged that as a former GOP nominee for president, Dole had an obligation to attend this year’s Republican convention and support the party’s nominee, but said it was not something she was prepared to do.

“I have a hard time hearing (Trump) … giving a State of the Union speech or (imagining him) as commander in chief,” she said. “It’s escalating on both sides now. To me, I’m really more sad than mad.”

Dole didn’t defend Trump’s abrasive campaign. Rather, he said he had spoken to the Republican standard-bearer about the need to change his approach.

“I told him to tone down the rhetoric,” he said. “I told him to start talking about policy. If you listened to the primary debates, you never heard anything about Congress. You’ll never get anything done without Congress.”

Dole predicted Trump would present himself differently at the Sept. 26 presidential debate.

“I don’t think Trump is going to insult anybody that night, unless it’s me for telling him to grow up,” he said.

Dole contrasted the tone of this year’s election to his presidential campaign.

“In ’96, I thought of Bill Clinton as my opponent, not my enemy,” he said, adding that he is now friends with the man who defeated him. “It’s all gotten out of whack.”

In recent years, he reached out to the late Dr. Bill Roy, whom he defeated in a 1974 Senate race, Dole said.

“It was a very close race,” he said. “Abortion became a big issue. We had strange people on both sides. Some people went around carrying fetuses in jars. That bothered me. Several years ago I called Bill Roy. I said, ‘This is Bob Dole. I wanted to know if there was anything I personally did in that campaign that was personally offensive to you.’ He said, ‘I can’t think of anything.'”

The ability to form friendships on the other side of the aisle and desire to get things done is what separated the Congress they knew from the Congress they see today, Kassebaum said. She credited the leadership of President Ronald Reagan of helping foster that attitude.

“He always managed to end a conversation in an upbeat way,” she said. “There really was that sense of hope things would get worked through. I’m very disappointed, to tell you the truth, in Congress.”

Dole agreed that the problem is the absence of friendships and trust for those in the opposing party.

“If you’re not surrounded by friends, you don’t get as far as you would like to go,” he said.

One of President Barack Obama’s weaknesses, Dole said, is that he failed to forge such personal relationships with members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.

“I doubt he knows 20 people in the House,” Dole said. “He may know all the Democrats in the Senate, but I doubt it. How are you going to get things done when people don’t know you or trust you?”

Dole and Kassebaum agreed their ability to work with Sen. Ted Kennedy, the longtime Democratic leader in the Senate, was critical in many of their legislative victories, especially the American with Disabilities Act of 1990 that Dole championed and passed during his years as Senate minority leader.?”That was very controversial,” Kassebaum said. “I don’t think it would be in existence as it is today if (Dole) hadn’t been leader.”

Some of the legislation’s most strident opponents were Republicans, Dole recalled as he described how he dealt with one such vocal opponent in a meeting.

“He was very contrary,” Dole said. “He thought I was a big liberal. I asked him, ‘Do you want to be leader? If you do, lets have a vote right now.’ He sat down, and I didn’t hear much from him after that.”

With the exception of Kassebaum, who he said was always very popular, politicians’ approval ratings always go up once they leave public life, Dole said. Their retirement gave him and Kassebaum perspective, too, he said.

“We can look back on it now and hope we did things that were helpful to people,” he said.