Dole picked up a Sunday front-page story in The New York Times May 14 headlined “Dole Isn’t Being Dole, and Aides Call It Strategy.”
“Senator Bob Dole, master legislator, has in recent days looked like anything but,” Dole read from the lead paragraph. The story cited problems Dole was having passing a legal reform bill and handling President Clinton’s very controversial nomination of Tennessee obstetrician Dr. Henry W. Foster, Jr., to be Surgeon General. Foster had performed abortions, and Republicans were out to stop his nomination. Lacy was quoted saying that much of the Senate business was “inside baseball” and the important matter was maintaining Dole’s conservative credentials. Overall, the story suggested that Dole was wandering around bumping into himself in his dual roles as both the Senate majority leader and presidential candidate.
The next morning Dole called the campaign and said he wanted to have a meeting late in the day with Reed, Lacy and Jill Hanson, the political director. It was the first time he had summoned them so directly.
Lacy polled Reed and Hanson. What did they think the meeting would be about? Reed said he thought it was just to get a firsthand update on what was going on. No, Hanson said, she suspected it was to give them fatmouth about the New York Times article. Lacy agreed it was the article. He even went back and reread his own quotes to see if he had said something that was inappropriate or impolitic. He concluded he had not.
Dole had a very traditional 1960s or 1970s view about aides talking to the media. He didn’t see why it was necessary. An aide quoted by name still often got a sly look from Dole or even a cutting remark. Since Lacy had been around Dole for ten years, he and Reed had decided it was better for Lacy to answer the reporters’ questions and take the hit from Dole if he was irate.
At the meeting Dole asked some general questions, but clearly he was upset. Something was on his mind. He was not good at concealing. And then there was this article, he finally said. Had they seen it? It belittled Senate business, and showed him not fully managing or conquering his dual roles.
You know, Reed said, we have to present our case, our side of the story. We can’t take a negative story without responding.
Dole almost immediately backed off, and he soon began running through the usual rhetoric: What’s going on? Where’s this guy? What’s happening here?
The meeting degenerated into something like a tennis match with the ball going Dole-Hanson, Dole-Hanson, Dole-Hanson, with a state-by-state update.
By the end of the meeting, Dole seemed to have calmed himself down.
Later, Reed revisited the subject with Dole on the phone.
“My reputation is not as a hot dog,” Reed said, “and I’m sure not going to start being a hot dog now.” He said he was taking the campaign manager’s job with utmost seriousness. “You’ve got to understand that there are times we have to be in the story, and we’re going to have to and you just have to. If you’re mad, tell me, don’t go telling all the little Munchkins on the Hill who then go around and yap.”
“You’re right,” Dole said. He was cool, agreeing that it wasn’t a big deal.
Reed hoped the story would get the attention of Sheila Burke and the rest of the Senate staff. They needed to see that what they did had enormous political splatter on Dole’s presidential campaign.
On Friday, May 19, Lacy read conservative Paul A. Gigot’s weekly column in The Wall Street Journal. The column was an important pipeline into what movement conservatives were thinking. The headline read: “For 1996, Dole Leads, But Newt Looms.” Lacy plunged into the column, which said that Dole’s approach was “mechanical and uninspiring.” Dole had not hit on the self-confident emotional appeal of House Speaker Gingrich. Dole sounded defensive and talked legislation. All the talk and interest about House Speaker Gingrich running for president was because of Dole’s failure to step forward to represent the Republican Party’s traditional economic growth and optimism, the columnist declared. “If there weren’t a vacuum, no one would be asking if Mr. Gingrich might fill it.”
The column resonated with Lacy, in effect Saying that Dole had not conquered the philosophy question. It drove at the core of Lacy’s strategy. He dashed off a memo to Dole.
“Subject: Message.
“We will win if we stay on message,” Lacy began, underlining the sentence. “Every speech or interview should reinforce or illustrate one of our key themes.”
“Mari, Nelson, Stuart Stevens and I should begin regular sessions with you, Q & A and look at videotape of past performances.”
Lacy knew that Dole was very independent and did not want to be handled, but he was exasperated.
Dole ignored the suggestion that the staff regularly review his performances.
As part of the campaign routine, Dole had set up a regular 8:30 A.M. Tuesday meeting, called the steering committee, of Republican senators who supported his presidential bid. The group consisted of about a dozen senators, including D’Amato and Bill Cohen.
Dole didn’t attend the meetings himself even though they were held in his office. Instead, Reed ran the meeting. He and Lacy were there to listen, take notes on any and all suggestions. They bobbed their heads up and down in unison as one senator after another offered advice. Dole avoided the meetings like plague, once literally having his driver circle the block and calling into the office on the car phone, “Are they gone?” After the meetings ended at about 9:45 A.M., Reed often saw Dole in the hallway coming in. Reed realized the meetings made the group of senators feel part of the campaign, gave them a feeling of ownership in the process. So when it came time for them to tow the line on something critical to Dole’s stature as Senate leader, they were more willing to go along.
Lacy found the meetings a pain. It was such rambling chaos—sort of like the Senate itself. He listened carefully, and the group of senators would get focused on something like a floor statement that Dole was planning. As good as they might be as politicians, Lacy was surprised how they would get so inside themselves and think and act like the world revolved around the Senate.
Dole had scheduled a Senate recess for the Memorial Day week, and he was going to be on the campaign trail, ending in California. The plan, as Lacy had proposed in April, was to attack Hollywood directly on the grounds of sex and violence in movies and popular music. Mari Will, who was back at work, had spent some time drafting the anti-Hollywood speech. In her conversations with Dole, she returned repeatedly to the theme of values. “The country really aches to hear about values,” she said. And they needed to hear directly from him, not in cryptic partial sentences or Arrggghhh. For Dole, words were often a way of dancing around, avoiding confrontations or ducking a direct criticism of someone. She could interpret his likely meaning. But that wouldn’t work with the public. He needed to step up in a forceful and direct way if he were going to get and retain attention, particularly with conservative voters, she said. So Will had interjected some high-voltage rhetoric into the speech. Hollywood was guilty of the “mainstreaming of deviancy,” with loveless sex and mindless violence. Too many of the movies and songs were “nightmares of depravity.” She cited Time Warner by name for some of the foul lyrics on its music labels.
Will finished the draft of the speech on Friday, May 26, sent it over, and then spoke with Dole on Saturday. He had read it and said he liked the speech. He seemed in a good mood about the speech, even its directness.
John A. Moran, a California oilman who had been the Republican National Committee finance chairman for two previous years when some $115 million was raised, headed Dole’s presidential finance committee, as Terry McAuliffe did for Clinton. But big $1 million fund-raisers were unusual and Dole had to slowly eke out the money event by event. Since it was a heavy fund-raising week, Moran was traveling with Dole.
Moran had read the speech draft and said he was very concerned. Though most well-known Hollywood figures were Democrats, there were plenty of Republican big givers in the entertainment industry who would be attending the speech. He opposed a confrontation with the money people. The speech was too harsh, too direct, Moran said. The donors didn’t like to be fingered.
Moran was one of Reed’s best friends, but Reed thought Moran had little political savvy. Reed had laid the groundwork with the local California fund-raiser who was managing the event.
“This is going to be tough, but trust me,” Reed said. Yes, it was risky, fairly risky. “This is the right thing for us to do politically.”
Nelson Warfield could never erase his first image of Moran from several months earlier at their initial meeting. “Here comes the Monopoly Man,” one of his aides had said.
“What are you talking about?” Warfield asked.
“You are about to meet John Moran,” the aide replied.
Moran had walked in, and sure enough he looked like the guy from the Monopoly board game—the billionaire in the pinstripe suit with a sack of cash on his shoulder, striding out with a big smile beneath his mustache.
On Tuesday, May 30, Dole was in his suite in a Chicago hotel. A TelePrompTer was set up so he could practice the Hollywood speech—his only chance because they were flying to California the next day, first to San Francisco for a fund-raiser and then to Los Angeles to deliver the speech. Dole ran through it once, went off for some other meetings and then came back later that night to the suite to practice. Warfield and Glassner were there, and Dole invited Moran up.
Moran said that the phrase “sold your soul” was way too strong.
“Well, can we use the word ‘rent’?” Dole proposed, laughing.
Moran and Nelson Warfield faced off about the speech.
Dole realized it was a very heavy speech. He went back and had them get exactly what he had said on the topic earlier. He also read some of what various other critics had been saying about the entertainment industry, including Democrats like Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey. Dole thought if he took a shot in the dark, whhhsssttt, he would get chopped off as had happened before, criticized for taking a cheap shot. So he started taking some stuff out of the speech, putting in some of his own material. Changes were sent back to campaign headquarters where the master draft was being finalized so it could be released to the media in advance. Dropping an evening speech in California when it was 10 P.M. on the East Coast was the media equivalent of doing nothing if it was not released ahead of time. The speech draft went back and forth that night.
Moran had an alternative draft, a speech that would accomplish virtually the same goal without using what he called “inflammatory language.”
“Senator,” Warfield argued to Dole, “we can have the sort of punch if we have a strong speech like this. Trying to split the difference of this is going to result in a yawn. It could even be worse.” Warfield wanted to see if they could make national news with the speech.
“You know, inviting these people in,” Dole said, “I’m accepting their contributions. I’m going to blast what they may actually do for a living.”
Warfield reminded Dole that he would be talking to a much larger audience. “You’re talking to America. You’re a presidential candidate, you’re the front-runner. When you speak in that room you’re speaking through the cameras to America, to every voter out there, to the world.”
“It’ll offend them,” Moran said, appealing to Dole’s sense of manners.
During a break, Warfield had a chance to phone Mari Will to report the latest threat to the speech. Moran was urging a major pushback, Warfield said, and it was particularly poisonous because Dole would likely try to build consensus among his advisers.
Will laid out the arguments for Warfield to give back to Dole. “These people are going to be flattered to have the speech given to them even if it doesn’t directly affect a lot of them because they’re going to be at work the next day and this is going to be in the papers, and they’re going to say, ‘I was there,’ and it’s a compliment,” she said. Will argued that audiences of activists and donors wanted to be taken seriously.
She urged Warfield to remind Dole that this was a presidential campaign, not a race for the Senate. “It is insulting to go before audiences in this role and not take them seriously and not take the office seriously…It’s an insult to go to them and just say bland nothings, to just sort of wander through something without a point.” The speech would give the audience credit for having a moral conscience, she argued.
Warfield went back with the full force of the argument.
“Well,” Dole said, “I don’t think people want to be treated like props.” At this point Dole kind of glanced at Moran as if he was giving Moran part of the argument.
Moran took the cue and continued to cut away at the specific language. At one point, Moran suggested that such an in-your-face speech could cause fund-raising problems down the road.
“I would rather have the issue than the money,” Dole declared. He looked at Warfield, as if he knew Warfield had scored a point. Dole had a habit of shooting looks at Warfield when he had used one of Warfield’s lines or points in a speech or interview—almost as if Dole had given him something.
The back and forth continued. Dole never banged down the gavel and said the jury was dismissed, but rather just let the conversation wander on. In the end, he wouldn’t authorize the Washington headquarters to hand out copies in advance.
Warfield called Reed to report, “This is not a sure thing.”
On Wednesday morning, May 31, the campaign had the latest speech draft all neatly typed out in three and a half pages on “Bob Dole for President” letterhead, ready to give out to the press. But without Dole’s authorization, Reed was initially unsure what to do.
Reed suggested strongly that Lacy fly out to Los Angeles that morning. Dole was going to use a TelePrompTer, and some time had been allocated for practice.
Lacy hated to travel and be away from his wife.
Message and an opportunity for a dramatic offense were on the line, Reed noted.
“I don’t look forward to this,” Lacy said, “but if you want me to, I’ll just get on a plane and get out there.”
“Yeah,” Reed replied, “I think you should.”
Lacy headed to the airport. His mission: Protect the speech draft.
That morning Dole left Chicago for San Francisco. Reed reached Warfield by phone on Dole’s plane.
Lacy was on the way to hook up with them, Reed said, seeking the latest status report. “Is he going to give it?”
“Well, I think he’s going to give it,” Warfield said. “I think it looks good.”
Reed noted that to generate a turnout they would have to show a little leg, and he wanted to get on the phone to reporters to alert them, pump up interest, major speech coming. Perhaps even release the text in Washington that morning. “Is it okay to do it?” Reed asked.
“We ought to do it.” Warfield said, stopping short of making a full recommendation. Lacy on the scene would be a plus. “My prediction is he’s going to give it,” Warfield said, again stopping short of giving a full assurance. He figured he already had enough gray hairs from the campaign.
Reed decided to gamble and release the text on his own authority. He later reached Warfield. “Well, it’s out, we’re out. We’ve got tremendous interest so you’re going to get a good turnout tonight.”
Dole arrived in Los Angeles that afternoon. A visit with former President Reagan had been arranged.
Warfield was happy because it looked like the campaign was going to get a photo showing Dole with the former president—a trophy certain to make news. A Reagan-Dole meeting could suggest a modest if indirect endorsement. Later Warfield learned that Dole was only going to get a private meeting with Nancy Reagan at the Reagans’ home. The former president was in such bad shape that he was not going to attend the meeting. He was 84 years old and suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, the incurable neurological disorder that steadily destroys memory. Riding up in the car ahead of Dole’s limousine, Warfield was wildly pissed, cussing and carrying on at some length about the lost opportunity for the magical Reagan-Dole summit photo.
For Dole, the stop was more personal than political. The former First Lady told him that her husband was getting up and going to work each morning and was playing some golf.
“It’s really tough, really tough dealing with it,” she said. That’s all she would say, but it was clear to Dole she was very sad about her husband’s condition.
Mrs. Reagan gave him a copy of the book The Wit and Wisdom of Ronald Reagan. She tried to be upbeat and noted that the former president had autographed it to Dole but had made a mistake and had to scratch out and correct a word. “That will make it more valuable,” she added.
And she had lots of questions. What’s happening? How’s Newt doing? How are you doing?
As Dole answered, it was apparent to him that Mrs. Reagan was keeping pretty close tabs on the Congress and had a pretty good fix on where things were heading. Two matters didn’t come up in the conversation: the 1996 presidential race, and Dole’s forthcoming blast at Hollywood. Dole wasn’t sure how she might receive his criticism. After all, acting was also her former profession. She would hear about his speech the next day.
Dole was trying to learn to talk about values. He remembered that back as far as 1988, Mari Will used to fuss at him. “You’ve got to get up and let people know who you are,” Will had said. “It’s not just that you get up and make a speech.” He had to go further and answer questions, she said. “Who is Bob Dole? What’s he all about? Is he complicated? Where does he come from?”
He was very uncomfortable with these questions, then and now, but Dole knew that the Hollywood speech was an opportunity to provide some of the answers. He saw it as a little test. Could he talk about the things that he hadn’t really talked about before?
Dole connected values with religion. “My parents weren’t religious in a sense,” Dole told me a month later during a Saturday afternoon interview in his Senate office. “They wanted us to go to Sunday School but they didn’t attend church often and there wasn’t any driving force there at all. Probably believed in hard work, and we all worked Saturday, Sundays, evenings, whatever. We could find jobs, and you know I remember getting my mouth washed out with soap a few times for using language.” Four-letter words that he had picked up in Russell, Kansas—words that he had thought could be used to emphasize a point. “We had a strict household.” Dole claimed he had learned that points could be made without foul language.
My questions about values triggered a discussion of housework.
“My mother was a nut for cleanliness,” he volunteered. “We didn’t have a lot of clothes. She’d take’em off at night, and we’d wear’em again in the morning, but they would be spotless, you know, she’d see to that.”
Those were the things he remembered when the talk turned to values—religion, hard work, cleanliness, not talking dirty.
Maybe it was generational, Dole figured, but he was very uncomfortable with the Hollywood values speech. Maybe the opportunity and the little test just weren’t worth it. He considered not giving it.
Lacy arrived at the Century City J. W. Marriott in Los Angeles on the day of the speech and had a few hours to spare and make some telephone calls. He read the speech carefully—the draft that Reed had handed out. He wanted to identify the words that Dole might not like, so they could spend the time redoing portions or simply replacing words. He wanted to focus the debate on words, phrases, not on themes or the entire speech. It was a diversionary tactic so that Dole wouldn’t toss out the whole speech.
About 5:30 P.M Dole arrived at the Marriott with Moran and Warfield. They went to a second-floor room equipped with a TelePrompTer so Dole could practice. Dole said he was still not sure what he was going to do.
Lacy coaxed Dole to stand up at the TelePrompTer. Dole took his place.
Lacy asked him if the text was at the right height?
To check, Dole had to read some of the speech.
Lacy wanted to hear how it sounded. Soon Dole was going through it.
As Dole read, Moran interrupted with his same objections.
It’s going to be fine, Lacy said. He understood the speech might offend some of their finance people, but it would play well politically. It’s going to play well, Lacy repeated.
The line about “selling” or “renting” their souls came up. Dole said he wanted it dropped entirely.
“I think it’s okay, we can take that out,” Lacy said. “We don’t necessarily need that in there.”
Warfield didn’t argue.
A few minor changes were made to remove the “I” lines which Dole hated. For example, the line in the draft, “I have risked my life” to defend freedom, was changed to read, “Many, as I have, have risked our lives to defend it.”
Dole read it through several times and then everyone left but Lacy, who wondered if this was by design since he was the designated babysitter.
As they sat down together, Dole again expressed his concern. There was not much time.
Lacy had one case to make. What they were doing wasn’t something that two kids had concocted and brought in from the backyard. It had been very carefully thought through. It was a dramatic and sophisticated critique with a strong populist punch. The speech as a whole was coherent. Parts could not be thrown out at random and others substituted. There was a line of logic that had to be followed and retained.
Of all the thousands of speeches that Dole had given in his career, he had often felt good before giving them. Other times he felt good after he had delivered them. And some he wondered why he had given them at all. On this speech he had many trepidations. Soon, however, he was standing before the audience glancing around and wondering if some would be so offended that they would get up and leave. There had to be some Hollywood people from the entertainment industry out there, he knew. This was not only in their business, it was in their face. People had paid money to hear him, and he was going to cut their legs off.
Momentum was often the final decision maker for Dole, and he was capable of giving a full extemporaneous speech. Neither Dole nor Lacy knew for sure what he would do.
After Dole was introduced, a honking, forcefully cheerful song that sounded like the background to a video game played as he took the stage and stood between the flags of the United States and the state of California at a podium emblazoned “DOLE for President.”
“I accept the nomination,” he joked, drawing mild chuckles from the audience. “Why not?” he added. Dole’s nervousness was palpable, and he began to ad-lib.
“I know in California there may be other candidates or at least one that I read about, but I would say right up front all these candidates are friends of mine.”
Lacy could hear him stalling.
“I’ve been in California many, many times,” Dole continued, off message, off text. “Over the years, campaigning in good times and bad.” Pausing, his eyes darted quickly back and forth, gauging the audience. “I’ve met a lot of people here, made a lot of friends over the years and I come out here and I speak a lot and I talk about the party and I talk about what’s happening.”
Jesus.
There was nothing but the words, on TelePrompTer screens to either side of his face. Dole exhaled deeply.
“But I want to talk about a specific matter tonight,” he said, licking his lips, taking one more quick look around the room and then, mercifully, going to the text. “I may not win an Oscar, but I’ll talk about it anyway.”
“It’s good to be back in California,” he inserted, drifting, veering sharply. Oh, no. “And John, I do thank you for that introduction,” Dole repeated, referring to Moran whom he had already thanked. “And I do thank everyone for being here tonight.” Slipping, slipping.
But there on the TelePrompTer were the words, and finally Dole plunged in. “I want to talk to you tonight about the future of America—about issues of moral importance, matters of social consequence.” That was the point of no return. He probably couldn’t just make it up now. He was onto “moral importance” and “social consequence.” Dole looked worried, nervous but in control. Like the experienced doctor who has bad news for the patient but knows it must be told.
The entertainment industry was becoming “coarse,” he said, sticking to the text. Then the punch in the face.
“A line has been crossed—not just of taste, but of human dignity and decency…. About a culture business that makes money from ‘music’ extolling the pleasures of raping, torturing and mutilating women; from ‘songs’ about killing policemen and rejecting law. The mainstreaming of deviancy must come to an end.
“We will name their names and shame them as they deserve to be shamed.
“And let me be specific,” Dole said, pointing his left finger to the ceiling in front of his face for emphasis. “One of the companies on the leading edge of coarseness and violence is Time Warner,” he said, naming and describing some of their products. “And I would ask the executives of Time Warner a question: Is this what you intended to accomplish with your careers? Must you debase our nation and threaten our children for the sake of corporate profits?”
The line hit right at the self-image of a generation of well-educated people determined and insistent that their lives make a difference. Dole had told them their work was rotten and they were rotten, that they were money-grubbing and willing to sell out the children. His voice grew steady and stronger. But still, his head jerked between the TelePrompTers to his side. He glanced around to see if anyone was departing. No one was. He named some of the bigger money-making movies to recently hit the screen—Natural Born Killers and True Romance—and music groups Cannibal Corpse, Geto Boys and 2 Live Crew. Incorrectly, he implied that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s True Lies was a family-friendly film.
When Dole finished, many in the audience flocked to him. Boy, that was right, someone said. I’ve got a son at home, said another. Someone else said they had a little girl. Bo Derek, the actress who had appeared nude in the movie 10, and TV actress Tracy Scoggins praised Dole on television.
Afterwards Dole attended a private high-dollar fund-raiser in the hotel restaurant. He was pumped up and actually repeated some of the lines from the speech. Later, crammed in a small plane to fly down to Orange County for the next day, Dole was animated, cracking jokes. Warfield had only seen him like that once before, after he had done a pace lap in a race car.
The advance team plopped the morning papers in front of Dole’s door the next morning. Yeah, front page in the Orange County paper.
The New York Times played the story of Dole’s speech above the fold on the front page. The headline read:
DOLE ATTACKS HOLLYWOOD WARES
AS UNDERMINING SOCIAL VALUES,
Senator Moves to Front of Conservative Critics.
The Times ran pictures of five of the movies he had mentioned, dividing them into two categories: “Friendly to Families” and “Nightmares of Depravity.” His speech was called “a withering attack.”
It was giant news. The impact was way beyond anything in Dole’s entire political history. This was entirely new territory. Columns, debates, giant affection from Republicans and the right wing, and even outspoken praise from many Democrats and liberals.
The Jerry Springer Show wanted Dole to appear across from Bush-wick Bill, the foul-mouthed one-eyed midget rapper from the group Geto Boys who had burned a Dole campaign poster in protest. That was real connection and impact.
Dan Rather wanted Dole on the CBS Evening News that night. Dole, in Las Vegas for a fund-raiser, had to appear from what looked like a closet.
“Ah, went pretty well, didn’t it,” Dole said to Reed the next day.
“Yes. It’s working out well. You ought to see it from back here. We got the front pages,” Reed said, referring to the East Coast papers.
“Ahh, uhh, aarrgghh,” Dole replied. When he saw a video of the speech, he felt that he hadn’t done as well as he could have, and concluded he should have practiced more with the TelePrompTer.
On the same day, Pete Wilson signed his first executive order cutting back on affirmative action, but the Dole speech virtually drowned out Wilson’s efforts to gain attention.
The Washington Post had largely missed the Dole Hollywood story and came back the second day with two front-page stories.
As the impact and discussion continued, Scott Reed realized the campaign had made two mistakes with the speech. First, Dole was receiving some legitimate criticism because he had to acknowledge that he had not seen the movies. Reed should have made Dole watch the movies so he could speak with authority. But Reed figured they had barely convinced him to give the speech, and long sessions watching movies would have likely increased his resistance. Lacy knew that Dole had sat through a portion of Murder Was the Case, a 13-minute short film starring rapper Snoop Doggy Dogg, but Lacy wasn’t around when the inquiries came in from the media.
Second, the mention of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s movie True Lies in a list of the top-grossing movies that “were most friendly to the family” made it appear as if Dole were endorsing it. The movie was one of the most violent in several years. Since Arnold Schwarzenegger was one of the few outspoken Republicans from the acting community, it appeared that Dole was pandering.
Lacy believed the speech and the intense reaction to it helped Dole see the difference between the politics of his own generation and Lacy’s generation. The speech graphically demonstrated the importance of ideas and mass communications. Dole, Lacy increasingly realized, came from the Huck Boyd school of politics—McDill “Huck” Boyd, the newspaperman and Kansas Republican kingmaker who had discovered Dole in the spring of 1960, was a classic 1950s and 1960s pol, a relic of the days when campaigns were won by going around, shaking hands, seeing and being seen. It was ground organization, person-to-person. Dole didn’t fully appreciate how power today flowed from mass communications, and its inevitable role in a national campaign.
Lacy realized that when Dole spoke publicly, he was trying to connect with every individual in the room. Before Dole spoke, he liked to circulate in the crowd like the father of the bride. He would try to greet everyone if the group was small. Elizabeth even picked up the habit of going to the crowd before talking. Dole didn’t realize fully that he was speaking to the TV camera and the millions who might see a 10- or 20- or 30-second sound bite.
Reed recognized that Dole was not fully comfortable with the speech, even though other senators, Dole friends, and the intense campaign watchers in the media and in Washington seemed to get it. There had been no downside—an almost unheard of situation for a high-profile campaign move.
Dole told Mari Will that he was struck by the power an idea could have and how it could tap into great feelings. Will emphasized that talking to those people about what they were actually doing with their lives highlighted the moral concept of individual responsibility. It gave them credit for having a moral conscience.
What was next? Dole wondered. Should they do more Hollywood? A lot of people were advising him to ride the wave, and hit hard again.
No, Will said, now’s not the time. Let it play out. The topic and idea were so hot. She believed that sometimes things got so hot they could explode in the hand that held them. They could come back to Hollywood when the issue was cooler. Not until the fall, Will suggested. She had an idea for Hollywood II. It would be about sex on television.
Will said they should switch to another hot issue. The liberal academic elites have been pulling down pillars of the society—teaching in foreign languages and presenting American history by concentrating on the worst moments such as McCarthyism and the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. The English language has been the great unifier of diverse races and religions in America, and it was under attack.
Hhhhmmmm, Dole said. Hhhhmmmmm.