Looking back on Sen. Bob Dole’s farewell to the U.S. Senate

Thirty years ago today, Senator Bob Dole stood at the Majority Leader’s desk in the Senate Chamber to deliver his final remarks as a member of the United States Senate. Dole had announced weeks earlier, after securing the delegates that ensured he would be the Presidential nominee of the Republican Party, that he would be resigning from the Senate to devote his full attention to his campaign against President Bill Clinton.

I had spent the past month working with Senator Dole to hone and finalize his remarks. Of the hundreds upon hundreds of speeches on which I had the honor of working with him, I could sense these were the ones that meant the most to him, and the ones on which we spent the most time in preparing.

Three decades later, they stand as testimony to Senator Dole’s character and leadership, and as a counterpoint and antidote to the hyper-partisan bitter atmosphere that has come to dominate today’s political scene.

In our very first meeting to discuss the speech, Senator Dole gave me two very specific instructions. First, in no way should his remarks be seen as a campaign speech. His focus was on sharing memories of his over twenty-seven years as a Senator, not on the next five months leading up the November election. And second, it was clear to him that any success he had as a Senator and as Republican Leader was achieved because of the atmosphere of trust, mutual respect, and bipartisanship.

The remarks he delivered were full of praise for his Democrat colleagues past and present: his partnership with George McGovern on expanding nutrition programs; his teaming up with Daniel Moynihan to save Social Security; his work with Ted Kennedy and Tom Harkin to pass the Americans with Disabilities Act. (When I sent a draft of the speech with the managers of his presidential campaign, they sent instructions back to remove all praise of Democrat Senators. When I shared that request with Senator Dole, he told me to ignore it and to not send them any more drafts.)

In his remarks, Senator Dole also saluted those who were sitting in the Senate’s press gallery, saying, “I think it’s fair to say that we didn’t always agree with everything you said or write, but I know that what you do off this floor is as vital to American democracy as anything we do on it, and we have to keep that in mind.” What a contrast to those who accuse the press of being the “enemy of the people.”

Senator Dole also cast his eyes beyond America’s shores, reflecting on the number of foreign leaders who, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, had come to Capitol Hill not in search of money, but in search of inspiration. He reminded us that America “Is more than a place on the map…We’re a beacon of hope. We’re a magnet for the oppressed and a shield against those who would put the soul itself in bondage.”

As he neared the conclusion of his remarks, Senator Dole would remind his colleagues that the ultimate goal of public service was not any personal glory, saying, “When they catalogue all the amendments and all the bills and do all the commentary, is that whenever it’s all over for us here,” what truly mattered was what “we’ve left our children.”

Although he lost the Presidential election that November, Senator Dole would continue to speak out for another quarter-century—until his passing on December 5, 2021—on the points he highlighted in his Senate farewell speech, most often and most especially on the need for civility and bipartisanship.

And in his farewell letter to the American public, released by his family upon his passing,  Senator Dole would would again look forward and not back, writing that his final words were those that he personally heard his hero and fellow Kansan, Dwight Eisenhower, used to conclude his 1952 Presidential campaign kick-off speech in Abilene, Kansas: “I believe in the future of the United States of America.”