Dole hailed at DC funeral for war sacrifice, Senate service
WASHINGTON — Bob Dole was honored Friday at Washington National Cathedral and the World War II monument he helped create as top leaders from both parties saluted the longtime Kansas senator’s ability to practice bareknuckle politics without compromising his civility.
Displaying a bipartisanship rare in modern government, politicians in office and out came together to pay homage to Dole’s hard-scrabble rise from wounded war veteran to Senate stalwart to threetime, unsuccessful presidential candidate.
“He could be partisan, and that was fine,” said President Joe Biden. “Americans have been partisan since Jefferson and Hamilton squared off in George Washington’s Cabinet. But like them, Bob Dole was a patriot.”
Joining Biden at the funeral service were members of Congress, Cabinet officials, three Republican former vice presidents and Bill Clinton, who beat
Dole to win reelection as president in 1996.
“There’s something that connects that past and present, war time and peace, then and now,” said Biden, who touched Dole’s casket before addressing the service and mentioned their 50 years of friendship. “The courage, the grit, the goodness and the grace of 2nd Lt. Bob Dole, who became Congressman Dole, Senator Dole, statesman, husband, father, friend, colleague and — a word that’s often overused, but not here — a genuine hero.”
Dole, who died Sunday at age 98, was severely wounded during World War II, served nearly 36 years in Congress and was GOP Senate leader for more than a decade.
While calling him a “giant of our time and of all time,” Biden said Dole was worried at the end of his life about American democracy being threatened by bitter political battles and had noted that infighting from both parties “grows more unacceptable day by day.”
Still, Democrats and Republicans coming together to praise Dole’s ability to put country and public service over ideology was the overriding theme.
Former Republican Kansas Sen. Pat Roberts said Dole used humor as a political tool, delivering deadpan punchlines which helped let “the air out of the partisan balloons.” Dole’s daughter, Robin, read a letter her father wrote to his staff in which he said “I believe in the future of the United States of America.”
After the funeral service, Dole’s casket traveled to the World War II Memorial on the National Mall, which opened in 2004 and which Roberts said would not have existed without Dole spending years spearheading the legislation that erected it.
Addressing the crowd at the memorial, actor Tom Hanks asked, “How many structures in this city exist but for the efforts of one man?”
“It was Bob Dole who willed this memorial into place,” said Hanks, who starred in the World War II drama “Saving Private Ryan.”
Dole will eventually be interred at Arlington National Cemetery.