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Bob Dole receives Congressional Gold Medal

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The highest civilian honor recognizes his decades of bipartisan work in the House and Senate.
WASHINGTON — Former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole knew the art of the deal before President Trump published the 1987 book.
The two shared a stage under the Capitol dome Wednesday as Dole, 94, accepted Congress’ highest civilian honor, the Congressional Gold Medal, for his World War II service and decades of work in the House and Senate. Trump, meanwhile, was mired in a pitched budget battle that threatened to end in a government shutdown at week’s end.
The president nonetheless saluted Dole as “a patriot” and gave tribute to Dole’s struggle as a veteran who worked his way back from a grievous shoulder wound he suffered in Italy.
“He knows about grit,” said Trump.
But it was Dole’s penchant for working across the aisle that earned him his latest award.
“Bob Dole was known for his ability to work across the aisle and embrace practical bipartisanship,” reads the legislation Trump signed in September. Some of the award’s 300 recipients include George Washington and Mother Teresa.
Much of his best thinking, Dole said, was done while gazing from his West-facing offices in the Capitol the length of the Mall, past the Washington Memorial and across the Potomac River to Arlington, Virginia.
“Leadership,” he said in remarks read by wife Elizabeth, “begins with the long view.”
Bipartisanship is a concept not often embraced these days, especially by the unconventional president Dole endorsed during the 2016 election. Trump’s profanity-laced meeting with lawmakers of both parties on immigration last week blew up whatever comity may have existed between him and Congress at the start of 2018. Trump denigrated Haiti and countries in Africa as “shitholes,” according to multiple people present. Dole, even at his crankiest, has never been known for such a tone or attitude.
“If there’s anyone who has mistakenly attached themselves to our party in the belief that we are not open to citizens of every race and religion, then let me remind you,” Dole said during his acceptance speech at the 1996 Republican National Convention. “Tonight, this hall belongs to the party of Lincoln. And the exits, which are clearly marked, are for you to walk out of as I stand this ground without compromise.”
For all of that, Trump reached the pinnacle of U. S. politics. Dole reached for the White House multiple times – as Gerald Ford’s running mate in 1976, in Republican presidential primaries of 1980 and 1988, and finally as the Republican nominee in 1996. He lost in an Electoral College landslide to Democrat Bill Clinton.
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