Bob Dole, P.I.

Despite a reputation for the occassional humorous mal mot and a willingness to lash out at even Republicans he feels have done him wrong, former Sen. Bob Dole has always been a faithful hewer of the party line, which was one of the reasons he was chairman of the Republican National Committee during the 1972 Nixon re-election campaign.

So as I heard about Dole’s appointment to be co-chair of the commission to look into the conditions at Walter Reed Military Hospital this past week, I thought of the response he had back in the days of Watergate, and just how seriously he treated that political scandal. If you watch this report from Walter Cronkite (which I first saw at watergate.info), Dole’s little part comes in about two minutes into the video, but here’s my transcript of his words:

I think this is a despicable act. There’s nothing the Democrat [sic] National Committee has that I want. A lot of unpaid bills that, uh, we don’t need to photograph those. And I really can’t understand why anyone would do this. I just can’t comprehend. In fact I read the story, I thought, uh, myself, uh, it’s rather fruitless…I don’t…even if they succeeded I could see no point in it. The Democrats are ready for their convention, uh, they’re gonna be gone in July in Miami. I just couldn’t put together any reasons for anyone wanting to do this.

Uhhh, Bob, spying on political enemies?