Scrapbook
Scrapbook DOLE'S SECRET LEAVE-TAKING May 15 was one of the most intense days of his political life, but Bob Dole remained remarkably calm throughout. Starting with a morning visit to his campaign...
...The Seduction of Joe Tynan...
...Smith Goes to Washington...
...A surprisingly ripe 1979 movie about politics from a peculiar source: Alan Alda, who wrote and stars in this account of an ambitious liberal senator who finds himself abandoning his principles when he cheats on wife Barbara Harris with the very young, very sexy Meryl Streep...
...Very juicy performance by Rip Torn as a Sam Ervin type with whom Joe Tynan engages in a gumbo-eating contest...
...In fact, the former Reagan staffer who designed the administration's public "look" will be handling the visuals at the Republican convention in San Diego in August...
...Smith ends up being appointed to fill out a dead man's term to the Senate because he is a heroic Boy Scout troop leader...
...he declared himself "powerless over the media" (which have treated his recent difficulties with astonishing gingerliness...
...He took umbrage at the suggestion that he had taken a vacation: "I was going to work," he said-"on my body, my mind, and my soul...
...God, he said, "I decided to call Jesus Christ...
...Staffers in the former president's Los Angeles office report that they are getting requests straight from the Clinton White House for material relating to Reagan's triumphant trips abroad as president-schedules, videotapes of speeches, etc...
...Not the words, mind you, but the images from the podium...
...At noon, he kept his appointment to meet with five top officials from the Bosnian government...
...Some people call Him Jehovah or Yahweh, Elohe or Allah or Buddha, Confucius...
...Message to Manafort: Whoever is chosen as vice president might wish to have his own team, especially after the experience of Dan Quayle in 1988, when Quayle's so-called "handlers" did little except trash the vicepresidential nominee to the press corps traveling with him...
...That's a common complaint about the District's government: It just works too hard...
...CONFUCIUS SAY: SMOKE CRACK When last we reported on Marion Barry, the capital's mayor, he was skipping town for two weeks of "spiritual recovery" time and quoting "To thine own self be true" as Biblical wisdom...
...he outlined a new personal schedule (including "talk to Cora [Mrs...
...He'll be working with convention manager Paul Manafort, a longtime Washington political consultant who has privately been letting friends know he has been given an additional assignment-he will, he says, head up the vice-presidential operation after the convention...
...Starting with a morning visit to his campaign headquarters, he kept to his schedule as if the day ahead were like any other...
...THE RENTAL LIST Bob Dole's resignation from the Senate was cinematic in its drama, and put us in mind of several movies involving the Senate that are worth a rental...
...Well, he's blown back into D.C., greeting his subjects with a 25-minute effusion of New Age oratory and psycho-emotional exhibitionism...
...I didn't realize how fatigued I was," he said, pledging "no more 16-hour work days...
...He cited Aristotle...
...Advice and Consent...
...Confucius...
...But listen, when Stewart directs that final speech to the once-great, now-corrupt senator played by Claude Rains-"You remember hopeless causes, Mr...
...See Walter Pidgeon riding the Senate subway...
...Smith, a scene that forever glamorized the filibuster even though its primary use in decades to come was the blockage of civil-rights legislation...
...IT'S MORNING IN BILL CLINTON'S AMERICA Not only is Bill Clinton hijacking Republican rhetoric, he is trying to hijack Ronald Reagan's ineffable style...
...he discoursed on the Greek word kairos...
...Enoch Baden-Powell for Senate...
...and he confessed that the vice that has been tempting him is . . . cigarettes...
...The Clintonites are especially interested in Reagan's 1984 trip to Normandy ("These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc"), as well as other journeys to Japan and Ireland...
...The most famous movie about the Senate, this 1939 Frank Capra classic with James Stewart has some very big things wrong with it-do you remember that Mr...
...The requests go from the Reagan office to the Reagan presidential library in Simi Valley...
...Barry], if she's there...
...Deaver is telling people he will be in charge of "everything but the heads" of the speakers...
...Because a sitting president does not, by law, have to go through the time-consuming formalities of filing a Freedom of Information Act request for such information, horrified Reaganites find they have no choice but to oblige the Clintonites in their ceaseless quest to Xerox Reagan's reelection strategy-not to mention everything popular about Republicanism in general-and superimpose Clinton's face atop it...
...He also waxed long on religion...
...He has already been interviewing prospective staffers, among them Lanny Wiles, a former advance man for Phil Gramm and Dan Quayle...
...Its climax is a filibuster conducted by the idealistic Mr...
...This 1962 Otto Preminger version of Allen Drury's classic potboiling account of an ideologically charged confirmation hearing not only features some really interesting film footage of the Capitol itself, but also has the first gay-bar scene in modern American film-and the second senatorial suicide, after Claude Rains's (Don Murray does himself in here...
...Paine, you said they were the only ones worth fighting for"-and drives him to a shamed suicide, how can you resist...
...I'm not going to be around here much longer," said Dole, letting the Bosnians in on something he wouldn't convey to his Senate Republican colleagues for another 90 minutes...
...he dispensed dietary advice (no "fast junk food," because "the body needs carbohydrates and proteins and vegetables and fruit in terms of food...
...At 11:00, a little more than an hour after NBC first reported his plan to resign from the Senate, Dole had his picture taken with a group of Kansas constituents, a Capitol policeman, and a group of Pentagon tour guides...
...DOLE'S CONVENTIONEERS Michael Deaver is back, helping out with the Dole campaign...
...The only hint something was up came when a member of the Bosnian delegation asked for help in guaranteeing implementation of the Dayton peace accord...
...So why be dishonest...
Vol. 1 • May 1996 • No. 36
