ArticleIP_2067.txt

   
   
      
         
            The Wound

            Dole is "reluctant,"
"reticent," and "loath" to discuss it, claims the press corps. Or "even to
think about" it, as Newsday 's Elaine S. Povich wrote Aug. 12, "because
to do so would unearth the demons that he has lived with--and mostly hidden
from the public--for the majority of his 73 years."

            "It," of course, is the war
wound, the battlefield maiming of his arm and shoulder during World War II--or,
as the Washington Post 's David Maraniss and other writers have upgraded
it for their journalistic purposes, the Wound.

            The press
loves the Wound for the reductionist power it affords them when they write
about the candidate. Writing in the New Republic on behalf of hacks
everywhere, the otherwise estimable Matthew Cooper (now bound for
Newsweek ) calls the Wound Dole's "Rosetta stone." Dole speaks in
shorthand? Explanation: Infirmities prevent him from scribbling much beyond
his signature, so he's trained himself to compress the world into verbal
hieroglyphics. Dole refuses to give up? Explanation: He was left for
dead in Italy and marked a goner several times in hospitals, and he'd be taking
the dirt nap today if not for his interminable spirit. Dole is a hatchet
man, a mean guy given to angry outbursts? Hell, goddamnit! He grew up
hardscrabble and was crippled in the bloom of his handsome prime! He earned
everything he has, unlike softies like Bush and Forbes, who had the world
handed to them, and Clinton, who was anointed by Fulbright and got his own free
ride!

            But most of all, the press corps loves to touch the Wound
because they've convinced themselves that subject was previously taboo. Give a
listen:

            
               Most
revealingly, [Dole is] willing more and more to speak of being shot in World
War II, and of his lengthy recovery from wounds that almost killed him and left
his right shoulder incapacitated.
            

            -- Los
Angeles Times , Feb. 24, 1996

            
               Senate
Majority Leader Robert J. Dole, the laconic Kansan who for more than three
decades in Congress has been to reluctant to draw attention to his wounds from
World War II, returned today to a hospital building where he suffered
excruciating pain and nearly died.
            

            

               --Washington Post , March 15, 1996

            
               Midwest
stoicism being what it is, Dole still seems uncomfortable talking about the
wounds that nearly killed him as he lead (sic) a platoon up an Italian hill
April 12, 1945.
            

            
               As he
wrapped up his party's nomination, his generation's World War II experience is
at the heart of his third run for the presidency. But he talks about it
reluctantly.
            

            
               "I've
just never done it," Dole said in an interview with GNS. "I've always felt it
was private."
            

            --Gannett
News Service, March 22, 1996

            
               Recently,
[Dole] has given up his reticence to discuss his war wounds.
            

            --Helen
Thomas, UPI, April 17, 1996

            
               Dole
specifically chose last April to jump into the race, marking the 50th
anniversary of when he was wounded in Italy during World War II to highlight
his military record.
            

            

               Showcasing the 1945 grenade explosion which kept him in the hospital for
three years and left him with a useless right arm signaled a change in the very
private man who has been reluctant to discuss the episode.
            

            --Agence
France Presse, May 15, 1996

            
               Once
reluctant to discuss his injuries and his grueling recovery, Dole has been
warming up to the subject in interviews and speeches.
            

            --Associated Press, May
31, 1996

            But the notion that Dole is just now exiting the Wound
cocoon is a perennial press fantasy. Dole is always talking about his Wound,
and the press is always asserting that he is doing so reluctantly, for the
first time, and so on. He blabs about the Wound in the 1988 and 1996 editions
of Unlimited Partners: Our American Story , his book with wife Elizabeth,
and his reflections on the Wound and the aftermath consume a great chunk of
Richard Ben Cramer's nonpareil book about the 1988 campaign, What It Takes:
The Way to the White House . And he discussed it candidly during his last
run for the White House, as this déjà vu clip by Edward Walsh from the
Feb. 19, 1988, Washington Post proves:

            
               For the
first time in his public life, he has forced himself to speak openly about the
horrible war wound that turned a strapping, athletic youth into an emaciated,
bed-ridden hospital patient. The experience left him bitter and disillusioned,
Dole has told audiences this year.
            

            
               But Dole and his
advisers have also sought to turn the toughness that enabled Dole to overcome
his injury into an asset, the counterpoint to the Bush "wimp" image that is the
other side of the deeply personal contest between the two men.
            

            Did the press miss Walsh's story? Have they forgotten the
1988 campaign? If so, one would think that after six months of Dole
non-reticence on the hustings, including a pit stop for the press at the Battle
Creek, Mich., Army hospital where he recuperated from the Wound, and a full
nine months after the release of a campaign video, An American Hero , in
which Dole himself describes the Wounding in graphic detail ("Some
high-explosive bullet entered my right shoulder, fractured my vertebrae in my
neck. I--I saw these--things racing--my parents, my house. I couldn't move my
body, I couldn't move my arms, my legs."), the press would finally say with
authority that Dole is not only comfortable with talking about the Wound, he's
practiced.

            Not a
chance. In the final hours of the Republican National Convention, reporters
were still writing that Dole was only just coming to grips with his
infirmity.

            
               One
touchy subject is Dole's grievous war wound. He has always been loath to talk
about it, but his advisers have viewed it as an asset--a symbol of his will to
survive.
            

            

               --Philadelphia Inquirer , Aug. 15, 1996

            
The media's misperception about the Wound pairs
nicely with their other blind spot: that a "new, sensitive Dole" has emerged to
replace the "mean hatchet man." When Dole misted up at the convention,
reporters wrote as if the "Midwest stoic" had finally found his heart, when in
fact a sluice of his tears courses its way through his recent career. He sobbed
when he paid a recent visit to Ike's boyhood home in Abilene, Kan.; when he
retired from the Senate earlier this summer; when he visited his hometown of
Russell, Kan., in March; when he helped plant Nixon in Whittier in 1994; when
he talked on 60 Minutes in 1993 about his father visiting him in the
hospital; when he attended a Senate party in 1992 for the defeated George Bush;
whenever he hears "You'll Never Walk Alone" (which he played continuously
during his recovery); during a Ford/Dole campaign stop in Russell (he always
seems to cry in Russell) in 1976, which he included in a later campaign
video.

            Why then,
does the press paint Dole as a New Age '90s guy who is finally making the big
hug with the inner child who was ravaged by the Wound?

            Don't blame Dole. He hasn't exploited his war record for
political purposes any more than did John "PT109" Kennedy or George "Grumman
Avenger" Bush. And while he hasn't rubbed his game wing directly in Clinton's
draft-dodging face in pursuit of votes, he'll probably do whatever it takes to
win if he's woefully behind in October.

            Neither
exploiting the Wound nor shunning it, Dole has folded it into his life,
establishing the Dole Foundation to help the disabled, pushing the Americans
With Disabilities Act through Congress, and going out of his way to align
himself with the physically impaired. When he gave the commencement address
this year at Gallaudet University--the federal school for the deaf--Dole wasn't
engaging in political grandstanding. He was working his constituency.

            
The only disability that needs more exposure
this election cycle is the media's Campaign Cognitive Disorder, a seemingly
incurable condition whose symptoms are amnesia and treacle. CCD-impaired
journalists blot out the past and embrace the mawkish. In the case of Bob Dole,
afflicted reporters repeat the well-grooved narrative of his Wound, Recovery,
New Sensitivity, because it makes for a good and easy story--and because it
fits with their line that the formerly taciturn/stoic, mean/hatchet-wielding
Dole has evolved, even when the record shows that he's been a serial blubberer
since the '70s and, despite the tears, is just as mean as ever.

            
Meanwhile, the crybaby candidate must be chortling about the media's naiveté.
He's probably been chortling for more than three decades. In a Dole profile
published last December in the Los Angeles Times , former Dole aide Jim
French talks about chauffeuring the candidate to campaign stops during his 1966
re-election bid for the House. Even then, Dole knew the political value of the
Wound--and of his reluctance to talk about it. The Times reports:

            
               Few
gatherings passed without a tactful mention of [Dole's] military service in
Italy and the frozen right arm. It hit home with the veterans, as did Dole's
stern warning to dike the Communist tide in Asia. Dole rarely fished for
sympathy when he retold the tale of his battle injury, leavening the reference
by saying it won him a "bedpan promotion" to captain.
            

            
               But "if
a meeting wasn't going good, sometimes I'd have a guy in the back of the room
ask him about the war wound," says French. "It would switch the conversation to
make it more positive."