Edition: U.S. / Global

POLITICS: THE BOOK;The Doles Tell Their Two Tales, and Hope for One Happy Ending

Published: July 7, 1996

Elizabeth Dole carefully read and reread her wedding vows; Bob Dole elected to wing his.

From his years convalescing on his back from war wounds, Mr. Dole developed a phobia about fire and prefers ground-floor hotel rooms.

While Mrs. Dole worked in the Reagan White House, she planned a romantic candlelight dinner to lobby her husband for the sale of military planes to Saudi Arabia.

Such are the intimate insights offered in "Unlimited Partners: Our American Story" (Simon & Schuster), an autobiography written by the Doles with a brace of ghostwriters. Reissued with new chapters to coincide with Mr. Dole's run for the Presidency, the book, first published in 1988, chronicles the Doles' strikingly different paths to political power and marriage.

Mr. Dole has added sections sharply criticizing the Clinton Administration and laying out, in broad terms, his plans for the country, but the book remains overwhelmingly biographical. In a tour meant to soften and round out his public image, Mr. Dole, along with Mrs. Dole, spent last week promoting "Unlimited Partners" around the country.

The Doles alternate sections, with Mrs. Dole painting a comfortable upbringing in Salisbury, N.C., that included piano lessons and trips to Quebec, then school at Duke University and Harvard Law. Mr. Dole describes growing up in Depression-poor Russell, Kan., where some families paid the doctor with eggs, and from which he never traveled by bus or plane until he went to war at 19.

Mrs. Dole tells of a younger start in politics, winning the presidency of her third-grade bird club.

"You're a political animal," she records a suitor telling her years later, as their relationship soured, "and that's not my cup of tea."

Mr. Dole, a high school football player who considered becoming a doctor, does not mention an interest in politics until he recovered from his wounds and studied history and law at Washburn Municipal University in Topeka. A librarian suggested that he run for the State Legislature.

"I was never going to play football or wear a surgeon's gown," he writes. He adds: "Knocking on a stranger's door, looking him in the eye and asking for his vote was a way to overcome my disability without denying it."

Mr. Dole ascended through elective offices, Mrs. Dole through Federal appointments. (Mrs. Dole also writes of a year's stint as a defense lawyer in night court in Washington, where she represented a prostitute who proved, to her astonishment, to be a female impersonator.)

The Doles were sometimes on opposite sides. "While Bob Dole was voting against the Great Society, I was working for it," Mrs. Dole writes of her job at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare under President Lyndon B. Johnson.

The Doles repeatedly return to the strength they draw from their marriage. Mrs. Dole tells of being separated by political events on their 20th wedding anniversary in December.

"In our phone call that evening, I said, 'Bob, you know something?' " Mrs. Dole writes. " 'We're just as much in love now as we were the day we were married.' 'No,' Bob corrected me. 'We're more in love.' "

But their careers have forced frozen dinners and other compromises on them. Mrs. Dole recalls that when they married, they decided to postpone buying a house until they had more time. They still live in a first-floor apartment in the Watergate complex in Washington.

Those hoping for tidbits about the Doles' private lives like Mr. Dole's divorce from his first wife, will be disappointed. Some poignant moments reported in other Dole biographies go unmentioned here. Others receive a different twist.

In his biography, "Bob Dole," Richard Ben Cramer describes Mr. Dole as being so busy that his daughter, Robin, once left him a memorandum asking permission to pierce her ears. In "Unlimited Partners," the story illustrates not Mr. Dole's hectic schedule but that Robin "inherited the family sense of humor."

But his 41-year-old daughter, who makes frequent campaign appearances with Mr. Dole, remains an enigma in the book.

Two threads that run through the book are the personal causes the Doles have embraced -- for Mr. Dole, a concern for the disabled, for Mrs. Dole, the role of women.

He says "one of the most rewarding days of my life" came when President George Bush signed the Americans With Disabilities Act in 1990. "I suppose there were some that day who saw only a White House lawn covered with wheelchairs and guide dogs," he writes of the signing ceremony. "I saw Americans possessed with amazing gifts, who could finally contribute to a nation much in need of their skills and insights."

Mrs. Dole acidly describes being one of five women in a class of 150 on property law at Harvard. They were called on only once, on "Ladies' Day," when "they were summoned to the front of the room to read a poem of their own composition."