Former US Senator Robert Dole has died aged 98. The influential Republican politician served in Congress for 36 years: in the 1960s in the House of Representatives and in the Senate from 1969 to 1996. He was highly respected on Capitol Hill for his willingness to compromise and his ability to form coalitions.
On three occasions, Dole has further tried to become president on behalf of the Republicans: in 1980 and 1988 he unsuccessfully ran for the candidacy. In 1996 he succeeded, but then he lost the presidential race to the incumbent president, Bill Clinton.
Dole, who was in the habit of speaking about himself in the third person, was from the state of Kansas in the Midwest. Particularly in the 1980s under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, as the leader of the Republican majority in the Senate, he had a big finger in the pie in passing all kinds of legislation.
During World War II, he was seriously injured by a grenade explosion, which caused him to lose a kidney and paralyze his right arm. He never got to use it again. His rehabilitation took more than three years. To avoid embarrassing situations, he always had a pen in his right hand and always held out his left hand for handshakes.
Sign language interpreters
As a politician, he was strongly committed to people with disabilities: partly thanks to him, a law was passed in 1990 that made it a criminal offense to discriminate against people on the labor market, in public transport and in public buildings on the basis of their disability. He was also one of the driving forces behind the use of sign language interpreters in official speeches.
In the 2016 campaign, the battle for president between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, Dole made a name for himself by initially supporting Jeb Bush; when he withdrew from the presidential candidacy race, he became one of the few prominent Republicans behind Donald Trump, whom he would later praise for what Dole saw as Trump’s efforts “to restore our position as leaders of the free world.” .
Current President Biden remembers Dole on Twitter, praising his decency and integrity.
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