Bob Dole's acceptance speech - excerpts from and criticisms of Dole's speech at the 1996 Republican National Convention

Washington Monthly, Oct, 1996

Bob Dole's acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention was eagerly anticipated and widely praised. Beyond the pretty - even Helprinesque-prose,though,it represents perhaps the most comprehensive document of what, as of today, Dole will do as president (especially since he has done what the can to distance himself from his party's platform). Hence, the annotation - of inconsistencies, inaccuracies, and just plain bad ideas - that follows. President Clinton's speech had its problems - notably his preference for promising new government goodies for every class of Americans over taking on issues, such as entitlements, that require hard choices and sacrifice. Still, there were few surprises based on his record of the past four years. And of course, Dole didn't mention entitlements either - except to promise to protect them.

...to those who say it was never so, that America has not been better, I say, you're wrong, and I know, because I was there. And I have seen it. And I remember. And our nation, though wounded and scathed, has outlasted revolution, civil war, world war, racial oppression and economic catastrophe.... What enabled us to accomplish this has little to do with the values of the present. After decades of assault upon what made America great, upon supposedly obsolete values, what have we reaped? What have we created? What do we have? What we have in the opinion of millions of Americans is crime and drugs, illegitimacy, abortion, the abdication of duty, and the abandonment of children....

Most of the problems Dole identifies would seem to predate Clinton's ascension. If values trickle down, as Dole argues here, our decaying moral fiber - much in evidence in the 1980s - is certainly as attributable to George Bush and Ronald Reagan as it is to Bill Clinton.

Only right conduct distinguishes a great nation from one that cannot rise above itself. It has never been otherwise. Right conduct every day at every level, in all facets of life - the decision of a child not to use drugs, of a student not to cheat, of a young woman or young man to serve when called, of a screenwriter to refuse to add to the mountains of trash, of a businessman not to bribe, of a politician to cast the vote or take action that will put his office or his chances of victory at risk but which is right.

Dole seems to have forgotten his opportunistic election-year conversion to supply side tax cuts, which he had long and wisely resisted, or indeed his own vice-presidential nominee's politically expedient decision to abandon long held positions on the rights of immigrants and affirmative action because the Dole-Kemp team thought it would enhance their prospects for victory.

And why have so many of us - and I do not exclude myself, for I am not the model of perfection - why have so many of us been failing these tests for so long? The answer is not a mystery. It is, to the contrary, quite simple and can be given quite simply. It is because, for too long, we have had a leadership that has been unwilling to risk the truth, to speak without calculation, to sacrifice itself. An administration in its very existence communicates this day by day until it flows down like rain and the rain becomes a river and the river becomes a flood.... Now, which is more important? Wealth or honor? It is not, as was said by the victors four years ago, "the economy, possess the wit and determination to deal with many questions, but certainly not limited to them.

Dole is right that values as well as economics matter. But he doesn't acknowledge the link between the two. An unmoderated free market economy inevitably encourages a profit-at-any-cost mentality, which leads to the sorts of activities, whether violent screenplays or businessmen offering bribes, he deplores.

All things do not flow from wealth or poverty. I know this first hand, and so do you. All things flow from doing what is right. The triumph of this nation, the triumph of this nation lies not in its material wealth but in courage, sacrifice, and honor. We tend to forget this when our leaders forget it, and we tend to remember it when they remember it.... In the last presidential election, in the last presidential election, you, the people, were gravely insulted. You were told that the material was not only the most important of these three but, in fact, really the only one that really mattered. I don't hold to that for a moment.

[But] No one can deny the importance of material well-being. And in this regard it is time to recognize that we have surrendered too much of our economic liberty.

I do not appreciate the value of economic liberty nearly as much for what it has done in keeping us fed as to what it's done in keeping us free. The freedom of the marketplace is not merely the best guarantor of our prosperity, it is the chief guarantor of our rights. And a government that seizes control of the economy for the good of the people ends up seizing control of the people for the good of the economy.

And our opponents portray the right to enjoy the fruits of one's own time and labor as a kind of selfishness against which they must fight for the good of the nation. But they are deeply mistaken, for when they gather to themselves the authority to take the earnings and direct the activities of the people, they are fighting not for our sake, but for the power to tell us what to do.