Robert Dole, Former U.S. Senate Republican Leader, Dies at 98

Bob Dole, the World War II veteran who recovered from near-fatal wounds to become the U.S. Senate Republican leader and a three-time presidential candidate, has died. He was 98.

Dole died Sunday morning in his sleep, according to a Twitter post by the Elizabeth Dole Foundation. He disclosed in February that he had stage-four lung cancer.

Dole’s loss to Democrat Bill Clinton in the 1996 presidential election ended a political career that spanned more than four decades and took him from the legislature in Kansas to the innermost circles of power in Washington.

Dole emerged on the national stage as Richard Nixon’s “Hatchet Man,” staunchly defending the president through the early stages of Watergate. He later evolved into an adept legislative deal-maker and softened his public image as half of one of Washington’s first celebrated “Power Couples,” after Ronald Reagan appointed his wife, Elizabeth, U.S. Transportation Secretary. He was the only former GOP presidential nominee to endorse Trump in the 2016 election.

He was a conservative who sometimes wasn’t conservative enough as Christian evangelicals wielded greater power in Republican politics; a quipster with an acid tongue who ended up making light of his role as pitchman for an impotence drug; and a man who enjoyed the idea that his wife might outdo him in politics.

Tom Daschle, the South Dakota Democrat who faced off with Dole when they led their parties in the Senate, said in a 2000 tribute that Dole’s “sense of fairness and decency is a standard for which everyone in public life should aim.”