Elizabeth Hanford Dole: Speaking from the Heart

As a politician, what you say and how you say it is almost as important as what you do. Political careers are made based not only on substantive achievements, but also on style, presentation, speeches, and debates. Dole’s is no exception. After a career in government service spanning six presidents, from Lyndon B. Johnson to George H. W. Bush, she became widely recognized as a leading Republican politician in her own right after her 1996 speech at the GOP convention. In 1999 she spent six months campaigning for president before dropping out of the race due to a lack of adequate funds, and in 2002 she was elected U.S. Senator from North Carolina. In this biography of Dole, the authors show how she has been able to advance the causes she cares about, as well as her political career, through her consummate skills as a public speaker.

Dole’s career included service in two cabinets, as Secretary of Transportation (Reagan) and Secretary of Labor (Bush), and she also served as president of the American Red Cross. The authors quote liberally from her speeches and interviews to illustrate the events of her political career and to place her choices-personal, career, and political-in the context of the times and places in which she grew up and came of age. Her trajectory-from Southern belle debutante to Harvard Law School student and from political wife to presidential candidate and U.S. senator-is fascinating, and the deftness with which she has been able to deflect the criticisms thrown her way is instructive for women of both political parties and for politicians of both genders.