‘Some say Bill Clinton’s running for a third term’

Washington insiders on America’s first couple

When you enter the offices of the Great and the Good in Washington — or even the Not so Great and Not so Good — you always find an Ego Wall. Senator Trufflebacker’s Ego Wall will have photographs of himself at Nasa with the astronauts, a signed photograph with President Ronald Reagan and perhaps a framed pen used by President Bush to sign the bill authorising Senator Trufflebacker to give millions of taxpayers’ dollars to the corn farmers in his native state. Congressman Mudpie, on the other hand, might be pictured with Angelina Jolie, have a citation for his honorary degree, and perhaps even the first paycheck he ever earned for a very small amount as a miner in West Virginia.

But there is no Ego Wall in Washington to compare with that of Senator Bob Dole, the former Republican leader, former presidential candidate, and still — in his eighties — one of the sharpest political minds in America. Bob Dole’s Ego Wall is impressive not because he has much of an ego — refreshingly, he hasn’t. He is a grandfatherly politician from the plains of Kansas, a war hero who still bears the scars of the second world war Italian campaign, and for whom politics has always been about trying to do the decent thing. What makes Dole’s Ego Wall unique is that he is photographed alongside nine sitting presidents — Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush and Clinton. Despite the toxic partisan bitterness that has made Washington such an unpleasant place for the past 15 years, Dole knew them all, worked constructively with them all, and — in different ways — respected them all, including — remarkably — his arch rival in the 1996 presidential election, Bill Clinton. I am standing with Senator Dole in front of his nine presidential photographs asking him to grade Clinton as part of that historical medley.