Dole Institute of Politics - Voices from the Big First - Encore; Unknown

welcome back to cape pierre presents i'm kay mcentire for the rest of this hour what was on the minds of kansans in the nineteen sixties you've got just a few weeks left to see the exhibit at the dole institute of politics voices from the big first nineteen sixty one to nineteen sixty eight it's a look at some of the issues a dressing bob dole as he began his congressional career here's historian virgil dean and aubrey coleman of the dole institute of politics to talk about voices from the big first our conversation originally aired on k pr presents on march seventh twenty twenty one you know we're working with archive's in the papers here at the ball institute and hours being a relatively new so to speak historical collection meaning that there hasn't been a whole lot of scholarship done even though the papers have been open for about ten years or more we can see our whole host of subjects that we would really love to know more about what their souls and also think that you know scholars might be interested in and really trying to cultivate awareness of our collections was so

the nineteen sixties kind of beginning of the beginning of polls career in the us congress so we thought it would be nice to frame but those years but when you know after his election in nineteen sixty three and after his election to the senate in nineteen sixty eight and up and another nice manageable timeframe and also as as we talk about the crossroads of of change in the twentieth century and lots of different types of cultural social a political things going on during our time and have won for many years said to tell the story and to get some help telling that story in and vergil was kind enough to lend us has expertise and then looking into it field of energy that that itself in just a minute but i want to draw attention to the name of it it's entitled voices from the big first but in fact in nineteen sixty one bob dole was elected to the us six kansas congressional district

not the first explain how that happened and how the big first became a big first that's right very perceptive we become a while little bit in the title of their love of false information that unintentionally create a licensing deal that's it that's better by your idea when dole was elected bob dole was elected to congress for the first time and it was in nineteen sixty five he was running to replace our wordsmith it represented from the sixth congressional district which was basically north central in northwestern kansas at that time a democrat how floyd reading was represented from the southwest about to have to have the stadium and in the southwestern part of the state so adorable won that election i handed them into just two years later he had run against incumbent from the fifth district to know when he has to continue his

service well one of his close elections although he won unfairly unlit but in the interim by the nineteen sixty census occurred and as a result kansas lost a congressional district went from six to five and up the redistricting that took place essentially divided the state in half and so you have something similar to what we have today although the eastern boundary of the big first is not nearly as straight as it was then i even then i went back into the street part a little bit for this city's term central portal bit further but fifty eight of the hundred and five candidates were combined into the first congressional district ends so are ideas to defend the head the title that it's what what became the first big first and that it's so representative the voices from throughout that region that area and so we go from the southwest to the northwest in that is far east is so

aligned in that area and closer and hutchison on the eastern side of the big first it's hard to imagine now that at that time bob dole would have been the new kid on the block in washington dc can unite us who else was representing kansas at the time yeah tom those are thirty eight he came of course opt out of just was leading as rose district attorney in the county attorney and russell can and debt so he was so sparingly and relatively and all of his experience with his military service in a short time the legislature in anderson county attorney was significant but that elsewhere in kansas as i mentioned before floyd reading was a democratic representative from the southwestern part of the state and we have been the home robert bales worth i'm

not sure i can name omar right offhand the other four through for her representatives senatorial a window was first elected him to sample i was in the senate along with the frank carlson he and several died in early nineteen sixty one and early nineteen sixty two and jim pierson was appointed and then subsequently elected to that position so throughout most of dole's time in the house almost all of that he was working with in this on the senate side was frank carlson from a concordia parish and jim pearce i'm from johnson county ind so that was those relationships their gubernatorial in kansas you have a giant or sermon will we may britt delivery and the course then the docking years began during that time politically on the national scale

of course kansas's favorite son president eisenhower was just finishing up his term and die young he was elected right as an hour of finishes second term and in nineteen sixty and so didn't run his vice president richard nixon of course are sought the nomination receive the nomination and then ran against john f kennedy and they're so when kenny one in sixty three close election he started along well the decade before that with a democratic majority in both the house and the senate in washington and that that would continue throughout that period democratic party controlled the congress to rot goals entire time in the year the legislature and he was working with two were dominant figures and in the white house with kennedy and then of course johnson after the kennedy assassination so it the door a position of

being a very conservative republican in a minority party certainly on the right of his party which was at that time a fairly diverse was a different time when we head a conservative and moderate to liberal republicans in the same in the democratic party here and there but the republicans were and then in a distinct minority during most of that period or service in the in the house as he had when in the senate things start to change a little bit after the johnson years but they would continue the democratic dominated for quite a number of years so he was a player are we learning how to maneuver in the congress in a minority position under two maria active and prominent democratic presidential characters question might be easy tip or heart

take a cancer in hindsight but looking back at those very early days in nineteen sixty one was there a sense that all was going to be it a person to be reckoned with on a national level or coming in sm freshman congressman was that you know he's just one of hundreds well yeah i think that's one of the things that i learned from this project not that it in a lot from the research but so one of the things i learned about goal was the fact that he had no intention of being a wallflower even from the very beginning and so he quickly made himself known a threat but his district are of kansas and in washington dc so before their long people were talking about when he was gaining for a variety of reasons some national press and there he enjoyed that i think was quite a bit and work hard to make sure that continues but so from the very beginning i think he

he was going to say was he was a minority in the minority so he had to struggle to make make his voice heard in that way or to have much impact on legislation and initially he was he became quickly known as somebody who is opposing everything the slimy journal called him via kansas against your hours one of the charges that they applied to him fairly early on and he had some press criticism from the western part of the state route is attracting you're in here forty four terms in congress up to me from the sheriff's newspapers in the west had to send so lynette hand a great band at that time were all papers that were pre match moderate through to little little left of center republican because they're in kansas but that for the most part they were reflecting a very moderate position

in the us we're on the outer door when he wasn't at the shy away from battles with the with those newspapers either the hudson hutchison paper i think i know when it started it was in sixty one sixty two i think he talked about the hutchison news is the prophet of the purr so harper it probably was so those kinds of battles i think attracted a lot of attention and but it was i think even those opposition papers realize before too long the door had a good chance of making a name for himself and moving on and certainly after he won re election in nineteen sixty two which was by no means a a sure thing running against the democratic incumbent from the southwest of people recognize that this is it this is guy this can be around for quite a while and i think started looking for you know what's next for bob dole as bob dold but he at least as early as nineteen sixty six had his eye

on her senate run and things work out for him perfectly and sixty eight when frank carlson decided to retire and he was ready by that time two to move on to a lot to the approaching they do you describe him as being sort of ready to go from the get go because the goal has pretty famously said when he first thought about going into politics that he didn't know if he would be a republican or democrat and you went back and looked at russell county and it was a republican counties so by george i'm gonna be a republican so you didn't get a sense that like this is the man who started out with a really strong the course when he was elected to the legislature he was a republican by the time and he was republican is this county attorney russell cary but i think that europe that points out that to some extent pragmatism and so to go was certainly solicitous of his

constituents paid attention to what they wanted and quickly became i mean certainly from the beginning of his congressional career he was a very partisan republican and that although he and i think foster the relationship with eisenhower to a certain extent but they were very different republicans and i think all adds up to but yeah is partisanship comes early on one of the things he tried to do the very first year was to become involved in something that we don't cover an exhibit but i found an interesting a republican war organization ideas she did say are or team of congressmen called the paul revere they organize what they call paul revere panel which is to call attention to go out throughout the country in groups of three and to call attention to the socialist the policies of the democratic administrations so answer that that started as far as i can tell and sixty one dole asked to be involved in that i

think he didn't get a position but he was he was supposed to he hosted a group became the western kansas and in two years in nineteen sixty three when they started up again it was a member of that so as that an interesting effort to you know be an indication that he want to be involved in republican party politics into his inactive very active way from the very earliest point i would also add you know and then in the mid sixties and there's a real effort by him to distinguish himself not in congress but also it philosophically i guess when the twenty ten becomes a goldwater supporter and nineteen sixty four he actually introduces barry goldwater all on the stage it might madison square garden is the one who you know is really ready to not just be against something you know begins democratic policies but try to find some kind of thing to what are we for liberty individualism and things like that and

so trying to define himself a sign of that as a choice not a macro as a goldwater rohde many echo that same court and enhance the you know him in his own writings in that in the archives in nineteen sixty five and not for this project but for some research we did a few years ago the course after we start sending combat troops sent to vietnam army bowl goes on a listening tour on on college campuses they're out that october november think was six college campuses including kay you for today's some of the other schools and he gets a lot of attention now within the republican party for this really hands on type of the news centered outreach i am so i think he is just really you know apart from you know that the that the political philosophy parties just whatever he does he does a big and hard and find ways to excel and and an antenna be visible the air whenever he's doing i'm kate mcintyre today and keep your

prisons were visiting the dole institute of politics and their new voices from the big first exhibit virgil dean is the cue reader at that exhibit empathy with other komen the associate director of the dole institute of politics let's talk a little bit about the exhibit the focus really is on letters from constituents which you know now in twenty twenty one that may seem a little we allow any comment on that two government say i'm old enough that it didn't seem point to sign a letter that i wrote about i really didn't and then the main reason is that i've done quite a bit over researching congressional collections and gubernatorial papers and where the constituent correspondence is an important part of most of those and there when you get to love to members of congress it's

voluminous and i'm as curious as probably most people they're interested in figuring out how they can to deal with all these e mails in the future because it is very different i mean i haven't written a letter that anybody i'd be other than a note odd for a long time and certainly in corresponding to cover prison deeds or senators who ever public officials on the local level it's email you don't so the inner city but so it's it's a very different than a thing but again that's where my focus is banned the nineteen sixties is can a recent for me so most mylar researchers panel earlier in the twentieth century and then with other projects back of the ninety yeah i think that's a but i mean but the experience of reading these letters and you make the great point the case that the the nature of our communication is so different these days

and it's so immediate and verve as virgil said there's just vastly more volume that congressional offices are are dealing with but i think you know the more time you spend with these things and as an archivist i have a particular tune to appreciating these maybe more obscure points of of our documents are created but you really get the sense that are you know if you're writing a mall tae paragraph letter i'm eat by hand or by typewriter you are at least thinking very slowly and deliberately or maybe you've jotted out a draft before hand arm there's the sense that there's communication is really between the writer and the recipient of the season but it's of a more of a private exchange i think we think when we send email we know it's going to or a system we know that it may or may not be read by human arm that it hopefully somebody you be you know an algorithm is gonna analyze it and get back to you or maybe it will be constructed by a person with various form letters that is not to say that didn't happen in the sixties

because there you can see and then the response is i'm in the letters that they're different you know and there are four letters they actually be well very well crafted out towards the message that at the center is the issues of the initial correspondent is identifying abate they feel very personal and you know congressman dold it's said that he read all of those himself albert incoming mail himself and you really do get that personal sense there but even the sense that this that the exchanges is a private exchange it's not something that you know with social media where you suppose right writing imposing our opinion america's in a sea of everybody's gonna comment on it i'm you know i think in some ways it might have been easier for people to express what they're thinking knowing that it's more of a private exchange the tickets were true in terms of its easy to imagine door eating all are virtually all of that correspondence and he said that i would

have no reason to question later in later years i'm sure that wouldn't be the case but up through the nineteen sixties it going the more common you also get a large handwritten letters from people that probably i don't know for the exhibit i i would get settled least seventy five percent maybe they would just a rough guess but fifty to seventy five percent of those correspondence that we polled that were handwritten and that is that's impressionistic but there's a lot of that and so it's more person on that sense from the constituents any do you get there's a sense that there isn't time was though instead of course going into writing the responses and they're much more responsive to the interests of big of a correspondent now if if there are there are many cases where they'll be a lot of almost identical letters coming on a particular issue and you'll find it to be very similar almost identical a letter is going out to this to different people

but they are personalized in somewhere or another and i didn't think i don't think i found any that i thought well this didn't even come close to addressing what this person's concerned that whereas in more recent times i've had that experience the power of thought i don't always reading this but they're not really understanding what's certain and i don't think it's because i didn't explain it was a yeah there's a lot of there's a lot of this back and forth a reference to something that somebody said in their regional american citizens in their original owner says and unicef are really working hard to put those out in than typing us out by hand one hand so there's just i really respect i guess the maritime both of the constituents in the office dedicated to making sure that this was done well and right and i think that fits into it with what we understand to be senator dole style just really making people and relationships and communication a priority and one of the things i found that from journalists covering him was quickly recognizing the

fact that i think i might mention this earlier he was very very careful to be responsive to that to his constituents and so he was i think well known for one of the reasons why he was able to get reelected several times and then move on to the senate was that he was so a servicer was so careful too try to meet the needs and pay attention to what his people not western kansas where we're interested i might point out two and we go and look at the exhibit there's not a lot of we didn't do a lot of photography universal imagery in the exhibit it focuses very much on the documents but in some of the graphics and things were and when folks can then you know another great highlight of the collections here is that there are boxes and boxes of photographs that congressman paul took with his constituents when they would come to visit him in washington dc and there on the steps of the capitol and so does voters are incorporated into the design of the exhibit i'm not identified as such they don't match up with the letters and eventually found but you again just that the person a person

feeling and relationship building that you get with the letters is also very well documented in attendance scores of filters that we have done in the archives of now congressman bowl with all manner of people from kansas who were coming and very proud to demean him in washington said tell me about how you got archives boxes and boxes and boxes of letters from constituents who are writing to bob dole between nineteen sixty one and nineteen sixty eight how do you get that too an exhibit give me a sense of like how many boxes how many hundreds of letters are we talking about and how did you go about saying our direct mail finish but wait we first of all identified by looking at inventory lists and so forth together and that studying those and then talking about it together

some of the topics that we thought we try to cover up the ticket goes that was that would when you would be an interest in the nineties to the nineteen sixties civil rights for example you wouldn't deal with it with the a nineteen sixties that didn't matter vietnam few obvious ones but then some other things that just work came outcome a surface as a result a lot of correspondents on redistricting in the nineteen sixties on why that's the case and they're so that research would come in direct where we ended up but after that selecting if you're those key topics we'd just started i just started asking for boxes of letters of correspondents really focused on the constituent correspondents and so this collection is very well armed catalogue them and very impressive easy to easy to work with and so understaffed i was with good about giving me the things that i wanted

to look at and then i just lie went to a lot of a lot of boxers and hundreds of letters trying to make some reasonable selections i approach is a lot different than i would have for proposal doing out an article or a book because it died and i would be the first to admit work would probably miss a lot of good stuff too but you can't it's you the tough times that drew i was more and more time schedule them for this exhibit work that i would have been for a research project for publications so candidate in this some things as quickly as you can but then others you know maybe a former enemy fighters or innocent on average older but there's a lot in some are huge line from this one folder in each box archival boxes set very simple years and it's so out of the boxes i ask them to call for me some of the new look at now that doesn't have in there what i i knew what i

was expecting city can deal with pretty quickly others it takes a lot of time so we spent a lot of hours it's i mean yeah as virgil said the board the volume of material a system and so on and pretty overwhelming on my guest you know that kind of speaks again to the value of a project like this because one would you know before during a public facing research project you know when might ask are common and take the time to really digest this kind of material so and not just for the public to appreciate how through the exhibit but also i'm getting a sense letting people know what will we have and how it might be useful to them in their research is a colony to think about what we're kind of research it might spin off it again like that as our guard our global perspective you know the volume even people think about digitizing archives and you know wanted to scan at all in or maybe this letter of the law so now i think but in the past people have been more quick tip to weed out things particularly in the congressional they burst tradition because they're seeded

correspondents have been seen as duplicative those talks about the same issue again and again again will pick lime or ten or something like that but i am if it's just the volume of material of that indicates something is happening with this group of constituents in their song you know there's a suburb of people mobilizing to discuss this particular topic read especially redistricting education federal aid education burned schools no agriculture policy which is less surprising outcome and being in western kansas and so that's something that you know using that as a tool to focus in on a on a few key subjects that we thought were particularly representative of the big first of western kansas during this time that's aubrey coleman of the dole institute of politics and historian virgil dean talking about voices from the big first nineteen sixty one to nineteen sixty eight now in its last few weeks find out more at dole institute dot org i'm kate

mcintyre kbr prisons as a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas