united-states-presidential-candidates-1988

"If all fossil fuels and their derivatives, as well as trees for paper and construction were banned in order to save the planet, reverse the Greenhouse Effect and stop deforestation; then there is only one known annually renewable natural resource that is capable of providing the overall majority of the world's paper and textiles; meet all of the world's transportation, industrial and home energy needs, while simultaneously reducing pollution, rebuilding the soil, and cleaning the atmosphere all at the same time... and that substance is -- the same one that did it all before -- Cannabis Hemp... Marijuana!"

"Growing hemp as nature designed it is vital to our urgent need to reduce greenhouse gases and ensure the survival of our planet."

"I've repeatedly warned we must avoid the extremists: those who say we should pull out our troops in Vietnam immediately, those who say we should escalate and go right into North Vietnam... I tell you, we should continue doing what we have been: just messing around."

"Left-wing or right-wing. No, I'm not either. I'm kind of middle-of-the-bird."

"Many political experts have told me that nobody will vote for me because America is not ready for such decisive and dynamic leadership. They tell me these things, and I say nay to the negative nincompoops who never nourished the nihilistic nerve to name a novice to nail down the nomination."

"Here and now, I am hereby publicly challenging all of the other leading candidates to debate on the issues of the campaign. I challenge Ronald Reagan to meet me on his home grounds, the back lot of Warner Brothers. And I challenge Herbert Humphrey [sic] to debate on his home grounds. I do have some reservations about meeting George Wallace on his home grounds, but I'm willing to meet him on a neutral site in Harlem."

"We've got to step up our conservation efforts before it's too late. We're not protecting our lands and natural resources. Take the Grand Canyon for example; I'm sure that at one time it was a beautiful piece of land, and just look at the way we've let it go."

"I do not claim that I can solve all the world's problems by myself. If I did, I'd have to run as a Republican or a Democrat."

"The radio and press have once again chewed off more than they can bite. They continue to confuse personality with politics. They seem to assume that I'm lying when I state that I am not a candidate for the Presidency. True, all the present candidates once denied they had any intention of running. But the fact that I am also a liar, doesn't make me a candidate."

"A good many people today feel our present draft laws are unjust. These people are called soldiers. In one of the arguments against the draft, we hear it is unfair, immoral, discourages young men from studying, ruins their careers and their lives. Picky, picky, picky! We propose a draft lottery, in which the names of all eligible males will be put into a hat, and the men will be drafted according to their hat sizes. The tiny heads will go into the military service, and the fat heads will go into government."

"I've conducted my campaign thus far in the true American political tradition: I lied about my intention to run [...] I have been consistently vague on all the issues [...] Therefore I promise you all, my fellow Americans, that I will continue to make promises that I will be unable to fulfill."

"… let's all remember that we have a government "of the people, for the people, and by the people", and there are very few people in our government that you can't buy."

"After all, the leaders of our country were not elected to be tittered at. Censors have to draw the line somewhere. For instance, we are allowed to say Ronald Reagan is a lousy actor, but we're not allowed to say he's a lousy governor – which is ridiculous. We know he's a good actor. And you can't say anything bad about President Johnston [sic], because you shouldn't insult the President. But if you compliment him, who will believe it?"

"As a keen political observer, I've noticed that most people do not really vote for someone for the Presidency as much as they vote against the other candidate. And I think President Johnston's [sic] decision was unfair to these people."

"I ask you, will I solve our civil rights problems? Will I unite this country and bring it forward? Will I obliterate the national debt? [long pause] Sure, why not? Thank you."

"When I attended the signing of the ADA, I was fortunate enough to sit behind and catty-corner to Dole during the ceremony, and I watched his reaction during the entire event because he was so close to me. When President George H.W. Bush gave him full credit for bringing such sweeping legislation to fruition, I saw Dole quickly wipe away a tear. A man from his generation was loath to cry in public. But when I saw that moment of emotion from him, I remembered his worrying about a dehydrated young man trying to get a job in Congress. Dole might not have been our biggest ally for queer rights, but he might go down in history as being one of American democracy’s most notorious defenders and biggest advocates, and that’s how he should be remembered."

"He lost the election, and I regret that he did, but they did. He had Rudy Giuliani running all over the country, claiming fraud. He never had one bit of fraud in all those lawsuits he filed and statements he made."

"Something is wrong with America. I wonder sometimes what people are thinking about or if they're thinking at all."

"We can also commend him for his comity. When he became the GOP leader in the 1980s, he said, “I don’t wait for the consensus. I try to help build it.” He was not only successful in working with the very liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy, Democrat from Massachusetts, in getting the historic ADA passed, but also worked with Democrats to help expand food stamp and school lunch programs, and to create nutrition programs for low-income pregnant women, mothers, and young children. He also played a leading role in passing a ramped-up clean air act, public housing laws, and an extension of the Voting Rights Act. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Dole was sitting in McConnell’s seat right now and understood the assault on voting rights that are currently taking place in state legislatures? He would understand the urgency to pass a bill to help strengthen and protect voting rights for all. And wouldn’t it be nice if Dole, who could be equally crusty as the other men in Congress and who had an acerbic wit, could nonetheless have had a leadership role in getting to the bottom of the January 6 insurrection? He fiercely loved democracy, the Senate, and our Constitution perhaps like no other member of Congress in history. And that’s because he almost died from all of that. He would surely want to convict anyone — even the former president — who betrayed all that he revered and stood for. I heard that he wept while the Capitol was under assault."

"Now people call Bob Dole a moderate. Bob Dole is not a moderate. Bob Dole is an extremely conservative person."

"Dole gave up his Senate seat after serving for over 30 years when he ran for president, so once Clinton was in office, Dole had little sway over policy, but he was opposed not only to gays in the military but also to same-sex marriage, and that was as late as 2014, before same-sex marriage became legal nationwide. By then, Dole was in his 90s, and most likely still stuck in his ways. We can’t say that Dole was an ally, but I’m not so sure he should inspire our ire. He was from a generation that is disappearing at a very rapid rate. They were raised during a time when things like speaking about sexuality were taboo. Who really knew what was in his heart? I just always thought about the two guys I knew who worked for him, who loved him very much. However, we can — and should — commend him for his tremendous sacrifice during World War II. He nearly died defending our country and lived with his disabilities astonishingly until age 98. He was, and is, a legitimate American hero. Because of him and his generation, we are free — at least for the time being, and hopefully after 2024."

"If we had known we were going to win control of the Senate, we'd have run better candidates."

"I don't like to second-guess, but I do believe we've lost something. I can't get my hand on it, but we're just not quite where we should be, as the greatest democracy in the world. And I don't know how you correct it, but I keep hoping that there will be a change in my lifetime."

"I once called Carter a chicken fried McGovern and I take that back because I've come to respect McGovern."

"Even more distressing is how insignificant many of the subjects I wrote about look in retrospect. I spent months covering Senator Bob Dole’s run for president. I traveled on Dole’s plane, jockeyed to interview him, followed him across the country like a teenaged Led Zeppelin groupie. In 1996, Bob Dole was a big deal. It’s hard now to understand why. That’s true for so many people I covered. We thought they were important. Now they’re forgotten. A surprising number of them are dead, though I guess that shouldn’t be surprising. Death and irrelevance are coming for all of us. That’s the one certain thing. Repeat that to yourself every morning, and things fall into perspective. Most of what we think matters really doesn’t."

"I'm a Trumper. ... I'm sort of Trumped out, though."

"Dole, like many from his generation, presumably did not know how to handle LGBTQ+ issues, and most likely out of unfamiliarity didn’t do much for our community, which was also being left behind while he was in the Senate. However, when he ran for president in 1988, Dole lambasted his competitors for their AIDS-bashing speeches, saying, "There is, you know, such a thing as compassion." At that time and during that tragedy, getting anyone in power to show some compassion was a rarity. In 1995, running for president again (he became the GOP’s nominee in 1996), Dole clumsily flip-flopped with a donation sent to him by the Log Cabin Republicans. He accepted it, then sent it back saying he didn’t agree with the gay group’s agenda, then accepted it again, saying it had something to do with a mail mishap. It was rather embarrassing, to say the least. I think that’s how Dole approached LGBTQ+ issues, out of embarrassment, with hidden compassion. During the late ’80s to mid-’90s, most members of Congress were older white men, and the last thing in the world they wanted to talk about was "homosexual" issues. This is why the government was tragically so late in the game when it came to fighting AIDS."

"If Lincoln had an affair with a slave woman, it would be an outrage, but when Clinton does it with one of his staff, everyone is okay with it."

"At least she's the president of something, which is more than I can say."

"I, Robert Joseph Dole, do solemnly swear... Sorry. Wrong speech."

"As long as there are only 3 to 4 people on the floor, the country is in good hands. It's only when you have 50 to 60 in the Senate that you want to be concerned."

"If something happened along the route and you had to leave your children with Bob Dole or Bill Clinton, I think you would probably leave them with Bob Dole."

"I mean, there's always somebody in somebody's administration who jumps out early, sells a book, and goes after the guy who hired him, … I don't know if that's good. It may be good business; it's not good politics."

"This is a quality that has appeared often enough in American history — and outside America as well. Senators like Ted Kennedy have been prominent before, bearing names like Henry Clay or Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater and Hubert Humphrey. Governors like New York Republican Nelson Rockefeller or Alabama Democrat George Wallace. A Congressman like Jack Kemp. Non-office holders like Martin Luther King in the United States or Mohandas Gandhi in India or Nelson Mandela in South Africa (who later became president of his country) can, through sheer force of personality, come to dominate the political scene of the day without ever bearing a single official title."

"Conservatives define compassion not by the number of people who receive some kind of government aid but rather by the number of people who no longer need it."

"I think it is important for all those young out there, who someday hope to play real football, where you throw it and kick it and run with it and put it in your hands, a distinction should be made that football is democratic, capitalism, whereas soccer is a European socialist sport."

"Mr. Speaker, Kodak is laying off 10,000 workers. Now if that is not enough to overexpose your most recent negative, Fruit of the Loom is cutting 3,000 jobs and moving to Mexico. Unbelievable. It is getting easier to find Charlie Trie and Elvis than it is to find a good factory job here in America. Beam me up. I think it is time for Congress to ask themselves a very simple little commonsense question: If our trade program is so great, why does Japan not do it? Think about that. I yield back all the balance of jobs and say one last thing here. From snapshots to long johns, American workers just keep getting their assets kicked."

"Beam me up. The IRS does not need more workers. The IRS does not need more money. These stumbling, fumbling, bumbling mistake-prone nincompoops have got to go."

"Many of them are so dumb they could throw themselves at the ground and miss."

"Beam me up, Mr. Speaker."

"Mr. Speaker, we are here now in chapter 11. Members of Congress are official trustees presiding over the greatest reorganization of any bankrupt entity in world history, the U.S. government."

"They have kept us in submission because they have talked about separation of church and state. There is no such thing in the Constitution. It's a lie of the Left, and we're not going to take it anymore."

"The media challenged me. `You're not going to bring atheists into the government? How dare you maintain that those who believe the Judeo-Christian values are better qualified to govern America than Hindus and Muslims?' My simple answer is, `Yes, they are.'"

"[Hugo Chávez is] going to make Venezuela a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent... he is an out-of-control dictator... a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil that could hurt us very badly."

""Satan is a tool of God's love in the sense that he forces us to see God's loving patience." — Answers to 200 of Life's most Probing Questions"

"Presbyterians are "the spirit of the Antichrist." (Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, p. 239)"

"The Islamic people, the Arabs, were the ones who captured Africans, put them in slavery, and sent them to America as slaves. Why would the people in America want to embrace the religion of slavers."

"We're importing Hinduism into America. The whole thought of your karma, of meditation, of the fact that there's no end of life and there's this endless wheel of life, this is all Hinduism. Chanting too. Many of those chants are to Hindu Gods — Vishnu, Hare Krishna. The origin of it is all demonic. We can't let that stuff come into America. We've got the best defense, if you will — a good offense."

""It is clear that God is saying, 'I gave man dominion over the earth, but he lost it. Now I desire mature sons and daughters who will in My name exercise dominion over the earth and subdue Satan, the unruly, the rebellious. Take back My world from those who would loot it and abuse it. Rule as I would rule.'" — The Secret Kingdom"

""If you go all the way back to the days just following creation, men lived nine hundred years or more." — Answers to 200 of Life's most Probing Questions"