29: Bob Dole
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From WBEC Chicago, it's his American life. I'm out of your glass. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday. Mr. presumptive Republican nominee. Happy birthday to you, happy birthday. See this is the kind of event the Bob Dole campaign should have staged when he turned 73 this past week. They should have surrounded him with lively young people, a big happy event celebrating his vigor. You may not know that particular piece of tape, it's Marilyn Monroe, singing to John Kennedy in 1963, which in my view makes it even more appropriate for Bob Dole to use. Marilyn Monroe and John Kennedy are his contemporaries after all. Bob Dole is 73, Marilyn Monroe where alive she would be 70, John Kennedy would be 79. But instead of a big lively event, a hall full of boisterous young people, where did the Dole for President campaign stage its big birthday photo op? In an old age home. They're in the paper. You can see the pictures. Bob Dole was some senior citizens. You really had to wonder, you know, what were they thinking? You know, what message are they trying to get across to us? Does this campaign have the will to live? Well, each week here on This American Life, we choose a theme, invite a wide variety of writers and performers to take a whack at that theme, documentaries, radio monologues, reportage, found tape, occasional radio dramas, basically anything they can think of. And today, we bring your perspectives on Bob Dole. Because at this point, there's something utterly mesmerizing about what's going on in that campaign. Barely a day goes by without some odd quote or strange gaff, or just at the end of this past week, there was a thing in the news how the Republicans have booked themselves into a convention hall for the Republican convention, and it's like 14 feet tall. And the TV guy was quoted and they're saying that, you know, he doesn't want to make him look bad or anything, but there is literally no way to film them, to shoot them for TV, you know, which is the entire point of a modern political convention. There's no way to shoot them without them looking like ants on a postage stamp. And I see the stuff, really, my heart just goes out to the man, something deep and co-dependent in me wants to step in and help him out. Anyway, our program today in three acts, act one, campaign diaries, act two, instructions on how you can become Bob Dole, act three, a writer who have been trying to get on our program for a while, actually, a guy named Danny Drennan. Usually, he writes about things like the TV show Beverly Hills 90210, and we give him a little assignment. Anyway, stay with us. Act one, campaign diaries. Well, before on this program, once before we've featured the campaign diaries of Michael Lewis, and he is covering the political campaigns, he's one of the people writing for the New Republic. He's writing is really some of the most remarkable writing anybody's doing about the campaigns, because he basically he's this really funny, smart guy who writes like a novelist more than like a political reporter, though there's a lot of political analysis in it.
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