william l. (“bill”) armstrong - robert and elizabeth...

ROBERT J. DOLE ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview with

WILLIAM L. (“BILL”) ARMSTRONG

April 2, 2007

Interviewer

Brien R. Williams

Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics 2350 Petefish Drive Lawrence, KS 66045

Phone: (785) 864-4900 Fax: (785) 864-1414

This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas. http://dolearchives.ku.edu

Armstrong 4-2-07—p. 2

Williams: This is an oral history interview with former Senator Bill Armstrong for the

Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas. We’re in the Washington

[D.C.] office of the Investment Company Institute, where the senator is visiting as a

member of the board, for a board meeting. Today is Wednesday, May 2, 2007, and I’m

Brien Williams.

Let’s start out with your recollection of your first encounter with Bob Dole.

Armstrong: I haven’t the faintest idea, but I’m sure it was at some kind of political event.

I suppose it was at a Lincoln Day Dinner or a fundraising event or something like that,

because I knew Bob Dole. I’d met him. I didn’t know him well, but I was aware of him

and had shaken his hand long before I came to Washington, so I’m sure it’s when I was

in the state legislature in Colorado and he was coming to town for a Lincoln Day Dinner,

a political event, campaigning for somebody. It was in that kind of a setting.

Williams: Do you remember his running for the vice presidency, and did he come to

Colorado at all during that time?

Armstrong: I do remember his running for vice president, of course, but I don’t recall

specifically whether he did that or not, not because my memory has failed completely,

although it’s failing, I guess, but because his visits to Colorado in that era were

commonplace. I mean, he was in and out of Colorado all the time. In fact, one of the

things that I’m sure will come out in your interviews is that he was every place all the

time. I mean, he logged more miles in airplanes than airline pilots did. He was always

going someplace. In fact, there was a time later than the period you’re referring to, but

there was a time I think when he was on a plane four or five nights a week. After the

Senate was done, he’d jump on a plane and go to Cincinnati or Denver or New York or

someplace for an event, and did that just week after week after week after week.

So I just don’t remember when it was, because he was in Colorado a lot. He was

an important figure in Colorado, not so much because he was a neighboring senator,

although of course Kansas and Colorado are neighbor states, but because he was

regarded, even before he was even really an official leader, he was regarded as a leader.

He was a person that Republicans looked up to, looked to for hope. I mean, some of



those years that I’m talking about were really pretty desperate times. If you were a

Republican, you felt like you were on the Endangered Species List. Yet he was full of

energy and full of vitality and was able to preach the gospel, and made those who heard it

feel good about the party and about themselves and about the future of the country.

Williams: During your six years in the House of Representatives, did you have any

contact with him?

Armstrong: Yes, I did, a little. Not a huge amount, but I had some. In fact, again by this

time, by the time I was in the House of Representatives—and I was elected in 1972—Bob

Dole was by now an established senator and was highly thought of, and he was one of the

people that we looked up to. Of course, when it came time for me to run for the United

States Senate, I sought him out and asked if he would endorse me in the primary, which

he declined to do. I was running in the primary against an astronaut, Jack Schweigert, a

good guy, by the way, who later died just days before he was to be sworn into the House

of Representatives himself. But Bob didn’t think that was necessary or appropriate. I

thought if I could somehow prevail upon him to endorse my candidacy, it would help me

a lot in the primary, which it undoubtedly would have. Turned out I was okay and won

the primary anyway. But he was a natural person for me to go to. I knew him well

enough to do that, considered him to be sort of—well, I considered him not to be exactly

a conservative godfather, but I considered him to be a conservative leader and a person

whose word would carry a lot of weight with the kind of people who vote in Republican

primaries in the State of Colorado. In fact, that’s true—this is now more than three

decades later, that’s still true. If Bob Dole were to come to Colorado and say, “Vote for

Smith,” or, “Vote for Jones,” it would carry a lot of weight.

Williams: He was the chairman of the Republican National Committee for a couple of

years. Did you have any contact with him when he was—

Armstrong: Of course, he was in the Senate during that period, so I was well aware of

that, although my relationship with Bob was never primarily related to his position as

chairman of the Republican National Committee. He was, as I recall, what was called



the—I may be wrong about that. Was he called the general chairman? Was there also a

full-time working chairman at that juncture? I’m not sure of that. But those of us in the

Senate, while we were well aware of his leadership of the party and also, for that matter,

the reason that he was chosen, because he was Mr. Republican. Let’s face it, he was the

person who personified the ideals and the energy and the future of the party. While we

were aware of that, we mostly thought of him as a senator and related to him at that level.

Williams: He was carrying the water for President [Richard M.] Nixon for a long time,

known as Nixon’s man in the Senate.

Armstrong: He was.

Williams: Then that relationship got a little strained when Nixon decided to appoint

[George H.W.] Bush as the RNC chairman. Were you aware—

Armstrong: I wasn’t in on that. I was aware of it, and I, of course, knew about it, but I

wasn’t consulted about it or in any way involved in that decision.

Williams: Did you occupy a leadership role in the House?

Armstrong: No, I did not. I was in the House for three terms and served on the Armed

Services Committee, and then later on the Appropriations Committee, one of the worst

experiences of my life, I might add, but did not seek or win any position of party

leadership.

Williams: You intrigue me with that comment. Can you explain why?

Armstrong: Sure. Because it’s a huge committee. I left the Armed Services Committee,

of which I was a junior member—everything is by seniority—because I was useless,

because everything the committee was trying to do I agreed with, and instead opted to go

to the Appropriations Committee, where I was also a junior member. I think I was about

number 54 out of 55 or something like that, and I think [Rep.] Jack Kemp was either 54th



and I was 55th, or vice versa, way down at the bottom, and I didn’t agree with anything

the Appropriations Committee was doing. I mean, there were days when I would go

home literally sick to my stomach at the way these people were wasting the material

wealth and the accumulated savings and the work and effort and thrift of the people of

this country, and they were just throwing it out the window, people who had never earned

anything in the private sector in their life, who had no idea of what the real value of the

sweat and tears and toil of the people who had made this money, and they would just

confer it on the darnedest projects and enterprises, and literally I found it terribly

frustrating.

I guess during the time I was on the House Appropriations Committee I probably

wrote more minority opinions and dissenting views than the rest of the committee put

together. In fact, one of the senior members of the committee, as an act of friendship,

came to me and he said, “You know, Bill, if you keep acting this way, you’ll never get

any dams built in your district.”

I said, “That’ll be fine. I haven’t got enough water in my district. I could

impound all the water in my district in a teacup, so it’ll be fine.” But he was trying to

show me the ropes, and I did not wish to be shown those ropes. I thought they were

wasting the money, and in the years since then, see, this would have been—even that

would have been more than thirty years ago. In the years since then, it’s gotten infinitely

worse, and, frankly, I’m just disgusted with the lack of responsibility of people who

spend the public money.

Williams: Is it a philosophical difference or—I guess I’m trying to get at the source of

your animus and how you perceive the interests of, I guess, presumably liberal

Democrats.

Armstrong: No, this was both Republicans and Democrats. In fact, I was a minority

within the minority because Republicans were in the minority in those years. But, no, it

wasn’t the Democrats. They were worse, but the Republicans—actually, I was more

disgusted with the Republicans because I expected the Democrats to be big spenders. I

mean, that’s what the Democrats stand for. I don’t really have a lot of problem with

people doing what they say they’re going to do. I mean, they went out to the country and



said, “Look, vote for us. We’re going to spend a lot of money on public works projects.

We’re going to create new programs. We’re going to provide funding for this, that, and

the other thing.” The Republicans said the opposite. Republicans said, “We’re going to

balance the budget.” Balance the budget. You talk about an old-fashioned term that’s

seldom heard anymore. But the Republicans didn’t really mean it. In fact, here we are

all these years later, they still don’t mean it. There’s some who do, and there was a brief

period when most Republicans in Congress felt that way, but that’s kind of come and

gone, so now they’re paying lip service to an ideal in which I passionately believe, and

they only want to use it for political advantage, in my opinion.

So I was more out of sorts with the Republicans, actually, than I was with the

Democrats. And it was nothing personal about it; it’s just this sense of betrayal of

idealism, betrayal of the values of the country, and the betrayal of all these millions of

people out there who are sacrificing and driving old cars so that they’d have money to

send their kids to college, and were making tough decisions, I mean elderly people who

are trying to decide, “Shall I save a meal or two a week so I’ll have money enough to

send a Christmas gift to my children?” These are the people we’re taking money from

and conferring it on people who are much less worthy in many cases. Not in every case.

Certainly there are good government programs, but I mean, the waste and extravagance

and the gay, lighthearted manner in which they just shoveled money out just drove me

nuts.

Williams: What was your yardstick for evaluating a government program and deciding

whether or not you wanted to commit money to it?

Armstrong: Well, I always felt that national defense was a high priority, and of course is

a legitimate function of the national government because, first of all, the national

government is the only one that can really perform that function. We certainly don’t

want the State of Colorado and Iowa and Nebraska providing tanks and airplanes and

conducting foreign policy and defending the country.

Surely there are some other things, too. For example, I think one of the great

successful projects in the history of the federal government was the interstate highway

system, which, by the way, began originally under [Dwight D.] Eisenhower as the



National Defense Interstate Highway System was what they called it, but it’s had an

enormous effect on the country. Again, it’s something the national government uniquely

can do.

I felt the G.I. Bill of Rights, for example, was a great program, and I had

something to do with getting it reinstated when it lapsed, again because it was related to

fulfilling an obligation to servicemen and women and then later my interest in it was

triggered by the volunteer army, that research showed that the opportunity to get an

education was an important incentive in bringing talented men and women into the

military and giving them an incentive to do that.

So certainly there are some good government programs. Farm subsidies,

absolutely not. In fact, people in my state get lots of farm subsidies. I went into the farm

areas of my state and I said, “It’s time to abolish every one of these programs,” and I said

that over and over again, said it year after year after year. One year every single

candidate for federal office in Colorado endorsed the concept of 100 percent parity. Are

you familiar with that? It’s one of the dumbest ideas that you can imagine, and I was the

only one who said, “Don’t do it.”

Interestingly, here I am, an ardent foe of wheat subsidies, corn subsidies, any kind

of subsidies, wouldn’t endorse the idea of 100 percent parity, and on one occasion

actually confronted a howling mob, I mean literally a mob that had a flatbed truck with a

scaffold on it and me hanging in effigy from it over this issue. And yet when election

time came around, that year I won with about two-thirds of the votes in the state, and

Colorado’s not, by the way, a Republican state. During the seventies and eighties I was

really the only Republican elected to governor or senator during those years. In the farm

areas I carried them very strongly. It’s interesting to think why that is, not because it’s

about me, but because it says something about voters. What it says to me is that voters

are very patient, very tolerant with those who disagree with their views if they think that

person is motivated by some conviction or principle, even if they disagree with it. If they

think you’re just pandering to get their votes, they’re on you like a pack of dogs. And I

think actually that’s the way it should be. I mean, if people show that their vote is just up

for sale, well, then if they don’t give it to you, you ought to be down on them pretty fast.

On the other hand, if somebody’s standing for principle, you ought to cut them a little

slack.



So in general, I’m very conservative. I mean, let’s face it, I’m so conservative I

squeak. But I just think that spending public money is almost a sacred trust. I wouldn’t

go quite that far. But it’s certainly a public duty, a public trust, and should be done with

the greatest discretion. It should not be used to subsidize for long periods of time any

group of citizens, even poor people, and I think the government has a responsibility to

help people who are poor or disabled, but it shouldn’t be a way of life. It shouldn’t be

permanent. It should be a program that subsidizes them in their hour of need and then

helps them get out of their hour of need. I suppose there’s a few that for one reason or

another, especially disability, will never be able to be self-supporting. Then, of course,

the government should do that. But to support just a whole generation, then another

generation, then another generation of people whose life is just predicated on getting

money from the government, absolutely not. I don’t know if that answers your question.

But I am what used to be known as a fiscal conservative. But then I’m about every kind

of conservative that there is, fiscal conservative being one of them.

Williams: So what were the steps that motivated you to leave the House and run for the

Senate?

Armstrong: Well, I very much disliked my service in the House. I thought it worthy, but

I didn’t enjoy it because I was a minority within the minority because our leaders in the

House—that is, our Republican leaders in the House—were basically accommodating

themselves to the situation, getting along the best they could with the Democrat leaders,

and trying to get some dams built in their districts. That’s not my style. I wanted to take

the case to the country, to the people, to the voters, and to make a case on principle, and I

was simply not situated in the U.S. House of Representatives to do that. Now, a United

States senator, that’s a very different thing. A U.S. senator, got a big voice, big platform,

and it seemed to me as a relatively new House member, I’d been there at this point, when

I decided to run, a little over four years, five years, I guess, it seemed to me that that was

a logical transition. In any case, I knew I wanted out of the House. I did not like it.

Were I to go back there today, I suppose that my attitude would be a little

different, that I would be a little less impatient about things, a little more understanding

of different points of view, and recognize that somebody that comes from a state where



the interests are different or so on, that it’d be less personal to me. But I didn’t like the

House at all.

Now, I loved the Senate. Loved the Senate, because even if you’re a junior

senator, if you’re the newest senator from a minority party or whatever, you can have a

big impact on things, and after you’re there for a while, you can have a huge impact on

things. I just felt that, as a House member, I didn’t have an impact on anything, and I

considered, “Shall I hang around here for years and try and work my way up in the

structure?” It just wasn’t for me. I had an incumbent, a Democratic senator, to run

against, so although the odds did not favor my election, it was an easy decision for me to

make. My decision was really go home and run my business or go home and run for the

Senate, which is what I did.

Williams: Tell me about your primary battle.

Armstrong: Well, I ran against Jack Schweigert in the primary. Jack was a wonderful

guy. He had been an astronaut and was a very popular, well-known figure. He was—

well, all I can say is he was a wonderful guy, and we had a classic primary in the sense it

was not bitter, it was not personal, it wasn’t divisive. He talked his issues, I talked mine.

I think he would have said that, “Armstrong’s too conservative to get elected,” but that’s

about as tough as he ever got with me, and I don’t think I ever said anything about him.

In fact, that year you couldn’t hardly get me to talk about anything except cutting

taxes. If somebody said, “Well, what about the environment?” I would say, “Well, you

know, first thing about a good environment is having a job. That means we’ve got to cut

taxes.” If somebody said, “Well what about racial justice?” I’d say, “Well, I’m just back

from Five Points,” which is a ghetto area in Denver, “and down there they want jobs, and

that means we’ve got to cut taxes.” It wouldn’t matter what the issue was. If somebody

said, “Well, Jack Schweigert is a great guy,” I’d say, “Yeah, he’s a wonderful astronaut,

but I’m better at cutting taxes.” So I didn’t talk about hardly anything during either the

primary or the general election. In fact, I started out after the primary about 30 points

behind in the polls and ended up winning with over 60 percent of the vote.

Afterward, Floyd Haskell, who had been a friend of mine, actually, he’d been a

Republican, he was the Republican Leader of the State House of Representatives when I



was the Republican Leader of the State Senate, so I’d known Floyd for a long time.

Afterwards somebody asked, “Well, Senator, how did you happen to lose the election,”

and he said, “Armstrong convinced every living person in the State of Colorado that I had

single-handedly raised their taxes,” which I did, and in fact that was fair. It was true. He

had supplied a crucial vote when a huge, I mean a massive tax increase passed by one

vote, and that’s all I would talk about. If somebody wanted to talk farm subsidies, I’d

turn it to taxes. If somebody wanted to talk about national defense, I would say, “A well-

timed tax cut can stop a missile in mid-air.” I wanted to talk about taxes, and that was a

year when that was the right thing to talk about politically, and of course I was passionate

about it. I cared about it. I still care about it.

When I came to Washington, the highest marginal tax rate was 70 percent on

individuals. When I left, it was 28 percent. I had something to do with that. Bob Dole

had a lot to do with that. It’s crept up since then, but I think that’s a huge

accomplishment and it’s got a lot to do with why our economy is prospering, why there

are good jobs available for many people. So that’s what happened in the primary.

One footnote to this—and it has nothing to do actually with the purpose of this

interview, which is about Bob Dole, but it’s kind of an interesting story—after the

primary, Jack Schweigert and I became really good friends. We weren’t personally tense

even during the primary, but we became very good friends. He was a great guy. He

came to me and said, “Okay, how can I help?” Then after I was elected, he said, “Here I

am. You’re the leader of the party. Tell me what to do.” So we became very good

friends. He had an opportunity subsequently to run for the U.S. House of Representatives

and was elected, and shortly after he was elected and before he was sworn in, he came

down with cancer. In fact, he had cancer during the campaign but nobody knew it. He

died before he was able to be sworn in, so he never became a congressman, even though

he was elected. He died in a hospital right here in Washington, and at the instant of his

death, I was seated at his bedside, maybe eighteen inches from him, reading to him the

150th Psalm at the moment he breathed his last breath. I will always be glad to have had

that opportunity to be present when he passed away. Good man. Brave man.

Williams: That’s a wonderful story. Did Senator Dole help you during the campaign in

your first run for the Senate?



Armstrong: Oh, absolutely, after the primary. After the primary. After the primary.

And I needed help, because our primary was in September, it was after Labor Day, if you

can imagine that, so I had two months and here I was, my recollection is that I was thirty

points behind, but I was way behind a popular incumbent. Sure, he pitched in to help me

raise money, came out and helped me in the campaign itself, spoke for me and did a lot of

things. Of course, you could ask Republican candidates for Senate, governor, Congress,

dog catcher, bailiff or whatever. There must be thousands of candidates for whom Bob

Dole has gone out to do an event, a handshaking tour, a fundraiser, a garage sale or

something. I mean, the guy was just a one-man campaign machine. He just lifted up the

whole party on his own energy and enthusiasm.

Williams: Tell me what it was like attending a campaign event with him. Did he tend to

upstage you? How did it work?

Armstrong: Well, I never thought it was upstaging, because by this time I was getting to

be pretty well known, but he was the star. I mean, he was the star. Very funny, very

quick wit, not so much in a campaign setting, but here’s a line I will always remember of

Bob Dole’s. It was just one of his typical lines that just get thrown away in the middle of

a sentence, but it keeps everybody sort of on the edge of their chair, waiting to see what

he’s going to say next. He’s talking about some tax bill and he says, “You know, people

don’t like to pay taxes, especially those who’ve never tried it.” [laughs] He just had that

gift of being able to kind of sum things up in a kind of a half a sentence, and he did that

all the time. Of course, out in Colorado and in the Senate and every place, we admired

Bob, first of all because he was an authentic war hero. I mean, here’s a guy that you

could say, “I’ll follow this man in war or peace.” Second, because he was a political

hero. I mean, he had survived the worst that had happened to the Republican Party in

anybody’s lifetime. I ran for office in 1962 and then again in 1964, so I was on the ticket

with [Sen. Barry M.] Goldwater, who was another hero of mine, and of course Goldwater

lost and I happened to win, but Bob lived through all of that as well, and of course

through the Watergate era. So we thought of him not at that point in a presidential sense,



but as our standard-bearer, as the guy who would give the command and then we’d

saddle up and ride to the sound of gunfire.

So he was a star. Great cheerleader. He was much more than that, but in the

context you asked that question, he was a guy who could inspire Republicans. Now, he

did have a much broader impact on the nation and the culture than that, but in the context

of the campaign, he had this great ability to make Republicans feel good about

themselves and to say, “We can win. We’re on the road. Get with the program.” He’s

great at that.

Williams: At one of these events, would you introduce him or would he introduce you?

How did that work?

Armstrong: I think ordinarily I would introduce him. In fact, yes, I think that would be

the way it would be many times. I mean, he was the senior buffalo, so it would be

ordinary and customary for him to do that. Of course, Bob was the epitome of political

etiquette, so that at a particular event were I to introduce him, then he would say many

complimentary things about me. And by the way, he would look out in the audience and

see many people he would know, and he’d say complimentary things about all of them. I

mean, he was great about that.

But by the way, this is a little off the subject, because we’re talking about

campaigns, he was the most generous of all senators in sharing praise with his colleagues.

I don’t know if this is the point at which you’d like to do it, but I want to be sure to tell

you about that. Very unusual. Senators, as a group—and mostly as individuals—are

extraordinarily self-absorbed, extraordinarily self-centered. I mean, that’s kind of the

way it is in politics, but senators more than just about anybody. I mean, senators think

the world revolves around them, and yet over and over again I have seen Bob Dole go out

of his way, when he didn’t need to, to praise his colleagues, and in very specific terms. I

mean, not just, “He’s a great American. He’s a wonderful senator. He’s a man of

distinction. He’s my respected colleague. He’s my dear friend,” blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah. But I mean in very specific terms. And interestingly, not only senators, but

staffers. I really never saw any other senator do that to any great extent, I mean refer to

them by name in a speech on the floor or at a meeting at the White House or at a



committee meeting, he’d say—during part of those years, Brian Wade was my legislative

assistant on the Finance Committee, he’d refer to Brian by name. He’d refer to [Sen.]

Bob Packwood’s legislative assistant by name. He’d refer to the people who were really

doing a yeoman’s job, and he knew what their contribution was to the effort and thanked

them for it and praised them for it.

Let me see if I can conjure up a couple of concrete examples. Well, I’ll tell you

one example. This is more of a ceremonial occasion. I will never forget—and I have

even to this day, I mean within the last few months, maybe even the last few weeks, have

people remind me of what Bob Dole said about me on the occasion of my retirement. I

mean, I was leaving the Senate. My career in public life was drawing to a close. He

didn’t have to say anything about me. He had no further stake in my political stock, and

he made this wonderful speech, which was so good that in fact fairly recently—and I’ve

had it happen a number of times over the years—somebody Googles me and they come

across Bob Dole’s speech and they will play back something he said in that speech.

Went out of his way to share the credit with people. Quite a remarkable thing.

Generosity of spirit. What was the response? Tremendous loyalty to him. I mean, we all

thought Bob was great, we loved him, we admired him. If there was a close call, we

would all always resolve our doubts in his favor. It didn’t mean we were always on the

same side, but if it was close, if it could go either way, almost all the Republicans and

many of the Democrats would go with Dole if their conscience would permit them and if

the circumstances would. He was great about that. Still is, by the way. Still is.

I wrote Bob a letter recently to tell him—I haven’t seen him lately, but I wrote

him a letter before this history project came up. I wrote him a letter to tell him that I was

going to come to Washington some day and I hoped he’d have lunch with me because I

wanted to get a little sense of closure with him, that we were both getting older, and

before one or the other of us passed on, I wanted to have a chance to just look him in the

eye and say, “Thank you for your service to our country,” and to thank him for his

personal friendship to me and the way he encouraged and supported and helped me at

times when he really didn’t have to, but went out of his way to do so. So I wrote him and

told him I wanted to have that opportunity, and one of these days I will.



I also have the warmest feelings of friendship for Elizabeth [Dole]. Great lady.

But anyway, as you can tell, I have great admiration and tremendous affection for Bob

Dole.

Williams: Well, we’re on a little bit of a tangent here, which I’m delighted we are.

Armstrong: Get us back on track.

Williams: No, no, I want to stay there for a moment because you’ve been there.

Armstrong: I live my life on a tangent.

Williams: How do you account for this characteristic that you attribute to senators of

thinking that the world does revolve around them?

Armstrong: Well, you know that life in the United States Senate is probably about the

most corrupting place on earth. You see, senators are constantly surrounded by people

who flatter them. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed that when the bell rings and

senators either take the subway or walk across the lawn from their offices to the Capitol,

there’s often staffers, two or three staffers, trailing, whispering in their ear, telling them

what they need to know about this vote. Well, what staffers spend most of their time

doing—well, maybe that’s an exaggeration. What staffers spend much time doing is, in

effect, saying, “You’re great. You’re essential. You’re important. The country needs

you. Nobody can do this except you. You are a great American,” blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah. Well, that is terribly destructive to a person’s personality.

Then, if you’ve noticed, if somebody steps out of their office building, out of the

Russell Building or the Hart Building or something, and prepares to go on the surface

over to the Capitol, what’s the first thing that happens? A police officers steps out into

the traffic and stops the cars both ways, and there is a deference to senators which I think

it’s kind of like rock stars or movie stars or, I don’t know, people who hit home runs in

baseball. It is very destructive of the human ego. If you really wanted to find a way to



corrupt people, it would be to subject them to that, and then to couple that with making

them intellectually dependent upon other people, staffers and lobbyists.

Now, senators are called to make hundreds of votes during the course of a year,

six, seven, eight hundred, I don’t now how many—lots—on matters that they have little

real information about, and so, often, not on the biggest bill, but on many important bills

they’ll come to the floor to vote on the bill or on an amendment that may have

implications that are tremendous, knowing nothing about it, and in the last three or four

minutes, maybe the last thirty or forty seconds, even, in some cases, before they cast their

vote, they’ll summon a staffer who’s been in the room listening to the discussion and in

whom they have trust, and say, “What’s this about?” And often you will hear, “Your

vote is yes,” “Your vote is no,” from a staffer who is, I think in almost every case,

honestly saying to the senator, “Based on everything I know about you and your

convictions, your principles, how you do things, how your state will feel about this,” and

so on and so on and so on, “your vote is no.” They’ll say, “Your vote is no. This is the

Smith amendment on the automobile tariffs.” They’ll sum it up in a few words. That

makes senators very dependent on these staffers, who are often intellectual superiors, by

the way, of the men and women they serve. I mean, they really are. They’re very smart.

Very smart.

So, first you’ve got them flattered within an inch of their life. Second, you’ve got

them intellectually dependent. And then third, they begin to feel that they’re

invulnerable, that they’re above the ordinary rules of conduct and behavior. Now, that is

also very noticeable in other government officials—presidents, Cabinet officers, judges

particularly—that somehow the ordinary rules, even the ordinary laws about things like

taking kickbacks, somehow don’t apply to them, that the ordinary courtesies don’t apply

to them, and then you mix into this periodic episodes that last a year or two in which

they’re scared to death they’re going to lose this job by which their life is defined, I

mean, most of those senators, their life changes dramatically if their first name is no

longer “Senator.” I mean, it really does. Now, there’s a handful of us who left

voluntarily from the Senate, and whose personality, whose central existence, whose value

didn’t hinge on being a senator, but it’s my observation that for most men and women in

the United States Senate that’s what makes them who they are, is, “I’m Senator so-and-

so.” In fact, you’ll hear them say it. I always kind of cringe when somebody says,



“Hello, this is Senator Smith calling,” or introduces themselves at a cocktail party, “I’m

Senator so-and-so.” I mean, that’s just a matter of taste.

Anyway, I think this leads people to be tremendously self-absorbed, and of course

then you’ve got the newspapers who are either alternately flattering or criticizing, often

unfairly on both sides. I mean, if you’re a liberal, The Washington Post and many

newspapers are going to praise you beyond what you deserve, and the The Washington

Times is going to do the opposite, and vice versa. If you’re a conservative, The

Washington Post and, for that matter, the Denver Post, are going to be enormously

critical. They’re going to look for ways to jump on you. So all of these things together

just conspire to make people very, very self-centered, and that’s true in public life

generally. It’s not just senators. But senators have it to a heightened degree because their

job is so important, because they’re the center of the universe because they make such big

decisions, because votes are often so close. I mean, one vote is what I ran on in ’78.

“We have seen how destructive one senator can be when his vote imposed on American

people the largest tax increase in history.” So they just become very self-absorbed.

I don’t know, I may be overgeneralizing, but the thing that’s interesting about

Bob Dole is that in the midst of all of this, he had a good sense of himself. It’s not that he

was unaware of what an important guy he was, but how generous he was in sharing the

praise with other senators of both parties, and with members of his staff and members of

the staff of other senators. I’ve seen lots of senators who praise their own staff. Pretty

unusual when you see the senator from Kansas praising the staff, by name, of the senator

from Colorado. You’ve got to like a guy like that.

Williams: We were talking about the presentation at campaign events in that first run for

the Senate. What was Bob Dole like between campaign stops?

Armstrong: I have no idea. I don’t think I ever traveled with him on the campaign trail.

I was with him at a lot of campaign events in Colorado and elsewhere, but I’m just trying

to think did I ever ride in the car with him? I don’t think I ever had occasion to do that. I

don’t recall that I did.

Williams: And you didn’t share time with him between events in hotels—



Armstrong: I do not recall that I did. Let me just give that a good solid think. I don’t

recall an occasion like that. There may have been. May have been.

Williams: So tell me about your first few days in the Senate. What was that like?

Armstrong: Oh, it was great. Suddenly, having been a minority within the minority in

the House, a back-bencher, suddenly I was a senator. And, you know, a senator has such

enormous opportunities. First of all, in the House you’re limited as to what you can say.

If you’ll notice on C-SPAN, the Speaker or the presiding officer will say, “The gentleman

from Colorado is recognized for three minutes,” for five minutes, for ten minutes, for

thirty seconds, sometimes for eight seconds, for tiny amounts of time. In the Senate it’s

quite different than that. When you’re recognized, you’re recognized, and nobody can

take you off your feet. Presiding officer can’t take you off your feet, the Majority Leader

can’t, the Minority Leader can’t. You’re able to stand there and talk on any subject of

your choosing for as long as you want to talk. Well, I mean, if you like to talk, this is

pretty great. Now, a lot of times nobody’s listening, but it’s all going into the

Congressional Record, which, by the way, has an enormous influence, much more than

you would think. Why would you think that putting down every word in the

Congressional Record would have a big impact? But it does. I mean, there are people

out there who read that stuff, and of course one of the things I did when I was in the

Senate is I pushed to get television brought to the Senate. In fact, it’s one of the things

I’m kind of proud of that I had a hand in. Once we were on television, I mean, there are

Senate junkies who watch that stuff. So if you get up and make a speech to an empty

chamber, you’ll hear about that from all over the country, depending on the content of the

talk, of course.

So the first thing that I noticed is that I had a chance to have my say. Second,

almost all the business in the Senate is really done by unanimous consent. I don’t now if

you realize that. Senators do vote, but most of the business is actually done when

somebody, usually the Majority Leader or the manager of a bill, will say, “Mr. President,

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the consideration of S202,” or,

“Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this amendment be laid over until a week



from Thursday.” A lot of it, the most common expression is “unanimous consent.” Well,

if you don’t want to consent, you don’t have to.

Shortly after I got there, I happened to be on the floor and [Sen.] Robert [C.] Byrd

was the Leader, and he was doing something and I didn’t know what he was doing, didn’t

understand it, so I just stood up and said, “I object.”

And Robert Byrd, who’s very, very gracious, he said, “Mr. President, let’s stand

in recess a moment and we’ll see if we can work this out or explain this to the senator

from Colorado.” Of course, it was routine stuff, but I didn’t know what it was. It didn’t

sound good to me, so I just said, “I object.” Well, that ability to throw a monkey wrench

in the works—now, if you use that technique a lot, you don’t get a very good reputation

in the Senate, and I don’t recall that I ever did exactly that again in the years I was there,

although I objected to lots of things, but not in quite that way or for that reason. But the

ability to do so conveys to every senator a seat at the table, and often you will see

senators object to something, object to proceeding to consideration of some bill, and what

you’ll then see is the Majority Leader and/or the Minority Leader or the manager of the

bill go to the senator and say, “Okay, what’s the problem?”

He’ll say, “Well, Jones has got my nominee for dog catcher tied up in his

committee, and if he won’t let that out, I’m not going to let you proceed to this bill.”

Terrible system. But that’s the way it works. I mean, it’s constantly one senator holding

the process hostage for something else. Now, I don’t have any problem with that if it is

holding the process hostage for some important issue. It sort of rankles me when the

issue is getting an appropriation out to build a new courthouse or mule barn, you know,

the John J. Jones Memorial Mule Barn in my home state. That seems kind of petty. But

that’s the way the process works.

Then, of course, the numbers are much smaller in the Senate. There are a hundred

senators. Every vote counts in a way that it just doesn’t in the House. In the Senate,

committee assignments are by seniority. In the House, at least in the era when I was

there, they were assigned by a committee on committees, which gave enormous power to

the leadership. In the Senate, it’s all by seniority, so that when I was there, for example,

the Republican committee assignments started by asking [Sen.] Strom Thurmond, “Mr.

Thurmond, do you wish to change your committee assignments?” And he could ask for

an assignment to any committee he wanted to be assigned to. Now, of course, after



you’ve been there a while, you don’t want to change your committees. But that meant

that a senator is not so much beholden or subject to the whims or the favor of the leaders.

I mean, in a sense, leaders really work for the members rather than the other way around.

In the House, the Speaker is said to rule the House. The Majority Leader is never said to

rule the Senate. Nobody rules the Senate. I mean, it just doesn’t work that way.

Then, of course, in committee and on the floor, you can do anything, and that is

both the nobility and the downfall of the Senate. I mean, you can do anything. In fact, if

I may, I’ll digress and tell you a story about just doing anything, a story of something I

did on a whim, which happened to involve Senator Dole. After lunch one day I was on

my way back to the office and I’d been down somewhere in the center of the Capitol,

maybe in the Leader’s Office, I don’t remember, but I remember I entered the back door

of the Senate. I could have gone around and walked back to my office, but instead I

thought, “Well, I’ll just take a shortcut and go through the Senate chamber.”

Somebody’s in the chair presiding, there’s a Democrat managing the floor for his side,

and here’s Bob Dole giving a speech about some bill that he was managing. I don’t even

remember what the bill was. Only three people on the floor of the Senate. So I walk

through, and I do not know exactly what possessed me to do this, but as I walked through

the floor I just called out, “Mr. President, would the senator yield?”

Well, of course Bob said, “Well, of course I’d be happy to yield to my

distinguished friend, the senator from Colorado.”

And I said, “Well, Mr. President—.” Of course you know in the Senate you

always talk in the third person; you always address the chair. You don’t say, “Hey, Bob,

what about this?” You say, “Mr. President, could the senator from Kansas tell me—.”

So I said, “Mr. President, I notice that the senator from Kansas, the distinguished

chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is speaking to the Senate on Bill number so-

and-so. Is that correct?”

Bob said, “The senator is correct.”

I said, “Well, I note that on the desk of every senator there is a committee report,

a thick committee report, which is the report of the Committee on Finance on this bill. Is

that right?”

And Dole said something to the effect, “Well, once again the senator is entirely

correct.”



And I said, “Well, I notice, Mr. President, that this report says on the cover that it

is submitted by Senator Dole, the chairman.”

And Dole again says, “Yes, this is correct.”

I said, “Well, I’m just wondering, Mr. President, I’m just wondering if the senator

from Kansas could tell us, does that mean he wrote the report?”

And Dole says, “Well, no, I’d say to the senator—.” I’m paraphrasing. I don’t

remember the exact words. He said something to the effect, “Well, no, I did not write the

report.”

And I said, “Well, Mr. President, could the senator tell us if he read the report.”

And Dole says, “Well, no.”

I said, “Did the senator read any of the report?”

And Dole said, “No, not necessarily.”

And I said, “Well, could the senator from Kansas that is the distinguished and

able chairman of the Senate Finance Committee tell us if he knows the name of any

senator who has read this report.”

And Dole says, “Well, no, I guess not.”

And I said, “Well, I thank the senator for yielding. I just wanted to make that

point, because on the off chance that some judge some place happens to read this portion

of the Congressional Record and if that judge would some day be inclined to look at

committee reports as a valid indication of legislative intent, I hope he will think twice,

because in reality, committee reports are not written by senators, they are not read by

senators. They’re written by staff members. There’s nothing to vote on. If I disagree

with some portion of the committee report as a senator, I can’t move to amend it. And I

just want the courts to know that this is not a valid expression of congressional intent, and

I thank the senator for yielding.” Went back to my office and went on with it, didn’t

think any more about it for a couple of years.

Then about a couple of years later, a judge in Alexandria cited this colloquy in

one of his opinions, and a while after that, Justice [Antonin] Scalia quoted the judge in

Alexandria, Virginia, on this topic. Now, that’s not momentous, but it sure was fun, and

you couldn’t do that in the House of Representatives. It’s a very different, very different

kind of body. I don’t want to be too critical of the House. I mean, I honor the service of

House members. It’s terribly important, but as a place to serve, the Senate is superb.



That must be the greatest job in the world. Second greatest. I actually have the greatest

job in the world now, but it was the second greatest job in the world.

Williams: Do you recall your next meeting with Senator Dole after that exchange?

Armstrong: Do not. But I saw him all the time. I would see him once or twice or ten or

twenty times a day. I mean, it was not uncommon for us to meet in the hall, in the

cloakroom, on the floor, at the White House. I mean, during the six years I was part of

the Republican leadership, we were often down at the White House together. We were

on the campaign trail together. We did news conferences from time to time together,

though not often, but sometimes. We were together every Tuesday. I was chairman of

the Republican Policy Committee, so we had lunch together every Tuesday and I

presided at those luncheons. By tradition, the chairman of the Policy Committee, which

is what I was, presides at the luncheon and recognizes the people who want to be

recognized. The Majority Leader sits on one side of him and the vice president, who is

the president of the Senate, sits on the other if he’s a member of the party. So that when

George [H.W.] Bush was vice president, he sat on my left hand. Am I right about that?

Gosh, that’s terrible; I’ve forgotten who sat on which side.

But in any case, so I was with Dole all the time, just nothing uncommon about

that. In fact, on occasions when I didn’t have a luncheon meeting, I would have lunch

frequently in the senators’ private dining room, which is different from the Senate Dining

Room, but in the senators’ private dining room, where only senators were permitted,

nobody else. It didn’t matter who you were; you didn’t get in there. It was just senators.

I would often find Bob in there. It was very common. Usually seated at the end of the

table. In fact, I cannot recall when he was not. I’m sure that there were occasions.

Holding court, telling stories. People were saying, “What’s going to happen about this?

What’s going to happen about this?” And of course the most common of questions that

senators address to their Leader is, “Can you be sure there will be no votes after seven

o’clock Thursday because I’ve got to go home for a fundraiser.” I mean, that is the

question that senators really ask their Leaders, is, “Can you protect me on so-and-so?

Can I get paired? Can I do this? Can you hold up the wheels of progress so I can go out

to a garage sale that I’m committed to attend?” I mean, it’s uncanny.



Williams: My guess would be that you would not have stopped as you crossed the Senate

floor and had that same kind of colloquy with another member of the Senate.

Armstrong: Probably not. Probably not. I mean, Bob was a good sport. He’s still a

good sport. I don’t know if he knew exactly what I was doing. He may have very well

had some suspicion of it. But as I recall, he didn’t express the slightest bit of

consternation that I was making a record that these committee reports were not a valid

source of congressional intent. But I mean, you know, he was very laid back about that

kind of stuff. He knew when he needed to fight to protect his turf and when he didn’t.

Sure, there are some people who would take that well and others who wouldn’t, but it

never crossed my mind that he wouldn’t take it well.

You know, interestingly, that’s a vivid recollection of mine. I think there’s a

decent chance he may not even remember that that happened. That’s one of the

interesting things about life, and I have it happen to me all the time. People come up and

tell me about what an enormously important formative instant there was when we were

together and they did so and so and I said so and so, and in some cases I can’t even

remember the person. I’m sure you’ve had that same experience, too. But Dole had so

many experiences with so many people, I think there’s a good chance he may not even

remember that kind of humorous episode. But it’s in the record. It’s in the

Congressional Record.

Williams: And no one took it out.

Armstrong: I don’t think so. [laughs]

Williams: Tell me about your first committee assignments.

Armstrong: When I went to the Senate, it’s kind of a bidding process based on seniority,

and I was new, but I was very fortunate in my committee assignments, extremely

fortunate, partly because I’d been a member of the House, so they get a little preference.

If everybody has equal seniority, if you’ve been a House member you get preference. If



you’ve been a governor, you get a preference, and so on. So I got great committee

assignments. I was put on the Banking Committee, which I loved, by the way. I didn’t

have any particular reason to be on that committee, but it turned out that the Banking

Committee is a very, very interesting committee. I have subsequently advised some of

my successors to bid for the Banking Committee, and some of them have done it, because

it has this great jurisdiction not only over banking, but over housing, over some aspects

of international trade, over Fed policy and that kind of thing. Then I was put on the

Budget Committee, because I continued to have this great interest in trying to put the lid

on federal spending, and I served on the Budget Committee for twelve years. Served on

the Banking Committee for ten years.

Then I asked for the Education and Labor Committee, which was a mistake. I

hated it. I didn’t participate in it to any significant extent. I disliked it from the moment I

attended it the first time and basically I went to a couple of meetings and then just

dropped out. I mean, I didn’t literally drop out, but I just didn’t pay any attention.

Two years later I was able to bid for the Finance Committee and was put on

Finance. Now, the Senate Finance Committee is, I think by most estimations, the most

significant, most important committee of the United States Congress. Ways and Means is

terribly important, and there’s other very important committees, but I think by general

agreement, Senate Finance Committee is the best committee assignment you can have,

and I had that for all the rest of the time I was in the Senate. So for the last ten years that

I was in the Senate, I was on the three major committees that handled money—Banking,

Budget, and, supremely, Senate Finance Committee.

Williams: When you went on Finance, was Dole then chairman, or did that come later?

Armstrong: Well, I think [Sen.] Russell [B.] Long was chairman. I think Russell Long

was the chairman. He was a colorful guy. I remember one time shortly after I got that, I

forget what the reason was, I guess he called me to his hideaway office in the Capitol,

and he said, “You know, Armstrong—.” I don’t remember if he called me Armstrong or

Bill. He had a great, wonderful, congenial manner. He said, “We’ve been thinking—,”

meaning, “I’ve been thinking.” “We’ve been thinking about putting you on the

conference committee on such and such a bill, but I don’t think we’ll do that, because if I



asked you to vote some particular way, you wouldn’t feel comfortable to do that, would

you?”

And I said, “No, probably not, Russell.” So I wasn’t put on the conference

committee. [laughs] I was subsequently put on conference committees, but I mean, he

knew what he wanted and knew what he needed. He wanted to put somebody on who

would be a reliable vote on the Republican side for what the chairman wanted to do.

Very interesting, colorful guy, and of course a throwback to a much earlier era.

Williams: So you came into the Senate midway through [Jimmy] Carter’s term.

Armstrong: I was elected in ’78.

Williams: Then the [Ronald] Reagan revolution occurred, and at that point you went on

the Finance Committee.

Armstrong: Yes, in 1980.

Williams: So you were witness to major changes in fiscal policy.

Armstrong: Yes, I was. Actually, I was more than a witness. I was a co-conspirator. Of

course, Jack Kemp is a dear friend of mine. Jack and [Sen.] Jim [James] McClure and I

held some news conferences while I was still in the House, talking about cutting taxes,

which I passionately believed in then and I still do, actually. When we did, people

laughed at us. I mean, they laughed at us. They just thought—I mean, guys like [Sen.]

Fritz [Ernest] Hollings, for example, they just thought that was the dumbest thing you

could possibly—why would you want to give money back to the taxpayers when we

could keep it and pass it back to the taxpayers as grants and subsidies and whatnot? Of

course Jack took the lead on that and really, really, really pushed it. I mean, he was, in

his own word, monomaniacal about it. I mean, you couldn’t say, “Pass the butter,” but

what he’d say, “Well, you know, if you really want to butter up the economy, you’d

better cut taxes.” I mean, he was great about that.

Bob Dole, by the way, was somewhat critical of that.



Williams: I need to interrupt you here just for a second because we need to change tapes.

Armstrong: Okay.

[End File 1. Begin File 2.]

Williams: All right. We were starting to talk about your time on the Finance Committee.

Armstrong: Actually, we were talking about tax cuts, and if I could just pick it up there

for a moment. Jack Kemp, of course, was the nation’s leading advocate for tax cuts, and

there were others—[Sen.] Bill [William] Roth and Jim McClure. I was one of them and

there were others. Interestingly, at the early stages, Bob Dole was not a great fan of

cutting taxes. I don’t know that it was so much that he was against cutting taxes as it

wasn’t high on his radar scope. I don’t really know what was in his heart, but Bob was

very much the old-fashioned budget-balancing conservative. At least he gave lip service

to that idea. It’s particularly interesting for a couple of reasons, because there was some

tension between Dole and Kemp. Of course, later they were running mates. But the

story I remember is in some meeting or some occasion, I don’t remember where,

expressing, in a humorous way, his feelings about those who constantly clamored for tax

cuts. He said, “I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that a busload of

supply-siders went off a cliff and they were all killed. Bad news, there were two or three

vacant seats on the bus.” Now, that’s kind of typical of Bob. That would be about as far

as he would go in being critical of somebody. But it was clear at the outset that Bob was

just not passionate about that. Later, he did become. In fact, Bob Dole had an

enormously important role in the tax reforms that took place, and I want to tell you about

one of those specifically, but at the outset, that just wasn’t quite his cup of tea.

After the 1980 election but before the president was sworn in, I was part of a

group that sat around in somebody’s office—it may have been [Sen.] Bob Packwood’s

office; I’m not sure—with Reagan on the speakerphone from California. Kemp was in

the room, and I don’t remember who else, but there was a half a dozen or a dozen of us.

One of the things we talked about was cutting taxes. Of course, as you will recall, the



president is credited with being the great tax cutter, and rightly so, but in fact it was Jack

Kemp and Bill Roth and some others.

But if you want to digress just a little, I’ll tell you a story about how that 28

percent rate got put together. I was on the Finance Committee. Bob Packwood was the

chairman at this point. I got a call one day from Packwood and saying, “What would you

be willing to give up in order to get a top maximum of 30 percent or 28 percent?”

I said, “Just about anything.” And I would. But he was shopping this deal around

among members of the Finance Committee and ended up putting it together, and that’s

how the rates got down to 28 percent.

I’m a little lost as to the detail of this, but subsequently it must have been—I’m

sorry, I’ve lost track of the dates, but at some point Dole, who was by then the

chairman—I may be wrong about that. Was Packwood chairman of the Finance

Committee ahead of Dole? That isn’t right, is it. He was after. I’ve forgotten the

sequence of events.

My great interest in the tax bill, other than cutting the marginal tax rates, was to

index the personal brackets because it was clear to me that when the brackets escalated,

that with inflation people got escalated into higher brackets. They really had no more

effective income, but the government was taking a bigger slice of it. So I wanted to talk

about indexing, indexing, indexing. In fact, [Rep.] Bill Archer, who was subsequently

the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and I were the big advocates of

that. I got Dole interested in it. In fact, ultimately though I was the guy who pressed the

issue, when it came to the floor, Bob volunteered and I willingly, enthusiastically agreed

that he would offer the amendment and I would be a co-sponsor of it, because he had this

towering prestige, and although I was pretty well known by this time in the Senate,

clearly a Dole amendment of this kind would have more support than if it was an

Armstrong amendment, although everybody knew that this was a pet project of mine.

Well, two footnotes to that, one involving Dole and one involving Reagan. When

we offered this proposal, and Bob did it so skillfully and, of course, it passed, the Reagan

administration opposed it. The secretary of the Treasury and the lobbyists came down

and opposed it. I found this very frustrating. Here’s the best idea of the tax bill, and they

were trying to kill it. We got it passed. So then we had the Democratic House and the

Republican Senate. Reagan then goes on the air, on his Saturday radio broadcast, and



compares the two bills and explains why the Republican bill as embodied in the Senate’s

proposal was better than the Democratic bill, and the centerpiece of his argument was the

indexing provision, that that was the reason that he cited, at least, as to why this was such

a better bill.

Well, I saw him a few days later and I said, “You know, Mr. President, I really

appreciated what you had to say about indexing the tax structure.” He nodded or

something. I said, “But here’s what I can’t figure out. Why, if you feel that way, why

did the administration lobby so hard to prevent it from being adopted as an amendment in

the Senate?”

And he said, “Well, I never object to having a tax cut shoved down my throat.”

And of course, as history records, we were able to get it through the House and it became

a piece of the bill, and I quit keeping track long ago of how much it has saved taxpayers,

but I mean, it is an enormous amount, an enormous amount. And in that wonderful

speech when I retired from the Senate on that sentimental occasion years later, Bob Dole,

among other just absolutely over-the-top, wonderful things he said about me, described

me as the father of indexing the Tax Code. That reputation, which was crystallized by his

comments, has followed me ever since. I mean, people mention that to me all the time.

Now, I immediately got up and thanked—“I thank the distinguished senator from Kansas,

our leader,” and so on. I said, “He exaggerates my role. I was not the father of indexing.

Actually, he was the father of indexing. I was the uncle of indexing.” But in fact, his

generosity on that occasion really resulted in sort of making it public record of what I

thought was one of the most significant, probably the most significant contribution I

made from a legislative standpoint during those years, and yet it was he that actually

offered the amendment.

Williams: Am I right that that was all part of the 1986 Tax Reform Act?

Armstrong: That must be right. I’ve kind of forgotten the sequence of events, but it

wasn’t a part of the first Reagan tax bill. I think that is correct.

Williams: The first one was the—



Armstrong: As a historian, you probably know better than I.

Williams: Well, I have my crib notes here.

Armstrong: Good.

Williams: ERTA [Economic Recovery Tax Act] was the bill in ’81, which was

supposedly cutting the taxes by 25 percent over three years.

Armstrong: Yes.

Williams: And that had negative economic consequences, which were then corrected by

TEFRA [Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act] in ’82. Can you sort of recreate some

of that?

Armstrong: There was always this huge debate at whether it had negative consequences

or not. Those of us who were supply-siders didn’t believe that and criticized then, and

this debate goes on today, of whether or not tax policy should be scored on a static basis

or a dynamic basis. On a static basis any tax cut will result in a loss of revenue. In fact,

in the real world on a dynamic basis, when you cut taxes, if that stimulates economic

activity, it may very well produce a gain in federal revenues from lower rates, and that’s

seen dramatically, for example, in the estate tax. Well, actually in all kinds of taxes. Tax

rate reductions frequently result and usually result in the long term in increased economic

activity, which means more revenue. And the reverse is true. If you raise taxes, it tends

to stifle and cut economic activity, and thereby the resulting tax revenues.

Williams: So the recession the country experienced following the ’81 tax bill, you would

say that would be a temporary thing before the revenue flow caught up?

Armstrong: I guess I would say that. I don’t think there’s much doubt about the fact that

reductions in taxes encourage people to invest and work and spend and all the things that



lead to economic prosperity, but it’s not as simple as just turning on and off a light switch

or opening and closing a spigot. It’s more complex than that.

Williams: Dole played a major role in ’81 and ’82, first working with the Reagan

administration and then basically opposing them, and eventually Reagan came around.

Did you—I’m tempted to use that word “witness” again, but were you aware of his

negotiating with the White House and how that was going?

Armstrong: Oh, sure. Sure. We were all furiously engaged in it, and of course he was

the leader. More than anybody, he was the leader of those efforts.

Williams: Did you go down to the White House much to talk face to face with people?

Armstrong: During the years when I was chairman of the Policy Committee, which was

the last six years I was in the Senate, I was down at the White House basically every

week that we were in session. Oh, maybe it wasn’t every week. Maybe it was two-thirds

or 75 percent of the weeks. But there was a meeting of the Republican leadership, and

we met in the Cabinet Room and met with the president and talked with Reagan and then

later with George Bush.

Williams: I want to get to that, but I want to finish up with your time on the Finance

Committee. Any other recollections or telling moments as far as you were concerned?

Armstrong: Well, this is not a telling moment particularly, but it’s kind of funny. When

there was a transition and Russell Long became the ranking minority member instead of

the chairman, which had been a long time coming, on the first roll call they called the

names of everybody and then at the end they called “Mr. Chairman,” and without

thinking, he answered, “Aye” or, “Nay,” or whatever, and everybody laughed. But, of

course, he had been answering the roll call in that way for I don’t know how many years

at that point.

Bob—one of the things you need to understand to really get the full picture of

Bob Dole is that he’s a very skillful legislator, I mean a very skillful legislator. It is easy



to see Bob as a partisan leader, and he was the best at that. Bob really did have the

capacity to rally the troops. I’ve tried to share with you some idea of his personal warmth

and his generosity of spirit, but he’s also the most skillful legislator of his generation. I

mean, he knew how to make deals. In fact, I forget when exactly, but some magazine

had a picture of him on the cover of it and it said “Forger of Compromises.” I think I

made some smart remark, “Bob, I see you’re forger of compromises.”

And he said something to the effect of, “Yeah, I guess that’s right.”

And I said, “Well, I didn’t think compromises were forgeries. I thought they were

real.”

But he was good at that. I mean, he knew how to make deals in committee, and

he knew when to make a deal. For example, he knew that if we tried to put the indexing

thing on the bill in committee, win, lose, or draw in committee it would set us back on the

floor, because the administration would focus on that, because Don [Donald] Regan and

others just didn’t want to see that in the bill for some reason. So he knew how to make a

compromise, he knew when to make a compromise. He knew how to work across the

aisle. He was very good about that. As partisan as he was, and I mean, he was really

thought of as a hard-hitting partisan fighter, I mean he was a warrior, but he had this

enormous respect among Democrats and treated them well and worked with them well

both in the majority and in the minority. He’s a very, very skillful legislator. Of course,

he knew everything. He had an encyclopedic recollection of what had happened, and he

could predict with a high degree of accuracy what people were likely to do in a given

situation and he knew what people needed in order to get on board. That’s what

legislative leaders need to do, and he was good at it. He was really good at it.

Can I give you one other insight, just in passing, of a lesson that Bob taught me?

I had offered some amendment—I was always offering amendments, and some of them

got adopted and some of them didn’t. Some of them got adopted the first time I offered

them, some of them got adopted the tenth time I offered them, and some of them never

got adopted. My motto always ways, there’s two kinds of fights; there’s the ones we’ve

won and there’s the ones that aren’t over yet. Well, I offered some amendment, I don’t

remember what it was, and as always, I was tallying the votes and so on, and it was not

the first time I’d offered it, and it lost, but I noticed that Dole had voted against me. So I



went up to him. He was on the floor and I said, “Bob, I noticed you voted against this,

and yet when I offered it previously, you voted for it. Did you intend to do that?”

He said, “Oh yeah. Oh yeah.”

I said, “Oh.”

He says, “You remember so and so and so and so, and you voted against my

amendment?”

I said, “Point taken.” Now, what I don’t know, and what I probably will never

know, is if his vote had been the deciding vote, would he have voted for it as some matter

of conviction or to help me, or would he have voted against it. But in fact, this was a way

for him to teach me a lesson at no cost, because my amendment wasn’t going to pass

anyway in this particular case. I wasn’t mad about that. I took it for what it was. He was

the master legislator and he was teaching me a lesson, which it is, Senators have long

memories, and so if you’re going to vote against somebody, that’s okay, but sometimes it

has a price.

Williams: What was his role like on the Finance Committee after he became Leader,

when he gave up the chairmanship of the committee?

Armstrong: You know, I don’t know that I have a very clear recollection of that, in the

sense that it’s all kind of wadded together. That’s when Packwood became chairman.

Bob Packwood, by the way, was a very able chairman, although his career in the Senate

sort of ended in a crash landing, so to speak. He was a very good chairman. He was a

very skillful legislator. Bob Packwood and I were never close, and in some ways he was

more liberal than I am, but I respected him as a legislator. I don’t know that I can really

characterize that, because it just all kind of runs together.

But every day that I was in the Senate, in the minority, in the majority, when Dole

was chairman or when he wasn’t, he was a huge factor in everything, I mean even before

he became Leader, I mean when [Sen.] Howard [H.] Baker [Jr.] was Leader. In fact, I

had forgotten until just this instant, but I remember on one occasion that I was walking

with Dole over to the old Senate chamber for a leadership election, and I think I had

agreed to nominate him for Leader or for something. I don’t remember. I remember the

occasion, and then I think—I’m sorry, it’s lost. There was some doubt as to whether or



not Bob wanted to go through with being nominated, but I can’t remember what that was.

I’ve lost it.

Williams: That selection of Dole as Leader was a hotly contested election. As I recall,

four votes went through.

Armstrong: Remind me who the other candidate was.

Williams: [Ted] Stevens, [Pete V.] Domenici, McClure, and one other, in addition to

Dole, I believe, and came down to Stevens and Dole, and Dole barely won.

Armstrong: Yes, now that you remind me, I remember it. Of course, Ted Stevens is very

tough, very—I mean, wonderful friend. The last guy you want to be on the opposite side

from. But I was for Dole. That may have been the occasion that we’re talking about.

The detail of that is hazy in my recollection, but the essence of it was, he didn’t want to

be nominated if he wasn’t going to win.

To tell you an interesting story, another not fascinating but kind of an insight into

how Dole worked, after we’d all been elected to positions of leadership, he was the

Republican Leader and I was the Policy chairman and so on. First thing he did was, he

called around to the other five leaders and said, “Are we going to run as a team for

reelection? Are we all going to support each other?” And of course what that did is, first

of all, you start with six votes right there, including there are probably one or two of

those votes that if it hadn’t been put on that basis, might have entertained a challenge

from somebody else. He was very astute.

Williams: So tell me about your time on the Policy Committee. What was that like?

Armstrong: Well, the chairman of the Policy Committee—by the way, that’s a job I

think was originally created for [Sen.] Robert Taft, who was one of my early heroes. I

met him when I was ten, eleven years old, when he ran for president in 1948. He came

touring through Freemont, Nebraska. He was a great guy. I mean, Bob Taft was—in

some sense, he was the Bob Dole of that era. He was Mr. Republican, he was Mr.



Conservative, Mr. Integrity, and ultimately, as Bob Dole did, lost out for the presidency

to more charismatic and somehow fresher faces, [Dwight D.] Eisenhower in the case of

Taft.

Well, anyway, the Policy job, I think was originally created for Robert Taft, and

that meant that I had a staff of twenty or twenty-five people that reported to me, and it

was our job to develop analysis and ideas and so on for Republican senators, a service

organization to senators. The most interesting part of the job to me personally was, first

of all, that I presided at these weekly luncheons, the only time when Republican senators

routinely gathered. We occasionally would have a conference. Once or twice a year

we’d have a conference where the conference chairman would preside, but routinely the

time when we all gathered once a week to talk about the schedule and talk about

legislative policy, was at the Policy Committee luncheon. Well, I got to preside at that,

and in fact, when I took that job over, I was a relatively new member of the Senate. I’d

been six years and I was reelected and then became the Policy Committee chairman. So

that was good fun. That gave me a sense that I was really sort of participating at the

higher levels in the Senate, also gave me an opportunity to be down at the White House

and participate in those discussions down there.

I never deluded myself that I had quite the same impact on things that Howard

Baker did or that Bob Dole did. I mean, after all, they were the Republican Leader. I

was one of the Republican leaders, but they were the leaders. But still it was a great

opportunity and great satisfaction to have the chance to do that.

Williams: In pecking order, you were number three in leadership?

Armstrong: Yes. But, you know, except for the Leader himself, every senator is a

leader. I mean, we talked about that earlier. But senators see themselves as leaders.

They see themselves as people who can question presidents, lecture presidents, who can

call CEOs of the biggest companies into their office for a séance, who deal with

ambassadors and prime ministers and kings and potentates and bishops and scientists and

you name it. So they’re all leaders. The Democratic Leader and the Republican Leader

are first among equals, but after that we’re all leaders.



Williams: How often did you meet at the White House?

Armstrong: Once a week when we were in session. So about, I would say, not every

week, but I would say two-thirds of the weeks of the year we went down there.

Williams: So you must have some stories, recollections about being with the Policy

Committee and down at the White House.

Armstrong: Sure.

Williams: Share some.

Armstrong: Well, lots of recollections of my time at the White House. I would not say

that I was one of the most vocal members at meetings at the White House, which is, in a

sense, in retrospect, a little surprising because I’m pretty vocal. I didn’t think I was

elected to keep my mouth shut, and I don’t mean to say I was silent at the White House,

but I don’t know that I was the most outspoken person to visit the White House. On one

particular dreadful occasion when George Bush was considering going back on his “no

new taxes” pledge, there had been rumbles of that and rumors of that for several days,

and I was really distressed about that. I went down to the White House for a leadership

meeting and he threw it out on the table, and whether by prearrangement or not I do not

know, but one after another of the members of the House leadership and the Senate

leadership assured him that they would back him, assured him this was doable, that it was

difficult, but “We’re going to back you. We’re 100 percent with you,” so on and so on

and so on. I didn’t say a word, at least on that topic. As the meeting broke up, Mr. Bush

was making his way out of the Cabinet Room, he came over to me and he said, “I thought

your—.” I can’t capture it exactly. “I thought your silence was significant,” or, “Was

your silence significant?”

I said, “Mr. President, all these people weren’t telling you the truth. This is not

doable. It will be agony. It will be terrible. It is a huge mistake. They have not served

you well by what they’ve told you.”



Well, of course, in the end the tax increase did pass, but it never gained a majority

of Republican senators. Dole and the others were good soldiers about it, but most of us—

and I was one of the leaders in opposition, of course, but most Republican senators saw it

as I did, that you don’t make that promise and then go back on it. So we didn’t. In fact,

what did that have to do with his downfall? Probably a lot. Probably did.

Williams: What about your observations of Dole interacting with Reagan and then Dole

interacting with Bush?

Armstrong: Always respectful. I do not recall any—there may have been one, but I

don’t recall any occasion when either publicly or privately he spoke disparagingly of Mr.

Reagan or of Mr. Bush. I think there was always a belief that—well, I think there were

kind of always two contradictory beliefs intentioned. One, that he would back the White

House, that he would be the White House’s leader in the Senate, and second, intentioned

with that was the completely contradictory belief that he was a man of the Senate who

would do what he thought was best as the Republican Leader of the Senate and as a

senator from Kansas. Now, at some point those things come into conflict, but I always

believed both of those things, and there were times, I know—I can’t cite one for you, but

I know this to be true, it’s got to be true, that his opposition just changed the White

House, I mean because if Bob Dole wasn’t ready to sign on for a particular policy, the

White House just couldn’t make it work. I mean, because he was a loyalist, and properly

so, and yet his supreme responsibility was not to the White House; it was to the Senate, to

his colleagues in the Senate, and so I know there were times—and maybe others will be

able to tell you this, or maybe Bob himself will tell you some occasions like that where

he just had to say, “No, Mr. President, I’m sorry I can’t do that.”

Williams: How would you characterize his relationship with Reagan? Congenial, very

deferential?

Armstrong: Professional and deferential, but not very deferential. I mean, you know,

he’s the president, Dole was the Leader of the Senate, and so in status they were not

equal, but on the other hand, Dole had been a power in Washington when Reagan was



still making movies. So you never had the sense that Dole was in awe of the president or

anything like that. They were professional colleagues, they were on the same team. Bob

Dole was always suitably deferential to the president, but not obsequious.

I won’t mention the name, but I know some senators, absolutely I felt humiliated

to hear their discussions with people because they were so obsequious. In fact, one that

comes to mind was so obsequious towards Bob Dole that it was just embarrassing. I

don’t want to say too much more about it, because this is somebody who’s no longer in

the Senate and nothing to be gained by it, but my wife, Ellen, and I talked about it many

times, of how they’d go to public meetings and this particular senator would praise Bob

Dole just beyond the point of reason, and it just felt so smarmy and uncomfortable. For

all I know, it was genuine. I don’t know that it was disingenuous, but it just felt so

strange. But you never had any sense of that with Dole and anybody. He was respectful

and professional and proper, but he could stand his ground.

Williams: You’ve documented Dole’s sense of humor. Reagan was famous for his too.

Did they play off each other at all?

Armstrong: I think to some extent. Yes, I think to some extent they did. I remember one

time we were down at the White House for some kind of a meeting, I don’t remember

what it was, but this was not in a leadership meeting, it was in a different kind of

meeting, it was just two or three of us for some reason, and he came into the room and he

says, “Well, you know the recipe for Hungarian chicken soup?”

We said, “No, Mr. President, we don’t.”

He said, “Well, first you steal two chickens.” That’d be kind of typical of

Reagan.

One time I know he came into the Cabinet Room and we were milling around,

waiting for him to arrive. We weren’t in our seats; we were just milling around. And he

burst through the door and said, “Quiet on the set!” So he had a great sense of humor.

Now, of course, I was much, much closer to Bob Dole than I was to Ronald

Reagan. I knew Ronald Reagan, and I wasn’t a contemporary of Bob’s. I mean, I was

junior to Bob in age and in other ways, but I was even more junior to Ronald Reagan,

much younger, though I had known him for quite a long time. In fact, on one occasion,



before he was elected president and maybe after he had been governor of California, he

was at the National Prayer Breakfast and I was deeply involved in the National Prayer

Breakfast, and so for some reason I was table-hopping. He was seated out in the

audience; he wasn’t up on the dais. He was at a round table. So I just came over and

shook his hand, said, “Hello, Governor, I’m Bill Armstrong.”

He says, “Oh, I remember you,” and he turned to the people at his table and he

says, “This guy’s my boss.”

They said, “What do you mean?”

Well, it turned out he was referring to the fact that he had a syndicated radio

program which was being broadcast on my station in Denver, and we were buying this

program from his syndicator. So I had known him in that capacity.

Reagan had been out to campaign for me, so I had known him before he became

president, but we were not buddies. I mean, he called me Bill and I called him Mr.

President. That’s the relationship we had. Great man. I wish we had another president

just like him.

Williams: Did you see diminishment in his capacity towards the end of his second term?

Armstrong: Not particularly, no. No, I can’t say that I did. But let me emphasize, much

as I admired him and though I saw him fairly frequently, I wasn’t close to him personally.

I never had a conversation, for example, with him of the length that we’ve had today. I

had a number of conversations with him, some of which were in very small groups, one

or two, mostly not, but it was not as casual as that. The president and Mrs. [Nancy]

Reagan didn’t invite Ellen and me over for dinner and watch TV. We weren’t on that

basis with them.

Williams: What was the mood like in the room with George Bush in charge, as

compared to Reagan, perhaps?

Armstrong: That’s a great question. I think in some sense—well, it was very respectful

in both cases. Great affection for Ronald Reagan. I mean great personal affection for

Reagan. And there were a lot of us, in the case of Reagan, who felt that our political



capital was heavily invested in him, that if his stock rose, our stock rose. If he got in

trouble, we were in trouble. There was an emotional bond there which in fact served Mr.

Reagan very well, because he did get in trouble a couple of times. When that happened,

there were people who were ready to come to his defense in a way that was not true of

George Bush, and yet George Bush was seen as more, quote, one of us. I don’t mean that

in my own case, because I was never “one of us” in that sense, but George Bush was sort

of a professional politician. He’d been a congressman, he’d been a Cabinet officer, he’d

been the CIA director, he’d been chairman of the RNC [Republican National

Committee], he’d been an ambassador. He was a Washington insider in a way that

Reagan never really was. So people were very comfortable with George Bush. I admire

George Bush greatly as a person.

There’s no doubt in my mind that Ronald Reagan was the greatest president of

our lifetime, but I have a warm personal affection for George Bush and for Mrs.

[Barbara] Bush. But Reagan was a little different quantity. I never doubted that his

closest friends were not in the political sector. They were in the movie industry, they

were in business, they were Holmes Tuttle the car dealer and people like that, that he

knew, because, you see, when he got there, he was the age I am now when he got to the

presidency, and his life was well set before he became president, and he was going to

have a good life whether he became president or not. I mean, he was a well-rounded,

complete person, and his associations and loyalties and thought life were simply not

dominated by politics in the same way that George Bush’s were, or, for that matter, Bob

Dole. I mean, as successful and as great as he was at it, politics was never quite as

central to Ronald Reagan as it was to Bob Dole. It wasn’t as defining.

Williams: What motivated you to decide not to stand for reelection?

Armstrong: I thought I’d served my time. I never had intended to be in politics anyway,

and when I was just a youngster, when I was twenty-five, I was a businessman in Aurora,

Colorado, and I was approached about running for the state legislature. “How would you

like to be in the State House of Representatives?”

Well, I knew nothing about the State House of Representatives, so naturally I

said, “Sure. I’d love to.” I served ten years in the state legislature and then six years in



the U.S. House of Representatives, then two terms in the U.S. Senate, and by that time I

was—well, I was fifty-one when I announced I was going home, and fifty-three when in

fact I did so. I just felt I’d been there long enough. I’m a believer in the notion of citizen

legislators. Though I was in a long time, I actually wasn’t in any one job very long, eight

years in the State Senate, six years in the U.S. House, a dozen years in the U.S. Senate,

and I don’t like what it does to you if your goal is to perpetuate yourself in office. I don’t

mean just what it does to others; I don’t like what it would do to me. If I got up every

morning thinking, “I’m going to be here for the rest of my life,” it would turn me into

somebody I don’t want to be.

If you think about it, I was fifty-three when my term ended. I could have very

well aspired to five more terms in the Senate. I could still be there. In fact, some of the

people who were elected when I was are still there. That may be okay for them, though I

don’t think it’s okay for the country, by the way. I personally am a believer in mandatory

term limits. I’m flexible about what they should be. But in my own case, I wanted to go

home. I loved my time in the Senate. I’m still very interested in the Senate. In fact, I’m

getting ready to crank up right now and help a very worthy candidate run for the United

States Senate, who will be the successor to my successor’s successor. I’m going to make

a big commitment to his campaign. I’m going to spend time on it, I’m going to

contribute financially and so on. It’s not that I’ve lost interest in it; it’s just that I don’t

think people ought to perpetuate themselves in office too long. It’s too corrupting. It’s

too toxic.

Williams: So you announced two years before.

Armstrong: I did. I announced in January or February of the year before.

Williams: What was the reaction among your colleagues?

Armstrong: Well, President Bush called me that day or the next morning and was very

gracious about it. I said, “Well, Mr. President, thank you for your kindness in calling me

about it. Remember I’m still going to be a senator for nearly two years. Please

remember that I’m still a member of the Republican leadership, so if I can be of



assistance to you, I want to be. If you have some heavy lifting to do, call on me.” Many

of my colleagues called with similar messages.

I don’t know that it had a huge effect on my life in the Senate for the following

two years, but it had some. I remember vividly one of my colleagues, a man who had

been in the Senate since before I got there, and who is still there, so he’s now in his

seventh term, maybe, I don’t know exactly, came up to me at the Senate Prayer

Breakfast, a little gathering of twenty-five or thirty senators that meets every Wednesday

morning. I was seated, and he came up sort of to the side or behind me and put his hand

on my shoulder, and he said, “Bill, I heard the news about you.” And he could never

finish the sentence. It was so far out of his context of what a person would do. At least

that’s the interpretation I put on it, that he just couldn’t figure out—I mean, he didn’t

quite know what to say. He didn’t know whether to say, “Congratulations,” “I’m so

sorry,” “Are you sick? Have you got cancer or have you got trouble with your family?”

I mean, none of which was the case, happily. I think there’s some members of the Senate

that took it that way.

Of course, what I did in coming home when I did, was not unprecedented.

Shortly after, [Sen.] Gordon Humphrey did the same thing. [Sen.] Paul Laxalt had quit at

a time when he could have been reelected. Jim McClure did the same, and others. In

fact, I think it’s one of the problems for Republicans. Republicans tend to be less

careerist than Democrats. Now, that’s not always true, and certainly Bob Dole, by the

way, would be more of an example of somebody who came and for whom life in the

Senate became a career. And I’m not criticizing that, but when Republicans who can get

easily reelected have a tendency to quit, it sort of loads the dice against Republican

control of the body, and I regret that. That’s one of the reasons I favor mandatory term

limits, because the way it is now, a lot of the good guys go home and some of the ones

that ought to go home or shouldn’t have been there in the first place, tend to stay for a

very long period of time.

Maybe I could just add this footnote. I am not really critical of those who want to

come and stay a long time. I don’t think inherently being in the Senate for a long time is

necessarily bad. I do think that the desire to perpetuate yourself in office is toxic. Maybe

there are some people that can handle it. In fact, I guess I’d say Bob Dole would be an

example of somebody who did handle it honorably and with distinction. Most people



cannot. I think a lot of the guys, including some of them who were my dear friends when

I was there, who are still present, are part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

Williams: Would you have a special perspective on making a few observations about

Senator Dole’s religious makeup?

Armstrong: I don’t think Bob’s a very religious person, a fact which I regret, honestly.

And let me say that my information is quite out of date. I haven’t had a lot of contact

with Bob since I left the Senate. I’ve had some. In fact, I had occasion recently to ask

him to do a short video for me when I was inaugurated as the president of Colorado

Christian University, and he sent me a very gracious video which I used. So I’ve had

some contact like that, and I’ve exchanged some letters with him. In fact, when he wrote

me a letter about this oral history project, instead of just sending back word, yes, that I

would be glad to be interviewed, I wrote back a letter that said, “You’d better be sure I’ll

be glad to do this, and I’m going to give them an earful.” But I haven’t had much contact

with him recently.

My impression, though, is—and this doesn’t go quite back to the time I was in the

Senate; it was a later occasion that was formative for me, is that he’s just not a very

religious person, and I regret that. The defining issue of my life is my relationship with

Jesus Christ, and I don’t think Bob would be likely to say that. I hope that the day will

come when he will say that. He is a very good person, a very good person, a person of

high morals, of sterling character, but I just don’t think he’s much interested in spiritual

matters.

Williams: As a religious man, how were you able to apply that to your role as a senator?

Armstrong: Well, when I became the chairman of the Republican Policy Committee and

began to preside over the luncheon of Republican senators, I began to call each week on a

different senator to say grace before we had the meal, a custom that endured all of the

years that I was chairman. Whether it still persists, I don’t know. It is customary that

former members, if they happen to come back and are in town on a Tuesday, will

sometimes go to lunch at the Policy Committee. I’ve not had occasion to do that. I



suppose if I’m ever going to do it, sort of return to the scene of the crime, I’d better do it

quickly, because most of the members I served with, many of them, are now gone. But

that’s one thing I did.

I thought it appropriate for a group of senators to acknowledge their dependence

on God and to thank him for the way he has blessed us, particularly with a simple “Thank

you for this food.” I make it a practice to always pray before meals. Honestly, I will tell

you after the fact that I was slightly nervous about this, because it had not been the

custom previously, and I wasn’t sure how it was going to be received, and I just finally

decided, “Well, I know how it’s going to be received by God, so if they laugh at me or

ask me not to do it, we’ll see what happens.” Nobody asked me not to do it. A few

people, not many, at the outset—I didn’t spring it on somebody. I went to somebody and

said, “Next Tuesday may I call on you to offer the grace?” At the end I’m not sure I did

that, but at the outset I did, so that I wouldn’t catch anybody unawares. A few people

turned me down, asked to be excused. Nobody ever was critical of it. Nobody ever

jumped on me about it, so far as I know, ever said, “Well, isn’t that a little too religious?”

Second thing that was a very formative experience for me, and I do not recall that

I’ve ever said this publicly, and I’ll tell you this now, it’s true and it’s just kind of a side

note of my life in the Senate, I seriously entertained the idea of not seeking reelection

after my first term. I felt I’d been there at that point in Washington for twelve years, six

in the House and six in the Senate, and I was thinking very seriously of not running for

reelection. I felt God was calling me to run for reelection. I did not feel God was telling

me, “You will be reelected.” I never felt called to be reelected. Turned out I was

reelected. I got about 66 percent of the vote. But I never felt that as a part of God’s

calling. I felt called to run for reelection. I never knew exactly why. I answered what I

believed was God’s call, but I never knew exactly why, whether it was just merely a

matter of obedience, because my heart actually was telling me to “Go home. Get back to

your business.” And it may have just been an obedience test.

But a couple of things did happen in my second term, one of which was that I

became the chairman of the Republican Policy Committee, which gave me an

opportunity, among other things, to institute the practice of senators praying together.

Second, it was during my second term that I was the main speaker at the National Prayer

Breakfast. I don’t know if you’ve ever been the National Prayer Breakfast, but it is an



extraordinary forum. I mean, here’s three thousand people, including the president, vice

president, two-thirds or 75 percent of the members of Congress and their spouses, foreign

dignitaries and important people from around the world. It gave me an opportunity to lift

up Jesus Christ in a way that was really a wonderful privilege and opportunity to do it,

and that is not always the case at the National Prayer Breakfast. It’s somewhat eclectic. I

have heard some messages at the National Prayer Breakfast that, frankly, were not even

Christian. They were messages of some philosophical interest or some other interest.

But I thought it was important to really let people know that, as the Bible says, there is no

other name given by which we must be saved. It’s Jesus. I have wondered somewhat

afterwards if that was part of why God wanted me to be there for a second term, is so that

that opportunity would be open to me, which I never sought. I was somewhat surprised

when I was asked to give that talk.

And because of that, at least partially because of it, not entirely, but at least

partially because of that, I began to get calls from all over the world to speak at prayer

breakfasts, and somehow it got to be my destiny at every prayer breakfast in North

America and across the world. I’ve spoken now literally to hundreds of them, and I’m

still doing it to some extent. I’m a little less able to do it because of my new job at

Colorado Christian University. So that may have been part of why God called me to run

for a second term, or it may have just been for some purpose that I don’t know. But

anyway.

Williams: Just briefly, what about the prayer group? Is that for both houses of Congress

or was that group just for the Senate?

Armstrong: No. In fact, there are several prayer groups. The traditional House Prayer

Breakfast, which in the years I was there had fifty, sixty members, would gather for

breakfast and hear a speaker, usually one of the members. In the Senate there was a

similar group, smaller group, twenty-five, thirty people. I guess I would say there might

be forty members, and on any given morning there’d be twenty-five Republicans and

Democrats, and in the Senate group it was always a member of the Senate who led the

discussion.



Interestingly, some of the messages were very thoughtful, very erudite, and, of

course, the Senate is a bell-shaped curve. I mean, at one extreme you’ve got some people

who are so dumb you wonder how in the world did they even get down to the office this

morning, let alone get elected, and most of us in the middle, and then at the other extreme

you’ve got some of the most intelligent men and women in the world. I mean, you really

do. And some of those were members of the Senate Prayer Breakfast, and I’ll tell you,

they delivered some thoughtful message. I’ve been gone from the Senate sixteen,

seventeen years. I still remember messages by [Sen.] Dick [Richard] Lugar, [Sen.] Sam

Nunn, and others. I mean, terrific stuff.

Then in addition to that, when I was in the House, I started a House Bible study

separate from the House Prayer Breakfast. In fact, I had invited my friend Bill Bright to

come and speak. I’d invited all the members of the House to come hear him speak, and

thirty-eight of them did so. Afterwards, he finished his message, we met in the little

dining room right under the House chamber, and afterwards, without any prearrangement,

but obviously a planned question, I said, “Dr. Bright, do you think it would be a good

idea if we had a Bible study among members of the House?” And out of that came a

little Bible study which started very small, one or two people at the outset. I’m told that

that group still exists, sort of the lineal descendants of it still exist, and it’s quite a large

number of people.

In the Senate, when I got over there, I started a practice of meeting with Dr.

Swede Anderson, a missionary for Campus Crusade for Christ, of which I’ve been a

board member the last sixteen years, but I wasn’t then, and he and I met together for

close to a year, in my office. Then another senator wanted to join us, and for

convenience we moved to his office because he had a hideaway office in the Capitol that

was convenient. Then for about the next ten years, we met in his hideaway office in the

Capitol and other senators joined that. I guess there was at the end ten or a dozen

senators who came to that pretty regularly, of which on any given occasion there might

be six or eight in attendance coming and going. I have heard, but I don’t have any real

evidence of it, but I’ve been told that that group now meets at a different time and it is

twenty or twenty-five members that meet together, pray and study the Bible. My

impression is there may be some other groups like that that I’m not aware of. So there is

quite an active spiritual dimension to life on Capitol Hill.



Williams: How separate is that from life as legislators on Capitol Hill?

Armstrong: Well, it is not very, not very separated, because, you know, the same guys

that you’re meeting with to pray are the people you’re rubbing shoulders with and

working with every day. I don’t think it ever got to be a problem. I think it was just

generally understood that our brotherhood in Christ—and I say “brotherhood” advisedly

because in the era I was there, there weren’t many women senators. In fact, let me stop

and think if there were any. I don’t recall. There were some Republican and Democratic

women in the House. I guess [Sen.] Barbara Mikulski would have been in the Senate

when I was. There were some women. Don’t think there were any Republican women in

the Senate at the time. Had been previously. But anyway, I think the thought was that if

we were brothers in Christ, that didn’t necessarily mean that I had to vote for your

amendment or you had to vote for mine, that we had a job to do, we had our

constituencies to represent. Now, as a practical matter—I want to say this carefully,

because I don’t want to leave the wrong impression—as a practical matter, most, not all,

but most of the men who were interested in spiritual things tended to be Republicans, not

entirely, but mostly. So, for example, in our little group that met in the hideaway office,

we were all Republicans, though we earnestly sought to get some Democrats to come and

join us, and they just didn’t have an interest to do so.

In the Senate Prayer Breakfast group, it was more bipartisan. There would be a

handful of Democrats, maybe more than a handful, but it was still more Republicans than

Democrats, and it was conservative Democrats at a time when there were still

conservative Democrats in the Senate. So that perhaps made it easier, but even so, there

were lots of times when we’d be on one side of the issue as Republicans and the

Democrats would be on the other, or even within the two parties there’d be differences of

opinion. So it never became a problem.

Williams: Was there a parallel group for Jewish members?

Armstrong: I don’t know that. I don’t think there was exactly a parallel group. One of

the Jewish members started a Bible study in his office, to which he invited me, to be led



by a Jewish teacher, not a rabbi, as I recall, but by a Jewish teacher, to study the Old

Testament. I thought that was really a great idea, and I came and attended faithfully and

enjoyed it very much, and it is a legislator who I admire greatly. One day he announced

that The Washington Post would be coming the following week, and I never went back. I

felt that if this was for The Washington Post, it had the wrong feel to it. I’m not sure I

made the right decision. I could have skipped the next meeting when the Post was there

and then gone back, but I didn’t. I felt somehow let down. Maybe “betrayed” is too

strong a word, but I felt let down. My interest was in my fellow senators and in learning

about the Old Testament from the perspective of Jewish scholars, and I thought that was

useful. I thought that was good. Felt good. Somehow letting The Washington Post look

at it made it feel cheap.

Williams: We’re about at the end of the second tape. Any last comments?

Armstrong: I guess the lasting impression I have of Bob Dole is that in the truest sense of

an overworked phrase he’s a great American. I mean, he served his country with the

utmost distinction in the War and sacrificed terribly, and still suffers from the wounds

that he bears. He was a wonderful member of the House by all accounts. You remember

when he left the House and went to the Senate, his comment was that by leaving the

House and going to the Senate he was improving the average IQ of both bodies. And he

became one of the greatest, maybe the greatest, senator of his time. A partisan warrior

and yet with great friends on both sides of the aisle. The most skillful legislator of his

generation. A great, great American.

Williams: Thank you.

Armstrong: That was fun. I enjoyed that. I guess you can tell I like Bob Dole.

[End of interview]



Index

Anderson, Dr. Swede, 61 Archer, Rep. Bill, 36 Armstrong, William

board member of Campus Crusade for Christ, 61 chairman of Republican Policy Committee, 28, 40, 45, 46, 59 initiates House of Representatives Bible study, 61 member of Colorado state legislature, 53 member of House Appropriations Committee, 6 member of House Armed Services Committee, 6 member of House committees, 5, 6 member of Senate Banking Committee, 31 member of Senate Budget Committee, 31 member of Senate Education and Labor Committee, 31 member of Senate Finance Committee, 31, 35 member of U.S. Congress, 11, 12, 53, 61 member of U.S. Senate, 11, 23, 24, 25, 53 on Barbara Bush, 52 on Democrats, 7, 55 on Elizabeth Dole, 18 on farm subsidy program, 9 on Floyd Haskell, 13 on G.I. Bill of Rights, 9 on George H.W. Bush, 47, 52 on House debates on government spending, 7, 8, 9 on Jack Schweigert, 3, 12, 13 on leaving the Senate, 53 on National Prayer Breakfast, 50, 59 on Rep. Jack Kemp, 33, 34 on Republicans, 7, 55 on Robert J. Dole, 2, 3, 4, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22, 28, 29, 30, 34, 36, 37, 40, 41, 42, 43,

44, 48, 49, 50, 52, 55, 56, 57, 64 on Ronald Reagan, 49, 50, 51, 52 on Sen. Barry M. Goldwater, 15 on Sen. Bob Packwood, 43 on Sen. Robert C. Byrd, 24 on Sen. Robert Taft, 45 on Sen. Russell B. Long, 32 on Sen. Ted Stevens, 44 on Senate Prayer Breakfast, 57, 59 on tax policy, 12, 13, 39 on television in the U.S. Senate, 23 on term limits, 54, 56 on the Congressional Record, 23



on the role of the federal government, 8, 9, 10 on U.S. Congress, 11, 12, 23, 25, 28 on U.S. Senate, 11, 16, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 28, 46 president of Colorado Christian University, 56

Baker, Sen. Howard H. Jr., 43, 46 Bright, Bill, 61 Bush, Barbara, 52 Bush, George H.W., 5, 29, 47, 52, 54 Byrd, Sen. Robert C., 24 Campus Crusade for Christ, 61 Carter, Jimmy, 33 Congressional Record, 23, 27, 30 Denver Post, 21 Dole, Elizabeth, 18 Dole, Robert J., 2, 3, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22, 28, 29, 30, 34, 37, 41, 42, 43, 44, 50, 52, 55,

56, 64 and George H.W. Bush, 48 and religion, 56, 57 and Rep. Jack Kemp, 34 and Richard M. Nixon, 5 and Ronald Reagan, 48, 49, 50 and tax reform, 34, 36, 40 and travel, 2 and William L. Armstrong, 17 chairman of Republican National Committee, 4 Majority Leader of Senate, 46, 48

Domenici, Sen. Pete V., 44 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 8, 45 G.I. Bill of Rights, 9 Goldwater, Sen. Barry M., 15 Haskell, Floyd, 13 Hollings, Sen. Ernest, 33 House Prayer Breakfast, 60 Humphrey, Sen. Gordon, 55 Kemp, Jack, 33 Kemp, Rep. Jack, 6, 33, 34, 35

and Robert J. Dole, 34 Laxalt, Sen. Paul, 55 Long, Sen. Russell B., 32, 40 Lugar, Sen. Richard, 60



McClure, Sen. James, 33, 34, 44, 55 Mikulski, Sen. Barbara, 62 National Defense Interstate Highway System, 9 National Prayer Breakfast, 50, 59 Nixon, Richard M., 5 Nunn, Sen. Sam, 60 Packwood, Sen. Bob, 35

chairman of U.S. Senate Finance Committee, 43 Reagan, Nancy, 51 Reagan, Ronald, 33, 35, 36, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52 Regan, Donald, 41 Roth, Sen. William, 34, 35 Scalia, Justice Antonin, 28 Schweigert, Jack, 3, 12, 13 Senate Prayer Breakfast, 55, 60, 62 Separation of church and state, 50, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63 Stevens, Sen. Ted, 44 Taft, Sen. Robert, 45 Thurmond, Sen. Strom, 25 Tuttle, Holmes, 52 Wade, Brian, 17 Washington Post, 21, 63 Washington Times, 21 Watergate, 15


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