Bob Dole's Senate

Today’s party leaders play a central role in managing the Senate. For example, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., are intimately involved in all aspects of the Senate’s decision-making process. Schumer and McConnell dominate their respective party caucuses. Together, they set the Senate's agenda, oversee significant negotiations, and routinely structure the legislative process to make it harder for senators to change or defeat the products of those negotiations on the Senate floor.

The present extent of party leaders’ involvement in all aspects of Senate decision-making is striking, given that senators did not create these two leadership positions until the 1920s. Before then, Senate leadership was provided by senators of extraordinary ability (e.g., John C. Calhoun, Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster) or committee chairmen.  

Woodrow Wilson criticized the Senate’s earlier decentralized leadership structure in his 1885 book, Congressional Government: A Study in American Politics (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company). Wilson noted,

“The public now and again picks out here and there a Senator who seems to act and to speak with true instinct of statesmanship and who unmistakably merits the confidence of colleagues and of people. But such a man, however eminent, is never more than a Senator. No one is the Senator. No one may speak for his party as well as for himself; no one exercises the special trust of acknowledged leadership.”

Today’s majority and minority leaders clearly exercise “the special trust of acknowledged leadership.” That is, Schumer and McConnell routinely speak for themselves as well as for their parties. And in doing so, they are following in the footsteps of former Senate leader Bob Dole, R-Kan.

A Pioneering Leader

The current centralized role played by party leaders like Schumer and McConnell first emerged in the Senate during the 1980s and 1990s thanks, in part, to Bob Dole, R-Tenn. (minority leader, 1987-1995; majority leader, 1995-1996). Dole was one of the first party leaders who took a more active role in developing and managing his party's agenda inside the Senate. As the Republicans' floor leader, Dole also played a more prominent role in developing and implementing the GOP's communications strategy outside the Senate.

Dole’s predecessors – leaders like Mike Mansfield, D-Mont., Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., Everett Dirksen, R-Ill. - worked to facilitate the participation of interested senators in the legislative process on the Senate floor. But, unlike today's party leaders, Mansfield, Byrd, and Dirksen would allow the legislative process to unfold without trying to control it. Instead, they would resolve any problems that arose during that process on the back end. 

As a party leader, Dole did things differently. He was the first Senate leader who understood his job almost exclusively to advance the Republican agenda. And he worked aggressively behind the scenes to shape that agenda before senators debated it on the Senate floor.

Dole routinely structured the legislative process to secure senators' support for his preferred course of action – whether they agreed with him or not. For example, Dole would bring legislation to the Senate floor and force senators who opposed it to shut down the debate by blocking amendments and objecting to a final passage vote on it. And he would make it harder for opponents to obstruct by threatening to keep the Senate in session around the clock and on weekends. When that did not work, Dole even threatened to cancel upcoming recesses if the Senate did not complete its business.. 

Unlike his predecessors, Dole also limited the autonomy of rank-and-file senators. For example, he refused to make it easier for senators to offer amendments that were not filed in advance (or cleared with their leadership). And Dole announced in 1986 that he would no longer keep the identity of senators holding legislation private.

The Takeaway

Dole’s tenure as Republican leader accelerated the shift in power inside the Senate from committees and rank-and-file lawmakers to the institution's majority and minority leaders. In doing so, Dole helped make the Senate’s present centralized party leadership possible.