Quote of the Day/Week- Bob Dole

Since today is Super Tuesday, which means that Republicans in Georgia, Tennessee and Ohio and seven other states will choose their candidate to represent the party in the general election against President Barack Obama, we thought we would quote a famous Republican.

This month, we will be quoting men who got their party nod, but failed to win the general election. Here, we will quote Bob Dole, 88, and on our sister blog "Politics, Culture and Other Wastes of Time," we will quip George McGovern, 89, who lost the 1972 election to Richard Nixon.

Dole represented Kansas in the U.S. Senate from 1969-1996. Though he is most known for losing to Bill Clinton in the general election of 1996, Dole was also Gerald Ford's running mate in 1976. He is thus the rare individual who was on the ticket with an incumbent president who was not that president's vice president (Ford's veep was Nelson Rockefeller) and also one of the few people who was on two losing tickets. This is made more ironic because Dole is a Republican, and they have a 5-3 advantage over Democrats in terms of the presidency since 1968.

Dole was born in Russell, Kan. He went to the same high school as his Republican U.S. Senate colleague Arlen Specter, who stunned The Hill by becoming a Democrat as the GOP was moving more to the right.

Dole's wife Elizabeth Dole was also a U.S. Senator, as she represented north Carolina for one term. Bob Dole has also said publicly that he hopes Newt Gingrich will not become president of the United States.

Here is the quote of the day/week from Bob Dole, which helps confirm my view that the National Zoo in Washington, DC, and the U.S. Congress may have more in common than one might think:

"If you're hanging around with nothing to do and the zoo is closed, come over to the Senate, you'll get that same kind of feeling there and you won't have to pay."