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"FacebookPinterest\n\nWhat's a Great American, exactly? Bob Dole. Someone who lives through the Depression, then takes a bullet for his country in World War II. (Bob Dole.) Someone who bootstraps his way to Washington (Bob Dole) and serves his country for fifty years. Someone who loses the vice presidency (Bob Dole), loses the presidency (Bob Dole), and still, at 88, is hard at work, calling out the wackos in his party to build a better, more perfect union. That's why in our July issue, which lists the 50 Things America Does Better Anyone Anywhere Else, correspondent Jeanne Marie Laskas spent some time with Bob Dole. (Bob Dole.)\n\nI ask him the question everyone seems to be asking of the GOP faithful in 2012: \"Would you say your endorsement of Romney was...tepid?\"\n\n\"Not tepid at all,\" Bob Dole says, his face tight and serious.\n\nThere's a spritely young flack sitting behind me and another one in a chair to my left, and so it is me and Bob Dole doing a show together, which apparently is what makes Bob Dole comfortable. \"Romney came to my office,\" Dole says, \"we had a good meeting, and I'm not a Gingrich fan, so...\" He famously loathed Gingrich: \"He's just difficult to work with. It's either Newt's way or the highway. He's got a lot of ideas. Some of them are good; not many. So it looked to me like it would be either Romney or Newt for the nomination, but just on its own, I thought he--well, I'll say this: Romney looks like a president.\"\n\nIt's always discomfiting to listen to people try to conjure any serious oomph when taking about Romney, and this moment is no exception. I make the point that Mitt Romney's background is different from Bob Dole's. \"You're self-made,\" I say. \"You embody the American Dream.\"\n\n\"I've never known a lot of rich people,\" he says. \"It's not my bag.\"\n\n\n\n\"Bill Clinton called me one day recently,\" he offers. \"I said, 'What do you want?' He said, 'I want to see how you're doing. How's your health?' He's done that a couple times. If I did anything, I made a lot of friends. And they were Republicans, of course, and Democrats.\" Clinton would help Dole deal with Gingrich. \"I'm not going to talk to him, you talk to him,\" Dole, as Senate majority leader, would say to Clinton. \"No, you talk to him.\"\n\n\"President Obama came to visit me in the hospital. He said, 'I wish you were still in the Senate; I need your help.' I'm not certain I can help on everything. Maybe some things.\"\n\nBob Dole doesn't kid himself. He knows what he's good at (getting laughs, getting things done). He championed causes today's conservatives run full campaigns against--civil rights, food stamps, benefits for the disabled. And Bob Dole knows what he's bad at (winning really big elections). He lost the vice presidency to Mondale in 1976 and then the presidency to Clinton in 1996. He even wears failure with a candor that seems lacking in Washington these days.\n\n\"I don't know how many people run for vice president and president and lose both,\" Bob Dole says, turning to his aides. \"I think there's one other?\"\n\n\"You're testing my history on that one, sir. It would have been...\"\n\nDole: \"Anybody?\"\n\n\"Lost both vice president and president? Um...\"\n\nDole: \"Somebody said there was someone--other than me?\"\n\n\"You have to go back pretty far, I just, I don't think--\"\n\nNobody can come up with one.\n\nRead the rest of the interview here.\n\nRead more on Death Race 2012\n\n\n\nSupreme Court Watch: The Nation Gathers Round the News-Ticker\n\nFive Fox News Articles that Changed My Life\n\nToday's Political Firestorm: Romney Indirectly Responsible for Outsourcing\n\nSo A Congressman Said An Impolite Thing on Fox News Yesterday\n\nFollow @GQPolitics on Twitter for more updates on the campaign trail"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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