This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
ROBERT J. DOLE
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
Interview with
WALT RIKER
March 12, 2008
Interviewer
Brien R. Williams
Robert J. Dole Institute of Politics
2350 Petefish Drive
Lawrence, KS 66045
Phone: (785) 864-4900
Fax: (785) 864-1414
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 2
Williams: This is an oral history interview with Walt Riker for the Robert J. Dole
Institute of Politics. We’re in the worldwide home office of the McDonald’s Corporation
in Oak Brook, Illinois, where Walt holds the position of vice president, corporate media
relations. Today is Wednesday, March 12, 2008, and I’m Brien Williams.
Walt, let’s start with a little bit of your background and how you got into
journalism, where you studied, and so forth.
Riker: Sure. I grew up in New York City in the Bronx and ended up at the University of
Kansas, which a lot of people ask me how can that happen. But my father was a
Distinguished Professor at Cornell University Medical School. His best friend
throughout life was [W.] Clarke Wescoe, who became Chancellor at the University of
Kansas, and he was really my surrogate uncle for me, so that’s how I got connected to
Kansas, which is important to the story, because how did a kid from the Bronx get to
Kansas, and then from Kansas get with a giant like Bob Dole, so that’s how it happened.
I went to K.U. I majored in English when I was at K.U. It was the greatest decision I
ever made in my life, it opened me up to all the great things about Kansas and the
friendly people and a wonderful state, phenomenal university, really opened my horizons.
After I graduated in 1970 and I got a degree in English, I went into music and I
was a professional musician for about six or seven years, had my own bands. We had
original bands. I lived in Lawrence and Topeka, toured all over the U.S., a lot of hard
work, yet really enjoyed it. Didn’t make any money, but really enjoyed it. It was a great
experience. When I realized that that was kind of a tough racket to be in, I decided I
wanted to go back to school. I always wanted to get into journalism, having graduated
with an English degree. I was always very much interested in television; I wanted to get
into broadcast and TV news. Went back to the William Allen White School of
Journalism at K.U., another great decision, and this time I was actually a mature
individual, so I really buckled down and got pretty good grades and really, really got into
it.
So I graduated from the K.U. School of Journalism and I was hired by Channel
13-WIBW in Topeka, and they hired me actually while I was still in school. That was a
great break for me, because it was exciting because I could get into the real world of
broadcasting and really start learning a lot not only about radio and TV, but also about
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 3
Kansas. So as I migrated up from kind of a hot-shot, aggressive radio reporter, I got the
coveted position in television to be the State House correspondent, which was the top job
at the station. I was fortunate enough to kind of leapfrog over a lot of senior people who
really wanted the job, and once I got the job I realized why. WIBW at the time, the TV
station, was the powerhouse, it was the dominant TV face, if you will, in the entire
eastern half of Kansas. It was a blowtorch. So I think the six o’clock news had a market
share of like 60-something. It was just beyond belief. It was a very famous station for
developing people who went on to network news, like Bill Curtis, just for one, many
sports personalities and such.
So it was an honor to be there, but once I got in at the State Capitol, my job was
politics, so I was covering politics every single day. So I covered the legislature; covered
the governor and, as I got more experience and my profile was rising at the station, if you
will, I was on TV every single night. I usually had a live report from the State House. I
interviewed all the politicians and I knew everybody on both sides of the aisle, to tell you
the truth.
I remember Bob Dole coming in. I’ll never forget this one day I was covering an
event in the governor’s office, and Bob Dole was making—later I would be on these—
these kind of incredible sweeps through the state, just nonstop traveling and appearances
and popping in to see the governor, popping in to see maybe a state legislator, doing
interviews, keep moving all the time, meeting with constituent groups, making speeches,
fundraising. So I remember Dole coming in. I was a reporter, and the drama of someone
like Bob Dole coming in, who was the giant, giant politician in the state, coming in with
his little entourage, which I would be part of later, but when he came in, we were all,
frankly, in awe when Dole came in, because of his profile and what he meant to the state.
It was interesting, because my impression was how he was dwarfing the governor and
everybody else there. We were firing questions at him as he came in. I remember I think
it had something to do with the SALT Treaty and all that, maybe the Jimmy Carter stuff.
So that was really great.
As I covered politics, I got to know people in all the different offices. Senator
Dole had an office in Topeka, and I would hang out there, just getting to know the people
on the Kansas staff. They were good people and I learned a lot about politics, so it was
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 4
helpful to me, and I did the same on the Democrat side. I had a lot of Democrat friends.
I’d go into the Speaker’s office.
But what happened in the Dole office, I got to know Kim Wells, who was in that
office, and he’s a legendary Dole guy and a great guy, a tremendous sense of humor. We
really hit it off, so we would hang out and spend time together in the Topeka office and
had a lot of laughs, learned a lot.
But then I went back to my TV job, doing my thing, and one day I got a call from
Kim Wells, and he asked me if I would be interested in possibly being Bob Dole’s press
secretary. Just came out of the blue. I never expected anything like that. I was kind of
blown away. I was very flattered and I really thought long and hard about it. It was a
daunting prospect, to tell you the truth, but I agreed to throw my hat in the ring, and that’s
really how it all started with Senator Dole.
Let me just add real quick here, during his 1980 campaign for Senate, he was
running against a guy named John Simpson. He was the Democrat, and it was a total
mismatch. It was like a heavyweight going up against a flyweight. And that’s no
disrespect to John Simpson. He was a really good guy, but he was just up against a Titan,
just out of his league. So Dole would make his campaign swing through the state as he
was running for Senate in 1980, and so while he did that, I interviewed him, so I had a
sit-down interview with Senator Dole.
I would interview him at different times during the campaign. I still have the
videotape, actually, of the interviews. So I can look at myself now, all these years later,
but I see myself sitting there with Senator Dole, I’m a TV guy and I’m interviewing him,
and he’s making me laugh because he’s funny, but also it was a good piece. I also got
Senator Dole live right before the first Reagan-Carter debate, did a live interview with
Senator Dole from the Washburn campus, where he went to school, and I was asking him
if he had any advice for the candidates during the debate. Looking back, it’s pretty
ironic, because I covered politics, that was my first open door to Senator Dole, and then I
interviewed him extensively, I covered him in Washington and I would go back and do
reports from the White House when Jimmy Carter was president and also Ronald Reagan
was elected, so I’d see him there as well. Then I got to know him as a reporter and I had
a tremendous amount of respect for him instantly. You could tell he had the gravitas, an
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 5
amazing grasp of issues, and was a great interview. I mean, he always gave you
something.
Williams: Did you have a particular political orientation growing up in New York City?
Was your family strongly Republican, strongly Democrat?
Riker: That’s a good question. I’m actually putting that in my book, so I don’t want to
give away all my good stuff. No, I’m kidding. I grew up in a political family in the
sense that my mother and father followed politics like sports, so at an early age I was
interested in politics. It was pretty much a classic post-FDR family, Democrats. New
York was a Democrat city. The mayors were always Democrat. So, yes, I grew up in a
Democrat household. My father was a big Adlai Stevenson fan. He was professorial, he
was intellectual, and so my father was definitely tuned into that. We watched all the
early political TV shows religiously. I think for me they happened to run on Sundays,
like the Meet the Press-type shows. The only reason I was watching is because they’re
right before the NFL football games, the New York Giants. That was almost like a pregame show that I had to watch, so I saw Mike Mansfield and Hubert Humphrey a lot. So
I learned a lot of politics back then.
Williams: So did you have to go through a period of conversion to join Dole’s staff?
Riker: Again, I’m writing about that in my book, that I really was coming out of a
Democratic environment, if you will, but I liked Nixon. When he was vice president and
running in 1960, I was really for him as a kid. I liked Nixon, I liked what he represented,
and I supported him, I wore Nixon buttons, I went to a Nixon rally. But then when
Kennedy was elected, having lived through it, I mean, he was a dynamic, inspirational,
charming personality, just swept everybody off their feet, including me, so we were all
devastated when he was assassinated and all the rest. But I think once Johnson got in, I
think the whole thing started tilting the other way, because he certainly had no charisma
and I never really warmed up to him.
But I would say this. It’s kind of interesting, I was on the K.U. campus during the
whole Vietnam [War] era, which actually started with JFK; it didn’t start with Nixon as
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 6
the warped history tries to say. So the whole progression from JFK to LJB and then to
Nixon, I was caught up in that, but almost like an observer. I didn’t passionately get into
demonstrating, I never really got into any of that, but I was more interested in the music
culture, frankly, but I was almost like a U.N. observer at all these demonstrations that
happened on the K.U. campus and all the rest of that, the 1968 Democratic Convention
riots here in Chicago.
But I remember seeing Bob Dole on television when I was living in Topeka
during my musician years, and it was right after Watergate and all the rest, the
impeachment attempt and all that. I remember watching Dole on TV. I was in a little
apartment, I was a drummer in a band, and I was getting ready to go back to school, but
the house was hot, I didn’t have air conditioning. I’ll never forget this. I think I was
working out in the house, and I had a little TV, one of these little portable Sonys, on top
of a bar stool, because that’s about all I had back then. But I remember seeing Dole on
one of the political shows, because I always watched them, and I remember listening to
him, and I think right after the [Dr. Bill] Roy campaign. He was one of the few survivors
of the Watergate backlash. He looked like he’d come out of a war. I remember he had
the dark circles under his eyes and he just looked exhausted. You could almost tell
through his voice that he’d survived. He didn’t win; he had survived. But I remember
listening to him, and I was listening to him with an open mind, and the more I heard him
talk, the more it sounded good to me, made sense. He was connecting with me. So I
really felt myself changing. I felt like this was kind of a direction that I felt comfortable
with.
Then the final story was the Carter debacle, you know, and his failed presidency
and the collapse of America, basically, in my view. So that really flipped me.
Williams: For the historical record here, and I don’t want to impose on your book
anymore, but did you have one band or were you in many bands?
Riker: I was in many bands. I had an all original band I’m very proud of, it was called
Thump Theater, was together two years. We did all original music. We toured with a
group. We’d be in the same circle with a group that became Kansas, which was a very
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 7
famous group, good guys. Terrific band, you could even tell back then. It was a great
experience. I still play. I really love playing. That’s a different interview.
Williams: What was the name of the band again?
Riker: Thump Theater.
Williams: So tell me how then you made the final connection going back to Washington
and joining the Dole staff.
Riker: I threw my hat in the ring, and they called me to meet Dole in Washington, so I
did. I flew in one day, and it was a day in the life that I would experience for thirteen
years, but I was just a green rookie then, so I remember getting there bright and early. I
stayed at a friend’s house and got up all fired up to go to the Hill, and I went to Dole’s
office up on the Hill. At that time it was in the Dirksen office, just catty-corner from the
Capitol. I went up, and the first person I saw there was Betty Meyer, who was the
secretary at the time. She was very nice and she had a great way of saying, “Senator
Dole is really busy and he’s actually not going to meet with you at your appointed time.”
So I got put into the bullpen, and I had no comprehension of what a senator’s daily life
was like, especially for someone like Bob Dole, so I had no idea what I was stepping into.
So I sat in a chair for a real long time. [laughs] I got to meet the staff one by one,
because I was there and I looked like a piece of furniture in the reception area. So they
took pity on me and we started talking. Scott Richardson was one of them, and he toured
me around the office. As it went, the way the Senate was operating that day and all the
commitments, I didn’t meet with Senator Dole until almost like five or six o’clock p.m.
[laughs] So the whole day had gone by and he went out to lunch, but I got to meet the
staff.
I’ll never forget this. I was sitting in Dole’s private office, just what we called it,
his inner sanctum, at his desk, where he’d go to have some peace and quiet and meet with
people. I remember sitting there by myself. It was dark, late in the day. I didn’t know
what to expect. I was exhausted at this time. I actually had like a bronchitis to boot, and
it was going through my head, “What am I going to say?” and how to say it. I was very
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 8
nervous and felt like I was way over my head. I probably was, actually. I remember
hearing his footsteps coming down the hallway, and it was a white-knuckle experience.
He came in and we shook hands. I knew how to shake his hand because I’d covered him
and knew he was a war hero. Sat down to talk, and Senator Dole is not a
conversationalist, so it was intimidating, because I felt like I was on the defensive
because I had to get to my points pretty quick, because there wasn’t a lot of back and
forth. But he was very gracious and I was honored just to be there. I thought, “Hey, if
this thing doesn’t work out, at least I can say I was in his office.”
So we talked for quite a while, actually, and I kept thinking of what would be the
key line I could tell him that I was really sincere about working there and that I would do
a good job. I think the one thing I really had to offer was that I could work really hard
and was used to working long hours, also that I brought broadcast experience, which I
think he was very much interested in at the time, that I had been in TV. This was a
departure, because I was really being compared with print people, who traditionally Dole
had had on his staff. They were print people, not TV people. So I think it was strategic
on his part to have the vision to look ahead at the role of broadcasting and TV. This was
kind of the new frontier to really explore and exploit, if you will, in the proper way. So
we discussed that, and I told him that I had friends on both sides of the aisle, coming out
of TV, and they ran all their traps, part of my being there, and I’d built up a good, solid
reputation on both sides of the aisle as a straight shooter, but I think I got really good
reviews from the Republican side, because, frankly, that’s the way I’d been shifting, not
that it was interfering with my reporting, but in just conversation, acquaintance, going to
lunch, and people knew where I was leaning.
So I kept thinking, what is the one thing I can say to Dole to really nail this thing,
and I finally told him, I got up the courage, I said, “I’ll tell you one thing, Senator, I’ll
work my ass off.” And I don’t know if that was the thing that did it, but I hope it made
an impression, because he’s as hard a working person that you’ll ever meet on the face of
the earth. No question about it.
The other thing I asked him, in my naiveté, is—the room was dark and he was
really sitting back, too. I almost felt like I was in this kind of dark lair, you know, and the
sun was going down. I finally asked, I said, “Senator, are you still interested in running
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 9
for president?” I look back now and we can all chuckle at that one. He didn’t say
anything, but he just kind of nodded his head.
Williams: Interesting.
Riker: What I tried to do, too—I didn’t know what to do. There’s no training manual.
Nobody there trained me, so I just relied on instincts and kind of blind trial and error
when I joined the staff. What do you do? So my instinct was to do a lot. I tried to beef
up the TV coverage and access, and again, coming from a reporting side, my strategy was
promote Dole, get as much access as possible, get as much exposure as possible, do it
now and hit the ground running. That really was the key to our communications strategy
for the next thirteen years, where I was, that we ended up, in my opinion, doing more
media than anybody else in Washington, including the President of the United States.
We had an incredibly aggressive open-door media policy with reporters, interviews, and I
think, in my naiveté and my vibrancy to just start doing things, because it was really
intimidating, I really pushed hard for access.
Back in the day, you had what they called the Senate recording studio, which was
kind of a free TV studio for U.S. senators. What they would do is they would come up
and I would ask them to shoot B-roll of Senator Dole’s hearings. I ended up interviewing
Senator Dole. I’d kind of play reporter again. Back in the day, you didn’t have satellites
and everything else, but I’d put these video packages together and then send them back to
the state. Over the many years, it would be more sophisticated, but then there would be a
satellite send-out and conference calls and things of that sort. We can talk about that
later. So that was my first introduction. I just started doing things, trial and error, and he
hadn’t done anything like that before either, so we stepped up the pace of access and
communications.
I’ll never forget this one thing I’ve never mentioned before, but I remember early
on, Elizabeth—of course, I got to know Elizabeth Dole very well and really liked her a
lot, tremendous respect for her, a very impressive individual in her own right, to say the
least, but we became a little bit of confidants, simply because she was down at the White
House at the time in the Office of Liaison with President Reagan, and, frankly, she was a
little bit cut out because of the good-old-boy network down there, so every once in a
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 10
while I was flattered she’d call me for some advice, communications advice. “I’m going
to do this, and this is happening.” I was kind of treading water, and I remember one day
she called me, “I’ve got the Secretary of Education on the line with me. He needs advice
and counsel.” It was really a pretty breathtaking experience. But I remember she told me
early on that Bob liked what I was doing because I was forcing him, if you will, to do
more and forcing him to be more involved with media. Not that he hadn’t been, but that I
was really stepping it up, and it was almost like doing exercises, that it’s a good thing.
So when I got that feedback from Elizabeth, I knew I was on the right path.
Williams: Because he would not have perhaps shared that kind of thought with you?
Riker: Right. Yes, he was not a boss who gives you a lot of feedback. This is not his
style. You pretty much have to figure it out for yourself, and that’s just the way he is.
He is an imposing figure. First of all, he was a towering politician of his time, certainly
in Kansas, but he was a national, worldwide political figure. He’d been on a national
ticket and he had run for president in 1980, he had presidential ambitions, he was a lion
in the Senate, so for someone like me, green and raw and hadn’t been to Washington, it
was a heady experience but also kind of frightening, to be honest with you, because I was
really over my head, so I was very flattered to be the one who was picked, but at the same
time I was really working hard to do the right job. I’m always grateful to Dole for
sticking by me and letting me make mistakes.
Williams: When you left the office that day, after that initial interview, did you have the
job?
Riker: No, I did not, and I went back and it took a long time, because I knew they were
interviewing other people. I remember Dole came back to Kansas. This was after the
interview. I was covering some event, I remember, and Kim Wells, the chief of staff
then, told me that I should go and talk to Senator Dole again, see him at this event. It was
a classic, again, Dole event—I’d be in a million of these after I joined him—a huge
ballroom, he was working the room, he made a speech, he had all his constituents to see,
party folks in Kansas, and chairmen and all the rest, and he was doing his Dole thing,
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 11
working the room, shaking hands. Again, it was the same thing; I was just on the
periphery. I remember Kim Wells telling him that I was here, and he had no reaction and
he kept working the room, so I just stood there forever. I finally had a brief interlude
with him. I didn’t get great vibes. I thought, well, that’s the end of me. [laughs]
But then I did get the call. Kim called me and told me they wanted to go through
with it. So I was really blown away by that.
Williams: So about how much time passed between that first interview and your getting
the call?
Riker: Seemed like forever, to tell you the truth, because I had my TV career, which I
loved. I wanted to be in TV for a long time, and I was just at the point where I was
sending out résumé tapes to markets that I was really interested in moving up, that’s the
way in the TV world where you’ve got to keep fighting your way up to other markets. I
wanted to go to Seattle or Portland, and I was starting to get nibbles from both of those
markets. I was really excited, but then this political thing came in.
Finally, I got the call, and I remember going in to my TV station the next day, and
I went in to see my news director, Jim Hollis, who was the anchorman there in Topeka,
kind of a famous guy who ran the newsroom. I had been there for, I guess, four years,
had a prominent role on TV. Again, I was kind of leaning towards staying, actually,
because I loved TV so much. So I was trying to weigh moving to Washington and all of
this stuff. At that point in time, I had a son as well; I think he was two years old, in
Topeka with my wife, Christine. So that weighed on me, too. Do I want to relocate all of
this or do I really want to stay in TV. At the time, even Dole being Dole, I had no idea
what that was either. [laughs] I like to say if I had known what the job entailed later, I
may have turned it down simply because it was so daunting, but then again, thank God I
pushed through the anxiety.
I remember going in to see Jim Hollis and I said, “I’ve been offered the job to be
Bob Dole’s press secretary,” and he literally turned around and started writing my
resignation memo, because he knew, “Oh, my God, are you kidding?” I always think
back, if he’d offered me another nickel an hour, I probably would have stayed. [laughs]
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 12
Simply because I like TV. But that’s kind of a hyperbole. So the memo went out
immediately, so that’s how it happened.
Williams: Over your thirteen years with the senator, were there chapters to your service
as press secretary? Did you see changes at certain points and whatnot, or was it pretty
much a continuum?
Riker: No, there were chapters. That’s a good question, because, first of all, he was the
towering senator from Kansas, so when I first joined him, he was chairman of the Senate
Finance Committee, and those two were—actually, there were three. There was Senator
Bob Dole the national figure, there was Bob Dole the giant Kansas senator, and there was
Bob Dole the lion of the Senate Finance Committee. Three separate roles, platforms,
opportunities to make a difference, and he did in all three. So you had international and
national media at the highest levels, you had all of the Kansas media, including weekly
newspapers in 105 counties, and then you also had the Senate Finance Committee, which
wasn’t Wall Street; it was the epicenter of finance and taxes and tax reform, international
trade, labor law, farm subsidies, disaster relief, and went on and on and on, but it was the
Tax Code and all of the things that Dole had an impact on. He was just ripping through
all of that. He was a giant leader. I mean, everything he did, of course, was leadership.
That’s what he’s all about. So he had really made the Senate Finance Committee a major
place to be for media in Washington. So those were three completely different things.
Williams: What proportion of time were you devoting to each of those three?
Riker: I had to do all of them, and that was really daunting, too, because the Senate
Finance Committee was highly technical. You had all of these expert national reporters;
specialty tax reporters; Wall Street types; lobbyists galore; high-powered, brilliant
staffers all connected to the Senate Finance Committee on extremely technical and
complicated tax and finance issues. So I had to learn that like really fast. Dole had this
incredibly talented, high-powered staff with the Senate Finance Committee. They were
all from Harvard and the Ivy Leagues. It was incredible. It was almost like a submarine
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 13
in the basement of the Dirksen Building, because that’s where the Finance Committee
was. But the Senate Finance Committee staff was down in the basement, no windows.
He started using me not only as the press guy, but kind of as his lieutenant to give
orders, not that I was giving orders, but I was the messenger. So he’d say, “I want you to
go down and talk to Sheila,” so I’d have to go down and talk to Sheila Burke in this highpowered—Rod DeArment, Bob Lighthizer, some of these legendary staffers, brilliant
people, and here was I, this lowly Kansas TV guy, going down telling them what to do,
“Dole wants this,” and wants that. I’d go down there and they were all with these stacks
of papers about this high [gestures] and their desks and they were pounding away on all
this incredibly complicated stuff. There must have been twelve people down there in this
basement, this like secret place where all these staff guys were, and I’d have to tell them
what to do. Social Security was under Dole’s purview, so I was talking to the Social
Security expert, the tax expert, an expert on healthcare legislation, women, infant, and
children, food stamp programs, all under Dole. He was making reforms and news on
every one of them, every day, every single day.
Then you had all of his work in the Senate going on with all the legislation, then
everything involved with Kansas, getting money for Kansas and projects for Kansas and
federal contracts for Kansas. That would be a whole book unto itself.
Williams: I’m going to use the word now and you’re going to say it would never apply,
but can you go through what might be called a typical day?
Riker: Yes. Dole was always in demand by the media. Like I said—this is a true fact—
we were doing more media than anybody else in Washington, and it was kind of a natural
convergence, because in my naiveté and energy to do things—again, I thought more
access is better, and I think Dole liked that, but his thing was, he loved coverage and
that’s your platform to get your message out. “This is what I’m doing. This is what I
want to do. This is my vision. This is my goal. I’m here to do A, B, and C.”
So we started doing all of this together, so what would happen—here’s, actually,
somewhat of a typical day. I’m not making this up. So you’d start with, in the morning
we’d do the Today Show. So what does that mean? That means he has to get up and I
have to get up at five o’clock in the morning, and get your stuff together, drive into the
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 14
NBC studios, which actually are way out of the city, and you’d get to NBC and you’d go
in there and get ready to do a live interview on the Today Show over remote back to New
York. So, okay, that would start at seven a.m. By the time they got to Dole, maybe it’s
seven-fifteen or something like that. You do a live interview on the Today Show. Make
news, guaranteed made news.
Then I’d get in the car with him, with his driver, and then we’d go to a morning
speech downtown, maybe at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. So Dole would walk in
and he would do a speech to maybe fifteen hundred people in the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce. He would have the outlines of his speech, his forte was definitely not
reading a speech. He’s not very good at that, but he’s a dynamo and one of the greatest
off-the-cuff speakers probably in political history. Once he got up there and really started
getting his groove, I mean, he just would nail you back to your seat because he was just
so powerful, so in charge, if you will, a powerful leadership. What he was talking about
on legislation and his knowledge of it was just incredible, and people were just
spellbound. It was all off the top of his head, and he would mix in his incredible oneliners, just out of nowhere. You’d be laughing like you were watching Jay Leno or some
late-night comic, he was that good. You’d go through all of that and then do Q and A
from the audience, and you’d just be blown away by it.
Then you get back to the car and then you’re going up to the Hill to start the
regular day. Most people were just getting to work. Then you’d hit the office and there
were a million things already on the agenda, maybe a lobbyist in the reception room,
maybe some visiting dignitaries from Kansas. There was a full agenda in the Senate. He
had a Senate Finance Committee hearing beginning at ten a.m. sharp, with twelve other
senators in a packed hearing room. This is the way it went.
Then at lunchtime, while he was juggling, he’d be in the Senate doing legislation,
then he’d pop out of the Senate chamber and meet with visitors from Kansas, go back
into the Senate. Maybe I’d set up an interview. He’d come out and do maybe a fifteenminute interview with the Washington Post. Then he’d go back in.
Then he’d go over to the Senate Finance Committee, which is in another building,
back in the Dirksen Building, so you’d have to get a little shuttle train underneath the
Capitol to go over to the Senate Finance Committee, where I’m riding over with a couple
of staff people and they’re briefing them and giving them documents. Then he walks into
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 15
the Senate Finance Committee and he’s the chairman, hits the gavel, and he’s off and
running on a very complicated tax issue.
Then that goes into the lunch hour. We’re back in the car. We go downtown. He
gives a luncheon speech maybe at the Convention Center to ten thousand people, or
maybe it’s the National Cattlemen meeting somewhere. So he’d have a luncheon speech,
maybe even two luncheon speeches or a fundraiser. We get back in the car. Then after
gobbling down a quick lunch at his desk by the time he got back, which usually was the
Senate bean soup, skim milk, and an apple pie—that was his favorite meal—he’d eat at
his desk and then, whammo, he’d be back into whatever else was going on. Other
hearings, too, by the way. It wasn’t just the Senate Finance Committee. He was in
demand at the Agriculture Committee, wherever it might be.
Then we’d also have events ongoing in the office, where maybe you’d have a
Cabinet secretary, like Jim [James] Baker, coming up, wanting Dole’s votes and lining up
votes in the Senate, whatever it might be. So then that would go on. Then as it got late
into the day, he may do a few more interviews, and that night you may be going
downtown to a fundraiser and then another speech. So by the time that was all over,
you’re talking about seven o’clock. Actually, some nights we’d end up doing Nightline,
ABC Nightline Live With Bob Dole, and that show didn’t go on until, what, ten-thirty at
night. So that’d be your day.
In fact, I remember one day we flew to Minneapolis for lunch and came back in
one day, because he did a major speech in Minneapolis, but we went to work in the
morning on the Hill, had a private plane take us to Minneapolis, gave a speech at lunch,
back on Capitol Hill and worked for the rest of the day.
Williams: What would the day before this typical day have been like? Was there a lot of
planning going into all these events, or did he hit them somewhat cold? Who was doing
these outlines and filling in the blanks?
Riker: I don’t even know, frankly, how he managed to keep it all. He had it all in his
head, never missed a beat. He had Betty Meyer, then Jo-Anne [L.] Coe would be
interlocking all the schedules and appearances. Every day I had a media memo to him.
“Here are the requests that I think are at least for your consideration." I could have give
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 16
him a list a hundred long. Everybody wanted him. So I’d give my recommendations and
then he would send back in the memo a checkmark about “yes,” or put an “x” mark
through the one he didn’t want to do, or sometimes he’d make a comment about the
reporter or the issue or whatever it might be. So that’s how we did that. But then I had to
shoehorn my interviews in and integrate with the other schedules already going on. So it
was daunting.
People have no idea the stamina that it takes to pull off a schedule like he did. I
mean, first of all, he had Olympic stamina. I’ve never seen anyone with more stamina.
People don’t realize. I liken him to an athlete because of the stamina that he had. He
walks like a speed walker, long legs and walks really fast. A strong, dynamic guy, tall,
almost intimidating, strong. And just to keep the schedule, he never missed a beat. He
was up early in the morning, went to bed late, he got up early, never missed a beat, and
when he had to be somewhere, he was going. He didn’t wait around. You went with him
or you were left behind. He’s a guy you just couldn’t help but admire really in every
way. First of all, his dedication to Kansas, his dedication to the issues, his passion for the
issues, his passion for the state, to do it right, to make sure that Kansas was well
represented, and then his just complete focus on the job that he had to do, and he could do
it all and he could pull it off.
Williams: I’m a stickler for details here just a little bit. Let’s take the Today Show and
the address to the Cattlemen. Would someone prepare him for those things, or would he
hit the Today Show just sort of whatever they threw at him?
Riker: We knew what the issue was going to be, and I’d provide some general talking
points. I found that it was better almost to let him do his own thing, and usually you’d
have the best laid plans and then usually, of course, in the back of his brilliant mind he’d
always have something extra to throw in there that always made news. You’d sit back
watching the monitor when you’re in the green room watching it all, which is why they
loved having Dole on, because he always made news.
With the Cattlemen, they’d usually have a staffer like the Agriculture staff guy,
would write a speech, which was, again, very dry. They’re not speechwriters, that wasn’t
their job, but they would certainly give Dole all of the technical information they would
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 17
need about the farm bill or cattle legislation, things of that sort. He’d look it over, he’d
read a little bit of it, and then he’d go off and from the top of his head really get into it,
and of course it was always better, including the stuff I gave him most of the time.
[laughs]
Williams: Did you think of yourself primarily as a kind of mouthpiece for him or were
you really involved in a lot of strategizing as well?
Riker: That’s a good question. I grew into the strategy part. At the beginning, again, I
was facilitating, I was doing writing, and, yes, I was a spokesman as soon as I got there
because the media was calling all the time, so I was doing that and coordinating with the
staff. I did a lot of press releases. We put out more press releases than anybody in the
history of Washington. It was unbelievable. We could put out two or three a day. A lot
of them went out to Kansas, the others we took up to the press room up in the Capitol, put
them in racks, Kennedy, Dole, and all the senators. Dole’s was always very popular
because of who he was and the news we were making with the press releases. So we did
a lot of press releases, also supplemented by a lot of interviews, whether it was on the
phone, bringing reporters into Dole’s office, or broadcasts, set up the TV cameras. We
did a lot of that.
Little by little, as I gained my confidence, I figured out I did have something to
offer, and I was able to maybe analyze the process, so, yes, I was proud of the fact that I
was able to really, with many other people, establish myself in part of the strategy. Then
more and more I took it upon myself—and again, I’m always very, very grateful for
Senator Dole for letting me make mistakes, sticking by me. I think he saw something in
me, but maybe I didn’t see it at the time. I worked hard to get into it, and then when I
realized that, wait a minute, he should be getting a lot better written materials, he should
be looking better when he’s speaking, so I really started taking over a lot of the day-today speechwriting, if you will, more for the Senate, writing it more like for sound bites,
improving and enhancing, so I think I did play a role in that, and more and more got
involved with that, with one-liners or other things like that.
Dole was a great platform because he was so great on his feet, that anything you
could supplement, he’d use. Small things made a difference. For instance, Senator Dole
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 18
would use a loose-leaf notebook to read his speeches from, but then originally a lot of it
was on one page, but there were small print lines. So I started making the print bigger
and the spacing bigger. We put the pages in plastic pages and then put them in a looseleaf notebook, a lot of pages, but at the same time, because of his war injuries, it was
easier for him to turn the plastic pages. So he’d use them at the podium in the Senate.
When he was down in the well as Majority Leader in those years, which is a whole other
thing. But we got more into more noticeable phraseology, if you will.
Williams: Let’s talk about the transition from Finance chair to the Leader and how that
impacted your operation.
Riker: When Senator Dole announced that he was interested in being the Senate Majority
Leader, I remember at the time, too—and I’m trying to write a little bit about that in the
book that I’m trying to write—that at the time—it’s kind of funny when you look back—
that a lot of the reporters didn’t give Dole a chance to win. [Pete V.] Domenici and [Ted]
Stevens and, I think, [James A.] McClure, they were all in the race, and I kept thinking,
“I don’t get it. Why do they handicap him like that?” It just didn’t make sense to me,
because I thought, first of all, it’s Bob Dole, number one, and I’ll bet on him. Then
secondly, I knew the kind of focus and attention he would bring to it as a politician
campaigning for other politicians. So I had a lot of faith in him that he would win, and
that was a really, really round-the-clock campaign, very, very competitive with the other
senators. I remember thinking, my God, if he won this thing, the whole world would
change.
So that was a very historic day, because it takes place in the old Senate Chamber
right just down from the U.S. Senate, where all the Clay Calhoun debates took place, and
it’s like electing a pope; it’s all secret and secret ballots. At the time, I was outside. The
hallways in the Senate were just jam-packed with reporters and staffers. It was like
hundreds of people, because this was momentous. Whoever emerged from that room as
the new pope of the Senate was going to be the new giant in Washington. Everybody
wanted it. There were, I believe, something like thirty TV cameras set up in the Senate
hallway. Again, looking back, that was going to be my neighborhood for the next eight
or nine years. I’d know every square inch; I’d know every tile on the floor. I spent my
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 19
life there till two o’clock in the morning many times. But at the time it was all kind of
swimming.
So there were a lot of secret ballots and ties, had to go through a lot of different
balloting. I remember Howard [O.] Greene told me this story. Maybe he told you this
story. He was Secretary to the Leader, but he ran the cloakroom. He was a lieutenant.
He was the floor boss of the Republican Leader. So anyway, I remember he was inside
the room when they were counting the votes. He had good relationship with Dole. He
was one of the ones counting the ballots, so when it was a twenty-twenty tie and all this
stuff. I remember Howard told me the story that they were counting the ballots, and the
last time, when they finally went to the third or fourth ballot and Dole won, and Greene
looked at Dole and gave him a wink and a quick thumbs-up, so Dole knew that he was
going to be the new Senate Majority Leader.
That’s when both of our worlds changed. For a while there, I was unclear if I was
going to go over there with him, and it was kind of a tough time for me because I felt like
I had earned it and I wanted to be part of it and I wanted to continue to do everything I
could to help his agenda and be loyal, and it was so exciting, and the responsibilities that
it would have and certainly a platform upon which he could run for president, and I
wanted to be a part of that. I felt like I wanted to continue on with that, but with the
power, the naked power just lying out there surrounding the Senate Majority Leader,
there were a lot of other forces who wanted to get in there, so they wanted their guy in
there and they wanted to have influence inside that office, including inside the Dole
world. Some people wanted me out and wanted somebody else in, or somebody
downtown was whispering. It was a whisper campaign going on, that, “Maybe we ought
to do this.” People were talking, “Maybe you’d be better served—,” this or that. You
know, this is raw politics. I knew all that was going on, so it was a tough time for me. I
felt like I was twisting in the wind, and it was a very, very tough time for me because it
was unclear what was going to happen.
I remember Scott Richardson and I would walk over to the Capitol, and we were
walking through Howard Baker’s office, who was the previous Leader, and it was now
vacated. He vacated the office because Dole was coming in. I remember Scott and I
walking through the office, and it was all empty, and Scott was saying, “Hey, this is
going to be your office.” And I remember looking out of that window when it was
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 20
night—we were always there at night. I remember looking out my window that I should
be looking out for the next eight years—I didn’t know it at the time. But it was a typical
pitch-black night, looking down the Mall and Pennsylvania Avenue and the lights and the
traffic, and you could see all the buildings and the Washington Monument. It kind of
made me shiver because I was thinking, “Wow, if I’m over in here, this is a whole
‘nother world again.” It was exciting, but it was also kind of daunting, too. But I felt like
I deserved a shot. I wanted to be part of it, but it was unclear, so I really kind of twisted
in the wind there for a while.
Williams: So how did you find out that you were the lucky one?
Riker: Ah, that’s a great Dole story. It says a lot about Dole, just his personality. We’re
all different. Again, for him, he wasn’t a guy who would sit down and converse; it’s not
him. So I was still his press secretary, went to all the events. We were doing the Today
Show, the Tonight Show, the speeches, traveling all over the country, and I didn’t know
what was going on and the clock was running. So I’ll never forget this. We were at a
luncheon speech at, I believe, the Capitol Hilton. It’s the Hilton that’s downtown, not the
Hilton where Reagan was shot. Is that the D.C. Hilton? We were going down an
escalator, and, as usual, Dole was kind of ahead of me and I was behind him, and as we
were coming off the escalator, he ran into some constituents or lobbyists or somebody,
and he talked to them and he said, “Hey, meet Walt Riker. He’s my press secretary in the
Majority Leader’s office.” That’s how I found out. So, wow, I was just really blown
away.
Keep in mind I’d been with Dole since 1981, and this was now in November of
1984 and probably now getting into December, because he was taking over for Leader in
January of ’85. So all of a sudden my world had changed again. Now again I’d done
everything with Dole. I’d traveled to probably every state, done everything you could
possibly imagine, we had more media than anybody else, survived the whole Finance
Committee thing. That’s a whole other story maybe we can get into. It’s kind of
fascinating. But all of a sudden now this was Bob Dole skyrocketing into what I consider
to be the second most powerful position in the world, the Senate Majority Leader of the
United States of America. First is the President of the United States. The second is,
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 21
without question, the Majority Leader of the Senate, because he’s the only person in the
world who can stop the president’s agenda, and he has the power of the Senate rules,
different from the House, different from anywhere else, to be the most influential either
roadblock, gateway, modifier, doctor, whatever you want to call it, of the president’s
agenda, and that’s absolutely true, whether it’s Republican or Democrat. So go to the
Parliament in London and go all over the world, there’s nothing like the Senate, and
being the boss of the Senate is the most powerful position in the world. So that was a
whole other daunting experience, and that’s where we really started rolling.
Williams: I’m going to change the tape.
[Begin Tape 2]
Williams: You were mentioning your strategy during the Finance Committee days as
press secretary. So tell us that story.
Riker: I was really fortunate to have a really smart guy at the time, smart kid, Scott
Richardson, who was my deputy press secretary, who, by the way, I had to lobby Dole to
hire him as the deputy press secretary, because at the time he was, I believe, in
Constituent Services. Scott, I could tell, first of all, was a really smart guy, really
strategic, had a real feel for communications, and I thought he would be really valuable to
be the second guy, simply because he knows Dole, incredibly loyal to Bob Dole. I liked
him immediately, but I also could see that he was smart and he was kind of visionary and
had good ideas. So I had to go to Dole and lobby him for Scott to be my number two
guy, and I did. I worked on Dole because I was convinced Scott was the right guy, and I
was right, he was the right guy. I think Dole came to appreciate that as well.
We were a great team, Scott and I. Back in these early days like I was talking
about before, where again we were green and naïve, maybe, but at the same time we
worked our asses off and we had a lot of good ideas. I think we broke the mold in doing
media and communications and getting reporters involved. I think before, it was kind of
a strict regimen, or maybe you’d pick one guy and you’d do that. Our strategy was “the
more the merrier.” If you want to get your message out, you want to communicate, well,
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 22
what do you want to do? Do you want one telephone or you want two telephones? We
wanted two telephones. So we thought the more media the merrier, and Scott and I had
the idea that we’re having these Senate Finance Committee press conferences, if you will;
well, if you could get ten reporters in there, why not fifty? Or one TV camera, why not
twenty? And why not fill the room with all kinds of people? This is common sense. If
you were putting on a political rally, how many people do you want to hear your
message? Especially back then when you didn’t have cable and satellite and digital and
all the rest, and you didn’t have that many reporters on the Hill, it was a no-brainer.
So Scott and I decided, hey, let’s blow this thing out. So Dole was going to have
a very important announcement and hold a press conference and talk about it, some big
tax reform bill, deficit reduction. That was the big thing. So Scott and I would just sit
down with books and we’d religiously call everybody we could possibly think of to come
to the press conference. So we found that it was interesting; two things. One, like the
bigwigs, the network reporters, they were used to being called and they came or didn’t
come, but it was more of the medium and little guys, they’d never been called before, so
they thought it was an honor. They’d always say, “God, thanks for calling. We’ll be
right there.” So some guy would be running up there with his camera crew to be part of
this, because they’d never been asked before. We invited the smaller papers. We’d also
go down and call lobbyists and to give them a heads-up, going, “Dole’s making this
major announcement on deficit reduction and tax loopholes. You may want to be there.”
And then Scott and I made up the kicker line; it would be, “By the way, it’s really going
to be big.” We would throw that in every time, “By the way, it’s really going to be big.”
Maybe we didn’t know how big, but it worked every time.
I’ll never forget this. I’m sure Scott told you the same story, but I’ll never forget
this. The first time we pulled this strategy and we had the big Senate Finance Committee
hearing room and they had the horseshoe desk panel for the senators, and then they had a
big open space, then they had all this room in the back, and then behind that, behind the
horseshoe, there was a door that went to an anteroom where the staffers and the senators
would get ready for hearings, and we got in there with a couple of Dole’s aides and we
were talking about it, and he basically asked me, “Is this going to be any good? What
kind of turnout do you think it’s going to be?” And I think he was almost putting us on,
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 23
almost, but he asked us. We ended up, “It’s really going to be big.” We used our own
line.
And I’ll never forget that first deficit reduction press conference, Scott and I just
went through the phone book, and I opened the door for Senator Dole to go up to the
podium, and it was like staring at the sun because of all the TV camera lights. You
couldn’t even see anything, the room was so blinded by TV lights. Then when your eyes
cleared, you see in the back there were like twenty TV cameras, there was a mass of
reporters up front, there were probably five or six still photographers in the well, and then
just packed with lobbyists around the rim of the room. It was standing-room only, and
Scott and I would look at each other and go, “Oh, my God.” Just completely blown
away, and Dole was, too. Then Dole was right in his element because he was such a
powerful communicator, and he was going to talk about the legislation and the reform.
We were making news like that around the clock, so it really paid off and it really
ushered in a new era—I mean, it sounds kind of silly, but it really did, the way we
approached doing press conferences and communications and blow them out.
Williams: There’s a risk, though, that you might be seen as calling “Wolf” too often or
something. You always had to have something to deliver, right?
Riker: Right. That’s the great thing with Bob Dole; he always did. Every once in a
while, you’re right, you can’t have a winner every time, but the reforms that he was
leading and the Finance Committee that was so important to the national economy and
everybody in America, from food stamps to taxes, that it was riveting. He was making
news, and ended up in the Washington Post calling him “the lion of Washington,” “the
new lion of Washington.” That was really a direct result of the communications support
we were giving him. We’re talking about a legislative monster, a giant in the business.
He was doing it, but all we were doing was supporting it with enhanced communications.
We felt, hey, it’s working. Why would we stop?
Riker: Were some of these press conferences ones where he shared time with one or
more of his colleagues, or was it pretty much the Bob Dole show?
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 24
Riker: No, he would share. That’s one point I want to make about Senator Dole. He
may not get credit for this. I can tell you that no one was more inclusive than Senator
Dole, to the point sometimes where I’d just kind of shake my head, “How does he do it?”
With Democrats and strong liberal opponents in the Senate, guys from the House,
freshmen senators, Democrats. He’d be pulling chairs out for them, making sure they
were able to speak and be seen. He was inclusive to a fault, I always thought. It’s
incredible, but it again speaks to the kind of a guy he was, that he truly was someone who
could work with the other side, work with anybody—Jesse Helms, Ted Kennedy. It
didn’t make any difference. Farmers, city people, Charlie [Charles] Rangel, even people
that were so strongly against him. He was polite, he was inclusive, he was friendly. He
always gave somebody access to the forum, debate time, whatever it was. Amazing. Just
incredible.
Williams: How did he change as he became Leader?
Riker: The same.
Williams: Did you see changes?
Riker: Even more so. Very inclusive.
Williams: I didn’t mean just inclusive, but just as a person, did you see a change?
Riker: His leadership began to be noticed because you’d see him in all these different
venues, not forgetting that he also ran as vice president and had done so much before I
ever joined him, but that his powerful leadership and his skills and also his brilliance
really came to the fore, because it was now you were in the big, big, big leagues and you
were seen every single day running the Senate and being at the White House and being
the spokesperson for the Senate and president sometimes, or opposing the president.
Again, we kept up the pace. We did more media than anybody else, and more access. So
I think the world began to see him as legitimate, heavyweight, worthy of a presidential
run. That’s really how it went down.
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 25
Williams: What was your participation in his senatorial and then ’88 campaigns?
Riker: Again, I was really honored to be the press secretary, so my office was right next
to his. I was the closest person—I like to say this, I was the closest person to Bob Dole in
the world for eight or nine years. Why? Because my desk was closest to his. We were
separated by a door, but when he opened that door, I was looking right at him, so our
desks were really only about fifteen feet apart, but we were separated by a door and a
wall. This was in the Capitol Building in the Majority Leader’s office. I think that’s the
importance that he put on communications. We did around-the-clock communications.
So when he opened the door and he was there, I could learn so much. After a while when
I was involved more with all the strategy and stuff, I could open the door and go in to see
him when I felt it was the right time. I wasn’t one of these guys that was going in every
five minutes. You had to pick your shots.
But that was really an honor, and I look back on that as one of the highlights of
my life, being on the Majority Leader’s staff and working for him so closely, and seeing
what he did in the Senate as the Leader was just astounding. Then one of my dreams
when I was on the Hill was that I actually had full access to the U.S. Senate any time I
wanted to walk in those doors. I never once took it for granted. I was there for nine
years and never once took that privilege, walking in that Senate, because only a few
people had that kind of access.
Williams: Did you go out on the campaign with him or were you pretty much
Washington-based?
Riker: I’ve got to back up for a minute, because by the time I left in 1993, I had been to
fifty-eight foreign countries with Senator Dole; I’d been to fifty states many times over
in the United States, so just think about that. We had met every world leader. We had
been behind the Iron Curtain. We had met within the Kremlin, had been in the
Parliament, been in Thailand, China. We’ve done it all. We met Deng Xiaoping in
Beijing. It doesn’t get more amazing than that. So he was an incredible student and—I
would say master of foreign affairs, but he doesn’t get enough credit for that. He had an
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 26
incredible affinity for foreign affairs, an ease of understanding of issues, whether it was
in Armenia, Thailand, Cambodia, Germany, the E.U., Russia. By the time we would land
on some of these trips in places like Taiwan, he’d be making news and he’d be analyzing
things, he’d be asking great questions of these world leaders. He just had a tremendous
understanding of that, which I always thought would be so powerful for him if he were to
get to the White House, because he was really sharp on foreign affairs, kind of like a
Nixon.
Williams: In these travels, what was your role and what were you doing while he was
meeting with these people and so forth?
Riker: I was part of the congressional delegation. We usually took a number of senators
with us, and I went with Dole as his communications lead, but also as the
communications head of his congressional delegations, so we went to fifty-eight foreign
countries, from people like [Mikhail] Gorbachev, we met with Saddam Hussein for three
hours in Baghdad before the Gulf War. Met with Margaret Thatcher, Deng Xiaoping in
China, all throughout South America, every continent, Morocco, Egypt, just mindboggling experience. So I got to see him in action. I can tell you what, he was a foreign
affairs heavyweight.
Williams: And you’re right, that does tend to be overlooked in speaking of Dole. Since I
interviewed Mike Glassner yesterday, who was describing his role as the right-hand man,
did your roles overlap?
Riker: Yes, we were joined at the hip. Mike Glassner and I were like brothers. We were
a band of brothers in the traveling world of Bob Dole. We did more miles, by far, than
anybody else. We always went out on trips with Dole together. Mike was an unsung
hero. He was behind the scenes doing a lot of heavy lifting and dirty work, and always
there for Dole, and kept things hopping. A great guy, a guy of integrity, a small-town
Kansas kid. I liked him a lot. When you’re involved in that kind of band of brothers
environment on the road, late hours, long trips, things have got to happen on time. You
get up in the morning in some motel in Green Bay, Wisconsin, you’ve got to make the
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 27
breakfast on time, you’ve got to have the agenda right, the talking points, the interview
with the Milwaukee Sentinel has got to be done right on time, and the cars at a certain
time. You’re going to the airport to get on a private plane because you’re going to South
Dakota, and then from there you’re going to Idaho just in one day. So Mike and I lived
in that world, and we usually, after a long, long day and Dole went to bed, we put Dole to
bed, he and I would get in a room, one of our rooms, and just try to relax and talk and
kind of review the day and share a few laughs.
Williams: It strikes me, having talked to him yesterday, you today, and then thinking
back to Kim Wells and Scott Richardson and others, there was a sort of generational
difference here operating in the Dole operation, wasn’t there?
Riker: Yes, that’s a good point.
Williams: I imagine it was easy for you all to affiliate, because you were sort of the same
age and had a lot of personality common elements, too.
Riker: That’s true. That s a good point.
Williams: It’s interesting that Dole was able to relate to you all and to find you all in one
age group. I know I’m not speaking well on this, but you understand the point.
Riker: Yes, very much so. I think that’s a great point, and I thought about that when I
was on the staff, because, you’re right, I think Dole liked the energy of youth, because he
was so youthful, eternally youthful, and eternally energetic. And my thing is, look—I tell
people this—if you couldn’t keep up with him, if you didn’t have his same kind of
stamina or at least trying to keep up with him and worked your ass off, you were willing
to do 24/7, you wouldn’t last a week; you’d be gone. And some were gone in a week.
But if you had that youthful energy and he saw that you were keeping up and you were
doing everything possible and had that infusion of youth and enthusiasm, then you were
going to make it. And that’s where we were in this band of brothers, really hardworking
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 28
guys who really were total believers, passionate about Dole, we’d do anything for him,
and we did. [laughs]
But then he also had the Senate Finance Committee geniuses in the staff. They
were a different breed. That was kind of a different culture. They spoke their language
and they were kind of that Ivy League thing; we were the kind of K.U. Kansas mafia
guys who, I think, Dole liked. Then he hung out with old guys all day long, if that’s a
way to look at it, older people in the Senate all day long, okay? And in the Finance
Committee hearings, so you had other senators and whatever it was. So there was a mix
of cultures that were all different.
Williams: Within his own operation, were there some gray eminences, his generation
and so forth, that he was relying on?
Riker: He had Bob Ellsworth, who would be in the kitchen cabinet. People like Richard
Nixon was a counselor and advisor. Cabinet members, Elizabeth Dole. He worked
directly with presidents. So, yes, there was that whole other world that we weren’t a part
of.
Williams: But in terms of the staff, there were no older people other than, I guess, some
of the women, would that be right?
Riker: Yes, pretty much. So we had a lot in common, like you said, and I think we all
were kind of funny guys and we liked to share a laugh, because if you didn’t, you’d never
survive. The pressure was incredible. Incredible pressure, incredible physical demands
to just last through a day, not even mentioning traveling on the weekends, traveling on
holidays, being away from your family. I mean, you had to lay it out, because this wasn’t
for the skittish. You had to make tremendous personal sacrifices. I don’t know how my
wife did it. She’s a giant in my world because of what she put up with because I wasn’t
there very often. We eventually had three kids.
If I wasn’t working for Dole, I’d be with my family, and that’s all that mattered to
me. But it was really tough because I’d be out playing catch with my son, Wally, a really
great baseball player, and I’d be out playing ball with him, and my wife would open the
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 29
door and say, “Hey, CNN’s on the phone!” And I’d have to run in and do that. Come
out and play again, and, “Dole’s on the phone!” And I’d have to be running in.
Back in those days, think of it, no cell phones, no pagers, no portable anything; it
was all station-to-station telephones. So when Bob Dole called, you had to run to a
telephone, okay? And a lot of times I’d be running in, sweaty, whatever, and Dole would
be on the phone saying, “I want to put out a press release,” or a statement. Something
happened and we would react with a statement, some world event, someone maybe
passed away, maybe the president issued some proclamation, something happened,
Howard Baker was named the chief of staff. Whatever it is, we’d always be first with a
comment. First. Again, at this time I was now a seasoned veteran, having kind of
worked my way up the communications chain, so now we had the thing down to a
science. Dole would call, he would, off the top of his head, do a statement. Then I would
clean it up or do whatever. I’d call him back. “Read it to me.” He’d make changes and
say, “Okay, let it roll!” So I’d call up—again, this is the old days, telephone—call AP
[Associated Press]. [makes sound of telephone call] “AP up.” Now I’ve got to call the
New York Times. [makes sound of telephone call] New York Times. Read the statement,
read the statement, read the statement, read the statement, read the statement. Super
intense, you know, and it was either a Saturday afternoon or the last thing you wanted to
do, but that’s what you signed up to do and that’s what you did.
Scott and I worked every Saturday. Again, when you sign up for the duty, this is
what it’s all about. So Scott and I would report to duty Saturday morning around nine,
ten o’clock in the morning. Dole would be in there in his office. He’d be wearing casual
clothes, which you almost never saw him wearing casual clothes, so it was khakis and
loafers. He was always extremely well dressed. Maybe a sweater and a white shirt, loose
tie—no tie, excuse me. Open collar. It was great. It was strategically brilliant by Dole’s
instincts, because everybody else was at home relaxing. No, we were in taking
advantage. Nobody was there, so we had the whole media to ourselves. So we’d always
try to think of a way to do interviews, put out press releases or statements, so it was for a
couple of hours every Saturday, man, we really were highly productive and we owned the
airwaves on a Saturday, and it would bleed into Sunday.
Now then Dole was also breaking every record in the book in being on Meet the
Press, Face the Nation, and the [David] Brinkley Show, Issues and Answers prior to that.
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 30
He was on, it seemed like every Sunday, but maybe it was every other Sunday. Every
other Sunday. So he’d work Saturday, enjoy your time at home. Bright and early
Sunday, instead of going to church, you was going to the Dole media church, which was
Meet the Press, Face the Nation, and then you’d get home, and it almost made the
weekends more enjoyable because you had so little of it. So when I got home after the
Brinkley Show on Sunday, my wife had already been to church and the kids were up, and
I got home at like noon or one o’clock, I felt like I’d been given a gift. So it was the most
intense time with the family, that you knew at least you were done working. Not for
everybody.
Riker: I want to shift here just a little bit. What kind of relations did you have with the
other press secretaries of other senators?
Riker: When I became the Majority Leader press secretary, you become, de facto, the
dean of the press secretaries, and that was kind of a daunting responsibility, too, because
they’re really sharp, smart, hard-charging people, too, and came from different states and
different issue areas, if you will, so I had to work hard and count on people like Sheila
Burke and others, Rod DeArment, to brief me, and Howard Greene, to give the other
press secretaries a hint of what was to come, what they could expect on the floor, what
our strategy was. That was good for me, good education. So I would hold—I think they
were weekly—if I can remember—weekly sessions with the press secretaries. That’s
where I got to know Ari Fleischer, who became [George W.] Bush’s first White House
spokesman, and he and I became pretty good friends up there. He was, I could tell, really
a comer, was eager to learn, and I felt like I was mentoring him in some way. So he
would check into our office. He was with Pete Domenici at the time. So that was a good
experience for me, and I enjoyed doing that.
Williams: How was your operation with Dole different from the rest of them, or were
others sort of following your example or doing the same kind of thing, beefing up the
media end of things?
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 31
Riker: They did their own thing. In the Majority Leader’s office, we were like news
around the clock. It was unbelievable. We did interviews and press releases. We had the
leading reporters in the world coming into our office. Also Clarkson Hine and I, when he
was my deputy press secretary, he and I worked together great, and we ramped up, again,
the access, the strategic communications focus, ideas, gimmicks, stages. You name it.
What we did was, we would turn Dole’s Capitol Hill office almost into a studio, because
when you’re in the Majority Leader’s office, you’re the mayor of Capitol Hill; you can
get anything done that you want. You just snap a finger and people jump. So they had
almost like moving men, you could call and they would come up. So what we’d do is if
we had, for instance, Clarence Thomas coming up during his confirmation hearings, we
wanted to make sure we got out the message that we were supporting him and he was
working with the Leader, and we were showing solidarity with him, so Clarkson and I
would design the office like it was a studio. So we’d call up the moving men. They’d
come in and move all the furniture out of the room and put it in the hallway.
Then we had a drill where we would then pin the curtains, behind Dole’s desk in
the Capitol, closed because if you’re pointing a camera into a window, it ruins the shot.
So we had a whole technique where we almost like stapled the curtains shut, and then I
would bring in an American flag as a backdrop, and then there’s a technique where you
take a hanger and put that behind the flag so the flag folds out like a triangle; otherwise, it
just hangs limp. So we wanted to make sure that the background was enhanced.
Then we’d arrange the chairs in a certain way, where if it was George [H.W.]
Bush visited, or Reagan, we’d do the same kind of staging, and then I’d kind of snap my
fingers again and I’d say, “We’re going to have a photo op in Dole’s office at ten a.m.
with George Bush,” let’s say, or Clarence Thomas, or something else. So the people that
ran the press offices upstairs would get the word out, and of course there was like
guaranteed media. So the entire national press corps would file down from upstairs.
That would mean all the broadcasts, every network, CNN, you name it, Washington Post,
New York Times, A.P. [Associated Press], UPI [United Press International], Reuters, you
name it. And other newspapers. We’d do the same thing; we’d call the Washington
Times, the Baltimore Sun, the Boston Globe, the L.A. Times, the Seattle PostIntelligencer, you name it. So we’d get those all lined up. Then we’d get all the still
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 32
photographers, don’t forget. A.P., UPI, New York Times, Washington Post all had their
own photographers.
What would happen is, we would stage them outside our door, so we had built
this de facto TV studio with a big door, that I was in charge of, and you had this kind of
authoritarian power where you determine exactly when the media does what they do and
when they do it and how they do it. So the people who run the galleries are all great
people, so you had the still photographer gallery, you had the press gallery, and the
broadcast gallery. So I said, “Okay, this is what I want. When I come out and open that
door, we’re going to let the still photographers in first. Nobody else.” And I knew all
these guys. They were great. I love working with still photographers. So I’d open the
door. “Okay, bring ‘em in.” The other guys were in the bullpen; they couldn’t come in.
So the still photographers would come in, so they’re not in competition with TV cameras
and stuff, and they would be snapping all over the place, because we had the staging and
we had all these different people in place, and they knew we’d get great pictures. I’d
give them enough time and then say, “Okay, that’s it. Gotta go.”
Then these wise guys were smart, because they figured out, “All right, if we don’t
want the staging thing—,” there was this new technique, and you see it now all the time,
but it was started back then, is as the photographers leave and, “See you later,” they’ll
turn around and get that one last shot of backs of people and people in motion, and that
became kind of a legitimate news shot.
Then I’d let in the TV guys with the reporters. The print reporters would kind of
fan out on the flanks, and the TV broadcasting guys would be spraying the room with
video. So it went like that year after year, week after week. We did it all the time, and it
was guaranteed wall-to-wall coverage. It was incredible. So we were, again, ramping
up, blowing up the access, doing things that I don’t think anyone had ever done before in
the Majority Leader’s office, not even close.
Williams: You mentioned Clarence Thomas. Talk about some of the really big issues
during the period that you were on the Hill, and particular battles.
Riker: You had the [Robert] Bork nomination, the Clarence Thomas nomination. You
had major farm bill legislation that Dole was the lynchpin, the absolute expert, the
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 33
number one—he was the voice of agriculture on the Hill. Nobody knew more about
agriculture programs than he did—nobody. Not even close. He could talk to the cotton
guys, the rice guys, the wheat guys, the corn guys. Pork bellies, cattle; he knew it all
backwards and forwards. Even though Dole wasn’t on the Ag[ricultural] Committee, he
was the most important guy in agriculture.
I’ll never forget this, too. The 1985 Farm Bill was the most comprehensive,
complicated, contentious farm bill in the history of Washington, and Dole put it all
together. It all happened because of him. I’ll never forget this; we did one of our
stagings in the office. We had Jesse Helms, chairman of the Ag Committee at the time,
and I think Ed Zorinsky from Nebraska, was a Democrat. Dole was always kind of
partial to him and he included him in a lot of stuff, because he was a moderate Democrat
farm guy. We staged a picture where Jesse Helms and Zorinsky were looking at the farm
bill, but it was the actual farm bill. I think it weighed thirteen pounds, so we wrapped it
with twine. Jesse Helms was like holding it up, and Dole and Zorinsky were standing by
the farm bill. I think that picture’s in the Dole Institute now. But that was a great shot.
So we did things like that. So we had the farm bill.
We also had the Reagan agenda, was on the Hill, so Dole was point person for the
Reagan agenda. Think about that. We had the Contras, funding for the Contras. We had
the Oli [Oliver] North arms-for-hostages crisis. These are things off the top of my head.
The first Gulf War, the invasion of Iraq out of Kuwait.
The Shuttle blowing up. I saw that live on TV. I happened to be watching the
Shuttle. I had three TVs in my room on all the time, to monitor the Senate and the
networks and I was watching the Shuttle take off, and I saw it blow up. I had to go into
Senator Dole’s office and say, “I hate to interrupt you.” I kind of choked up. I said,
“Senator, the Space Shuttle just blew up.” So he came out to see it. I wrote, as fast as I
could, a statement for Dole, and actually it’s probably one of the best things I’ve ever
written. Dole went out to the Senate floor and read it. That’s one of my highlights.
But Dole ended up trusting us to write him stuff, and that kind of trust really
meant a lot to us and means a lot to me now, that we could give him something almost
cold. He would take cold material and read it on the floor of the Senate.
You have to remember, too, that Dole was the senator who, as the Majority
Leader, brought television into the Senate chamber. Prior to Dole becoming the Majority
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 34
Leader—I know this sounds incredible now—there was no broadcast coverage allowed.
People never saw the Senate, they never heard the Senate, they never heard the voices of
the senators, and on the national news—and I’m saying this for all you people who are
too young to know this—the only time you saw senators on national news were sketches
drawn by artists. I’m talking about in the 1980s, like you see in courtrooms where they
don’t have cameras. That’s how it was. Dole was absolutely convinced that the
broadcasts should be in there. Did that help his political career? Absolutely. Was there
an ancillary motive? Sure. Fine. Right. It makes sense. Nothing wrong with it. And by
the way, the people ought to be allowed to see their elected officials. If it wasn’t for
Dole, there wouldn’t be C-SPAN.
I’ll never forget the day we brought in the TV. We had a grand opening. There
were some experiments leading up to it, so first they had a broadcast, you could actually
hear the senators, but you didn’t see them. Then they had the tests with cameras—ooh—
make sure it’s all this. Then finally there was the day where we actually opened it up and
had the full broadcast. But Dole is the one who got it done.
Williams: Were you an instigator on that?
Riker: I helped. I definitely helped, yes, and I was very proud of that, because it was
something that needed to be done.
Williams: Did you have particular what I might call press battles?
Riker: With the media?
Williams: Yes.
Riker: Every day.
Williams: Talk about that for a bit.
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 35
Riker: You have to keep in mind, what is the playing field that Dole was on, okay? He’s
a world-class, world-leading, household name, towering politician of influence, so he has
a very strong point of view, has an agenda, and his beliefs that he believes passionately
about, and so did we. That’s why we we’re there. If you didn’t believe, you shouldn’t be
there. That meant, if you had to, it meant going to war, and that’s maybe an extreme way
of saying it, but he had a point of view and you wanted to make sure that you had your
point of view. And you had the national media, there’s no question, tilted left, without a
doubt, and they were covering everything that you were doing, so there was that everyday
tension of the left-wing and the Republican side, and we’re trying to get a fair shake in
the coverage, so it was a constant battle to get your message out without being filtered or
ignored, frankly. So while we had the platform to communicate how it came out in the
papers—and this is regardless of any partisan position, but it’s all up to editors and
reporters. At the end of the day, you can’t control that. But you give it your all to make
sure that you get your point of view out, and hopefully it’s reflected in the stories. So,
yes, we battled every single day. We had the confidence and the backing of Senator Dole
to make sure that we stood tall in the face of reporters who maybe had a different view or
that weren’t treating us fairly, and we did. We got our message out, and if we had to, we
would go to the mat with a reporter or go to an editor.
Williams: From your perspective, how was the New York Times, as the example, slanting
stuff?
Riker: They’re liberal papers, fundamental, there’s no question about it. But at the same
time—and don’t misunderstand me—Dole had enormous respect for those reporters. I’ll
never forget this, when I first joined him, he said, “Don’t ever try to fool these reporters
because these are really smart people. They know more about a lot of these things than I
do.” And he was right. He was absolutely right. It’s really amazing. Some of the Hill
reporters had been up there a while, they knew legislation, they knew Senate rules, they
knew the ins and outs of issues. Unbelievable. He was right. So you can never try
gimmickry and fooling and all of that. That wasn’t part of the deal. And don’t forget we
had Reagan as president, so there was tremendous shock in the world of Washington that
a conservative was now president, and a lot of media couldn’t come to grips with that;
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 36
they were in a state of shock. You could tell it. So there was that kind of anti-Reagan
factor in the media, that they were pushing like crazy against his agenda, and when we
were on the Hill, supporting the president or doing our thing, it was a little bit like
swimming upstream a lot of times.
Williams: So you felt that the “liberal press” was expressing their point of view not just
on the editorial pages, but actually reporting the news?
Riker: Yes, absolutely. Sure. That’s kind of human nature in these papers. Outlets are
what they are. It doesn’t make them bad people. I liked them. I got along, I think, pretty
well with them. But it was the jobs we did. That’s what it’s all about. At the end of the
day, they wrote what they wrote, and we had an obligation to be the strongest advocate
possible for our position. If you didn’t do otherwise, then why were you there?
Williams: Say something about the relationships you had with the White House over
your period of time. I guess that would be Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush.
Riker: And [William J.] Clinton.
Williams: And Clinton. Exactly.
Riker: I’ll tell you what. I was there for Bill Clinton’s first year in office, and I can tell
you, it’s a lot more fun having a Democrat at the White House than a Republican,
because the Republican president, you’re carrying his agenda and his water most of the
time, and you’re seen in the light of the Republican president and you’re a Republican on
the Hill. Now I see why the Democrats had so much fun with Reagan and Bush and
whatever. When you have the other party in the White House, you can tee off all the
time, just like being at a golf driving range. You’re just hitting buckets of balls as far as
you can hit them. And that’s what it’s like.
So while you certainly respect the president, and I want to say this, that, again,
Bob Dole showed class and utter respect for that office, regardless of who was in it.
Think about it. He ran against Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan had a different agenda
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 37
than Dole’s. Reagan won in a landslide both in the primaries and then in destroying
Carter, and then came in as the new powerhouse in Washington with a whole new
agenda, and Dole had to come to grips with that. Secondly, George Bush became
president, the guy that Dole went to the mat with in Iowa and New Hampshire, in a
bloody, brutal primary battle, which you could write a whole book about, and yet when it
came time to support Bush, he was there. When Clinton came into office, Bill Clinton,
he’s a Democrat and we no longer had anybody in the White House, Dole showed
complete class and respect for the Oval Office, whether it was Bill Clinton—he called
him President Clinton, President Reagan, President Bush, and that’s just the way Dole
was. He understood the hierarchy and the respect that you should have in politics. Some
people didn’t do that. Bill Clinton never called George Bush President Bush; he always
called him George Bush. So he went out of his way to personally disrespect. That was a
campaign tactic. Maybe it worked. Dole would never do that, and never did.
I’ll give you an example of Dole’s class. Immediately after Gary Hart was caught
with a girlfriend in an adulterous relationship, it was explosive, to say the least, and it just
turned out that literally the next couple of days after this broke, Gary Hart made his first
personal public appearance in New York, on the dais with Bob Dole at an event in New
York City. Of course, I can’t for the life of me think of what it was; I’d have to think
about it. But it was in a grand ballroom in one of the really upscale New York hotels.
I’ll never forget it, the media was in there en masse because of Gary Hart’s personal
crisis and political crisis. Dole was speaking first, and then he was going to introduce
Gary Hart. This had all been put in place well before all this broke. The easiest thing in
the world would have been for Dole to cancel, say something to get cheap headlines,
ignore him, whatever. We had a reception prior to the event, for the VIPs, whatever.
Dole went out of his way to be around Gary Hart. He wouldn’t respond to any issues that
people may have been bringing up. Then when the program began out in the full
auditorium with all the cameras, Dole introduced Gary Hart as “my friend, Gary Hart.” It
just gave you goosebumps when he did that, because he went out of his way to help a guy
who was in a personal crisis.
I’m going to tell you another time when I first joined Dole, and a freshman
senator from Wisconsin—I’ll have to think about it; do your homework. You can figure
out who it is [Bob Kasten], but a freshman senator was on the Banking Committee, and at
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 38
a time there was a huge banking issue, and he, as a freshman senator, which was kind of a
little bit unprecedented, maybe, but this was the new Senate where you had freshmen
coming in and doing whatever they wanted, and he was kind of off on his own agenda
and he was making a lot of news and was taking on bankers and all of this. And I’ll
never forget this. Dole went up to the press room upstairs, and they had a little room
where it was lit and then all the media would come in and set up the cameras, and it was
like an interview room. It’s long since been gone. This was the old-fashioned one,
looked like a little hovel, you know, it had the fake books and the lighting, and it was
cramped. You’d look through the glass on the outside, kind of watching Dole do his
thing. Now it’s all modernized and all changed, but this was in the old days.
So anyway, Dole went in there to do an interview on this contentious banking
issue which a guy in his own party was completely opposed to Dole was challenging
Dole, and had amendments and everything else. It was this young senator against Dole.
Dole was in there to give his side, so we brought the senator up and he was answering the
questions. I was in the glass portion of it looking in, but I could hear what was going on.
There wasn’t room enough to be in there. But I was sitting with other reporters, and as
Dole was doing the interview and they were talking about Bob Kasten, I think his
name—yes, it is Bob Kasten—and they were basically baiting him. They wanted him to
say something about Kasten, and they were lobbing up these softballs for Dole to
tantalizingly lure him to tee off. Dole didn’t take the bait. He stayed on the high road. I
was sitting with network reporters and wire reporters outside, and they were going,
“Come on, come on.” They were literally rooting for Dole to take shots at Kasten,
because he was a Republican and he was a guy who they wanted the raw meat. “Come
on, come on. Go, go! Take it, take it!” Dole never did; he resisted the opportunity. So
two things pop into my mind, that that’s the real Bob Dole, that he was so respectful of
other people and their position, and personal attacks and all this stuff, he didn’t do it.
Another example. I used to write the scripts for a show called Face-Off!, which
was a daily debate format between Bob Dole and Ted [Edward M.] Kennedy. The scripts
had to be really tight, and you had to write them so they were about less than a minute
each, so they really weren’t a debate, but I had to tape-record them every week. So it
was kind of a daunting assignment that I got, that I had to do the scripts. It was one of
those things where I kind of slowly took over someone else’s writing when I didn’t like
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 39
them [the scripts], I ended up editing them very heavily. Finally I just said, “You know
what? I’ll do it.” So I ended up writing; I had to do five scripts a week. The Kennedy
guy had a great writer, too, very talented guy. Kennedy was good, and he had five
scripts. Then Dole would record his side of it and then they would record Kennedy’s
side, then they’d play it. The reason I’m saying this is I tried to toughen up the rhetoric
and sometimes really push the envelope, and Dole always said, “Going too far. No
personal attacks. Tone is down. Don’t say that.” So then I realized, yeah, okay. But
that was a screen. He would not cross that line. That may be different from the
perception, but I can guarantee, from someone who’s inside every single day, Dole had a
line that he wouldn’t cross, and he never did, even though some of us were eager to push
him in there. He didn’t do that. So I just wanted to get that on the record.
Williams: Looking back over your career with Dole, what are particular victories and
maybe some defeats?
Riker: I would say probably it’s a long list of incredible legislative successes and heroic
actions, literally saving things that had no chance of passing, many times on behalf of a
president, Reagan and Bush. I think Dole’s leadership on the vote to go to war against
Iraq, in the Gulf War in 1991—this wasn’t the [George W.] Bush Iraq thing; this was
completely different. This was Iraq and Saddam Hussein invading Kuwait and making
all kinds of threatening noises about the Middle East and burning Israel to the ground. It
was a world crisis. At the time, President George Bush provided tremendous leadership
putting coalitions together. “This will not stand.” But the president needed the backing
of the Senate to commit troops and to take military action. Because although he didn’t
need it as a president and commander-in-chief, he needed the support of the Senate,
through a resolution, to give him the national backing to commit troops. And this was
serious stuff. Dole was facing a losing hand in the Senate. It was a time when the
Democrats were controlling the Senate. Dole had to marshal the forces and get Democrat
votes to support the president in this time of crisis. He ended up doing the impossible,
that he got the votes and he expended his personal capital and went to the mat. It was a
brilliant job, and we had major strategies and communications and all kinds of media that
we were using, too. It was his one-on-one leadership, getting key Democrat votes,
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 40
including Al [Albert] Gore’s [Jr.] by the way, that were critical in giving the majority a
narrow majority. Without getting those Democrat votes, it wouldn’t have passed, and the
President of the United States would have had to go to war without the backing of the
Senate, which would have been a disaster. I think that was one of Dole’s, if not his
greatest, moments in a time of world crisis and military action, commander-in-chief
needing Dole to come through in the clutch, and Dole came through in the clutch like you
can’t believe, and he turned the thing around.
That became really one of our proudest moments. In fact, one of the things I’m
proudest of is I had the idea of writing an Op-Ed for the Wall Street Journal once the war
was clearly a mind-boggling success, and the U.S. military, the proudest moment since
Vietnam. You’ve got to go back to it, because this gets clouded with George Bush and
the Iraq invasion and all that. That’s completely different. So at this point in time, the
military was never more prepared, never more equipped, never more proud in doing that,
all through the “doom and gloom” predictions of the media and all the skeptics saying,
and the Democrats got way on a limb about body bags and, “This is going to be a
disaster. We shouldn’t do it,” and we held firm. We backed the commander-in-chief.
Dole came through, and once the military performed so heroically and miraculously and
stunningly, and people couldn’t believe how fast the victory was, that I decided it would
be cool if we wrote an Op-Ed, going back to the Senate debate that Dole led, and going
back to what the Democrat senators said would happen, and how wrong they were. So
we did an Op-Ed from Dole, using the very quotes from the Democrat senators. And
looking back and hard to believe now, but if it weren’t for four or five votes that swung,
the Senate would never have been supportive. So Dole agreed to do it, and it was a
dynamite Op-Ed, and it got tremendous recognition and accolades. Not that I wrote it,
but it was a brilliant thing to do simply because it went, “Can you imagine if we hadn’t
done this, and here all the predictions of the doom and gloom that never came true?” So
that was pretty cool.
Williams: On the opposite side, what about a low point?
Riker: The lowest point for me that clearly comes to mind was when we lost the Senate
majority, and Dole was there for two years and threw his heart and soul into supporting
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 41
Republican candidates. We went out on just a brutal seventeen-day—I’ll never forget
this. This was also, two things, supporting George Bush for president around the clock,
campaign appearances all over the United States, campaign stops around the United
States nonstop for Senate Republican candidates, also Congress and dogcatcher. That
was the way Dole operated. He threw his heart and soul into that.
I’ll never forget the night of the elections, November of 1986. Everything hung in
the balance. It was ’86, that’s right, so it was before Bush, but we also did the Bush
thing. I was wrong there. But I’ll never forget, we were in our offices with Senator and
Mrs. [Elizabeth] Dole, watching the elections at night, and one Republican candidate
after another going down to defeat, and we suddenly realized there was that tipping point
where we lost the Senate majority, and that was just a crushing, stunning defeat, and it
was the real world of politics hitting you in the face about as hard as you can imagine,
that suddenly, for whatever reason, we lost and we were not going to be in the majority
anymore. Again, a classic Dole window into his soul, he not only campaigned his heart
out, but we stayed up late that night doing interviews, when we could have shut the door,
“No comment. We’re not going to talk about it.” No, Dole was on live TV, he was
gracious in defeat, complimented the Democrats, said, “We’ll work hand in hand with the
new Leader, Bob [Robert C.] Byrd.”
I went home that night and got about—not, I didn’t go home that night. I slept in
a staffer’s apartment close in to town, because we had to be there the next morning to do
the Today Show. We did all the morning shows live from Dole’s office, about losing the
Senate. It was tough to do, but he did it. He stood tall and showed real class and
leadership, and we did all the interviews. We got two hours’ sleep. I met Dole back in
the office right on the dot at like 6:30 in the morning, and just plowed through the
interviews. He was gracious.
I’ll never forget it. The walking out of that night, when he left the office, must
have been about two o’clock in the morning, and I went by and I remember going by
Senator Bob Byrd’s office, who was the Minority Leader, and they had balloons out and
people were already celebrating. They already had painters and basically interior
designers all over the building, already measuring for curtains for the Democrats to take
over offices. The story was—and it’s actually true—that Dole’s magnificent suite had
always been the Republican Leader’s office, and there had been all kinds of attempts to
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 42
take that away. Even Bob Byrd wanted to take that office away, and he paraded Dole
around one famous day, showing him alternative offices sites. Some of them happened to
be in the basement that used to be coal bins that they’d turned into staffers’ office. We
were not interested in that. So Dole stood tall on that and he ended up, I think because of
his credibility with the press, that they’d let him keep his office, although they took
Sheila Burke’s office away from Dole. But he had a magnificent, huge, spectacular
office that was turned into a Democrat office during that time. So it was a really tough
time. I tell you what, it’s no fun to be in the loser’s locker room.
Williams: We’re going to have to change tapes.
[Begin Tape 3]
Williams: So, comes 1993 and what prompted you to leave this exciting world?
Riker: Hardest decision I ever made in my life. I didn’t want to leave. I’d still be there
if I could. It was the greatest experience of my life. I was really lucky to be the right guy
in the right place. It was a one-in-a-trillion experience. I don’t know why it was me, and
I think about it a lot. It’s one of the reasons I’m trying to write about it now in some
ways. When I look back, sometimes I can’t believe it was me, because I was so lucky to,
first of all, get the job and then to grow with Senator Dole, and the support that he gave
me, because other people may have cut and run. He stood tall. So I didn’t want to go,
but I had three kids. Some day they were going to go to college; at least I hoped they
were going to go. My wife had really taken a pounding. And, frankly, I’ll be very
honest, we were very underpaid. The whole time I was with Senator Dole, we were
tremendously underpaid. His thing was, he came from a farm state and he didn’t want
people making more than the governor of Kansas. I get that. But at the same time, we
were living in Washington, D.C., which is one of the most expensive places to live in the
world, and inflation and everything else, and the housing market was beyond sticker
shock, so there was a dynamic there, let’s be honest. You can ask the other people. But
it was certainly an issue. We were underpaid and they never caught up, so as a result, I
was really under the gun in my position in life and getting older, and I didn’t have much
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 43
to show for it. The greatest experience in my life, but also I realized I needed to make
some money and have some stability and long-term foundation.
So I was lucky enough to be spotted by McDonald’s, actually in 1984. They
offered me a job. I came out here and interviewed with them. I turned them down. That
was a hard decision to make, but I’m glad I did, because then that led to the entire
Majority Leader’s thing. When they offered me a job again in 1993, I had to think about
it really, really hard. It was kind of what I was looking for, but it entailed not only
leaving Capitol Hill, but moving to Chicago.
It was the hardest decision I ever made in my life. I agonized over it. I stayed up
all night. I looked at the ceiling fan, I can’t tell you how many nights, to rip away from
the thing I loved more than anything else. To be in that position of not power, but to be
in the middle of the world, everything went through Dole’s office—everything. There
wasn’t an event on the face of the earth that didn’t go through that office. I don’t care if
it was in Indonesia, Japan, China, Europe, U.S., whatever it was, Dole was involved.
That was a cool thing. I had finally worked myself, into the last several years, of being
comfortable, and I had grown and matured and I really felt like I was having the impact
and everything. I wish I could do it right now. Sometimes I dream about it at night, that
I’m back there, actually, to tell you the truth. I remember I even told my wife, one
morning I work up and I said for some reason I was back in the Majority Leader’s office
and Dole was there. Everything kind of looked different because it was one of those
wacky dream things, but the thrill and the happiness that I felt was almost indescribable,
but it was a dream, as all things tend to me. So that’s the way I felt about it.
I accepted the McDonald’s job because it was everything I was looking for, and I
always loved McDonald’s. In fact, this is an interesting story. My deputy press
secretary, Clarkson Hine, and I were huge fast-food fans. We ate at McDonald’s and
Taco Bell almost every day, just to get away from the pressure cooker, so he and I would
kind of sneak out and would walk up Pennsylvania Avenue on the Hill, where there was a
McDonald’s several blocks away, but we would walk there faithfully every other day and
we’d eat at the McDonald’s, or get in my junky car and drive down to another
McDonald’s at the foot of the hill. There was also a Wendy’s there. Actually, I became
known as a guy on Capitol Hill who, surprisingly, ate at McDonald’s all the time. In fact,
it was written about. I have a picture that a friend of mine took from the New York
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 44
Times. I have it on my wall. It’s a black and white photo of my entire family eating at
McDonald’s on Capitol Hill, on the front lawn there. So that became a tradition.
So I told the McDonald’s guys I accepted the job and I was going to do it, and
then I regretted it the minute I told them. I agonized night after night after night. We had
a little neighborhood going-away party for us, I cracked. I thought, “You know what?
I’m going to pull the plug on this thing. I can’t do it.” But it was one of those things
where I knew it was the right thing to do, and I just bit the bullet and made myself do it.
It was agonizing to me. I’m not afraid to tell you that I broke down the day I walked out
that door, one of the few times but I cracked, because I knew I’d left that world behind
forever, and there’s no going back.
So having said that, thirteen years of the greatest ride anybody could have had,
especially someone in communications media, to see the world with Dole and to be
associated with a legend like Bob Dole, is something that I’ll treasure forever. So I did
leave, and it was the best decision I ever made, because I’ve grown here at McDonald’s
in ways I never could have imagined. It’s an incredible company. We do business in 119
countries. I’ve been lucky enough to travel and to be part of the “McDonald’s miracle,”
if you will, and I have grown here in communications and media relations. I almost wish
now that I had all the know-how and knowledge that I’ve learned from all the great
people at McDonald’s and take that back to Dole in the 1980s and ‘90s. So again, I think
this has met my criteria and I’m glad I’m here, and I look back with tremendous joy at
my Dole years.
Williams: How did the senator take your departure?
Riker: That’s a real personal thing. It’s kind of interesting. I think he and I had a very,
very close relationship because we worked together every single day and traveled the
world together. With Bob Dole, he never said things about those kinds of things,
relationships, but you knew, unsaid. Now if you did something wrong, you goofed up, he
kind of gave you a shot, okay? He’s the boss, right? So if you do something dumb—and
I did a few dumb things—he’d give you a shot. He was the kind of a guy who didn’t
need to say much. He’d say maybe three words, give you a look, or maybe two
sentences, and that was like anybody else, fifteen minutes, and you got the message real
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 45
fast. But he would show that he was over it. He’d come in later in the day or even the
next day and make some kind of comment that was a complete non sequitur, it didn’t
mean anything. He’d come in and say, “Yeah, the sun’s out.” Then he’d go back to his
office. Well, that was his way of not apologizing, no, because you did goof up, but
saying, “Okay, we had our peace, and that’s done with.”
This was kind of the same thing when I left. I told him that I was leaving. It was
on a Saturday, one of the famous Saturday morning things. I told him I needed to talk to
him. I had told him I was talking to McDonald’s. I told him how hard it was for me to
tell him this, but I’d decided to take the job, even though I didn’t want to take it. He kind
of just did one of his Dole things. He nodded his head, and you could tell the wheels
were turning. He said, “Yeah, maybe we could match it,” which kind of surprised me
and that kind of told me that in his own way he really valued what I was doing. That
meant a lot to me. We did talk, but I think the dye had been cast at that point, although I
did want to stay really bad. If they offered me that extra nickel, I would have stayed, just
like in TV. But I made myself jump. I just had to jump off the cliff, and I did. I made
myself jump.
We had a going-away party, which I’ll never forget, because obviously Dole was
there and I’d prepared remarks. The staff people were there. A lot of my friends in the
media came in, even people we had battled with and everything. We were friends at the
end of the day, and I had tremendous respect. My still photographer buddies all crowded
in. We had Democrat staffers coming in and all that stuff. It was one of the times where
my remarks, I hit it right. I still have a copy of them; I kept them. But I had some
comedy up front to break the ice. Then I told Dole how lucky I was, I could never thank
him enough. The remarks that he made, he kind of cracked, and his eyes welled up. I
think that’s all I have to say. That meant more to me than anything, and nothing meant to
be said. I’ll always treasure that and value that. To have just the respect of someone like
Dole, who’s all about integrity and loyalty, blow all the politics out of it, that was good
enough for me. So he said, too, he had remarks on the floor when I was leaving, and
George Mitchell was gracious and he said some nice things about me. Again, I’m not in
it to be thanked and all of that stuff, but Dole said no one had more integrity than I did,
and that’s probably the best compliment I’ve ever had in my life.
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 46
Williams: So how do you think Dole should be remembered?
Riker: My hunch is that the conventional wisdom about Dole will be how he will be
remembered, which is a legislative giant; one of the great senators; tremendous leader; a
guy who ran for president and didn’t make it, but will always be remembered for his
legislative genius. It’s all true. But I think Dole is underrated. I don’t think he gets near
the credit for his, like I said, first of all, international genius, if you will, foreign policy
expertise. He will never be given the credit for the 24/7 passion that he brought to the
job, the nonstop working on everything that you can’t even imagine, and the impact that
he had literally on everything in America. It sounds like a crazy statement, but when you
talk about taxes, welfare, farm, agriculture, international trade, jumping into issues like
Kosovo and Armenia and Cambodia, and Indonesia, and supporting freedom movements
all over the world, his role in standing tall during the Cold War, the impact he made
dealing with the new Soviet Union and [Mikhail] Gorbachev, and his leadership on so
many issues, it’s too much to comprehend or to boil down, even in a “what will Dole be
remembered as?”
I can predict what they’ll say about him, but it’ll really miss the man, because he
was integrity beyond belief, incredible drive and dedication to his job, the work and the
stamina. And then the other thing is, his respect for the little guy. I saw him every day of
my life more than my father, more than my wife, for thirteen years, okay? The way he
treated the “little people,” the waiters, the people in motels, the outreach to the people
who’d come up to him in airports, signing autographs, saying something nice about their
state, connecting with the “little people,” the tips that he would leave, the tips that he
would give to people out of his pocket, that tells you the measure of the man more than
the legislative victories. It was genuine. And he never forgot where he came from—hard
scrabble, Depression, moving into the basement of his own house, cutting the grass with
scissors, wounded war hero. I tend to look at him like that.
If I was going to write something about him, I don’t really care about the
legislative part—I don’t mean I don’t care, but everyone’s going to be talking about that.
It’s what he did with his disability that just blows my mind, because I was with him every
day and saw how he was challenged by that every single day and what he did to
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 47
overcome it and do more of it than anybody could have imagined. So that’s kind of what
I see.
He would always carry two things in his shirt pocket. Has anyone ever told you
this? Every single day—and it relates to two things in his life—one was his disability,
because of his arm and shoulder and his hand. He didn’t have much good feeling in his
so-called good hand. Very limited feeling in his right hand, in his so-called good hand,
with which he did everything. He had very limited feeling. So he used to say he’d put
his hand in his pocket and couldn’t tell the difference between a dime and a nickel. So
that gives you a little feeling of what it’s all about. He would carry a wad of cash in his
pocket, eighty or a hundred dollars, because, first of all, he didn’t have to fish in his
pocket and use change. And to tip people and to have cash available, mainly for just
tipping people, he would keep it in there.
He would also keep there the prayer card from his mother’s funeral. He kept it
next to his heart every single day, and it was in his pocket every single day. So maybe
that tells you more about what he was all about.
Williams: I think we’ll stop there. Thanks, Walt.
Riker: Sure.
[End of interview]
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 48
Index
ABC Nightline, 15
Associated Press, 29
Baker, Howard, 29
Baker, James, 15
Baltimore Sun, 31
Bork, Robert, 32
Boston Globe, 31
Burke, Sheila, 13, 30
Bush, George H.W., 31, 37, 39
Byrd, Robert C., 41, 42
Carter, Jimmy, 6
Challenger space shuttle accident, 33
Clinton, William J., 37
and George H.W. Bush, 37
Coe, Jo-Anne L., 15
Curtis, Bill, 3
David Brinkley Show, 29
DeArment, Roderick, 13, 30
Deng Xiaoping, 25, 26
Dole, Elizabeth, 9
and Robert J. Dole, 28
Dole, Robert J., 3, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 20, 23, 24, 36, 37, 38, 41, 46
1980 campaign, 4
and 1985 Farm Bill, 33
and agricultural policy, 32
and Bob Ellsworth, 28
and Charles Rangel, 24
and disability, 46, 47
and Edward M. Kennedy, 24
and Edward Zorinsky, 33
and Elizabeth Dole, 28
and foreign affairs, 25, 26
and Gary Hart, 37
and George H.W. Bush, 36, 40
and Jesse Helms, 24
and Richard M. Nixon, 28
and Ronald Reagan, 33, 36
and Scott Richardson, 21
and staff, 27, 28
and support of Gulf War (1991), 39
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 49
and the media, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 28, 29, 31, 32, 33,
34, 35
and Today Show, 41
and Walt Riker, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 17, 25, 44, 45
and Watergate, 6
and William J. Clinton, 36
as Senate Majority Leader, 33
chairman of Senate Finance Committee, 12, 13
election for Senate Majority Leader, 19
Domenici, Pete, 18, 30
Ellsworth, Bob
and Robert J. Dole, 28
Face the Nation, 29
Face-Off!, 38
Fleischer, Ari, 30
Glassner, Mike
and Walt Riker, 26
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 26, 46
Gore, Albert Jr., 40
Greene, Howard O., 19
Hart, Gary, 37
Helms, Jesse, 33
and Robert J. Dole, 24
Hine, Clarkson, 31, 43
Hollis, Jim, 11
Humphrey, Hubert, 5
Hussein, Saddam, 26, 39
Issues and Answers, 29
Johnson, Lyndon B., 5
Kasten, Bob, 37, 38
Kennedy, Edward M., 38
and Robert J. Dole, 24
Kennedy, John F., 5
L.A. Times, 31
Lighthizer, Robert, 13
Mansfield, Mike, 5
McClure, James A., 18
Meet the Press, 29
Meyer, Betty, 7, 15
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 50
Mitchell, George
and Walt Riker, 45
New York Times, 31, 35
Nixon, Richard M., 5, 26
and Robert J. Dole, 28
North, Oliver, 33
Old Senate Chamber, 18
Rangel, Charles
and Robert J. Dole, 24
Reagan, Ronald, 31, 33, 35, 36
Reuters, 31
Richardson, Scott, 7, 19, 21, 22, 23, 29
Riker, Christine (wife), 11, 28, 42
Riker, Walt
and McDonald's, 43, 44
as Robert J. Dole's press secretary, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25,
26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36
broadcast background, 2, 3
describes former senate press room, 38
educational background, 2
first meeting with Robert J. Dole, 7, 8
musical background, 2, 6
on Ari Fleischer, 30
on Betty Meyer, 7
on Challenger space shuttle accident, 33
on Clarkson Hine, 31
on Elizabeth Dole, 9
on George H.W. Bush, 39
on Jimmy Carter, 6
on John F. Kennedy, 5
on John Simpson, 4
on Kim Wells, 4
on Lyndon B. Johnson, 5
on media technology, 9
on Mike Glassner, 26
on Richard M. Nixon, 5, 26
on Robert J. Dole, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 23, 24, 25, 27, 28, 29, 33,
35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 44, 45, 46, 47
on Robert J. Dole and the congressional election of 1986, 41
on Robert Lighthizer, 13
on Roderick DeArment, 13
on Scott Richardson, 21
on the New York Times, 35
on the Senate Finance Committee, 12
on U.S. Senate, 33
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf
This document is from the collections at the Dole Archives, University of Kansas.
http://dolearchives.ku.edu
Riker 3-12-08—p. 51
political background, 5
recalls social unrest during Vietnam War days, 6
Robert J. Dole's Senate Finance Committee staff, 12
Roy, Dr. Bill, 6
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 31
Simpson, John, 4
Stevens, Ted, 18
Thatcher, Margaret, 26
Thomas, Clarence, 31, 32
Today Show, 13, 20, 41
Tonight Show, 20
U.S. Senate
and television, 33, 34
U.S. Senate Finance Committee, 12
United Press International, 31
Wall Street Journal, 40
Washington Post, 14, 23, 31
Washington Times, 31
Wells, Kim, 4, 10, 11
Wescoe, W. Clarke, 2
WIBW-Channel 13 (Topeka, Kansas), 2
William Allen White School of Journalism (University of Kansas), 2
Zorinsky, Edward, 33
riker_walt_2008-03-12.pdf