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This podcast uses government documents to illuminate the workings of the American government, and offer context around the effects of government agencies in your everyday life.
N. Rodgers: Hey, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Good morning, Nia. How are you?
N. Rodgers: I am excellent. How are you?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, I'm doing quite well, and I'm pretty excited because today listeners, we are recording another episode and are behind the Stories Behind the Names series. Listeners, I know at times you probably have been struck by the sheer enthusiasm I bring to a topic. Today, the roles are going to be reversed. Not saying that I'm not enthusiastic about the subject of today's episode, but I think today, Nia will be even more enthusiastic than me because Nia, the subject of today's behind the Story Behind the Name episode is whom?
N. Rodgers: Mary Elizabeth Alexander Hanford, better known as Elizabeth Dole.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: By her married name much later in her life.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, and her nickname?
N. Rodgers: Her nickname is Liddy L-I-D-D-Y and I'm sad to admit that in my whole life, I thought it was Libby Dole. I did not understand it was Liddy Dole, which is, by the way, a nickname she gave herself. Talk about strong will, man, she was strong willed from the time she was three. That was when she gave herself a nickname, and everybody was like, well, okay, then.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: But one of the reasons that Aughie is saying that I'm going to be so excited is because Liddy Dole is from North Carolina. She was born in North Carolina, Salisbury, North Carolina, and yours truly was born in North Carolina. Not too far from there, actually Charlotte, North Carolina. She's born quite a bit before I was. She was born in 1936, July 29th, 1936, and her parents, Mary Ella and John Van Hanford had a son, John, named for his father, Johnny, named for his father, and he was 13 years older than Mary Elizabeth. Mary Elizabeth is named for her grandmother. Who she used to go and hang out with because her grandmother would read the Bible to her while she ate cookies and milk, and she liked to hang out with her grandma. They called her Mom Cathey, C-A-T-H-E-Y which was her mother's maiden name. Mom Cathey and Pop Cathey live next door.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. That's oftentimes the case in small rural towns.
N. Rodgers: That's right. Salisbury was smaller and more rural back in the day. Although it was still big enough for her father to have a flower shop. Her father was a flower shop guy.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Florist. Thank you. That's the word I want, a flower shop guy. Sorry.
J. Aughenbaugh: Small business owner but in rural towns, and I think for some of our listeners, but in particular, Nia, for some of our students, who come from large urban areas or large suburban areas. This idea that your family members would be right next door, or in my case, my mother's aunt was right around the corner. My grandmother's house was two blocks away. You got off the bus, and if your mom or both of your parents worked, there was always a family member who would be around. This idea that you could get away with anything in a small town. Well, it's beyond the fact that everybody knew each other in a small town, but in particular, you had all your family members in that small town. So you could never get away with anything.
N. Rodgers: There were eyes on you all the time.
J. Aughenbaugh: You would go ahead and do things like Liddy Dole did, which is, you would go to your grandmother's house. You would get a snack. They might read to you. In my case, my great grandfather was still around when I was a young boy, and I would go to his house, and he would teach me how to go ahead and weed a garden and mow the yard, and this is how you do X. This is how you make chicken soup. I make chicken soup today based on my great grandfather's recipe. Now, was I all that interested in making chicken soup when I was 8-years-old? No. But I was interested in the fact that an adult would go ahead and show interest in me, and that's what went on in small rural communities. That's what if you will, shaped and produced, Elizabeth Dole.
N. Rodgers: In huge part also because her mom was involved in church and philanthropic, so from early childhood, service was part of her make up, was part of her life. In the third grade, she organizes a bird watching club and she's elected the president of this little club. In the sixth grade, she starts a book club and names herself president because she likes being in charge of stuff.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: In her senior year of high school, she ran for but lost the job of senior class president, which because it was considered a boys job.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Remember, this is in the mid-'50s. That really would have been a boy-centric leadership role. She was, however, voted most likely to succeed, and I would be willing to bet that in her class, she probably was the one who succeeded given what she does with her life.
J. Aughenbaugh: What she does next. She graduates from a small town high school. Then she matriculates at Duke University. This is one of the IVs of the South.
N. Rodgers: Where she's elected student government president in 1957. The Duke Chronicle, which is the Duke student newspaper, elected her leader of the year in '58. She's really firing on all her cylinders there. After graduation, she decides she's going to go to work as a secretary in the Harvard Law Library, and then she wants to further her education from what would have been her bachelor's, so she goes to study at Oxford in England. She's going to study English history and English government, but while she's there, she decides that she wants to go to the Soviet Union. Now, this, friends, is in 1959, height of the Cold War. Well, not height of the Cold War, but pretty close to the height of the Cold War. Before she calls home to tell her parents she's going to go to the Soviet Union, she writes out a list of all the pros and cons, and she makes this pitch to them. She's so convincing that they let her go, but you know they had to be terrified. You know they were scared.
J. Aughenbaugh: This is a small town family.
N. Rodgers: You want to go where, and do what?
J. Aughenbaugh: It's one thing to go ahead and have one of your children go up to Boston, Massachusetts, to work in the Harvard Law Library.
N. Rodgers: That's far, but we can live with that because we can still get there by train.
J. Aughenbaugh: But it's quite another for you to go to Oxford, but then also go to the Soviet Union during the apex of the Cold War. Come on now.
N. Rodgers: She graduates and she comes back in the summer of 1960, she decides she's going to work for one of the North Carolina senators, which I believe she worked in Jesse Helms' office, but I could be wrong about that. I couldn't figure out which senator.
J. Aughenbaugh: Which senator it was, yeah.
N. Rodgers: But she's working there as a clerk and stuff and she's all hanging around up in DC, and she goes to one of only two women in the Senate. She goes to Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, who we should do an episode on Aughie because she's also fascinating.
J. Aughenbaugh: She is fascinating.
N. Rodgers: She says, I want to be in the government. Margaret Chase Smith says to her, well, if you want to be in the government, you got to go get a law degree. That's the only way you're going to make it. Because she's Liddy Dole, she decides to go to Harvard and be one of 24 women in a class of 550 men, because if she's going to go to law school, she's going to go to the best law school. You know what I mean?
J. Aughenbaugh: She could have easily gone to her alma mater, which even back then, Duke University Law School was probably in the top 15, top 20. Richard Nixon got his law degree from Duke.
N. Rodgers: It's not like Duke's chopped liver, but she goes, no, I think I'm going to go to Harvard.
J. Aughenbaugh: I like her.
N. Rodgers: To be one of very few women.
J. Aughenbaugh: She graduates Phi Beta Kappa. Come on now.
N. Rodgers: She graduates with honors.
J. Aughenbaugh: It isn't like she was mediocre, she brought up the tail end of the grade point average. Come on.
N. Rodgers: In 1967, she's graduated now and she's a staff assistant to the Secretary of Health Education and Welfare in the Johnson Administration. Then from 1969-1973, she was Deputy Assistant to President Nixon for Consumer Affairs, and this begins her lifelong advocacy for consumers. A lot of what she does as she goes through life is consumer awareness, consumer protection things. We'll mention a few things as we go. Wait, so 1973, she stops being the assistant deputy because she's deputy assistant to President Nixon because the year before, she met a dashing soldier, divorced ex-veteran named Bob Dole, and she marries him in 1975. What is important to know about Bob Dole and there's lots of important things to know about Bob Dole, and if you want to know, we did a memorial episode when he died. You can go back and listen to that memorial episode. But one of the things you should know about Bob Dole is that he was injured in the war. He was very injured in the war, and part of his divorce had to do with his wife struggling to be a caretaker.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That comes into play later with some of the stuff that Liddy Dole does in her later years.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because the first part of her post-law school career is pretty much in the executive branch of the federal government. First within the Johnson administration, then the Nixon administration, Nixon appoints her for a seven-year term on the Federal Trade Commission, and she does that notwithstanding a leave of absence to work on behalf of her husband's vice presidential run with Gerald Ford. But even after her term ends with the Federal Trade Commission, Reagan gets elected in '80 and she becomes the Head of the White House Office of Public Liaison. That's the office that basically, manages, it's not the press secretary's office, but the Office of Public Liaison is the office that manages all of the state dinners. If the president is going to be in your state, your town, that's the office that goes ahead and handles all the details. This is very characteristic of Liddy Dole's if you will, career. You can trace this back to when she was a child. She likes to be in charge of the details.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's very characteristic of her public career. She is very detail oriented. She knew where everybody was supposed to be. She knew everybody's schedule, etc.
N. Rodgers: Her work on the Federal Trade Commission is very detailed work about consumer advocacy. Then as Secretary of Transportation, '83-'87, she's Secretary of Transportation. I'll get to tell you about a legal case here in a second.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: The first thing she does is she insists on headlamps on vehicles that are called Liddy lamps. The height of them is important so that they can be seen on the highway. That's the first thing she does. Then she starts working with a group called Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
J. Aughenbaugh: Hold on. For our younger listeners, MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving has always been a part of your life, right?
N. Rodgers: Right.
J. Aughenbaugh: But in the 1980s.
N. Rodgers: They didn't exist. They were brand new.
J. Aughenbaugh: Brand new. You see this with interest groups. They were oftentimes portrayed as zealous. But they all had one thing in common, they were mothers who had lost a child because of a drunk driver. Nia, their work with Liddy Dole, Secretary of Transportation leads to what policy initiative?
N. Rodgers: It leads to them encouraging her to deny funding to states that have drinking ages below 21.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: They want to see a national drinking age of 21.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes because the Mothers Against Drunk Driving had tapped into a body of research, that showed that for every additional year in the drinking age, you would reduce drunk driving and highway fatalities by some rather significant percentages.
N. Rodgers: Between 18 and 21, you could drop the death toll quite a bit?
J. Aughenbaugh: Significantly.
N. Rodgers: Quite a bit. If you get it to be 21. She's like, I'm on board with that. South Carolina said, "Hang on a minute."
J. Aughenbaugh: Not South Carolina, South Dakota.
N. Rodgers: South Dakota. Sorry. South Dakota said, "Hang on a minute."
J. Aughenbaugh: But what's interesting here is Liddy Dole was able to convince a president who campaigned on returning authority to state governments to go ahead and pass.
N. Rodgers: Excellent point.
J. Aughenbaugh: To pass a federal law, which would usurp their sovereign decision making. This is how respective and persuasive Liddy Dole was.
N. Rodgers: Right. She went to Reagan and said, "We got to stop this."
J. Aughenbaugh: "We got to stop this." Yes.
N. Rodgers: We have to curb it in some way. How can we curb it? This is what we think, sir. She showed him the statistics, and he went, "Okay." Which you're right, was a big thing for. By the way, I misspoke about Liddy lights. They're not the front light, they're the back light. They're center back light.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's right. Yes.
N. Rodgers: When you're driving behind somebody and you can't see their tail lights, but you can see that in the back windshield, that light that's at the top of the car, and you see the light go on, you know they're stopping, she's the one who brought that into. She's big into safety. But anyway, South Dakota is like, "I don't think so. I don't think you're going to make me raise the drinking age to 21. How did that turn out for South Dakota Aughie?
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, South Dakota lost. It is one of the most important federalism cases of the 1980s. The Supreme Court held that neither the 21st Amendment, which was the repeal of prohibition, but gave states the authority to decide about the sale and distribution of alcohol nor the 10th Amendment prohibited the federal government from conditioning federal highway dollars on strings conditions. The point and what was really interesting was the majority opinion was written by Chief Justice Rehnquist, who was a huge states rights advocate. But even he said, because Congress was clear, and that the amount of money lost, because South Dakota had a choice. If they raised their drinking age, they received their full allotment of federal highway money. But if they didn't, they only lost about 7%. He said, it's not coercive, and South Dakota has a choice. If not raising the drinking age is that important to them as a policy
N. Rodgers: Then they take the 7% hit.
J. Aughenbaugh: They take the 7% hit. But he said, "This is well within Congress's spending authority. Congress uses its spending authority in all kinds of ways to achieve policy initiatives. But it's a landmarks Supreme Court case.
N. Rodgers: Between those two things, you see her thread of making consumers safer.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Making driving safer, making people safer, right? She's got a long history from her consumer affairs under President Nixon. Well, she was Democrat for a while in her youth.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Then she joined the Republican Party and became but even when she was in the Republican Party, she supported things like the ERA, but she knew that the rest of the party would not.
J. Aughenbaugh: She is by today's standards a moderate Republican.
N. Rodgers: Yes, absolutely. That's a good way to put it. What we would old school call moderate instead of what's become moderate, which is well, they're not Trump, so they must be moderate or they're not AOC, so they must be moderate. I'm like, people, you guys have lost moderate. I do not think this word means what you think it means. Princess Bride.
J. Aughenbaugh: Nice Princess Bride, perfect.
N. Rodgers: She was actually a true moderate in the sense that there were a lot of things where she was like, we don't need to go to the extreme.
J. Aughenbaugh: We can work with our opponents. That's the other thing. Listeners, particularly our younger listeners, Liddy Dole represented a type of politician that today does not exist in either political party, which is a willingness to cross party lines to address a policy problem. Again, if you think back to the case of South Dakota versus Dole, this was a policy problem. We had young people drinking and then getting behind the wheel?
N. Rodgers: Killing themselves and others.
J. Aughenbaugh: Killing themselves and others. If they didn't kill themselves or others, they severely harmed themselves or others or caused exorbitant property damage which I know many of us are like, well, yeah, there's a bit [inaudible]
N. Rodgers: Who cares but the next time a guy drives through your front porch and into your living room?
J. Aughenbaugh: You tell me you don't care. In regards to auto insurance rates, this had a huge impact. This was costing families hundreds of dollars every year. Again, she was willing to work across party lines, which, again, you don't see today.
N. Rodgers: In '89 she becomes Secretary of Labor for a couple of years?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, for Bush 41, yes.
N. Rodgers: Then she decides she's going to be the president of the American Red Cross.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: From 1991-1999. Now, what's interesting about this is that in 1991, she did not take a salary. She volunteered the first year she was the president of the American Red Cross because she wanted to get the lay of the land, she wanted to understand how things worked, and she didn't want to take a salary till she could do the job. That's who she is. I'm not going to let you pay me to learn on the job. I'm going to learn.
J. Aughenbaugh: I understand that some folks would say, "Well, only a person
N. Rodgers: With means.
J. Aughenbaugh: With privilege can go ahead and do this. Fine, fair enough. But there are plenty of people that you know, Nia, that I know who would be like, whether or not I'm learning on the job or I know the job, my time is important, and you're going to pay me. But her attitude was, this is an important nonprofit who serves countless number of Americans, when their lives are at their worst. How can I go ahead and do this? I thought it was remarkable when she did because she was being groomed for prominent positions after Bush 41 within the Republican Party.
N. Rodgers: Which we will get to in a moment. But the first thing I want to mention is while she was president of the American Red Cross, one of the things that she did for that organization was she retooled the way that they test blood.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: While that doesn't seem like it's important in the years of HIV, which this is after the immediate HIV crisis, but while it is still problematic for the blood supply. The way that she helped reorganize made people feel comfortable with taking blood from the American Red Cross, which is a good thing because they provide 50% of the blood that gets provided in disaster. People need to be able to trust that system, and she worked really hard to make that a trustworthy system.
J. Aughenbaugh: Because one of the big concerns during the 1980s in regards to HIV was, could the American Red Cross take blood from people who have been diagnosed with AIDS? Because AIDS, at the time was seen as an illness related to two populations that didn't get very much sympathy and support at all in the 1980s.
N. Rodgers: Drug using populations and gay men.
J. Aughenbaugh: Gay men.
N. Rodgers: Generally.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. By improving the testing, it then went ahead and allowed individuals from both of those categories, those sub-populations to be able to return to giving blood. I knew this was a big issue, without going into many of the gory details, but it was a big issue with many of the people with whom I was friends at the time. Because the American population was just like, "Can we trust the blood supply?"
N. Rodgers: In the early HIV years, blood supply had been known to transfer HIV because there weren't proper testing methods. Then it became, if your kid's a hemophiliac, what are you going to do? You can't take blood because you can't trust it. There's all these issues, and she manages to work out this trust level so that people can say, I believe that the American Red Cross is testing properly and will not add to the spread of AIDS and in fact, will allow people to give blood who we need to give blood, which are young healthy men, which is of the gay community, right?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: Anyway, so good job on the Red Cross thing. But you're right. She's being groomed and they're like, "Maybe you could run for president." She's like, "You know what? Maybe I should." She does. Well, in 1999 she puts in a presidential bid, and she drops out before the primaries because she doesn't raise enough money. She's going up against Bush II, right?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. Yeah, Bush II.
N. Rodgers: Right, because he's the one who ends up against Clinton. Is that right? No, or is it Bush I?
J. Aughenbaugh: No. This is 2000, so in 1996, her husband is the Republican Party nominee and loses to Bill Clinton. 2000 Bush 43 beats Al Gore in the highly contested.
N. Rodgers: It's Bush II that she's?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. Even before the primaries begin, she was one of a number of Republican Party challengers.
N. Rodgers: She raised a lot of money.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But she was polling terribly.
N. Rodgers: It's like at 11% or something. She didn't have very good polling numbers.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. She didn't have very good.
N. Rodgers: Republicans were not yet ready to vote for a woman for president.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. To her credit-
N. Rodgers: Although man, she'd have been a good one.
J. Aughenbaugh: He pivots quickly, right?
J. Aughenbaugh: At this point, her husband's no longer in the Senate.
N. Rodgers: They're living in Georgetown where they have lived for the last 40 years because they have been in federal politics.
J. Aughenbaugh: Well, 30 years, yeah.
N. Rodgers: Right. Sorry, 30 years.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah, 2002. But the Republican Party from North Carolina reaches out to her and says, would you be interested in running for the Senate in North Carolina, because Jesse Helms was retiring after a very long and controversial US Senate career.
N. Rodgers: You can't see my face, folks, but if you could see my face, you would see that I'm giving side eye to Jesse Helms because when Aughie says he was controversial, that's one way to put it.
J. Aughenbaugh: I was trying to be diplomatic.
N. Rodgers: You were being diplomatic because Jesse Helms could start a fight just by looking at somebody. But you know what? He was incredible at constituency management. If you were from North Carolina and you wanted to go to the White House and do the tour thing, man, his services, they would get you tickets for you and your mama and your grandmama and your cat, and y'all could all go to the White House and see everything you want to see.
J. Aughenbaugh: His constituent service operation was the model for US senators. There were even Democratic senators who were like, I can't stand guy, I can't stand the policies, but we need to set up our constituent service operation just like he does.
N. Rodgers: Was therefore beloved in North Carolina because of that and because on a regular basis, he brought pork back because he was brilliant.
J. Aughenbaugh: What was really interesting was North Carolina, the Republican Party reaching out to her was making a conscious choice because her politics were easily two to three clicks to the left of Jesse Helms. In terms of just appearance and propriety, she was moderate. She was well spoken. Heck, excuse this, but she was civil. Whereas Jesse Helms, as you pointed out, Nia, Jesse Helms would start fights with his friends.
N. Rodgers: He'd start fight with paint.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: I don't like this color of paint.
J. Aughenbaugh: He would start yelling at the sidewalk.
N. Rodgers: Exactly. Not a warm and fuzzy man, but got a lot done. She's running for his seat. She runs against a guy called Erskine Bowles. If you don't think that that's not a great name, there is something wrong with you because Erskine Bowles, not only is that a great name, he'd been in politics for a long time.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, yeah, he served in the Clinton administration. Yes.
N. Rodgers: He's just a all around decent fella and his argument against Liddy Dole was, she has not lived in North Carolina in 40 years.
J. Aughenbaugh: She's a carpetbagger.
N. Rodgers: She's a carpetbagger. She has lived in DC. What does she know about us? Nothing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: That did not carry the day. She won because one, she had an excellent candidacy machine.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: And two, Liddy Dole is, well, at the time, she was beautiful, she was well spoken. She was all the things you were saying. She was exactly what North Carolina was like, oh, look at her. She's such a lady. She's such a wonderful lady and she had had this long history of being pro people.
J. Aughenbaugh: It was really easy for small rural town North Carolinians to go ahead and say, one of our own made good and they're coming back home. That's a story that resonates in rural America.
N. Rodgers: Don't forget that North Carolina's purple. Even to this day, North Carolina has streaks of purple in it. This idea that she was kind of sort of a Democrat and kind of sort of a Republican because of the way she carried herself in the number of administrations that she'd worked for, I think she carried the day because of that. She wins that and she sits on Senate committees and does all her work, and it's fabulous. She goes up for reelection in 2008, and she makes a huge mistake.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes, she does.
N. Rodgers: She has an opponent called Kay Hagan.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: If you are going, who? That's what most of North Carolina was doing in 2008. Who?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Then she accused in this ad, Kay Hagan of being an atheist.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: Kay Hagan is not an atheist. Kay Hagan has had a long history with the Methodist Church. Because Liddy Dole made an unfounded accusation and made a dramatic ad, it really went against her.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: There's times when you have to be really careful about the ads that you put out because they will drive things in different ways, and it cost Liddy Dole the seat. Kay Hagan won it. She takes a few years off. Then in 2012, she founds the Elizabeth Dole Foundation to support caregivers of wounded warriors. Remember, we mentioned Bob Dole and his lifelong injuries with his shoulder and his spine and his arm. One of his arms was paralyzed, wasn't it? He couldn't move.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: One of his arms. She did a lot, and she recognized how hard it was for the caregivers of veterans, and so she set up this foundation so that people could have fellowships and come together and study things and earn money. It's really a pretty cool thing. Then in 2024, President Biden awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which I think considering her career, it's probably legit. I would say it's legit.
J. Aughenbaugh: We did a previous podcast episode, Listeners, about the various awards that the government can give out. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award that you can win in the United States.
N. Rodgers: I don't think it was undeserved.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, no.
N. Rodgers: I think Elizabeth Dole was quite the character and she's done quite the level of service.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah. To put a final touch on this episode, again, think about this, Listeners, Liddy Dole, in many ways, spans at least two waves of feminism in the United States in her lifetime. From this idea that a woman from a small rural town could end up going to Duke and being elected student government president, then going to Harvard Law School when at that time, it was very unusual for women to be accepted into Harvard law, graduates with honors and then starts working a series of prominent policymaking jobs across presidential administrations, and then runs for elected office, runs one of the most important nonprofits in the United States.
N. Rodgers: I would argue that if you ask people name a nonprofit, probably most people would say the American Red Cross.
J. Aughenbaugh: American Red Cross. Because anytime there is a natural disaster in the United States.
N. Rodgers: That's who shows up.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's who shows up. This is a person of service. This is a person who went ahead and in many ways, reflected, I would argue the second and third waves of feminism pretty nicely, just in her lifetime.
N. Rodgers: A person in her own right, not a person as a reflection of anybody else. I think she would have done all this stuff even if she had not been married to Bob Dole.
J. Aughenbaugh: To Bob Dole. Yeah.
N. Rodgers: I'm not saying he didn't grease wheels because being married to a senator always greases wheels.
J. Aughenbaugh: It doesn't hurt, but at the same time, I agree with you. She would have had a magnificent government career even if she was not married to Bob Dole.
N. Rodgers: If he had not been a senator, he would have been Elizabeth Dole's husband.
J. Aughenbaugh: Husband. Yeah. Let's not cast aspersions simply because your heart wants what your heart wants. But the Reagan administration doesn't go ahead and raise the drinking age to 21 because of Senator Bob Dole. They raised the drinking age because of Secretary Liddy Dole.
N. Rodgers: And her convincing.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yeah.
N. Rodgers: They don't put those brake lights on your cart, which it seems like such a small thing. But if you ever travel at night or you travel in the rain or you travel in the snow, it's not a little thing to be able to know that the person in front of you is stopping. When you think about things like that, but also just when you think about the sheer amount of service, she just kept accepting. Aughie and I were talking off recording, and I want to mention this to listeners because it's important. He said something and I totally agree with it. He said, if asked to serve by a president, you take that seriously and if you can serve, you do serve because we serve at the pleasure of the president. If you're asked to serve the American people, you need to have a dang good reason for saying no.
J. Aughenbaugh: No. Yes.
N. Rodgers: I think that Elizabeth Dole was asked over and over and she served over and over because she believeed that that's what you do.
J. Aughenbaugh: There's a reason why they kept on asking her to serve, and it's not because she married a famous senator. They kept on asking her to serve because she could do the damn job.
N. Rodgers: She was effective in the role each time.
J. Aughenbaugh: That's a compliment that doesn't get thrown around enough today, but it was definitely accurate in regards to Liddy Dole. Thank you, Nia, for guiding us through the story behind the name.
N. Rodgers: Thank you, Aughie. I'm looking forward to our next one, too, because our next one is another fabulous lady.
J. Aughenbaugh: Oh, yes.
N. Rodgers: A little preview. Another fabulous lady is coming up. We're not going to do just women. We've done a lot of men, so now we're going to do a couple women.
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes. But thank you. Listeners, this is one of those times where I do wish we recorded the visual because how animated Nia has been throughout this episode.
N. Rodgers: Well, she's my home girl. It's hard for me because women from North Carolina, that's not a huge group of people to start with that are doing national level stuff. There's a lot of great women in North Carolina, but they're doing state level stuff for the most part and there's Liddy Dole, who's like, I'm not satisfied. I'm going out in the world, kicking butt and taking names.
J. Aughenbaugh: Let me be very clear. It's not that Nia is not animated, because I think you could probably hear her the animation in her voice with the audio recording. But the number of times Nia has leaned forward.
N. Rodgers: [inaudible] my arms?
J. Aughenbaugh: Yes.
N. Rodgers: You know what y'all should picture me as if you want a picture of how I usually am when I get excited in these things. Aughie has seen this at presentations as well, is a little bit like Kermit the Frog. My arms go everywhere and I lean forward. I'm not as cute as Kermit the Frog, but I will take it. Thank you, Aughie.
J. Aughenbaugh: Thank you, Nia.