It occurs to me, sitting in a stately law office with Bob Dole, that Bob Dole is the exact opposite of so many of the politicians we talk about these days—especially the animatronic, polished Mitt Romney, who tries so achingly hard to be real, to be authentic, to be someone like, well, Bob Dole. 
Dole materialized last winter and entered the national conversation as one of the first Republicans anyone takes seriously to endorse Mitt Romney. (Wait, Bob Dole is still alive?) In a letter to The Des Moines Register, he offered an explicit and unanticipated reality check, becoming the lone conservative to actually say something, politely, about the invasion of the GOP weirdos into the campaign.
Bob Dole. 
"I'm still here!" he says to me.
Bob Dole?
Aw, Bob Dole. 
I ask him the question everyone seems to be asking of the GOP faithful in 2012: "Would you say your endorsement of Romney was...tepid?" 
"Not tepid at all," Bob Dole says, his face tight and serious.
There's a spritely young flack sitting behind me and another one in a chair to my left, and so it is me and Bob Dole doing a show together, which apparently is what makes Bob Dole comfortable. "Romney came to my office," Dole says, "we had a good meeting, and I'm not a Gingrich fan, so..." He famously loathed Gingrich: "He's just difficult to work with. It's either Newt's way or the highway. He's got a lot of ideas. Some of them are good; not many. So it looked to me like it would be either Romney or Newt for the nomination, but just on its own, I thought he—well, I'll say this: Romney looks like a president." 
It's always discomfiting to listen to people try to conjure any serious oomph when taking about Romney, and this moment is no exception. I make the point that Mitt Romney's background is different from Bob Dole's. "You're self-made," I say. "You embody the American Dream." 
"I've never known a lot of rich people," he says. "It's not my bag."
His bag, even at 88, is to dress in a suit each day and show up at the law firm on F Street in Washington, D.C., grand and formal where dressy people are busy and hushed. He seems propped behind his big walnut desk, his soft body slumped like an infant's in a high chair, his chin lowered over the knot of his polka-dot tie, trousers hiked high. He's wearing a crisp white shirt, and his thin hair is combed into obedient stripes. A fresh cotton ball taped over paper-thin skin on the back of his hand suggests hospital matters not quite resolved. 
I ask him how he sizes up President Obama.
"He's a nice person. I have a good relationship with the White House, I just think he's totally out of step. We're moving farther to the left, and it may not be as bad as some people say, but we've got to cut spending. One of these days, we'll probably have to raise taxes. I just think his philosophy is too far to the left."
He blinks softly, not moving much else at all. His mind is clear. Sharp. But his body. It's as if his big blocky head were not attached to the dwindling rest of him. I ask about some of the central concerns of the campaign—income inequality, negative ads, health care, gay marriage—and while he appears engaged by the questions, he lacks the zeal to offer more than the "one man, one woman," "reduce spending" party lines. His fuller thoughts lie elsewhere. He is an old man with old-man stuff going on in his head: back-in-the-day, and good golly, all those great guys and gals stomping through his time here on earth, so many more to hurry up and meet. 
"Bill Clinton called me one day recently," he offers. "I said, 'What do you want?' He said, 'I want to see how you're doing. How's your health?' He's done that a couple times. If I did anything, I made a lot of friends. And they were Republicans, of course, and Democrats." Clinton would help Dole deal with Gingrich. "I'm not going to talk to him, you talk to him," Dole, as Senate majority leader, would say to Clinton. "No, you talk to him."
"President Obama came to visit me in the hospital. He said, 'I wish you were still in the Senate; I need your help.' I'm not certain I can help on everything. Maybe some things."
Bob Dole doesn't kid himself. He knows what he's good at (getting laughs, getting things done). He championed causes today's conservatives run full campaigns against—civil rights, food stamps, benefits for the disabled. And Bob Dole knows what he's bad at (winning really big elections). He lost the vice presidency to Mondale in 1976 and then the presidency to Clinton in 1996. He even wears failure with a candor that seems lacking in Washington these days. 
"I don't know how many people run for vice president and president and lose both," Bob Dole says, turning to his aides. "I think there's one other?"
"You're testing my history on that one, sir. It would have been..."
Dole: "Anybody?"
"Lost both vice president and president? Um..."
Dole: "Somebody said there was someone—other than me?"
"You have to go back pretty far, I just, I don't think—"
Nobody can come up with one.