BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

Send us Fan Mail As part of our series on the 1968 election , we are going to take 4 episodes and create a sub series to examine thoroughly the accusation of treason that has been promulgated for years against then Vice President Richard Nixon. It is a subject that has divided the public and historians for decades. Richard Nixon always denied it. Anna Chennault never talked about it until every on...

Send us Fan Mail The assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy shocks the world and causes the Democratic Party to descend into chaos. This episode opens with messages from Senator Eugene McCarthy and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, the rivals of Robert Kennedy for the Democratic Presidential Nomination. Kennedy had just won the California Primary and seemed headed for a victory at the Democratic...

Send us Fan Mail As we cover so much of the tumultuous year of 1968, we thought we would add one of its brightest moments too.  As the country struggled with Civil Rights, assassinations, civil unrest,  and a war in Vietnam we also moved closer to a dream that stretched back to the beginning of life itself.  As long as man has been capable of looking into the heavens we have dreamed of walking on...

Send us Fan Mail This episode opens with the country ablaze after riots break out in the aftermath of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  The country struggles with how to cope with the loss of the leader who had preached nonviolent resistance, and who had died such a violent death.  The one city that did not have a riot the night of the assassination was Indianapolis, Indiana. It was...

Send us Fan Mail Not since the Civil War had America been this divided. The decisions to both go to war in Vietnam and to pass several Civil Rights Bills that changed how America interacted socially led to an explosive Presidential Election year.  Never had their been a campaign with more extreme lows as this one had.  First came a major offensive by the enemy in Vietnam during the Vietnamese New...

Send us Fan Mail This episode unfolds in two parts.  In the mid 1990's, Former Defense Secretary Robert McNamara wrote a book in which he describes what he called the mistakes his generation of leadership had made in Vietnam and his thoughts on how future generations could avoid them.  He admits they were wrong.  McNamara has often been criticized by historians, even in our series we used one...

Send us Fan Mail At the end of 1968 the United States was a country at war abroad and in chaos at home.  The  American people  were asking the same question that movie star Lauren Bacall expressed to the country on "The Dick Cavett Show", "What has become of our country, is our country worth saving? " In January 1969, a new President, but a leader many had written off as a fail...

Send us Fan Mail In this episode we see events start moving fast. You see a divide start to show between members of the Johnson Administration as to what to do about the problems of Vietnam. The enemy starts bombing American targets including the Brinks Hotel during the Christmas season, maximizing the number of deaths in the hotel. Still Lyndon Johnson refuses to retaliate. He still has to be con...

Send us Fan Mail Even though we were already involved, this was the event that really started us down the long road to a full scale land war in Asia.  Strangely, to this day no one knows exactly for sure what happened in the middle of the night on the other side of the world. Most likely, nothing. But the supposed attack on the U.S.S. Maddox and U. S. S.  C. Turner Joy led to a retaliatory strike...

Send us Fan Mail On August 1, 2012, My brother Keith Wallace collapsed after he had a brain aneurysm burst in Manning S. C. He died on August 2, 2012.  In Memory of him on this the 9th anniversary, I thought we would rebroadcast the ABC News "Carolina This Week with Tim McGinnis" show from 2013 in which I discussed his situation and the importance of organ donation.  Thousands of people...

Send us Fan Mail He was known as the Wizard of Ooze, a disheveled, elderly man with a distinctive voice and a great sense of humor and a thoughtful, cautious style.  He was the leader of the Republican Minority in the United States Senate. He often had only 36 members in his caucus. But that was often enough votes to break a filibuster and deliver enough votes to pass major legislation that would...

Send us Fan Mail If President Lyndon B. Johnson has a real claim to greatness it is for his work to pass the Voter's Rights Act of 1965.  It was the act that guaranteed every citizen in this country the right to vote. It came after a horrifying Sunday in the Alabama town of Selma. It was there that a contingent of Alabama State Troopers attacked a group of protesters as they marched across th...

Send us Fan Mail Few relationships in the history of our country were as important as the one between President Lyndon Johnson and his Attorney General Robert Kennedy, and fewer still, were as bad. The two men could not stand one another and it was like that from the start. In 1960, Bobby Kennedy had tried to get Lyndon Johnson to back out of his acceptance of the Vice Presidential slot on the Dem...

Send us Fan Mail This episode opens as Lyndon Johnson declares War on Poverty in America. LBJ had a vision of the America he wanted to create and unlike many of our Presidents this man was the quintessential legislator.  Johnson's ability to get legislation passed was an area of his job in which there has been no equal, whether you like what he passed or not. Johnson's Great Society chan...

Send us Fan Mail The start of Season 3, begins on the Tarmac of Andrews Air Force Base on November 22, 1963. A new President addresses reporters and the American people after the assassination of a young and vigorous President. The New President was an old hand in Washington, with a larger than life persona and an ego as large as the State he had represented in the United States Senate, the state...

Send us Fan Mail While we were in production for season 3 we lost a very special and important part of our production team, my dog  Cooper. He was 11 years old and was a special member of my family. The two of us have weathered some very significant storms together and it warranted a special send off. Cooper's cancer diagnosis came as a surprise and he lived a brief four weeks after the major...

Send us Fan Mail Senator John Warner, the second longest serving Senator from Virginia ,  was one of the last World War 2 and Korean War Veterans serving in the Congress when he retired in 2009. He passed away on May 25, 2021 at the age of 94. He was a class act and a man who knew how to get things done. He knew how to work with people and how to reach across the aisle and find bi-partisan solutio...

Send us Fan Mail Season 3 of  "Bridging the Political Gap " takes us through the most controversial period in our history other than the Civil War.  In this season we will cover one of the most controversial an arguably most consequential Presidencies in the entire history of our nation. The Administration of Lyndon B. Johnson.  Here is a preview of what promises to be a long, hot, summe...

Send us Fan Mail November 1963, was a month that changed the trajectory of American History.  During the summer of 1963, President John F. Kennedy and the Kennedy Administration grew increasingly frustrated with the South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and his increasingly dictatorial ways in running the government. When Ambassador , and Republican, Henry Cabot Lodge pushed Diem to remove his...

Send us Fan Mail In this special edition of "Bridging the Political Gap" , our host Randal Wallace sat down earlier in the month (June 2021)  with This week with Tim McGinnis, a current South Carolina State House Member and former television anchorman for WPDE TV-15, the local ABC affiliate here in Myrtle Beach. Tim McGinnis is also the owner of "The Famous Toastery" in Carolin...

Send us Fan Mail In Part 3 of the celebration of the life of George Shultz, we look back at one of the singular, major events of the Cold War in which George Shultz was a major participant.   For a couple of days in October of 1986, four men met and changed the direction of the world. The two leaders President Ronald Reagan and Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and their two chief diploma...

Send us Fan Mail In this second part in our celebration of the life of George Shultz,  we look at his many wise thoughts on the problems our country and world face today, and how he felt they needed to be addressed. He tells stories from his time in public office as both a cabinet member,  an education leader, and his career in the private sector.  There is a lot to learn and a lot we can all be t...

Send us Fan Mail "He was a gentleman of honor and ideas, dedicated to public service and respectful debate, even into his 100th year on Earth. That’s why multiple presidents, of both political parties, sought his counsel. I regret that, as president, I will not be able to benefit from his wisdom, as have so many of my predecessors." - President Joe Biden George Shultz died on February 6,...

Send us Fan Mail "Madison did not design government to be easy, he designed it to be difficult, for unrelenting process and debate" - Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan D- New York There is no more important tool in the arsenal of the minority party when it comes to maintaining some sway with legislation in the United States Senate than the legislative Filibuster. It is a tool with a very i...

Send us Fan Mail One of the truly most heartfelt and memorable things I was able to do as an elected official and candidate for Congress was speak at this event honoring those who had lost their lives in Military Service in 2012.  This speech was very special to me because it involves three people I admired tremendously. I was able to talk about my political hero Bob Dole, My Great Uncle J.B. Crow...