BOB DOLE : 1995 Clinton's Comeback

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Our first episode of our new feature complimenting our 1995 and 1996 retrospective seasons of our show where we share the political columns from our time at the Lander University Student Newspaper where we commented on the national issues we are now covering with our podcast. This is real time commentary and we hope you enjoy this first edition of our column Politically Speaking - History editions , As we cover the College Republicans meeting Senator Bob Dole in Columbia , South Carolina. 

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An introduction to a new feature for our podcast  and publication on Substack. 

Please come over to Substack and The Randal Wallace Journal and join our email list for future updates on the journal, the podcasts and the coming books over the next year and beyond. 

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No one saw it coming. There had been no public hearings, the story had died down, the Ethics Committee had been predicted to censure Senator Packwood, and most likely strip him of his Chairmanship of the powerful Senate Budget Committee. 

Then it announced that in a 6 - 0 vote, it would recommend expulsion to the full Senate. 

As the old saying goes, that is when it hit the fan. 

Here we will tune in to the dueling press conferences as Senator Bob Packwood went on the offensive to defend himself and try to salvage his 27 year career. Just after his press conference ended the Ethics Committee Chairman, Mitch McConnell R- Kentucky and Richard Bryan, the ranking member, D-Nevada, stepped in front of the cameras with thousands of pages of materials and made their case. 

Bob Packwood was cornered, but he was not without friends and as you will hear, many of them, including members of the press would come to his defense, and often it wasn't even subtle. It would be some of the most interesting and riveting hours that I ever can remember in politics. 

Over the next few episodes we will take you through it all as Senator Bob Packwood, one of the most popular and powerful members of the United States Senate saw his career finally unravel in front of the world. 

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In this special short episode, we are introducing our new publication on Substack and new short feature for the show. 

The Randal Wallace Journal is a new publication on Substack and we invite you over to sign up and get on our email list.  Here is the Link https://substack.com/@randalw

The Randal Wallace Journal will be bringing you several different columns including the return of Politically Speaking with Randal Wallace, which was our political column from 1995 and 1996 at the Lander College Forum Student Newspaper. 

On this show, we will be sharing with you our history collection where we commented on the very events the final two Bob Dole seasons will be covering and we will also be writing some new columns on today's issues. 

Here is the various columns you will have access to on The Randal Wallace Journal on Substack. 

1. Politically Speaking with Randal Wallace  (Contemporary and the History Collections) 

2. Leadership Lessons

3. Presidential Notebook

4. Behind the Story

5. From the Archives

6. Myrtle Beach and South Carolina 

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In this episode we will listen tot he one full length interview Bob Packwood gave reporter Barbara Walters about midway through the ordeal that would consume thirty-three months in total before it toppled his career. 

It is an in-depth interview an examination of the scandal and it does leave you with lingering questions about the entire ordeal that I think still echo through time all of these years later. The accusations were, in all but one case, decades old. the accusations about his diaries and him looking for jobs for his now ex-wife, all seems to be a little bit without merit. 

Was Bob Packwood about to pay the ultimate price to atone for the sins of the senate and powerful men for decades. Was the process fair?  Or was the case just that overwhelming. 

My own opinion is it was a little of both, but we will let you decide as you hear it all unfold over the next several episodes. 

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In this episode we examine the scandal that would eventually lead to Senator Bob Packwood's fall from grace. 

We will hear from the women involved in their long form "60 Minutes" Interview, where 10 of the accusers sat down with Morley Safer of CBS News and told their stories. 

Then will let you hear from the reporter who broke the story and let her tell you how she uncovered the story, how hard it actually was to get it printed, her interactions with the Senator himself, and her thoughts about modern journalism in the 1990s. 

Finally, we will take you live to the Senate Press room gallery where Senator Bob Packwood would attempt to take this scandal head on in December of 1992 as he fields question after question, apologizes for his behavior and frankly, accepts that his behavior had been wrong. 

But will it save him? As you will see, the flood waters were rising and the scandal will begin to take on a life of its own. 

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This is a new feature that will actually be introduced later in the season when it fits more perfectly in our timeline with the Bob Packwood Special Series. But these two stories were discovered when we were doing the research to reintroduce the history of our old column at The Lander Forum Student Newspaper. 

In honor of Senator Lindsey Graham, who passed away on July 11, 2026, we thought we would go ahead and share these two articles with you. We hope you like the new feature of our podcast. 

In future episodes, we will be sharing our old columns from 1995 and 1996 from the Lander Forum Student Newspaper. These are articles and columns that we wrote as we were living through the timeline this season and the next season of our podcast are dealing with. We thought we would share them during the run of these two seasons.

 Also, we are reintroducing the column as part of our new publication on Substack, The Randal Wallace Journal. We invite you to go over to Substack and subscribe, it will get you on our email list and allow us to get in contact with you. We plan to share our current columns on here as part of the Politically Speaking segments as well, with both a history column and a separate current events column too. 

We will have more on this new segment later in the season when our first historical column would have entered the story in the Bob Packwood Special Series currently running. We decided to share these two stories now, after the death of Lindsey Graham, who emerged on the national stage, representing the South Carolina Third District, where Lander University is located, during this same time period. 

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Who was Bob Packwood? 

He was one of the leading Senators in Washington DC on tax and fiscal policy. The Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and often acknowledged as the Senator with the greatest grasp on how the finances of the Federal Government actually worked. In this episode we look back at who Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon was on the eve of his 1992 reelection, which he would win handily, before disaster struck. 

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In this preview we look back at arguably the biggest game changer of 1995 for Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole. It was the loss of his chief Lieutenant in the United States Senate, Bob Packwood. 
Dole and Packwood were friends, and both men were experts on the Federal budget. 
Packwood’s loss cannot be overstated. 

In this special series we will examine the scandal that brought him down, the agonizing three years it unfolded and the shocking 24 hours in which one of the most brilliant and powerful leaders in modern Senate history saw his two decade career collapse. 

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EXCLUSIVE HISTORIC CONTENT: 

IN 1995, our Host Randal Wallace showed up tot he brand new Bob Dole for President Headquarters with a camcorder and recorded the event there as Senator Bob Dole and his wife Elizabeth Dole cut the ribbon for the new headquarters. 

It was an all star cast of political leaders who stood on the stage beside him to welcome him to the state and open the campaign headquarters in Columbia S.C. 

Attorney General Charlie Condon, Lieutenant Governor Bob Peeler, former Governor Carroll Campbell, and Governor David Beasley, most prominent political figures in the state of South Carolina at that time and they were all united for Bob Dole for President. 

You can hear their remarks in this episode.  

Questions or comments at  , [email protected] ,  https://twitter.com/randal_wallace   , and http://www.randalwallace.com/
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