As former Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole is laid to rest, I’m reminded of what happened during one of his last big legislative fights. I wrote about it in my book — see chapter 5 — and in the wake of the Kansan’s passing, I’ve found myself thinking about it all week.
It was in 2012 when the Democratic-led Senate took up the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a treaty that had already been ratified by more than 120 other countries, and the terms of which had been negotiated by the Bush-Cheney administration.
From an American perspective, the point of the treaty was to extend the benefits of our 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act — legislation that Dole played a key role in passing — to people around the world. When the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the treaty in July 2012, then-Chairman John Kerry explained that the proposal simply “raises the [international] standard to our level without requiring us to go further.”
Its ratification seemed obvious.
Senate Republicans nevertheless balked. South Carolina’s Jim DeMint, for example, inexplicably said ratification of the treaty might expand abortion rights. Pennsylvania’s Rick Santorum — by this point, a political pundit on CNN — was an especially fierce critic of the measure, insisting that the treaty, which would’ve required the United States to do literally nothing except wait for the world to follow our example, represented “a direct assault” on conservatives.
Dole, badly injured during his World War II service, took on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities as a personal cause, confident that he could apply his leadership skills to the fight. The Kansas Republican worked the phones, as members of the chamber he once led considered whether to ratify the treaty.








