Why did Bob Dole give up his majority leader spot to run for president?

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I have the 1996 Newsweek Special Election edition as well as Bob Woodward's book "The Choice" that both cover this. I'll post them tomorrow.

"The Choice" was really about the choice, kind of an odd election book.  It was written something like two months before election day.

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From Bob Woodward's book "The Choice" Page 428

"Months earlier (before discussion on Vice Presidential selection) a seed had been planted, something that had nagged at Dole since the Republican primaries when he was beaten up as this creature from Washington, "Beltway Bob."  Buchanan, Forbes and Alexander regularly had aimed their most pointed attacks at his longtime service in the Senate.  Dole knew that people didn't like Washington, and his opponents had effectively wrapped the entire political culture of the capital around his neck.  As he started winning the primaries, he dismissed the problem.  But, over the Easter break he had eight days of rest in Florida, a record for him.  The negative interpretations of his total identity with the Senate gnawed at him.  He was pretty sure that 90% of the people didn't know what the title majority leader meant. To them, it just meant another politician making deals, raising their taxes, spending more money.  That was what Washington conjured up out there. That's what he conjured up out there.

In Florida, Dole had time to walk and sit in the sun, look around, think.  He thought about his late parents.  He thought about the frustration of the average people. He thought about his mail, the nasty letters, many of which had a common theme, 'You're like everybody else. You're like all the rest of 'em."  He had to be different, but he wasn't.  He had to break through the Washington noise and his own expectations, many of them of his own making.

Dole decided he would quit the Senate completely, not just give up the Majority Leader's Office, but resign his Senate seat.... He found he was sleeping well and having no second thoughts.




Page 432, Dole's statement:
"My time to leave this office has come and I will seek the Presidency with nothing to fall back on but the judgement of the people, and nowhere to go but the White House or home."... "And I will then stand before you without an office or authority, a private citizen a Kansan, an American, just a man. But, I will be the same man I was when I walked into the room.  I trust in the hard way, for little has come for me except in the hard way, which is good because we have a hard task ahead of us.  This is where I touch the ground, and it is in touching the ground in moments of difficulty where I find my strength.  I have been there before, I have done it the hard way, and I will do it the hard way once again. I have absolute confidence in the victory that to some may seem unnattainable."

I think that's a pretty classy statement from a person who did not deserve so much hardship in his life.