Bison

A stoic, dedicated warrior who served through sheer persistence.

Returning to the Senate floor after losing his right arm in World War II — and teaching himself to write with his left hand through years of grueling rehabilitation — Bob Dole embodied the bison's most defining trait: an almost incomprehensible capacity to absorb punishment and keep moving forward. Like the bison, which lowers its massive head and walks *into* the storm rather than away from it, Dole spent decades as the Republican Party's workhorse, accepting the 1976 vice-presidential nomination, the 1988 presidential bid, and finally the 1996 presidential campaign with the same stoic, duty-bound resolve. His famous self-deprecating wit — "I'm the most optimistic man in America" — masked a bison's quiet endurance rather than any genuine lightness. Broad-shouldered in spirit, built for long winters, and unwilling to abandon the herd, Dole was a bison in his very bones.