Kansas Sen. Bob Dole was an old-school Republican politician in the best sense of the word. His death Sunday didn't just mark the passing of a Senate giant but also the passing of an era when people on opposing political sides managed to find common ground through compromise and dialogue. Today, any Republican who dared tread down Dole's path of respectability, rock-solid principles and cross-party outreach would be denounced as a softy, a liberal, a RINO, a GOP traitor.

Rare was there a photo or video of Dole on the Senate floor without a pen firmly gripped in his right hand, as if he stood ready at any moment to get to work marking up legislation. In fact, Dole's right arm was a nearly useless appendage because of severe injuries he received fighting in World War II. He could hold a pen but not much else. The severity of those wounds attuned him to the plight of thousands of wounded war veterans who came back from Europe, the Pacific, Korea, Vietnam and elsewhere to grapple with an American street and workplace indifferent to the physical hurdles they faced.

Today, virtually every street corner in America bears Dole's fingerprints: Ramps that allow people in scooters and wheelchairs to cross with relative ease from sidewalk to sidewalk without encountering a steep curb. Various alerts help blind pedestrians cross with safety. Rails and extra-wide stalls in public bathrooms enable the wheelchair-bound to have access without needing assistance. Employers can no longer discriminate against the disabled. Dole's empathy inspired him to champion the Americans With Disabilities Act, which transformed America.

"Every man, woman and child with a disability can now pass through once-closed doors into a bright new era of equality, independence and freedom," President George H.W. Bush declared upon signing the bill in 1990.

Dole celebrated it as "historic civil rights legislation" that "seeks to end the unjustified segregation and exclusion of persons with disabilities from the mainstream of American life."

It's hard to imagine such a level of empathy being displayed by any leader in today's GOP.

Which is not to suggest Dole was all love and warmth. During the runup to the 1976 presidential election, when he was President Gerald Ford's running mate, Dole referred to World Wars I and II and Vietnam as "Democrat wars," adding, "I figured up the other day, if we added up the killed and wounded in Democrat wars in this century, it would be about 1.6 million Americans, enough to fill the city of Detroit."

He later tried to distance himself from his own ill-chosen words. Nobody's perfect, but America is a better place for having elevated people like Bob Dole to positions where, for an all-too brief period, they were able to use their power to prioritize the cause of goodness over political expediency.

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