Politics & Power Quote by Bob Dole

A tidy Midwestern sentence that lands like a reprimand: Bob Dole’s “Something is wrong with America” frames national anxiety as a moral diagnosis, not a policy dispute. The line’s power is its vagueness. “Something” invites listeners to pour in their own culprits - crime, culture, Washington, the media, economic drift - while Dole holds the posture of the scolding adult. It’s less an argument than a mood: the country feels unmoored, and the speaker is willing to say the impolite part out loud.

The sharper knife twist is the second sentence. “I wonder sometimes what people are thinking about or if they’re thinking at all” isn’t curiosity; it’s an indictment disguised as reflection. Dole positions “people” as both jury and defendant, implying a citizenry distracted, manipulated, or willfully careless. The phrase “if they’re thinking at all” carries a courtroom bluntness, a rhetorical move that converts disagreement into incompetence. If your opponents aren’t thinking, you don’t have to meet them halfway.

Context matters: Dole was a World War II veteran and a long-serving Republican leader who traded in duty, restraint, and institutional credibility. Coming from him, the complaint reads as generational and civic - a fear that the habits that once held the country together (service, seriousness, deference to norms) are eroding. It’s also campaign-ready language, built to validate frustration without naming targets too precisely, leaving room to pivot to whatever “wrong” your platform promises to fix.