After every State of the Union Address, whichever political party doesn't have control of the White House chooses a leader to deliver a response speech. Usually this is a person who is going to be running for president in the future.

Bob Dole was that guy in 1996.

Dole had a tough job when he delivered the response. His speech criticized Bill Clinton for propping up the welfare system, expanding Medicaid, and generally favoring "big government." Talking about the national debt, he made an appeal to parents and grandparents of America:

If we continue down this path we will place a tremendous burden of debt on every child in America. How can we betray them, their parents and grandparents?

The only problem was, Clinton had beaten him to the punch. The "big government is over" line pretty much curtailed all of Dole's criticisms. Not to mention, Clinton had fulfilled his promise to shrink the deficit during his first term. Dole's speech was sort of like a divorced dad bringing an X-Box to his kid's birthday party, only to arrive and find that the kid's step-dad already bought an X-Box.

Still, the Senator had a point. Unlike an X-Box Clinton's words were words, not material things, and the Republicans had favored larger cuts to more programs than the President during the budget debates of the previous year.

Talking like a conservative does not necessarily make you a conservative, and many commentators, like the next person on our list, viewed the sitting President as someone who might talk about shrinking government, but still keep it big.