THE TRADITIONAL FATE of candidates who lose a presidential election is to spend several weeks in seclusion or on vacation, ruminating about what went wrong and what might have yielded a different result at the polls. And I suspect after the votes were counted on November 5, 1996, there were many political observers who thought that I would continue that tradition by flying off with Elizabeth to a sunny location.

To be sure, I hadn't given much thought to what I would be doing in the weeks following the election. Having studied the public opinion polls, I had a strong suspicion that I wouldn't be picking a cabinet, but during a campaign your entire focus is on getting to election day. And so when I delivered my concession speech that evening, I meant it when I said, "Tomorrow is the first day of my life when I have nothing to do."

When I got up the next morning, I discovered that I was wrong. My first stop was "Dole for President" headquarters in Washington, D.C., where I began the process of personally thanking the hundreds and hundreds of staffers and volunteers who worked for my campaign, and placing calls to hundreds more across the country. What got my attention that day, however, was not a call I placed, but one that came in to my office. It was from the producers of The Late Show with David Letterman. They were to be broadcasting from Washington, D.C., in two nights -- would I be interested in being a guest?

Two nights later, Dave and I sat onstage, trading quips. Dave asked me about a favorite topic of his -- President Clinton's weight. "I don't know," was my comeback. "I never tried to lift him. I just tried to beat him." The audience laughed, and pundits, ever quick to grasp the obvious, claimed to have discovered a New Dole.

I suppose you could say my postpolitical career really began on that Friday night as viewers discovered that I wasn't the glowering, Social Security-devouring sourpuss they'd come to know, if not to like, from watching all those attack ads made possible by White House coffee drinkers.

Within a matter of weeks, I had also appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, taped a cameo on the Brooke Shields situation comedy, Suddenly Susan, appeared on Saturday Night Live, and filmed a Visa card commercial -- which premiered during the 1997 Super Bowl -- in which I returned to my hometown of Russell, Kansas, only to have my local diner's waitress ask me for identification before I could cash a check. "I just can't win," I lamented at the end of the commercial.

By going on television so soon after my defeat to poke fun at the campaign just concluded, I hoped to shatter the tradition of presidential also-ran silence. Most of all, I wanted to show that there is indeed life after politics. And that losing an election does not mean losing your sense of humor.

As with so much in my life, I owe my sense of humor to Russell, Kansas, the community that provides my roots and a constant source of strength. My first job as a teenager was working at Dawson's Drug Store in downtown Russell. For a few dollars a day, I whipped up chocolate malteds behind the soda fountain, and gave curb service on weekends. And I learned from the Dawson brothers that the more you traded quips and one-liners with the customers, the longer they stayed, the more they bought, and the bigger the tips. A few years later, I was to become one of countless veterans who discovered that a sense of humor was essential to surviving surgery, pain, and month upon month of hospitalization. When I returned to Russell to continue my recovery from my war wounds, one of the songs I would play most frequently on the jukebox at Dawson's was "Laughing on the Outside, Crying on the Inside."

Huck Boyd, who was one of my early political mentors, once warned me, "We don't need a Jack Benny in Washington." Actually, the way Uncle Sam spends money, we could use an army of them. I rarely disagreed with Huck, but over the years I've grown ever more convinced that my hero, Dwight Eisenhower, was absolutely right when he said, "A sense of humor is part of the art of leadership, of getting along with people, of getting things done." Indeed, there were countless occasions during my thirty-six years in the halls of Congress -- especially the eleven years I served as Senate Republican leader -- when a timely one-liner broke the tension at a tough negotiation and got everyone moving toward a solution.

And so I jumped at the opportunity when Doubleday suggested that I put together a few of my favorite stories and political jokes. You may have read or heard some of the stories I have selected. Others may be new to you. All, I hope, will cause you to smile. Even if they confirm your suspicion that politics itself is a joke.

So from crafting legislation, I've gone on to a new career which includes pitching doughnuts. Thus it seems only appropriate that I conclude with a doughnut story. Early in the Clinton administration, I attended yet another in a seemingly endless string of early morning White House meetings. As I left the Oval Office following the meeting, one member of the press corps shouted out how I thought the meeting went. "O.K.," was my response, and then I added, "but it would have been better had they served some doughnuts."

The press corps laughed, and reported my comments. A few days later, I received a letter from a woman in New Jersey who was taken aback at my remark, and thought it showed a lack of seriousness toward the problems facing our country. I wrote back to the woman, explaining that it would be tough to survive in Washington, D.C., without a sense of humor, and that government would be for the worse if public servants were denied the opportunity to laugh at themselves and each other. I hope this book also makes that point. By the way, the next early morning White House meeting I attended following my remark was highlighted by a big plate of doughnuts displayed prominently on the cabinet table. No joke.