Cook: Dole wasn't aggressive enough

Charlie Cook says U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole may not have worked hard enough. 

In a meeting with political reporters at Elon University his afternoon, the editor of The Cook Political Report said that first-term senators are typically more aggressive. 

"Normally, when you get elected to the Senate, you're a lot younger and a lot more aggressive and proactive and you hit the ground running and you work your tail off for six years," he said. "Then you get re-elected and then you work pretty hard for the next six and then you get re-elected and you can kind of ease off on the throttle and go on automatic pilot."

But he said that Dole, who was elected in 2002 after serving in two Cabinet posts, may have taken too much for granted.

"When you get elected and you're not that young and you're a Republican in the South, maybe you're not quite as visible as you needed to have been and maybe you haven't been quite as aggressive as you needed to have been and in a bad year you can get yourself into a race," he said.  

Cook currently ranks North Carolina as "leans Republican."