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The White House and Democratic leaders have been treading a careful line to present their push for health reform as bipartisan. Over the weekend, however, they took a step too far.

The Democratic National Committee on Sunday scrapped an ad featuring former Senate Majority Leader and former Republican presidential candidate Bob Dole that portrayed him as favoring Democrats' health care plans, the New York Times reports.

Dole reportedly complained to the White House on Saturday night, arguing that while he believes there is currently an opportunity for reform, he is not supporting any of the current Democratic proposals. Dole is one of a handful of former Republican leaders who have endorsed the idea of reform without offering support for the legislation working its way through Congress.

On Saturday, former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel released a statement through the White House, asking Congress "to put aside their narrow partisan differences" on health care reform because "we will fail our country if we do not succeed."

While these statements of support for reform may persuade some independent voters that the Obama administration is taking a bipartisan approach to health care reform, it is unlikely to make any different in Congress, where Republicans are already uniformly against the president's agenda, University of Virginia political scientist Larry Sabato told the Hotsheet.

Former Sen. Bob Dole has been hospitalized for the past week, the Associated Press reports.

The former Republican presidential candidate and Senate Majority Leader checked into the hospital after experiencing an elevated heart rate, but he stayed at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center so surgeons could operate on open sores on his left leg. He will receive a skin graft on Monday. Dole's heart is doing fine, his law firm Alston & Bird told the AP.

Dole, 85, reportedly said he hopes to leave the hospital in time for his birthday on July 22.

The Democratic-led Congress maintains it is working to create a health care reform package that can win Republican support, but if the bill is to be truly bipartisan, it should get in the range of 20 Republican votes, former Senate Majority Leaders Tom Daschle (a Democrat) and Bob Dole (a Republican) said Wednesday.

Along with former Republican Sen. Howard Baker, another former Senate Majority Leader, Daschle and Dole have created a set of recommendations for achieving bipartisan health care solutions. Speaking to CBS News political consultant John Dickerson on CBSNews.com's politics Web show "Washington Unplugged," the two men shared their idea of "bipartisanship."

"I'd like to have 20 Republicans" in the Senate vote on the health care reform package, Dole said.

Daschle concurred. "It has to be something where you have a double-digit number of Republicans and Democrats," he said.

The two men explained how they compromised on hot-button issues like a mandate for all Americans to have insurance and a government-sponsored, plan (or "public option"), to produce their report for the Bipartisan Policy Center.

"On the mandate, it was not an easy thing for me to give on," Dole said. "When we started, we decided we weren't going to let two or three things kill our effort."

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