The Last Great Senate

by Ira Shapiro

  Byrd understood that many of the senators still genuinely loved Humphrey, while some of the liberals harbored serious doubts of their own about Byrd. Byrd’s first step to becoming Mike Mansfield’s successor would be to win the position without humiliating Humphrey and antagonizing his supporters.

  On the evening of January 3, with the conference vote scheduled for the next morning, Byrd took a call from Humphrey. Humphrey said he would withdraw from the race if Byrd were willing to make him the chairman of the Democratic conference. Byrd was not surprised; some of Humphrey’s supporters had suggested that same solution. But Byrd was not prepared to relinquish power in this way. He would not agree to any arrangement that suggested that Humphrey would be the policy leader, leaving him to make the Senate trains run on time. Reluctantly, but firmly, Byrd declined Humphrey’s offer.

  Humphrey relented at last. At eight o’clock in the morning of January 4, three hours before the conference was scheduled to meet, Humphrey called Byrd to say that he was withdrawing. Obviously pained and distracted, he did not extend the same courtesy to his supporters. When the Democrats convened in meeting room S-207 of the Capitol, Ed Muskie put Humphrey’s name in nomination and was startled when Humphrey moved for Byrd to be chosen by acclamation.

  Byrd rose to accept the position. Seeking to soothe the hurt feelings of Humphrey and his supporters, Byrd told his sixty-one-member conference that the Minnesotan did not need any title to denote his importance to the nation: “He is a national leader, he has been a national leader, and he will always be a national leader.” But Byrd knew that more than words were required.

  He announced that he was appointing a three-member ad hoc committee, chaired by Senator Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut, to make recommendations for special recognition of former presidents or vice presidents who become senators—in this case, a class of one. The next day, the Democratic conference accepted the recommendations of Ribicoff ’s ad hoc committee: Humphrey would be given a salary equal to the majority leader’s, as well as a chauffeured car, additional staff, an office in the Capitol, and the title of deputy president pro tempore of the Senate. Humphrey was delighted, and his supporters were pleased. Robert Byrd had made a strong and dexterous start, unifying the Democrats and placating liberal critics. It was the culmination of a truly remarkable rise to power by Robert Byrd.

  THE U.S. SENATE HAS always had more than its share of very wealthy members, and in later years, it would come to be increasingly comprised of millionaires and “legacies,” the children of politicians whose names were already famous. But the Senate still made room for those who came from ordinary circumstances, sometimes even grinding poverty, rising to prominence on the basis of ability and energy, luck and timing, but above all a fierce determination to succeed.

  None of these senators had come further or worked harder than Robert Byrd. Byrd was born in North Carolina in 1917 as Cornelius Calvin Sale. He was the fifth child born to a woman who died in the great influenza epidemic within a year of his birth. Before her death, she asked her husband to give the infant to one of his sisters, Vlurma Sale Byrd, and her husband, Titus Dalton Byrd—a couple who had no children of their own. In accordance with her wishes, the Byrds adopted the child, renamed him Robert Carlyle Byrd, and took him to Bluefield, West Virginia.

  Robert Byrd’s father worked in the coal mines. Byrd would grow up moving from one mining community to another. Barely a step above abject poverty, he was educated in a two-room schoolhouse without electricity. As a teenager, he worked in a gas station, as a produce boy, and as a butcher; eventually he ran a grocery store.

  In his late twenties, Byrd taught Sunday school, attended college part-time, and became active in local politics. Hard working and attentive to his community, Byrd was elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1946. In his first speech, on Workmen’s Compensation legislation, the newly elected delegate said: “To me, the dollar is secondary; human misery and suffering, and the welfare of dependent children, come first.”

  Robert Byrd’s work ethic and his thirst for knowledge were awesome. Embarrassed that he had not finished college, he earned his law degree by taking classes at night for ten years after reaching Capitol Hill. His commitment to West Virginia was total, and the people of his state felt a deep bond with him. With their support, he never lost an election, reaching the State Senate in 1950, the U.S. House of Representatives in 1952, and the U.S. Senate in 1958, defeating an incumbent Republican senator. His constituents rewarded him with increasingly lopsided victories in 1964 and 1970 over token opposition. By 1976, in the campaign he had just finished, Byrd had been completely unopposed.

  Byrd could easily have been dismissed as a parochial politician. For years, he single-mindedly channeled money to his impoverished state, using his mastery of the legislative process and his increasingly powerful position on the Senate Appropriations Committee to earmark funds to improve West Virginia’s infrastructure, particularly its roads, bridges, and airports. “No item beneficial to West Virginia,” Byrd would write, “was too large or too small for me to give my close attention to.” But his timing was good. West Virginia was the state where John F. Kennedy learned about American poverty, where he saw with his own eyes what he had previously only read about in Michael Harrington’s The Other America.

  When he became president, Kennedy did not forget West Virginia. His legislative record during his first two years was unimpressive, but his first major legislative victory in 1961 had been the enactment of the Area Redevelopment Act (ARA), legislation labeled S.1 in the Senate. The ARA channeled public works money into economically depressed regions of the country, particularly Appalachia, to help close the gap between the region and the rest of the United States by investing in water and sewer construction, education and workforce training, small business startups, and above all, highway construction to break down the isolation of the mountainous region. “Appalachia” included parts of thirteen states, but only one state was entirely within Appalachia—West Virginia. From the beginning of his Senate career, Robert Byrd had good reason to believe that alleviating West Virginia’s poverty was a national priority, and he never changed that view.

  In 1967, Byrd saw an opportunity to move into the leadership of the Senate Democrats. George Smathers of Florida had decided not to seek another term as Secretary to the Democratic conference, the number three position in the Democratic leadership. Liberals predominated in the Democratic caucus, and when two of the most liberal Democrats threw their hats into the ring simultaneously, Byrd saw an opening. He quickly and quietly gathered the support of all conservative Democrats, particularly the Southern bloc. Capitalizing on the split within the liberal camp, Byrd won handily, and jumped on to the first rung of the leadership ladder.

  Almost immediately, he parlayed that minor post into real power, becoming, according to the Washington Post, “the man who runs the Senate during most of its nine-to-five hours. . . . He’s made himself ‘the indispensable man.’” He spent so many hours on the Senate floor that some new staffers thought he was the Senate sergeant at arms, and not a senator. He developed an extraordinary knowledge of the rules of the Senate but also an innate feeling for its rhythms. In 1971, after the accident at Chappaquiddick had disgraced and distracted then-Democratic whip Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts, Byrd mounted a swift and stealthy campaign to defeat Kennedy for the position. For the next six years, Byrd lived up to the Post’s description, effectively running the day-to-day operations of the Senate and taking advantage of his new power to accrue experience and stature, as well as the opportunity to do countless favors for his fellow Democrats.

  Byrd chafed at the widespread idea that he was simply a Senate mechanic—a grind—but in the end, his love of the Senate, his mastery of its rules, and his passion for detailed work paved his way to the position of majority leader. Moreover, if he had not been viewed as the man who could make the Senate do its work effectively, his conservative views might have disqualified him, particular
ly in light of his history with racial issues.

  As a young man starting out in West Virginia politics, Byrd had been a member of the Ku Klux Klan. He had long ago resigned his membership, which he had regarded as necessary to advance in local politics, yet remained vehemently opposed to advances in civil rights that were the moral cornerstone of the Democratic agenda during the 1960’s. Byrd conducted an all-night filibuster against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and opposed both the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and its extension in 1970. He opposed Lyndon Johnson’s 1967 nomination of Thurgood Marshall to be the first African American to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. He waged a harsh campaign against the District of Columbia’s home rule government, which struck many observers as tinged with racism. Byrd proved so conservative that in 1971, after the Senate had rejected two Republican nominees to the Supreme Court, an incensed Richard Nixon gave serious thought to nominating Byrd, taking pleasure in the notion that the Senate would have no choice but to confirm one of their own, despite his hard-line views on race and crime.

  But Byrd benefited from passing time. His views on civil rights became muted and more moderate. Moreover, although racial issues would remain difficult for America, the historic civil rights legislative battles had been won. Even Richard Russell, the Georgia Democrat who was the formidable leader of the Senate’s segregationist bloc, recognized “the Southerners’ time had passed.” The Great Senate was a progressive one, and the nation had moved on.

  By 1977, the Senate Democrats could justify making Robert Byrd their majority leader because of his selfless, unending efforts to make the Senate work. In the decade since he had joined the Senate leadership, the idea of Robert Byrd as majority leader had shifted from inconceivable to inevitable.

  Robert Byrd was not a hail-fellow-well-met. He was a serious, almost severe, man. He had narrow eyes and rarely smiled. He dressed in a three-piece suit, often with an incongruously flamboyant red vest. He had few close friends among the senators and made no real effort to cultivate them. He preferred to be called “Robert” but was uncomfortable correcting his colleagues, so he would almost always be known as “Bob.” To his chagrin, his hands frequently trembled. He occasionally surprised visiting groups from West Virginia by suddenly veering off into an unexpected discourse on the inevitability of death.

  Yet Byrd also had an unexpected joyous side. His staff members remember being summoned to the majority leader’s office on Friday afternoon at 4:30. They anticipated having to brief Byrd for his Saturday morning roundtable with the reporters covering the Senate. Instead they were ushered into his room that held several rows of folding chairs. A moment later, Senator Byrd would appear, with his fiddle in hand, and would happily play for thirty minutes, taking particular joy from his favorite, “Turkey in the Straw.”

  Byrd had a considerable ego and in January 1976 had declared for both his fourth term in the Senate, where he was unopposed, and the presidency, thinking that the battle for the Democratic nomination might deadlock. But his presidential bid was not taken seriously, and Carter ran away with the nomination. Byrd quickly shifted his attention back to his effort to become majority leader.

  He was lucky. If the Republicans had held the White House, the Senate Democrats might have opted for a more charismatic figure to serve as their national spokesman. But with a new Democratic president in the public spotlight, a capable mechanic was needed to ensure that the Senate ran smoothly. Byrd’s colleagues did not pretend to understand him fully, but they respected him. They knew that he was absolutely committed to the Senate’s place in the constitutional system and making it work. They expected that the Senate would run effectively under his leadership and that each of them would be treated fairly. He seemed to be the right steward for the Great Senate, though few expected him to live up to the standard set by his predecessors.

  FOR DECADES, THE SENATE was controlled by a powerful combination of southern Democrats and conservative Republicans. Mainly the product of small states and sparse populations, they maintained a stranglehold on the Senate due to the Founding Fathers’ decision to give each state two senators regardless of population. For this reason, even during the liberal presidencies of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman, the Senate stood as an obstacle to progressive legislation that would have benefited the nation’s cities and minorities, particularly black Americans. As William S. White observed in The Citadel: “The Senate was the only place in the country where the South did not lose the [Civil] War . . . the South’s unending revenge upon the north for Gettysburg.”

  But by the late 1950’s, even the conservative Senate could not stand immune from the winds of change sweeping the nation. In 1954, the Supreme Court, under the leadership of a new chief justice, Earl Warren, had handed down the unanimous, landmark decision in Brown v. the Board of Education, establishing that “separate but equal” schools were unconstitutional. President Eisenhower had been forced, against his instincts, to send U.S. troops to Little Rock, Arkansas, to integrate the schools. The movement for civil rights was building, foremost among black Americans but also among the white liberal intellectuals and the labor unions that provided much of the political power of the Democratic Party.

  Paradoxically, Lyndon Johnson was the ideal man to bring these changes to fruition. Narrowly elected to the Senate from Texas in 1948 at the age of forty, he became minority leader just four years later, and then majority leader two years after that. Johnson was a southerner, but one with national aspirations and gut liberal instincts, which had made him an early supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Though deeply rooted in his region, he was embarrassed by its bigotry, poverty, and backwardness and determined to overcome them. Earthy and forceful, Johnson had a lust for power and used it to advance the South, the nation, and himself.

  He transformed the role of Senate leader, utilizing committee assignments and office space to favor those senators that he liked and punish those that he didn’t. He expanded the use of unanimous consent agreements to drastically limit serious debate, shifting the real action from the Senate floor to the cloakroom or the leader’s office. He worked his will through matchless powers of persuasion, including a ruthless knowledge of each member’s priorities, needs, and weaknesses. In the words of Robert Caro, Johnson used “every carrot, no matter how small and unappetizing, and every stick, no matter how thin and seemingly fragile, to create his own ‘special powers.’”

  Using Hubert Humphrey as his liaison to the liberals, Johnson acted as a bridge between the old conservative Senate and the more progressive institution that would emerge. As Caro has famously recounted, Johnson demonstrated his leadership most brilliantly by surprising his southern colleagues and spearheading the passage of the first civil rights legislation in a century. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 was a relatively modest measure, watered down by the need for compromise, but it represented the first breach in the dam of Southern obstructionism.

  Yet, even as Johnson bullied, badgered, and cajoled the Senate into the mid-twentieth century, the forces of change were moving too quickly even for him to control. The election of 1958, which brought Robert Byrd to Washington, marked a turning point in the history of the Senate. The Eisenhower administration, after six years in office, was running on fumes. America was in recession, and it was in shock as well, still reeling from the stunning news that the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik into space. The 1958 election was a rout in which the Democrats won three open Senate seats and defeated ten Republican incumbents. Gaining new seats in every part of the country, the Democratic majority became more geographically diverse, more urban, and more liberal, with a commanding margin of 65–35 over the Republicans.

  The 1958 Democratic landslide left Johnson with a new challenge from restive liberals, such as Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee, Joseph Clark of Pennsylvania, and William Proxmire of Wisconsin. These men rebelled against his heavy-handed leadership, and they could increasingly count on support from the newly elected senators. In one telling incident, Bobby
Baker, the wheeler-dealer secretary of the Senate Democrats who was Johnson’s right-hand man, told Johnson that he had to discipline Clark for voting against him. Johnson agreed and buttonholed Clark on the Senate floor. The two men were seen arguing angrily. When Johnson came back he said to Baker plaintively, “He told me to go to hell. Now what do I do?” Plainly, a new Senate was stirring.

  In July 1960, at the Democratic convention in Los Angeles, Lyndon Johnson stunned most political observers by jumping at the vice presidential nomination when John Kennedy offered it to him. He saw it as the only possible road to the presidency for a southerner. He had relished being Senate majority leader with a Republican president, but found he had no real interest in the position when a Democratic president would dominate the spotlight. Not only that, he also understood that his power over the Senate was ebbing. Though he had been extraordinarily effective, Johnson had just about worn out his welcome. Most of the senators were ready to see him on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

  THE ELECTION OF 1958 had poured the foundation of the Great Senate. But the next off-year election, in 1962, completed the edifice that was the progressive Senate of the 1960’s and 1970’s. In most off-year elections, the president’s party loses seats in Congress. But 1962’s election came just days after President Kennedy had successfully defused the Cuban missile crisis. National adulation of Kennedy provided a lift to Democratic candidates across the country and likely tipped the scale in several close races. (Republican Senator Barry Goldwater observed: “We were Cuber-ized.”)