by Ira Shapiro
Allen had demonstrated the lethal potential of the post-cloture filibuster by preventing the passage of the Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust legislation for weeks. Byrd and Mansfield had ultimately secured passage of the legislation, but Byrd knew that they had prevailed only because the Senate wanted to pass the bill to honor Phil Hart, who was dying of cancer. If not for that, Allen might be holding the Senate hostage still. The nightmare scenario of a paralyzed Senate was never far from Byrd’s mind.
The convening of a new Senate, and the passing of the torch to Byrd from Mansfield, made it a natural moment to reflect on the nature of Senate greatness. Just one week before the day’s festivities, on December 28, 1976, 1,200 solemn mourners had gathered in St. Matthew’s Cathedral to celebrate the life of Phil Hart, who had succumbed to cancer two days earlier. “The rich and the powerful were there, dressed in tailored suits and fine furs,” observed a reporter. “So, too, were the poor and powerless, dressed in jeans and parkas.”
It was a modest ceremony. “The Hart family wanted everything very simple,” said the funeral director. But it was not just because of Phil Hart’s personal modesty. Hart’s Antitrust and Monopoly Subcommittee had once investigated the high costs of funerals, and Hart was appalled to find that funeral homes were taking advantage of people in their hour of utmost grief. “If I die in office and you spend more than $250 on my funeral,” Hart told his wife, Janey, “I am going to get up and walk out.” Janey Hart had done her best to comply with his wishes, arranging for a simple pine coffin that cost only $150.
Phil Hart was a World War II veteran and a man of uncommon courage. He had been seriously injured during the D-Day invasion, when shrapnel from an exploding German artillery shell severed the main artery of his right arm. Despite the seriousness of his injury, from which he had not fully recovered, Hart refused to return to the United States and rejoined the army in time to be involved in the Battle of Bulge in December 1944. After the war, he returned to Michigan and became a leading figure in the group of liberals that helped the Democratic Party take power in the state. Hart came to the Senate in the Democratic landslide of 1958. Of all the liberal senators, Hart may have been the most liberal.
Throughout his eighteen-year Senate career, he provided unflagging leadership to advance civil rights, battle poverty, improve conditions in the nation’s cities, and challenge U.S. business when it overreached. Soft-spoken, unassuming, gentle, and fair-minded, Phil Hart was universally loved. In June 1975, Hart inserted a statement in the Congressional Record announcing that he would not seek a fourth term. It was consistent with his long-held view that there should be a mandatory retirement age for members of Congress. Hart believed it would be far better to have younger members coming to Capitol Hill who thought they could change the world and had the energy and stamina to do so. His decision to retire came long before the detection of the cancer that would kill him. As his strength ebbed away, Hart agonized about the future of Detroit, which was wracked by the related problems of poverty, crime, drugs, and race.
Phil Hart would not be forgotten in Washington. In August 1976, the Senate paid their dying colleague the highest tribute by naming the third Senate office building, which was just starting construction, after him. The Hart Senate Office Building would rise on Constitution Avenue, just east of the two current Senate office buildings—the “old” Senate office building, named for Richard Russell, Democrat of Georgia, and the “new” Senate office building, named for Everett Dirksen, Republican of Illinois.
These were striking choices. The Senate could have named its buildings for the famous senators of the nineteenth century, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and John C. Calhoun. Instead, it opted for three Senate giants of its own period, men of absolutely different ideologies and temperaments.
Richard Russell towered over the Senate through the 1940’s and 1950’s, revered by senators of both parties for his intellect, integrity, and absolute commitment to the institution. He was probably the foremost advocate of American military strength throughout World War II and the Cold War. In the spring of 1951, President Harry Truman fired General Douglas MacArthur for exceeding his authority to wage war in Korea. “It is doubtful that there has ever been in this country so violent and spontaneous a discharge of political passion as that provoked by the President’s dismissal of the General,” Arthur Schlesinger and Richard Rovere wrote. At that moment of crisis, Russell chaired a series of public hearings that calmed the nation and reasserted the importance of civilian control of the military. Russell’s greatness as a senator was so universally acknowledged that the first Senate office building was named for him despite the fact that he was also the most effective opponent of civil rights that ever served in the Senate.
Everett Dirksen came to the Senate as a Midwest isolationist and a tough partisan whose hard-line position on the threat posed by communists in government was not much different from that expressed by Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. When he became Republican leader, Dirksen was noteworthy mainly for his unruly shock of white hair—Bob Hope once described Dirksen as looking “like a man who had been electrocuted, but lived”—and his mellifluous speaking voice and theatrical style. But Dirsken evolved into a statesman who worked closely with President Kennedy to ensure Senate approval of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, and then with President Johnson to enact the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964. He would be remembered for transcending partisanship when the national interest required it.
And Phil Hart would be honored for the consistency of his views and, in Reverend King’s famous words, “the content of his character.” Columnist Coleman McCarthy wrote that “it was not an accident that he was the most trusted man in American politics. He fronted for no one. His alliances were to timeless ideals, not upstart lobbies. As though he were the wildest of gamblers, he bet that the common vanities of hack politics—images, smiles, calls for brighter days—counted for little. Instead, he wagered that conscience and persistence could matter.” It would be a long time, editorialized the Washington Post, “before anyone in the Senate matches his integrity, diligence and compassionate humanism.”
It would fall to others, starting with Robert Byrd, to fill the large holes left by the departures of Mike Mansfield and Phil Hart. Knowing Senate history as well as any person living, Byrd understood that being majority leader did not guarantee his place as a great senator. Who remembered Ernest McFarland or Scott Lucas or William Knowland, several of the majority leaders before Johnson? Great senators needed another dimension, and Byrd quickly signaled his priorities and aspirations. Hoyt Purvis, one of Fulbright’s most respected staffers when he chaired the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, had left the Senate to teach at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. Purvis was stunned to get a call from the majority leader’s office, inquiring whether he would consider returning to the Senate as Byrd’s chief foreign policy adviser. Purvis had never realized that the dedicated West Virginian had any interest in foreign policy. But he came to Washington for an interview and went away convinced that the new leader wanted to be a forceful player on foreign policy and national security. Purvis soon returned to the Senate and would provide exactly the expertise and credibility that Byrd was seeking. For Byrd, a growing personal interest in international issues combined perfectly with his view that the Senate needed to reassert its Constitutional role in foreign policy.
Eighteen years—three terms—was a full Senate career for many men. But Robert Byrd, who had completed three terms, was just getting started.
chapter 2
THE NATURAL
BYRD’S TRIUMPH MAY HAVE BEEN HISTORIC, BUT ON THE MORNING OF January 4, the real drama was taking place on the Republican side. With the Senate Republicans scheduled to meet at 10 a.m., Howard Baker, one of the most gifted politicians of the era, remained unable to decide whether to run for Senate minority leader.
As soon as the previous Republican leader, Hugh Scott, had announced his intention to r
etire, Baker’s key supporters, led by Robert Packwood, assumed it was a given that he would run. Liberal Republicans Ed Brooke and Charles McC. Mathias, who formerly supported Scott, promised to be with him. The likeliest other challengers—Robert Dole, John Tower, and Barry Goldwater—had each decided against making the race. But Baker, although intrigued by the possibility, had refused to commit.
The heir apparent for the job was Robert Griffin of Michigan. Griffin had come to the Senate in 1967 at the same time as Baker and had rapidly risen to become Republican whip. A tough partisan and formidable politician, Griffin was well respected in Senate Republican ranks, and his rise to minority leader seemed to be going smoothly.
Yet the stars were not aligning for Griffin the way that they had for Byrd. Jimmy Carter’s victory ensured that the Senate Republican leader would become the most visible Republican in the country. Griffin had many talents, but charisma was distinctly not one of them. Baker, on the other hand, had become a household name as vice chairman of the Watergate Committee. Boyishly handsome with a reputation for fair-minded independence, he was by far the most attractive face that the Senate Republicans had to offer. Still, Baker hesitated.
When the incoming Republican senators met for breakfast on January 3, Harrison Schmitt, the former astronaut who was New Mexico’s new senator, called Pete Domenici, his senior colleague, to tell him that Griffin was about to speak, but that Baker was a “no show.” Domenici called Baker at home. “You just have to go over there,” Domenici pleaded. “And you can’t just say, if I run, I want you to know what I’m like if you decide to vote for me.”
Baker went to the breakfast and declared his candidacy. When asked whether he simply planned to use the minority leader position as a platform for a presidential race, Baker acknowledged that the presidency was among his ambitions but said his principal goal would be to strengthen the badly weakened Republican Party. The new senators seemed impressed by his remarks and his candor. But what was truly amazing was that even after the breakfast, Baker still remained undecided. A series of repeated, large disappointments had taken a toll on his confidence.
By 1977, there was no denying that Howard Baker was an extraordinarily gifted politician. If Robert Byrd was a grind, Baker was a natural. His father, Howard Henry Baker Sr., became a Tennessee congressman, and his stepmother, Irene Baker, had also served in Congress, after his father’s death. In 1951, Baker married Joy Dirksen, a congressional staffer who was the daughter of the eminent Republican from Illinois, Everett Dirksen. These family ties played an important part in Baker’s rise to power. But Baker’s blend of intelligence, temperament, and political skill meshed so well that there sometimes seemed to be no limit to his future. It was frequently said that if the senators chose the president by secret vote, Baker would have been in the White House by a wide margin.
Friendly and seemingly easygoing, Baker had reached the Senate a decade earlier in 1967, a young man in a hurry. Many observers thought he would be a good soldier for his father-in-law, dismissing him as a “junior grade Everett Dirksen.” Baker quickly dispelled that notion. The Supreme Court had handed down its landmark decision in Baker v. Carr, ruling that the Constitution required states to apportion legislative districts on the basis of population—“one man, one vote.” Dirksen, fearing that the decision could dilute the power of the Republican Party in many states, opposed rapid compliance. Baker did not agree. He surprised Dirksen with the firmness of his position and then crossed the aisle to work with Ted Kennedy on legislation to preserve the newly mandated doctrine of “one man, one vote.”
In September 1969, Dirksen suddenly succumbed to lung cancer. A group of young senators, led by Packwood, who had just been elected, urged Baker to run for minority leader—and Baker was willing. Yet in stepping forward, Baker was seeking to become Senate leader faster than anyone in the history of the Senate, even faster than Lyndon Johnson. This act of chutzpah exceeded the amount of ambition that most senators recognized as acceptable, and Baker was defeated by Hugh Scott, who had already served eleven years in the Senate after sixteen years in the House. To underscore the point, the Republicans also rejected Baker’s bid to become whip, choosing Griffin instead. Apparently unfazed by these setbacks, Baker surprised everyone by challenging Scott again two years later, another unusual step: at least in the previous race, the leader’s position had been open. Satisfied with Scott’s leadership, the Republican caucus rejected Baker once again.
Yet these political setbacks seemed to do Baker no lasting damage, because his talents were so universally acknowledged. In 1971, President Nixon, casting about for a southerner who could be confirmed by the Senate, had offered Baker a seat on the Supreme Court just four years after he was elected to the Senate. Baker gave it serious thought, frustrating Nixon with his indecision, but eventually concluded that he was much too young for the cloistered Supreme Court. “Funeral homes are livelier than the Court,” he later told Orrin Hatch, the young Republican senator from Utah.
When the Senate decided in January 1973 to appoint a select committee to look into the abuses generically known as “Watergate,” only three Republican senators volunteered to serve—Ed Gurney of Florida, regarded as a knee-jerk defender of Nixon’s; Lowell Weicker of Connecticut, seen as headstrong and fiercely independent; and Baker, known for his steadiness and moderation. Viewing Baker as “the best television personality in the Senate,” Scott made his former opponent the vice chairman of the Watergate Committee.
Scott’s decision made Howard Baker a household name in America. In the summer of 1973, millions of Americans, riveted by the Watergate hearings, saw Baker, day after day, sitting next to Sam Ervin, persistently but nonabra-sively pursuing the truth wherever it led. Baker’s famous question—“what did the President know and when did he know it?”—was not only a memorable moment in the hearings; it would become a virtual axiom, dusted off and reused in almost every scandal for the next thirty years. Baker’s skill in navigating the difficult cross-pressures of Watergate earned him an assignment to the Church Committee investigating the abuses of the U.S. intelligence agencies; he was, in fact, the only senator to serve on both select committees, an indicator of his unique stature in the Senate.
Yet despite his rapid rise and formidable accomplishments, 1976 had been a terrible year for Baker. He had harbored high hopes that Gerald Ford would pick him as a running mate. When Ford chose Bob Dole instead, Baker left the Republican convention wounded. Ford’s decision probably cost him the White House. In opting for the ultra-partisan Dole, to placate the Republican right, Ford solidified his support only in Farm Belt states, which were already in his pocket. The more independent and moderate Baker would have enhanced Ford’s appeal, particularly in the South and border states. This was cold comfort to Baker. Still hurting, he gave serious consideration to running for governor of Tennessee, thinking it might make for a better platform to the White House. But he loved the Senate, and realizing that he would be bored in Nashville, he stayed put.
Now, just months later, a third chance to be the Republican Senate leader had presented itself. But Baker, his confidence frayed from previous disappointments, and fearing the impact another defeat could have, still wavered.
Remarkably, even as the Republican senators gathered to make their choice, Baker remained undecided. “I don’t have the votes,” he told Domenici, Mathias, and Packwood, and he considered withdrawing from the race that he had just entered. “You can’t do that,” Packwood said, “and Bob [Griffin] probably doesn’t have the votes either.” With Packwood’s tally showing six members still undecided, Baker agreed not to make up his mind until he reached the caucus meeting.
Entering the high-ceilinged meeting room in the Russell Senate Office Building, Baker encountered Griffin, whose confidence had undoubtedly been shaken by Baker’s sudden appearance at the breakfast the previous morning. “Bob, I’ve got 17 votes, and I don’t know what the hell to do,” Baker candidly stated. “Well,” Griffin replied nervo
usly, “good luck if you win.” Sensing Griffin’s fear, Baker signaled to Mathias to nominate him. Leadership contests, because they are secret ballots, are often difficult to predict, and Baker’s last-minute entry made this one truly uncertain. Moments later, Baker had won by a margin of 19 to 18.
Third time was the charm, and by one vote, at the age of fifty-one, Baker was finally to be the Senate Republican leader. Griffin generously broke the tension, shaking Baker’s hand and opening a bottle of champagne that he had brought to celebrate his expected victory. In politics, the smallest margin can be world changing. Griffin, stung by his unexpected defeat, promptly lost interest in the Senate. Baker would become the most visible Republican in the country, the Senate minority leader, and, very possibly, a future president.
AS HE PREPARED TO deal with his new responsibilities, and a new occupant of the White House, Baker’s model for a great Republican leader was his father-in-law. Everett Dirksen would always be remembered for transcending partisan politics to accomplish great things in the national interest. His support for President John F. Kennedy’s Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963 had made Senate ratification possible. Most famously, Dirksen’s support for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, when he borrowed Victor Hugo’s words to endorse “an idea whose time had come,” had made possible the Senate’s greatest accomplishment and secured Dirksen’s place in history. But Dirksen had been leader in a different era, when the Republican conference gave him many more progressives and moderates to work with. Baker would preside over a Republican caucus that had begun moving rightward.