Address by Howard H. Baker, Jr., July 14,
1998
Introduction by Senator Trent Lott
My colleagues, thank you all for being here this afternoon.
Welcome, Senator Baker and Senator Kassebaum.
Though we come together this evening in this stately and formal
Old Senate Chamber, our convocation has the light spirit of a family
reunion. It was a thrill for me to see the way our colleagues
reacted to Senator Baker on both sides of the aisle. Even some that
could not be here tonight made a special point of coming by to speak
with Senator Baker.
Tonight we welcome, as the second speaker in our Leader's Lecture
series, a greatly esteemed member of our Senate family. We are
hoping this will be something that we can continue throughout this
year and into next year, with Senator Byrd being our invited speaker
in September.
I am delighted that the American public has joined us this
evening through television. They will hear this outstanding
gentleman who will give us, I am sure, a great deal of his usual
wisdom--and much wit. I hope they will also sense the enormous
affection for our speaker tonight, which is almost palpable in this
room.
I wish they could also see the display of photographs in the
corridor outside this Chamber, for our speaker is, as we here all
know, an accomplished shutterbug. His skill in capturing with his
camera the historic occasions of which he was a participant makes
clear that he did not have to pursue politics as a profession. The
man actually had talent.
But public service was in his blood. It was the legacy of his
parents, both of whom served in the House of Representatives. It
was, as well, the legacy of his father-in-law, Everett McKinley
Dirksen of Illinois, the Republican Leader in this body from 1959 to
1969.
We were just visiting across the hall in the Republican Leader
suite of offices talking about the history of that room and how the
British started the fire that burned the Capitol in that very room,
and the fact that Senator Dirksen had his desk right there where I
have a staff desk right now. There is a lot of history in that suite
of rooms where Senator Baker served.
His official biography lists honors and accolades, positions won
and positions awarded. But those details do not really reveal the
most important aspects of his career.
How, for example, he became the first popularly elected
Republican Senator from Tennessee with bipartisan support, a pattern
that continued throughout his years in Congress. I was a student at
the time at the University of Mississippi Law School. I had seen
Republicans before in my life, but it was the first one I had ever
seen win an election. Obviously, it had an impact on me. Or how he
handled the constitutional crisis of 1974, and putting the Nation's
good above all else, nudged it toward a resolution. I should add
that my own freshman service on the House Judiciary Committee at
that time was one of the most difficult times I have ever
experienced, at least in my political life, and I can appreciate,
therefore, all the more how really difficult that task was for
Senator Baker at the time.
There is nothing in any political science textbook that explains
the unique way that he led the Senate, but those who were part of it
at the time remember. I have had occasion to talk with my senior
colleague from Mississippi, Senator Cochran, about some of the
unique ways Senator Baker led the Senate. They remember his cool and
his patience, even under personal attack.
They remember how, seemingly nonchalant, he would let a policy
battle rage for days on the Senate floor, with each Senator
exercising fully their right to debate. And then, when the voices
calmed and the tempers died down, there would be an informal
gathering in his office. After a while, I am told, the anxious
staffers outside would hear laughter, probably the result of an
anecdote aptly timed to break the ice and bring about a civil
consensus.
I can relate to that process. In fact, one day last year, when
some of my best friends were faulting a vote of mine, they referred
to me as having acquired "Bakeritis." The man after whom that
condition was named called to ask me how I was feeling with my new
affliction. I had just one question for him: Is "Bakeritis" fatal?
He assured me it was not, and apparently it is not. Indeed, some
of the speaker's most remarkable accomplishments came after he ended
his congressional career. Two in particular come to mind tonight.
The first was his extraordinary service as Chief of Staff to
President Reagan. Let us be candid. Most Senators would view that
position as a tremendous step down, to put it mildly, from the
office of Senate majority leader. But our speaker saw things in a
different light. His President needed him. And to be blunt, his
country needed him in that position at that particular time. Some
things were coming apart, and he was the right person, and perhaps
the only person, to pull them back together again.
His second remarkable accomplishment after leaving the Senate was
to win the heart and take the hand of someone who had long since won
all our hearts, Senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker.
Now, cynics may think that there is no real romance at all in
official Washington. There is, indeed, but you have to know where to
find it. Few would fault that it would be in the Senate of the
United States.
You have to know where to find real leadership, too, the kind
that subordinates ambition to achievement, and ego to the greater
good. In 1980, our speaker ran for the Presidency, supported by
almost all of his Republican colleagues. But it was not meant to be.
A lesser individual might have nursed resentment against the man who
defeated him. Instead, this man carried the banner of his triumphal
rival, led his forces here in the Senate, and pulled off the Reagan
Revolution of 1981.
That took more than skill. It took class. It took a lifetime of
dedication to something more important than party or personal
advancement. It took Howard Baker, and I am honored to present him
to you tonight.
Address by Senator Howard H. Baker,
Jr.
On Herding Cats
Thank you so much. I am grateful. What a welcome. What a pleasure
it is for me to be back here in this historic place and to be among
you, my friends, and in many cases former colleagues. I am
overwhelmed with the absolutely outrageous introduction Senator Lott
has produced for me. It was wonderful to have a chance to visit with
him and with most of you before these remarks began. I would like to
do more of that, and perhaps we can after this is finished. But
first, I would like to make these remarks in response to the
leadership's request.
I will express my thoughts on Senate leadership. Perhaps I should
start by telling you that the first time I walked into the gallery
of the United States Senate, it was almost sixty years ago. My great
aunt Mattie Keene was then the personal secretary to the late
Senator K.D. McKellar of Tennessee, and I came here to visit her in
July of 1939 as a 13-year-old boy. And being the secretary to
Senator McKellar, she was able to procure gallery passes, and I
visited the hall of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
The Senate had only the most primitive air conditioning in those
days. As a matter of fact, it was principally cooled by a system of
louvers, vents and skylights that dated back to 1859, when the
Senate vacated this Chamber and moved down the hall to its present
home.
But in all fairness, the system didn't work very well against
Washington's heat and humidity. As a consequence, Congress was not a
year-round institution in those days.
Many of you who know me are now tempted to think that I am going
to devote the balance of these remarks to a dissertation on the
citizen legislature--a Congress that did its work and went home,
rather than a perpetual Congress hermetically sealed in the capital
city. But I assure you that will not be my lecture tonight. Besides,
I have heard it myself so many times, I am tired of it. In that
summer of 1939, in any event, nature and technology offered little
choice.
On that same trip in 1939, I traveled even further north--to New
York, in the company of the same Aunt Mattie--to attend the New York
World's Fair. And there I had my first encounter with a novel
technology that would have more profound consequences than air
conditioning, and it was television. It was the same K.D. McKellar,
my Aunt Mattie's boss who, a mere 3 years later, would help
President Roosevelt launch the Manhattan Project that would shortly
usher in the nuclear age.
By the way, Senator McKellar was then chairman of the Senate
Appropriations Committee, and when President Roosevelt summoned him
to the White House to ask him if he could hide a billion dollars for
his super top-secret national defense project, Senator McKellar
said, "Well, Mr. President, of course, I can--and where in Tennessee
are we going to build this plant?"
Perhaps things don't change as much as we think.
I recite all of this personal history not to remind you how old I
am, but to remark on how young our country is, how true it is in
America that, as William Faulkner wrote, "The past isn't dead. It
isn't even the past."
The same ventilation system that Senator Jefferson Davis of
Mississippi presided over the installation of in the Senate Chamber
in 1859--which, by the way, was just before he left the Senate to
become President of the Confederacy--was still in use when I first
came here as a boy, when television and nuclear power were in their
infancy.
My friends, we enter rooms that Clay and Webster and Calhoun seem
only recently to have departed. We can almost smell the smoke of the
fire the British kindled in what is now Senator Lott's office,
burning down this building in August of 1814. Incidentally, if you
smell any smoke now, I must confess that when my late father-in-law,
Everett Dirksen, was in office, he told me that the fireplaces in
the leader's offices didn't work because they were sealed when the
air conditioning was put in. So when I was elected Republican
leader, I asked the Architect of the Capitol what it would take to
make these fireplaces work, and the architect said, "Well, a match,
perhaps"-- which was one of the few occasions when I found Senator
Dirksen to be entirely wrong.
My dear friend, Jennings Randolph of West Virginia, and my good
friend Ed Muskie of Maine, with whom I helped write so much of the
environmental and public works legislation of the 1970s, have both
passed away recently. Jennings Randolph came to Washington with
Franklin Roosevelt, taking his oath of office in 1933. And he was
still here when Ronald Reagan arrived in 1981. He was a walking
history lesson who embodied--and gladly imparted--a half century of
American history.
What Makes the Senate Work
You may be wondering by now what all these ruminations have to do
with the subject of Senate leadership. The answer is this: What
makes the Senate work today is the same thing that made it work in
the days of Clay, Webster and Calhoun, in whose temple we gather
this evening.
It isn't just the principled courage, creative compromise and
persuasive eloquence that these men brought to the leadership of the
Senate--important as these qualities were in restoring the political
prestige and Constitutional importance of the Senate itself in the
first half of the 19th century. By the way, it is interesting to me
that at that time an alarming number of our predecessors in the
office of the Senate found the House of Representatives more
attractive and more promising and left the Senate to find their
careers over there.
It isn't simply an understanding of the unique role and rules of
the Senate, important as that understanding is. It isn't even a
devotion to the good of the country, which has inspired every
Senator since 1789.
What really makes the Senate work--as our heroes knew
profoundly--is an understanding of human nature, an appreciation of
the hearts as well as the minds, the frailties as well as the
strengths, of one's colleagues and one's constituents.
My friends, listen to Calhoun himself, speaking of his great
rival Clay. He said, "I don't like Henry Clay. He is a bad man, an
imposter, a creator of wicked schemes. I wouldn't speak to him. But
by God, I love him."
It is almost impossible to explain that statement to most people,
but most Senators understand it instinctively and perfectly.
Here, in those twenty-eight words, is the secret of leading the
United States Senate. Here, in the jangle of insults redeemed at the
end by the most profound appreciation and respect, is the genius and
the glory of this institution.
Very often in the course of my 18 years in the Senate, and
especially in the last eight years as Republican Leader and then
Majority Leader, I found myself engaged in fire-breathing,
passionate debate with my fellow Senators over the great issues of
the times: civil rights, Vietnam, environmental protection,
Watergate, the Panama Canal, tax cuts, defense spending, the Middle
East, relations with the Soviet Union, and dozens more.
But no sooner had the final word been spoken and the last vote
taken than I would usually walk to the desk of my most recent
antagonist, extend a hand of friendship, and solicit his report on
the next issue for the following day.
People may think we're crazy when we do that. Or perhaps they
think our debates are fraudulent to begin with, if we can put our
passion aside so quickly and embrace our adversaries so readily. But
we aren't crazy and we aren't frauds. This ritual is as natural as
breathing here in the Senate, and it is as important as anything
that happens in Washington or in the country we serve, for that
matter.
It signifies that, as Lincoln said, "We are not enemies but
friends. We must not be enemies." It pulls us back from the brink of
rhetorical, intellectual, and even physical violence that, thank
God, has only rarely disturbed the peace of the Senate.
It is what makes us America and not Bosnia. It is what makes us
the most stable government on Earth, and not another civil war
waiting to happen.
We are doing the business of the American people. We do it every
day. We have to do it with the same people every day. And if we
cannot be civil to one another, and if we stop dealing with those
with whom we disagree, or that we don't like, we would soon stop
functioning altogether.
Sometimes we have stopped functioning, and once we did, indeed,
have a civil war. By the way, once, Representative Preston Brooks of
South Carolina, who was born in Strom Thurmond's hometown of
Edgefield, came into this Chamber and attacked Senator Charles
Sumner of Massachusetts with a cane. It is at those times we have
learned the hard way how important it is to work together, to see
beyond the human frailties, the petty jealousies, even the
occasionally craven motive, the fall from grace that every mortal
experiences in life.
Calhoun didn't like Clay. He didn't share his politics. He didn't
approve of his methods. But he loved Clay because Clay was like him,
an accomplished politician, a man in the arena, a master of his
trade, serving his convictions and his constituency just as Calhoun
was doing.
Calhoun and Clay worked together because they knew they had to.
The business of their young nation was too important--and their
roles in that business was too central--to allow them the luxury of
petulance.
I read recently that our late friend and colleague Barry
Goldwater had proposed to his good friend, then Senator John
Kennedy, that the two of them make joint campaign appearances in the
1964 Presidential campaign, debating issues one-on-one, without
intervention from the press, their handlers, or anyone else.
Barry Goldwater and John Kennedy would have had trouble agreeing
on the weather, but they did agree that Presidential campaigns were
important, that the issues were important, and that the public's
understanding of their respective positions on those issues was
important.
That common commitment to the importance of public life was
enough to bridge an ideological and partisan chasm that was both
deep and wide. And that friendship, born here in the Senate where
they were both freshmen together in 1953, would have served this
Nation well, whoever might have won that election in 1964.
Barry Goldwater and I were personal friends, as well as
professional colleagues and members of the same political team. Even
so, I could not automatically count on Barry's support for anything.
Once, when I really needed his vote and leaned on him perhaps a
little too hard, he said to his Majority Leader, "Howard, you have
one vote, and I have one vote, and we'll just see how this thing
turns out."
It was at that moment that I formulated my theory that being
leader of the Senate was like herding cats. It is trying to make
ninety-nine independent souls act in concert under rules that
encourage polite anarchy and embolden people who find majority rule
a dubious proposition at best.
Perhaps this is why there was no such thing as a Majority Leader
in the Senate's first century and a quarter--and why it is only a
traditional, rather than a statutory or constitutional, office still
today.
Indeed, the only Senator with a constitutional office is the
President pro tempore, who stands third in line of succession to the
Presidency of the United States. Our friend Strom Thurmond has
served ably in that constitutional role for most of the last 17
years, and I have no doubt that he will serve 17 more.
May I say, in Strom's case, I am reminded of an invitation I
recently received to attend the dedication of a time capsule in
Rugby, Tennessee, to be opened in 100 years. Unfortunately, I could
not attend because of a scheduling conflict, so I wrote them that I
was sorry I could not be there for the burying of the time capsule,
but I assured them that I would try to be there when they dig it up.
A Baker's Dozen
My friends, these are different times than when Calhoun was
Andrew Jackson's Vice President. These are different times than when
Lyndon Johnson was majority leader in the 1950s and could wield his
power to enforce party discipline with cash and committee
assignments, as well as the famous "Johnson treatment."
Today, every Senator is an independent contractor, beholden to no
one for fundraising, for media coverage, for policy analysis, for
political standing, or anything else. I herded cats. Trent Lott and
Tom Daschle have to tame tigers. And the wonder is not that the
Senate, so configured, does so little, but that it accomplishes so
much.
That it does is a tribute to their talented leadership. They can
herd cats. They can tame tigers. They can demonstrate the patience
of Job, wisdom of Solomon, the poise of Cary Grant, and the
sincerity of Jimmy Stewart--all of which are essential to success in
the difficult roles they play.
But for whatever help it may be to these and future leaders, let
me now offer a few rules for Senate leadership. As it happens, they
are an even Baker's Dozen:
1. Understand its limits. The leader of the Senate relies on two
prerogatives, neither of which is constitutionally or statutorily
guaranteed. They are the right of prior recognition under the
precedent of the Senate and the conceded right to schedule the
Senate's business. These, together with the reliability of his
commitment and whatever power of personal persuasion one brings to
the job, are all the tools a Senate leader has.
2. Have a genuine and decent respect for differing points of
view. Remember that every Senator is an individual, with individual
needs, ambitions and political conditions. None was sent here to
march in lockstep with his or her colleagues and none will. But also
remember that even members of the opposition party are susceptible
to persuasion and redemption on a surprising number of issues.
Understanding these shifting sands is the beginning of wisdom for
Senate leaders.
3. Consult as often as possible with as many Senators as
possible, on as many issues as possible. This consultation should
encompass not only committee chairmen, but as many members of one's
party conference as possible in matters of legislation and
legislative scheduling.
4. Remember that Senators are people with families. Schedule the
Senate as humanely as possible, with as few all-night sessions and
as much accommodation as you can manage. I confess with great sin in
that category, but it is good advice for the future.
5. Choose a good staff. In the complexity of today's world, it is
impossible for a Member to gather and digest all the information
that is necessary for him or her to make an informed and prudent
decision on major issues. Listen to your staff, but don't let them
forget who works for whom.
6. Listen more often than you speak. Once again, as my late
father-in-law, Everett Dirksen, once admonished me in my first year
in this body, "occasionally allow yourself the luxury of an
unexpressed thought."
7. Count carefully and often. The essential training of a Senate
majority leader perhaps ends in the third grade, when he learns to
count reliably. But 51 today may be 49 tomorrow, so keep on
counting.
8. Work with the President, whoever he or she may be, whenever
possible. When I became Majority Leader after the elections of 1980,
I had to decide whether I would try to set a separate agenda for the
Senate, with our brand new Republican majority, or try to see how
our new President, with a Republican Senate, could work together as
a team to enact our programs. I chose the latter course, and I
believe history has proved me right. Would I have done the same with
a President of the opposition party? Lyndon Johnson did with
President Eisenhower, and history proved him right as well.
9. Work with the House. It is a coequal branch of government, and
nothing a Senator does--except in ratifications and confirmations
--is final unless the House concurs. Both my father and my
step-mother served in the House, and I appreciate its special role
as the sounding board of American politics. John Rhodes and I
established a Joint Leadership Office in 1977, and it worked very
well. I commend the arrangement to others.
10. No surprises. Bob Byrd and I decided more than twenty years
ago that, while we were bound to disagree on many things, one thing
we would always agree on was the need to keep each other fully
informed. It was an agreement we never broke -- not once -- in the
eight years we served together as Republican and Democratic leaders
in the Senate.
11. Tell the truth, whether you have to or not. Remember that
your word is your only currency; devalue it and your effectiveness
as a Senate leader is over. And always get the bad news out first.
12. Be patient. The Senate was conceived by America's founders as
"the saucer into which the nation's passions are poured to cool."
Let Senators have their say. Bide your time--I worked for 18 years
to get television in the Senate, and the first camera was not turned
on until after I left. But patience and persistence have their
shining reward. It is better to let a few important things be your
legacy than to boast of a thousand bills that have no lasting
significance.
13. (The Baker's Dozen) Be civil, and encourage others to do
likewise. Many of you have heard me speak of the need for greater
civility in our political discourse. My friends, I have been making
that speech since late into the 1960s, when America turned into an
armed battleground over the issues of civil rights and Vietnam.
Having seen political passion erupt into physical violence, I do not
share the view of those who say that politics today are meaner or
more debased than ever. But in this season of prosperity and peace
--which is so rare in our national experience--it ill behooves
America's leaders to invent disputes for the sake of political
advantage, or to inveigh carelessly against the motives and morals
of one's political adversaries. America expects better of its
leaders than this, and it deserves better.
I continue in my long-held faith that politics is an honorable
profession. I continue to believe that only through the political
process can we deal effectively with the full range of the demands
and dissents of the American people. I continue to believe that here
in the United States Senate, especially, our country can expect to
see the rule of the majority co-exist peacefully and constructively
with the rights of the minority, which is an interesting concept.
It doesn't take Clays and Websters and Calhouns to make the
Senate work. Doles and Mitchells did it. Mansfields and Scotts did
it. Johnsons and Dirksens did it. Byrds and Bakers did it. Lotts and
Daschles do it now, and do it well. The founders didn't require a
nation of supermen to make this government and this country work,
but only honorable men and women laboring honestly and diligently
and creatively in their public and private capacities.
It was the greatest honor of my life to serve here and to lead
here. I learned much about this institution, about this country,
about human nature, and about myself in the eighteen years that it
was my pleasure to serve the people of the State of Tennessee.
My friends, I enjoyed some days more than others. I succeeded
some days more than others. I was more civil some days than others.
But the Senate, for all its frustrations and foibles and failings,
is indeed the world's greatest deliberative body. And, by God, I
love it.
Thank you very much.
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