Posted on 07/01/2010 5:19:09 AM PDT by Kaslin
About 10,000 men and women have served in the United States Congress. Robert C. Byrd, who died Monday at age 92, served longer than all the rest - -more than 57 years, with six in the House and 51 in the Senate.
In 1917, the year he was born, the United States had 103 million people and the nation had just entered World War I. The year he died, the United States had 310 million people, with military personnel in more than 100 countries around the world.
Byrd's life and career tell us many things about our country -- some good things, some bad.
Among the good things is that he was a paragon of upward mobility. Raised in a West Virginia coal camp, he was determined not to go into the mines. Like Charles Dickens' David Copperfield, he believed he was meant for better things. He studied hard and got good grades but was forced to drop out of college.
He was 24 when Pearl Harbor was attacked, already a husband and father. Byrd worked at shipyards in Baltimore and Tampa, Fla., during the war. Then he returned to West Virginia and worked as a butcher.
But then come the bad things. In Raleigh County, W.V., he organized a 150-member klavern of the Ku Klux Klan. That led the young kleagle to politics, and he was elected to the West Virginia legislature in 1946.
That episode did not prevent and may have helped his rise. In 1952, Democratic leaders wanted him to drop out of the race, but he was elected to Congress and served in the last days of Harry Truman's administration.
That gave him a reputation for independence, enhanced when he ran for the Senate in 1958 over the opposition of United Mine Workers President John L. Lewis. He won handily, and the man who worked as a butcher a dozen years before was a U.S. senator at age 41.
As a young senator, he eyed a long career. One way to achieve that goal was to bring federal dollars -- a billion dollars -- to West Virginia. He pledged allegiance to Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson (and at his behest supported Hubert Humphrey over John Kennedy in the 1960 West Virginia presidential primary) in return for a seat on the Appropriations Committee. A good thing or a bad thing? You decide -- the voters of West Virginia always thought the former.
The other way Byrd sought to secure his position was clearly bad: to oppose civil rights for black Americans. He attracted attention by attacking welfare programs in Washington, D.C., with its rapidly rising black population. He filibustered for 14 hours against the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The interesting thing is that this wasn't politically compulsory in his state. His West Virginia colleague Jennings Randolph voted for the bill.
Byrd's alliance with Southern Democrats led him to seek a leadership post, and in 1971, with deathbed proxy of Georgia's Richard Russell in hand, he ousted Edward Kennedy from the whip position -- No. 2 in the leadership. By 1976, when Majority Leader Mike Mansfield retired, Byrd had done enough favors for colleagues that he was elevated to lead the Senate Democrats, and did so for 12 years.
During that time, he continually worked to learn more -- a good thing -- about the Senate and the Constitution, the Founding Fathers and classical Rome. He delivered a series of speeches about the history of the Senate that, with the help of the Senate historian's office, were reprinted in a handsome book.
He celebrated the traditions of the Senate, including the filibuster, and insisted that the legislative branch was the co-equal of the executive. He justified pork-barrel spending as a prerogative of Congress sanctioned by the Constitution and successfully brought suit against the line-item veto passed by a Republican Congress and signed by Bill Clinton -- two stands in which he had the support of his scholarly colleague Daniel Patrick Moynihan.
He relinquished the majority leadership in 1988 for the position he had set about seeking 30 years before, the chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee, and was the lead Democrat there until the travails of age prevented him from carrying on.
He leaves the scene when his beloved earmarks are in disfavor with most voters and his long-ago cultivation of racism seems despicable to all. But he embodied many of the good things in America as well -- determination to rise, hard work, respect for tradition. Quite an American life
“Quite an American life”
...yeah. Right up there with Capone and Ted Kennedy.
Robert Byrd’s death: The end of pork barrel politics?
If something was built with federal dollars in the state of West Virginia in the last half century, there is a good chance that Byrd helped get the funding — more than $3.3 billion over his career.
His voters should be ashamed of themselves.
GOOD, BAD, AND UN-AMERICAN
“His voters should be ashamed of themselves.”
Fat chance. His voters are in mourning.
I wish someone would ask Byrd’s mourners where they think all that largesse comes from.
But then come the bad things. In Raleigh County, W.V., he organized a 150-member klavern of the Ku Klux Klan.
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One sentence Mr. Barone? You can only muster one sentence for this great crime? It’s not as though the Klan had a grip on local life in Raleigh County WV and the young and ambitious Byrd HAD to join to do anything at all with his life. No. That was not the case AT ALL! Robert Byrd brought the Klan to his county. He organized the klavern and recruited all it’s charter members! He foisted the evil and reprehensible KKK on the people of the county, it was NOT foisted upon him!
No way. He did not serve longer than "all the rest." That would have put him in the Senate for 20,000 years at least. Even Robert Byrd was not that old. I believed he did serve longer than any of the rest, though. Anyone who doesn't see an important difference there is an illustration of the utter uselessness of the public schools for teaching literacy.
That old man gave me the creeps and I for one am glad I don’t have to see him anymore.
LOL...godd pic!
LOL...good pic!
Haven’t they buried that rat bas*ard yet? Glorifying this repugnant pig of a man is appalling.
In the end, Robert Byrd will go down in history as one of the greatest US Senators, along with Clay, Calhoun, Webster, LaFollette, Taft, and Dole.
Most here on the thread including I, disagree.
Well he did mention it in the 6th paragraph
You are too close to the history.
100 years from now he will be seen that way, just like Calhoun, Clay, and Webster were seen that way from the point of view of 100 years later. Those three obviously did not agree with each other, and it would be impossible for any of us to agree with all of their positions.
But we can agree that regarding the institution of the Senate, they were great men who upheld its traditions more fully and served more wisely as they saw it than did most of their contemporaries.
Ask yourself what Senators from the past 40 years will be remembered by name in the year 2100. Byrd and Dole are quite obvious choices. You don’t have to like their politics to agree with that.
Oooo, this does not sit well with the Emperor Obama and his sex kitten, Elena Kagan.
Leni
Mistakes like that keep one humble...
:)
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