As longest-serving senator, Byrd recalls another era

WASHINGTON — Former Sen. George Smathers used to tell the story about how Robert Byrd had turned down multiple invitations to join other senators in Florida for deep-sea fishing or golf or gin rummy or tennis.

"I have never in my life played a game of cards. I have never had a golf club in my hand. I have never in life hit a tennis ball," Byrd told the Florida Democrat, according to an interview Smathers gave to a Senate historian.

"I don't do any of those things. I have only had to work all my life."

After almost 48 years in the Senate, Byrd is still working. On Monday, the West Virginia Democrat passes the late GOP Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina as the longest-serving senator in history.

And Byrd is not finished.

Slowed by age and grief-stricken over the recent death of Erma, his wife of almost 69 years, Byrd is running for an unprecedented ninth term. At 88, he uses two canes as he slowly makes his way around the Capitol. Yet he can thunder orations from the Senate floor.

"I can speak with fire because my convictions run deep," Byrd said. "I'm not just an ordinary senator."

That bit of immodesty came shortly after Byrd was asked whether he will be able to complete a full six-year term that would end when he is 95. When asked about his age and his stamina, Byrd bristled.

"Age has nothing to do with it except as it might affect one's strength, endurance and stamina. Age does not affect me except in my legs," Byrd said. "And I've got a head up here that hasn't changed one iota in the last 25 years."

The adopted son of a coal miner, Byrd grew up poor, in a house without electricity, running water or indoor plumbing. His rise to the upper echelons of U.S. politics began in 1946, when, as a fiddle-playing butcher, he won a seat in the state's House of Delegates.

Within 12 years, Byrd had made his way through the West Virginia Senate and the U.S. House. He won election to the Senate in 1958. Dwight Eisenhower was president and it was a year after the Soviet Union beat the U.S. into space with Sputnik.

Eschewing the limelight to focus on the nuts and bolts of Senate business, Byrd quickly became an inside player. He did a lot of grunt work in junior leadership posts, focusing on details that made colleagues' lives easier: arranging times for votes and colleagues' floor speeches, and making sure their amendments got votes. He became majority leader — the Senate's top post — in 1977.

He admits to some errors along the way.

Byrd participated in an unsuccessful filibuster of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. As a young man, he joined the Ku Klux Klan, a mistake he has been saddled with since the early 1940s.

He is a senator from another era. In an age in which politics has long since been dominated by sound bites and snappy visuals, he cites Roman history, quotes from the Bible and reads poetry in his Senate speeches.

According to Byrd, the Senate has seen much better days. Partisan politics is now everything. Raising campaign cash is too time-consuming. Workweeks are usually kept short, with Friday votes a rarity.

Today's senators would be left gasping at the paces Byrd put the Senate through when he ran it. Monday through Friday workweeks. Late-night votes. Fewer recesses. Byrd used to hold his weekly news conferences on Saturdays.

"I ran the Senate like a stern parent," Byrd wrote in his memoir published last year, "Child of the Appalachian Coalfields."

Byrd left his leadership post in 1989 to take the helm of the Appropriations Committee, where he turned on a federal spigot of new highways, water projects, federal buildings and job-training centers for West Virginia. The largesse included moving a new FBI fingerprint-identification center from Washington to Clarksburg, W.Va., where it would eventually employ more than 2,300.

He earned a lot of criticism for being too greedy in directing taxpayer dollars to his state. Byrd makes no apologies.

"Naturally I was going to send some home to West Virginia. Proud of it," he said.

Elections in 1994 and 2002 turned his beloved chairmanship over to Republicans. Byrd naturally has less clout now and has to work within the clubby atmosphere on the Appropriations Committee to have an impact.

"He's not involved in as many fights as maybe he was before," said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H. "But when he chooses to engage, he has a significant impact."

Byrd has become a darling of the liberal blogosphere because of his strong, vocal opposition to the Iraq war. While prominent Senate Democrats such as 2004 presidential nominee John Kerry of Massachusetts, Hillary Clinton of New York and Harry Reid of Nevada voted to authorize the war, Byrd stood firm in opposition.

Now that public opinion on the war has shifted, Byrd feels gratified.

"The people are becoming more and more aware that we were hoodwinked, that the leaders of this country misrepresented or exaggerated the necessity for invading Iraq," Byrd said.

As for President Bush, the 11th president the West Virginian has served with since entering Congress?

"He started with great promise, I thought. I had great hopes for him," Byrd said.

"As time went on, of course, in my judgment he did not bear out my early hopes. I'll leave it at that."