Tales from the Trail

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – It was a sight that would have seemed unimaginable when Senator Robert Byrd was growing up in West Virginia.

On Friday at a memorial service for the longest-serving member of the U.S. Congress, the first black American president paid tribute to a man who in his youth had belonged to the Ku Klux Klan.

It was just a moment in time, but reflected the sweep of social and political change in U.S. history during the 92 years of Byrd’s life.

Former President Bill Clinton addressed Byrd’s fleeting association with the white supremacist KKK in the early 1940s before he was elected to Congress.

“I’ll tell you what it means, he was a country boy from the hills and hollows of West Virginia, he was trying to get elected,” Clinton said. “And maybe he did something he shouldn’t have done, and he spent the rest of his life making it up, and that’s what a good person does.”

Senator Robert Byrd was a stickler for Senate decorum. And the Democrat from West Virginia would not tolerate any disrespect of the institution to which he was elected an unprecedented 9 times.

I remember when Bill Richardson, who was energy secretary in 2000 and under fire over security lapses at U.S. nuclear weapons labs, decided to skip a Senate hearing where he was asked to be a witness, Byrd was livid.

The following week when Richardson did show up for a Senate hearing, the Democratic senator from West Virginia delivered a scathing public scolding to the former member of Congress from his own party. (Jaws dropped at the sight of the Democratic senator telling Richardson he’d never work in this town again if Byrd could help it).

Dubbed “the world’s most exclusive club and deliberative body,” the U.S. Senate is packed with white-haired lawmakers, many of whom have served in the chamber for decades.

While Americans generally retire in their mid-60s or so, about half of the 100 senators are 65 years or older.

And one of them, Democrat Robert Byrd, 91, of West Virginia, set the record on Wednesday as the longest serving member of the U.S. Congress ever — 20,774 days.

The healthcare fight has turned into a power struggle over names.

Conservatives have the sirens out warning about the “Wellstone effect” in a jab at trying to knock out any inclination Liberals may have to capitalize on the Kennedy name in pursuing healthcare overhaul, one of  Senator Edward Kennedy’s signature issues.

Trouble is that the Wellstone analogy doesn’t automatically jump out for everyone.

It takes a bit of digging into the memory banks (or perhaps Googling) to refresh the brain cells that the reference is to the 2002 memorial service for Democrat Senator Paul Wellstone which was criticized for turning into a political event. Backlash contributed to Democrats losing that Senate seat.