love and clout

My whole life, I've been aware of the name Senator Robert Byrd. He's been in Congress since before I was born. I never lived in his state, but his name and some sort of something about him is just in my consciousness. He's like Johnny Carson -- part of the "wallpaper" of our background.

A guy who got elected to the U.S. Senate in (I think) 2004 wrote this about Senator Byrd:

...As I made the rounds to their offices, their advice usually related to the business of the Senate. They explained to me the advantages of various committee assignments and the temperaments of various committee chairmen. They offered suggestions on how to organize staff, whom to talk to for extra office space, and how to manage constituent requests.

...My meetings would end with one consistent recommendation: As soon as possible, they said, I should schedule a meeting with Senator Byrd -- not only as a matter of senatorial courtesy, but also because Senator Byrd's senior position on the Appropriations Committee and general stature in the Senate gave him considerable clout.

At eighty-seven years old, Senator Robert C. Byrd was not simply the dean of the Senate; he had come to be seen as the very embodiment of the Senate....Raised by his aunt and uncle in the hardscrabble coal-mining towns of West Virginia, he possessed a native talent that allowed him to recite long passages of poetry from memory and play the fiddle with impressive skill. Unable to afford college tuition, he worked as a meat cutter, a produce salesman, and a welder on battleships during World War II. When he returned to West Virginia after the war, he won a seat in the state legislature, and he was elected to Congress in 1952.

In 1958, he made the jump to the Senate, and during the course of forty-seven years he had held just about every office available -- including six years as majority leader and six years as minority leader. All the while he maintained the populist impulse that led him to focus on delivering tangible benefits to the men and women back home: black lung benefits and union protections for miners; roads and buildings and electrification projects ....

In ten years of night courses while serving in Congress he had earned his law degree, and his grasp of Senate rules was legendary. Eventually, he had written a four-volume history of the Senate that reflected not just scholarship and discipline but also an unsurpassed love of the institution....

Enthusiasm.

-30-