The rules of the U.S. Senate are arcane and layered; these days, they are being applied in political climate that is rigidly partisan, so it is difficult to envision any outcome that does not seem preordained. As a result, even the smallest surprises can assume epic proportions.
In general, senators speak in turn. They address an empty chamber where the real audience is a C-SPAN camera behind the presiding officer's chair. When senators are done, they slip out, not waiting to hear what the next person has to say -- even if it's a response to their remarks.
But in the days leading up to the floor debate on the nominations of Priscilla Owen and Janice Rogers Brown, real debate broke out on the Senate floor. All of it had to be done by addressing the chair, since senators can't address each other directly. Yet Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and Minority Leader Harry Reid engaged each other. And it may be no surprise that the senator at the center was Robert Byrd, the West Virginia Democrat, who somehow sucked Frist into a debate on the nuclear option.
“I have spent sleepless hours worrying about this thing of killing debate, freedom of speech in the Senate,” Byrd said. “Who wishes, Mr. Leader, to have that kind of a legacy to confront him -- to help to kill freedom of speech in the Senate? You don't want that legacy. I don't want to see you have that legacy -- freedom of speech in the Senate killed.”
Frist asked Byrd for the floor, so that he could answer.
“Not yet,” Byrd retorted.
Technically, the Senate was working on the highway bill. Byrd had an amendment that would have given a $500 tax credit to residents of rural states who had to commute more than 250 miles a week. He talked about the high price of gas. The amendment failed, but what he really wanted to talk about was the nuclear option. He had the Constitution in his breast pocket and his Bible on the desk. He accused the Republicans of trying to turn the judiciary into another GOP-controlled branch of government and demanded to know how much power they needed.
“How much land does a man need?” he bellowed. He repeated it a couple more times.
Then Byrd went after religious activists, the ones who care most about the judiciary issue.
“Here is my Bible,” he announced. “This is the King James version of the Bible. I don't read any other version of the Bible except the King James version. I speak as a born-again Christian. We hear that thrown around a lot around here. I am a born-again Christian and have been since 1946.”
At one time, warring political coalitions were focused on the question of civil rights, and Byrd was on the wrong side. When Southern Democrats filibustered what became the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Byrd was the last speaker, having talked for 14 hours and 13 minutes trying to kill the bill, until 71 senators voted to end the filibuster on June 10,, 1964. Ultimately, the Southern Democrats became Republicans. And the Northern Democrats saw their political base dismantled.
At 87, and serving his eighth term, Byrd, a onetime Klan member and segregationist, has become a champion of the left. He's also a hero to the MoveOn.org kids because of his opposition to the Iraq war. And, not surprisingly, he is a mega-target for Republicans who have set out to portray him as out of touch. His decision to play the Democratic attack dog against the White House and the GOP could hurt him in West Virginia when he seeks reelection next year.
Yet it doesn't slow him down. He often refers to others senators as “my distinguished colleague,” and it's as though he believes his contemporaries are not those men and women on the Senate floor but Webster and Clay, Calhoun and Sumner -- orators from a time when the measure of senators was the strength of his lungs and the wisdom of his words. Byrd talks and talks and talks. He leaves opens himself up to the possibility that he is a doddering windbag. But one of his great weapons is he does not care.
On that day, he was just getting going: “My wife and I will soon be married, the Lord willing, in about 16 or 17 more days, 68 years. We were both put under the water in that old churchyard pool under the apple orchard in West Virginia, the old Missionary Baptist Church there. Both Erma and I went under the water. So I speak as a born-again Christian. You hear that term thrown around. I have never made a big whoop-de-do about being a born-again Christian, but I speak as a born-again Christian. Hear me all you evangelicals out there, hear me.”
Heard or not, he's not done talking.
Terence Samuel is the chief congressional correspondent for U.S. News & World Report. His column about politics appears each week in the Prospect's online edition.
