After announcing verdicts in several controversial cases, Justice John Paul Stevens will step down from the Supreme Court after nearly 35 years. And Senator Robert Byrd, the powerhouse from West Virginia who has been ill for years, passed away early this morning.
With over a half century of service, Senator Robert Byrd was the oldest member of Congress, the longest serving member of either house, and the living embodiment of how the Democratic party changed in America in the 20th century. In the 1940s, Byrd joined and was elected to a leadership position in the Ku Klux Klan, at a time when that won you major points when running as a Democrat.
His views on race did not change overnight. He filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and was blatantly segregationist. Regardless of how precisely it happened — some say
it was just politics, he credits the Baptist church — a change of heart on race for him did occur.
He was a prolific writer on the history of the Senate and arguably the institution’s biggest expert on its rules. At his death, he was widely respected by members of both parties, though his affiliation with the Klan would always haunt him, as he seemed to think it should.
As Byrd said to the Washington Post, “I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times . . . and I don’t mind apologizing over and over again. I can’t erase what happened.”
He lived long enough to see his once segregationist party nominate and elect the first black president. In a moving passage in his book The Audacity of Hope, then Senator Obama writes about how awkward it was the first time he had lunch with Byrd, when Byrd presented him with an autographed copy of his multi-volume senate history. (Byrd went on to support Obama over Clinton in the 2008 Democratic Presidential nomination, despite the fact that Clinton had defeated Obama in the West Virginia primary.)
Byrd served as Senate Minority Leader, Senate Majority Leader (twice), and died as the President Pro Tempore of the Senate. Many recent Democratic legislative accomplishments — most notably, the health care overhaul — would not have been possible without an often ailing Byrd being wheeled in for his vote that staved off a filibuster. (And as with his good friend Ted Kennedy, for whom he openly wept on the floor of the Senate, the loss of his seat is going to make Obama’s already tenuous legislative agenda all the more difficult to implement. It is unclear for what term West Virginia’s Democratic governor can appoint a replacement for Byrd.)
source: villagevoice
