[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 105 (Tuesday, July 8, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4237-S4241]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REMEMBERING HOWARD BAKER
Mr. ALEXANDER. Mr. President, I thank Senator McConnell from Kentucky
for his eloquent remarks. One other thing I said at the funeral was
that Senator Baker had an eye for talent. In 1969, when I was a young
aide in the Nixon White House, Senator Baker came to me and said: ``You
might want to get to know that smart young legislative assistant for
Senator Marlow Cook.'' That young legislative assistant was Mitch
McConnell. So I did get to know him.
I thank Senator McConnell for coming to the funeral. I thank Senator
Reid, our majority leader, for being there as well. They were there at
the front of that small church in Huntsville, TN. The Vice President
came. He sat there, met everybody, showed his respect for both former
Senator Baker and his wife, former Senator Nancy Kassebaum Baker. We
Tennesseans appreciated that courtesy by the Vice President, the
majority leader, and the minority leader very much.
There were a number of others there. Our Governor was there; Senator
Corker and I, of course, were there; Senator Fred Thompson; majority
leader Bill Frist, whom Senator Baker had mentored; Senator Pete
Domenici, Senator Bill Brock, Senator Elizabeth Dole, and Senator
Bennett Johnston were also there; as well as Senator Jack Danforth, who
married Howard and Nancy; and our former Governors, Winfield Dunn and
Don Sundquist. It was a small church, but along with former Vice
President Al Gore and the current Vice President and the majority
leader, as well as the minority leader, there was real respect for the
former majority leader of the Senate.
I will not try to repeat what I said at the funeral, and it was a
privilege for me to be asked by the family to speak, but I did want to
make two comments briefly, one personal and one about the Senate.
The personal one that I said at the funeral was that I had tried to
follow the rule in Lamar Alexander's ``Little Plaid Book'' that when
invited to speak at a funeral, remember to mention the deceased more
often than yourself and to talk more about Howard Baker than my
relationship with him, but that was hard to do. I waited until the end
of my remarks to try to do that.
No one had more influence on my life over the last half century than
Howard Baker. I came here with him in 1967 as his only legislative
assistant. That is how many legislative assistants Senators had then.
They dealt mainly with one another, not through staff members. I came
back in 1977 when suddenly he was elected Republican leader on his
third try by one vote, and I worked in the office that is now the
Republican leader's office for 3 months helping him find a permanent
chief of staff until I went back to Tennessee.
Throughout my entire public life and private life, no one has had
more effect on me by virtue of his effort to encourage me--as well as
many other younger people who were working their way up in a variety of
ways--and as an example for how to do things.
My advice to younger people who want to know how to become involved
in politics is to find someone whom you respect and admire, volunteer
to go to work for them and do anything legal they ask you to do and
learn from them, both the good and the bad. I had the great privilege
of working with the best.
To give one small example of how closely intertwined our lives have
become, I had the same office he had in the Dirksen Office Building. I
had the same phone number he had in the Dirksen Office Building. If you
open the drawer of this desk, you will find scratched in the drawer the
names Baker, Thompson, and my name. I have the same desk on this floor.
As far as the Senate, just one story. A remarkably effective
presentation at the funeral was made by the Reverend Martha Anne
Fairchild, who for 20 years has been the minister of the small
Presbyterian church in Huntsville. She told a story about lightbulbs
and Senator Baker.
He was on the Session, which is the governing body of the church. He
was an elder, and he insisted on coming to the meetings. She said that
at one of the meetings of the Session the elders, who represent the
maybe 70 members of the church, fell into a discussion about new
lightbulbs. It was pretty contentious, and eventually they resolved it
because Senator Baker insisted that they discuss it all the way through
to the end.
She talked with him later, and he said: ``Well, I could have pulled
out my checkbook and written a check for the new lightbulbs, but I
thought it was more important that the elders have a full and long
discussion so they all could be comfortable with the decision they
made.''
That story about lightbulbs is how Howard Baker saw the U.S. Senate--
as a forum for extended discussion where you have the patience to allow
everyone to pretty well have their say in the hopes that you come to a
conclusion that most of us are comfortable with and therefore the
country is comfortable with it. He understood that you only govern a
complex country such as ours by consensus. And whether it was
lightbulbs or an 9-week debate on the Panama Canal during which there
were nearly 200 contentious amendments and reservations and arguments,
you have those discussion all the way through to the end.
It is said that these days are much more contentious than the days of
Howard Baker. There are some things that are different today that make
that sort of discussion more difficult, but we shouldn't kid
ourselves--those weren't easy days either. Those were the days when
Vietnam veterans came home with Americans spitting on them. Those were
the days of Watergate. Those were the days of Social Security going
bankrupt and a 9-week contentious debate on the Panama Canal. Those
were the days of the Equal Rights Amendment. Those were difficult days
too. Senator Baker and Senator Byrd on the Democratic side were able,
generally speaking, to allow the Senate to take up those big issues and
have an extended discussion all the way through to the end and come to
a result.
Most of us in this body have the same principles. Those principles
all belong to what we call the American character. They include such
principles as equal opportunity, liberty, and E pluribus unum. And most
of our conflicts, the late Samuel Huntington used to say, are about
resolving conflicts among those principles. For example, if we are
talking about immigration, we have a conflict between rule of law and
equal opportunity, so how do we put those together and how do we come
to a conclusion? Howard Baker saw the way to do that as bringing to the
floor a subject, hopefully with bipartisan support, and talking it all
the way through to the end until most Senators are comfortable with the
decision. His aid in that was, as Senator McConnell said, being an
eloquent listener. That is why he was admired by Members of both
parties. In one poll in the 1980s, he was considered to be the most
admired Senator by Democrats and by Republicans. That is why Dan Quayle
said: There is Howard Baker ``and then there's the rest of us
Senators.''
So I think the memory of Howard Baker, his lesson for us, is that--
without assigning any blame to the Republican side or the Democratic
side--we don't need a change of rules to make the Senate function, we
need a change of behavior. Howard Baker's behavior is a very good
example, whether it was the Panama Canal, whether it was fixing Social
Security, whether it was President Reagan's tax cuts, or whether it was
resolving whether how to buy new lightbulbs for the First Presbyterian
Church of Huntsville, TN.
I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the remarks of
Martha Anne Fairchild, the pastor of
[[Page S4238]]
the First Presbyterian Church of Huntsville, TN, as well as two other
documents, one by Arthur B. Culvahouse, Jr., who was Senator Baker's
legislative assistant and President Reagan's counsel. According to
Culvahouse, Howard Baker told him that if the President did not truly
know about the diversion of Iranian arms sales proceeds to the Contras,
he was to help him--if he did not truly know. The other is an article
by Keel Hunt from the Tennessean about Senator Baker, and finally the
funeral order of worship from the Baker ceremony.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
In Memory of Howard H. Baker, Jr.
Funeral sermon by The Rev. Martha Anne Fairchild, Pastor, First
Presbyterian Church, Huntsville, Tennessee
Dear friends, thank you for your presence here this
afternoon. Thank you for joining us as we gather to remember
and give thanks for the remarkable life of Howard H. Baker,
Jr., We are grateful and honored that you are here with us.
I would like to read one more Scripture lesson, one with
opening words that may surprise you. But as I continue
reading, you will understand why I chose it. It was written
by the Apostle Paul, from a prison cell, perhaps within a
very short time before his own death. He was writing to a
community of faithful Christians he held in such high esteem
that he considered them to be equal co-workers with him in
the work of Christ, and he wrote these words at the end of a
letter full of tender concern and advice for dear friends he
knew he might never see again. Here are Paul's words from the
fourth chapter of his letter to the church at Philippi:
(Philippians 4:4-9)
``Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice!
Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near.
Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and
supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made
known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all
understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in
Christ Jesus.
``Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is
honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is
pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence
and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these
things. Keep on doing the things that you have learned and
received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will
be with you.''
``Rejoice in the Lord always,'' Paul says. I'll admit it,
those are odd words for a funeral sermon. We may be
celebrating the life of a great man, but we do not feel much
like rejoicing. Our feelings are too bittersweet for that. We
have lost someone we loved deeply, someone who was an immense
influence for good not only in our own country but around the
world. How is rejoicing part of this picture? How can we say,
``Rejoice!''
Rejoicing is part of the picture for us for the same reason
it was part of the picture for Paul. Paul was nearing his own
death. He had already lost his freedom--he was writing this
letter from a prison cell. He was writing to people he would
never see again. In the stark conditions of imprisonment in
the first century, he was suffering physically, in chains and
without sufficient food or clothing, often alone and in pain,
with no certainty about what would happen to him. Yet he
invites us to rejoice, because the sources of his joy were
not tied to his particular difficult circumstances. They were
tied to the kind of man he was.
Can we quiet our hearts enough to hear his words? ``Let
your gentleness be known to everyone.'' In gentleness Paul
found the key that led him into the surrender of worry, into
a life of prayer, and above all else into a peace beyond
human understanding. This gentleness, this prayer, this
peace, made it possible for him to live in joy whatever his
circumstances and to invite his friends to do exactly the
same.
I chose to read these words today because we are saying
goodbye to a supremely gentle man. Howard Baker embodied in
his life all the qualities Paul commends to our reflection
and attention. He was a true, honorable, and just man. He
lived a pure, pleasing, and commendable life, and surely he
was a man of excellence and worthy of praise. In a public
life spanning decades of serious, selfless service to his
country, Howard Baker embodied every public virtue.
Of his public virtues, in fact, so much has been said over
the past few days that I can add very little. So I share with
you something of the gentleness Howard Baker shared with his
church. He was a member of this congregation from his
childhood, and one of the most faithful attenders of public
worship I have ever known. When he was in town, he was in
church on Sunday morning--it was one of his priorities. There
is an old catch phrase about sharing time, talents, and
treasure with one's church, and Howard Baker shared all those
things: He shared his time with his faithful attendance at
worship and church events. He shared his talents with his
photography of church happenings from Homecoming to Easter
egg hunts, and of course his cooking prowess when got up
early on Easter Sunday to join the other church men cooking
breakfast--his particular talent was putting the biscuits in
the oven and getting them out on time. He shared his treasure
in a lifetime of generous financial support of the church.
But most of all Howard Baker supported this church with his
presence.
Here is an example. Some years ago the congregation of this
church elected him as a ruling elder, a lifelong position in
our denomination. His election placed him in active service
on our church board, called the Session, for a three year
term. Now, I must share a little secret with you. Session
meetings only rarely concern matters of any great import. So
I mentioned to him that I understood the many demands he had
on his time, and offered him a blanket excused absence for
any meeting he needed to miss. That was a mistake. He was
quite offended by this suggestion of mine and told me
firmly--but very gently--that he intended to make every
meeting. And that is what he did, on one occasion even flying
in for our evening meeting and flying out again that very
same night to meet a commitment elsewhere the following day.
When Howard Baker made a promise, he kept it.
At every meeting, he was an attentive, helpful, encouraging
elder among fellow elders. He tried to get all of us to call
him Howard, and some of us managed to do that and some of us
never could. Even when the discussion revolved around the
purchase of new light bulbs--yes, I know all those jokes,
too--he was patient and helpful in not only contributing to
the discussion but in helping me as his moderator to guide it
to a conclusion. He told me later he considered just pulling
out his checkbook and writing a check for the bulbs we were
dithering over, but he wanted his fellow elders to go through
the process of making a decision we were all comfortable
with. And for that he was willing to devote a little more
time, a little more patience, and, yes, a little more love to
the task.
When he accepted President Bush's appointment to become the
United States Ambassador to Japan, his term of active service
on the Session was not quite over. It was necessary for him
to resign, and he called me to apologize that he could not
complete his term. It may seem that no apologies would be
necessary, but he reminded me that he had made a commitment
to serve his church, and he truly regretted being unable to
complete that commitment.
I am humbly grateful that he was so willing to accept me as
his pastor when I came here almost 20 years ago, a woman only
a few years out of seminary who still had much to learn about
the serious business of Christian ministry. From the very
beginning he treated me with affection and respect, and I
hope I have learned from him.
One of the things we all admire him for was his gift of
attention. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great 20th century
Christian theologian and martyr, once remarked, ``The first
duty one owes to others in the fellowship is to listen to
them.'' Howard Baker had a deep commitment to listening. When
you talked to him he paid attention to you--even if he could
only speak to you for 60 seconds, you had his focused
attention for that entire 60 seconds. You knew he heard you.
And every time you came away a little encouraged, a little
cheered, a little more content, because he had paid
attention--that great gift of being listened to that we all
hunger to receive.
Among the questions a Presbyterian elder must answer in the
affirmative at his or her ordination is this one: ``Will you
seek to serve the people with energy, intelligence,
imagination, and love?'' That is a vow every leader should
take. It is a vow Howard Baker lived up to in his entire life
of service, for that is what he was: a servant leader, one
who embodied not only the qualities of courage, confidence,
and consensus-building that were the hallmarks of his public
life, but also the qualities of humility, good humor, and
selfless love that made those other qualities possible. He
was a servant leader in the truest sense of the term.
As we remember him for his gentleness, his good humor, his
deep wisdom, as we recall shared moments of tears and
laughter, tense times of debate and controversy, satisfying
times of concord and shared accomplishment, as we pay tribute
to him for his deep love for his family, for his unwavering
devotion to the well-being of his country, and even for his
unfailing appetite for all things chocolate and sweet,
perhaps you can see why I think we must say with Paul,
``Rejoice in the Lord always!'' By God's great gifts to him,
Howard Baker became a great gift to us. And surely that great
gift is worth rejoicing over always.
Shortly we will follow his casket out to the cemetery
adjacent to this church. When we go I invite you to remember
that across the street from that cemetery once stood the
house where Howard Baker was born. We will be laying him to
rest just a few hundred feet from where his life began. In
the completion of that great life well lived, I hope that,
even in the midst of our sorrow, we will find cause to
rejoice always.
Thanks be to God for the life of Howard Baker. Thanks be to
God.
____
[From the National Review Online, July 2, 2014]
Howard Baker Jr., Courageous Constitutionalist
(By Arthur B. Culvahouse, Jr.)
Many of the recent obituaries of Howard Baker, the former
Senate majority leader,
[[Page S4239]]
White House chief of staff, and U.S. ambassador to Japan,
quote Jim Baker's accurate observation that Howard was a
``mediator, negotiator, and moderator.'' As a son of a
congressmen, a son-in-law of Senator Everett Dirksen's, and a
three-term senator, Howard understood that transacting the
people's business required at least 51 votes in the Senate
and 218 votes in the House. On the tough votes that require
leadership and political courage, he knew that the necessary
majority was to be found on both sides of the aisle.
Contrary to recent suggestions by approving left-leaning
news commentators and critics on the inexperienced right,
Howard Baker's interpretation of acceptable ``compromise''
did not entail splitting the difference or seeking a watered-
down consensus. As Bob Dole observed, Howard Baker believed,
along with Ronald Reagan, that achieving 70 percent or more
of one's priorities is a victory in our democracy. Above all,
Howard Baker was the most civil and respectful person I have
known. As a consequence, he had many friends across the
political and policy spectrums who would give his views a
fair and careful hearing.
Howard Baker exercised political courage wisely and with
the intention to win. His views, even when they were in the
minority in the Republican caucus and among Tennessee voters,
were the result of careful study and measured against long-
term national interests. His support for the Panama Canal
Treaty, for instance, clearly damaged his prospects in the
1980 Republican presidential primaries, and his leadership in
securing passage of the Clean Air Act and strip-mine
reclamation disappointed his friends and neighbors in the
coal country of East Tennessee. Those and other unpopular
votes did not occur in isolation; they were co-joined and
hedged by his unrelenting support for a strong military, for
nuclear power and coal gasification, and for dispensing with
the prolonged environmental review of the Alyeska Pipeline.
Jim Neal, the renowned Tennessee trial lawyer and Kennedy-
administration prosecutor, presciently predicted that Howard,
owing to his ``strong moral compass,'' would be the star of
the Senate Watergate Committee. From announcing at the
beginning of the Watergate Committee hearings that ``he would
follow every lead, unrestrained by any fear of where that
lead might ultimately take us,'' to assembling a minority
staff that discovered the existence of the Nixon Oval Office
tapes, to making the motion that the Committee subpoena the
tapes, Howard set aside partisan considerations and led the
effort to find the answers to the key question: ``What did
the President know and when did he know it?'' In 1987, when
he was the new Reagan White House chief of staff, Howard
instructed me that my job as the recently appointed White
House counsel was to guide and advise President Reagan
through the Iran-Contra investigations without his being
impeached--if the president truly did not know about the
diversion of Iranian arms-sales proceeds to the Contras.
Query how many current and recent senior officials would
append that all-important modifier: if.
In his farewell speech to the Senate, Howard stated that
``our wisest course is to follow the Constitution rather than
improvise around it.'' He expressed deep concern that the
Clinton impeachment proceeding votes were along party lines
and that we were reaping the whirlwind of the Watergate
convulsion--that we had not learned our lesson but were
instead enacting ill-advised and constitutionally suspect
laws that were no substitute for judging the character of our
leaders on a non-partisan basis.
I have no doubt that if Howard Baker and his long-time
Democratic counterpart in the Senate leadership, Robert Byrd,
were in the Senate today, both would be working together to
put an end to the current (and any other) administration's
blatant disregard of congressionally enacted statutes. In
that vein, Howard instructed me and other senior Reagan-
administration lawyers to drop our objections to the Senate's
proposed ``ratification record'' underlying the Intermediate
Nuclear Forces Treaty; that was the Senate's prerogative,
Howard reminded me, and the president wanted the INF Treaty
ratified as part of his strategy to end, and win, the Cold
War.
Shortly before the 2010 midterm congressional elections, I
visited with Howard Baker at his home in the mountains of
East Tennessee. When I expressed concern about the dramatic
swings in the recent election results, he replied: ``I taught
you better than that. Those swings are the self-corrections
built into our republican form of government.'' All of us are
well-advised to reflect upon the teachings of Howard H. Baker
Jr.
____
[From the Tennessean, June 29, 2014]
Howard Baker's Legacy: ``The Other Guy Might Be Right''
(By Keel Hunt)
For Tennesseans who knew Howard Baker in his day, the news
of his death on Thursday brought an afternoon of emptiness,
feelings of great loss, and a deep sense that one very
special had left the building.
There are certainly people who knew him better than I did,
but in my own memory this man of moderate height looms larger
than life. Let me count the ways.
Baker was a master politician, the great conciliator and a
builder of human bridges.
Especially from the vantage point of this current angry
age, Baker's gifts shine brightly now: that calming voice,
the steady temperament, his gift for reaching out and drawing
people together, a knack for reasoned compromise, his abiding
sense of how government can and should work.
Today, you hear some of those terms attacked, by the people
who thrive on dividing, as being somehow unpatriotic. Baker's
life was a demonstration of how politics and the skills of
collaboration are noble, of how government can work to move
society forward.
Hearing both sides of an issue, finding the common ground--
these are the gifts we associate with Baker now and all the
moderate politicians he inspired (see below). This is how
good government happens.
He often quoted his own father, U.S. Rep. Howard Baker Sr.,
who told him: ``You should always go through life working on
the assumption that the other guy might be right.'' His
stepmother once said of Baker Jr., ``He's like the Tennessee
River--he flows right down the middle.''
Before politics, Baker was reared in tiny Huntsville, in
Scott County, and educated in Chattanooga, Sewanee and
Knoxville. In the early 1960s, by this time a lawyer working
in Huntsville and Knoxville, he became an architect of the
modern Republican Party in Tennessee.
In 1964, wanting to mount his own campaign for U.S. Senate,
Baker allied with Republican organizers at the far end of the
state in Memphis and Shelby County, notably the lawyers Lewis
Donelson and Harry Wellford. Together, they laid the
foundation for a two-party state.
Baker's aim was to fill the unexpired term of Sen. Estes
Kefauver, who had died, and he came very close to winning.
But it was a Democratic year driven by national factors well
beyond his control: Barry Goldwater, the GOP's presidential
nominee, came to Tennessee saying TVA ought to be sold; and
Lyndon Johnson, who had succeeded President John F. Kennedy
after the assassination, would win in a landslide.
Two years later, the statewide coalition that Baker and the
Shelby Countians formed scored its first victory, with Baker
winning the Senate seat for a full term. He was the first
Republican since Reconstruction to be elected statewide in
Tennessee. Four years after that, there were two more GOP
victories statewide: Winfield Dunn was elected governor, and
the Chattanooga U.S. Rep. Bill Brock joined Baker in the
Senate.
Today, three decades on, two generations of political
leaders can be seen in the Baker lineage: Lamar Alexander,
Bob Corker, Bill Haslam, Fred Thompson, Bill Frist, Don
Sundquist.
Alexander, very early in his career, was Baker's top
legislative aide, and left that office in 1970 to be Dunn's
campaign manager. In 1973, Baker made Thompson minority
counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, putting him on TV
screens across America. Haslam, in 1978, worked in Baker's
re-election office. Corker and Haslam became mayors of
Chattanooga and Knoxville, respectively, and later on senator
and governor.
Baker had a way with Democrats, too. He was the first
Republican ever endorsed by The Tennessean, in its partisan
Democratic heyday. The editorial on this page that supported
him was a breakthrough in Democratic territory for Baker's
East-West alliance.
When President Jimmy Carter proposed the Panama Canal
Treaty, handing the canal over to Panama, Baker was a key
advocate on the Senate floor when it passed.
Plenty will be written this week about his roles on the
national and global stages--as Senate majority leader,
President Reagan's chief of staff, ambassador to Japan. But
through it all, and more so than many senators who have
become national politicians, Baker also stayed close to his
Tennessee roots.
One morning long ago, two years into his second term, I was
in a room full of reporters in Washington, D.C., and heard
the senator say: ``I am from Huntsville, Tennessee, which is
the center of the known universe.''
That is where, on Tuesday afternoon, he will come to his
final rest.
____
Funeral Order of Worship
Prelude
*Entrance of the Family
*Sentences of Scripture
*Hymn America the Beautiful
O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.
O beautiful for pilgrim feet whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat across the wilderness!
America! America! God mend thy every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control, thy liberty in law!
O beautiful for heroes proved in liberating strife,
Who more than self their county loved, and mercy more than
life!
America! America! May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness and every gain divine.
O beautiful for patriot dream that sees, beyond the years,
Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears!
America! America! God shed His grace on thee,
[[Page S4240]]
And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.
Opening Prayer
Scripture Readings Ecclesiastes 3:1-15; John 14:1-6, 25-27
Psalm 23 (read by all)
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's
sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me; Thy rod and
Thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine
enemies: Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup
runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my
life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.
Sermon The Reverend Martha Anne Fairchild
Remarks Senator Lamar Alexander
Anthem May the Road Rise to Meet You First Presbyterian
Church Choir
Prayers
*Hymn Shall We Gather at the River
Shall we gather at the river,
Where bright angel feet have trod,
With its crystal tide forever
Flowing by the throne of God:
Refrain:
Yes, we'll gather at the river,
The beautiful, the beautiful river;
Gather with the saints at the river
That flows by the throne of God.
Ere we reach the shining river,
Lay we every burden down;
Grace our spirits will deliver,
And provide a robe and crown.
Soon we'll reach the silver river,
Soon our pilgrimage will cease;
Soon our happy hearts will quiver
With the melody of peace.
*Commendation
*Blessing
*Recessional
*Dismissal of the Family
*General Dismissal
Postlude
Pastor: The Reverend Martha Anne Fairchild
Music Director: David Mayfield
If you release a baby sea turtle on ChiChi-Jima, (a small
island off the coast of Japan), and your turtle heads to the
sea, you are guaranteed good luck for 100 years.
Mr. ALEXANDER. I thank the Senate for this time, and I yield the
floor for my colleague from Tennessee.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. CORKER. I would like to join our distinguished leader Mitch
McConnell in seconding the comments about the presentation the senior
Senator from Tennessee made at the Howard Baker funeral.
It is a great privilege for us to serve in this body. While times are
tough relative to our ability or willingness to solve some of the major
problems, many of the major problems of our Nation today--and sometimes
there are comments made about serving in the Senate--what I say to
people back home is that if any of us ever forget what a privilege it
is to serve, we should go home. That privilege allows us to meet people
and to be in conversation with people like Howard Baker who affect us
and cause us to be better people. It also allows us to witness what
took place last week. I have to say I have seen Senator Alexander on
many occasions say and do things that I thought were impressive. I
don't think I have ever seen anything that measures up to what was said
in that small Presbyterian church last week. I think all of us were
touched. The Senator had a lot of good material to work with and was
describing a man who probably has had more effect in a positive way on
Tennessee politics--in many ways, national politics--like Howard Baker.
He was an inspiration to all of us. When we were around him, his
graciousness and humility caused all of us to be much better people.
His encouragement, especially when dealing with tough issues, I think
caused all of us to want to strive even harder to be better Senators
and better people.
I certainly cannot give the comments with the eloquence the Senator
gave last week and certainly the ones just given. I know you and he
were very close, and he impacted you more than any other person outside
your immediate family, but he had an impact on all of us. He had an
impact on this Nation. It is a great honor and privilege to stand with
the Senator today to acknowledge Senator Baker's greatness as a person,
his greatness as a Senator.
Many times we see presentations as people talk about someone's life,
and a lot of times that is embellished. I will say in this case none of
it was. It was all about the man serving here in the Senate but also
serving in that small church in Huntsville, TN, to which he was so
loyal.
I thank the Senator for the opportunity to serve with him. I know
each of us strives to carry out those characteristics Howard Baker so
wisely showed us, and I do agree that the Senate would be a much better
place if all of us could embody those characteristics most of the time.
I thank the senior Senator for his leadership and for his comments.
I thank our distinguished minority leader, during a time of great
busy-ness in his own personal life, for taking the time to be a part of
something that I think is meaningful to him also.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. LEAHY. I have been moved by the comments from the Senators
regarding Senator Baker. The story the senior Senator from Tennessee
told about the lightbulbs is--those of us who knew Senator Baker could
well understand that. He was a man who brought Senators together--both
parties.
I will tell two very quick stories. One is referencing a leadership
race won by one vote. He had called a good friend of his, who was at
home on official business, and said: I know the press says I am going
to lose this race, but I know you are voting for me. Can you come back
and vote?
That Senator did. The Senator was the then-senior Senator from
Vermont, Robert Stafford, and he flew back to get to the caucus to vote
for his friend Howard Baker--the first one by one vote; all the rest by
acclamation. I know this because both Senator Stafford and Howard Baker
told me that story. They were also two of the finest Senators with whom
I have ever served. Both tried to work things out.
My other story is we were going to be in session until midnight one
night on a technically contested matter.
Senator Ted Stevens and I and a few others went to see Howard Baker,
who was the majority leader. We talked about the issue that was
divisive. We said: We think we have a solution. We have all been
talking. We can work it out but it is going to take some time for the
drafting. Could you recess and not stay until midnight when all it is
going to do is exacerbate tempers? Come back in the morning and we will
have it all worked out, and we will get this done.
Senator Baker knew that we were all Senators in both parties who kept
our word. He said: ``Of course.'' So we recessed. Now, as the Senator
from Tennessee knows, we have cloakrooms here in the back of this
Chamber. We all--if we have late-night votes, most of us hang around
the cloakroom between votes. At that time they had beautiful stained
glass windows in the alcoves.
We recessed and went home. An hour or so after we went home a bomb
went off out here in the corridor. When we came in the next morning,
this place looked like a war zone. Shards of glass from those windows
in both cloakrooms were embedded in the walls. The door to where the
distinguished Republican deputy leader has his office now was blown in,
the stained window above of it was ruined. Paintings out here were
shredded, and some of the marble busts of former vice presidents were
damaged. You could smell the gunpowder of the explosive when we came to
work.
I mention this because his form of leadership was that if we could
get together and work things out, he preferred we do that. He would
encourage it--both Republicans and Democrats. Then because he could
rely on those of us--again both Republicans and Democrats--who would
keep our word, he agreed to that. We knew he would keep his word.
I wonder how many lives of Senators were saved that night because of
that. How many would have been terribly injured. Of course our staffs
who work often long after we have gone--how many people could have been
harmed if it had not been for the fact that the Senate was a different
place, and I believe a better place.
But I say this not so much to tell historical stories, but I say this
out of my great respect for Howard Baker. Somebody calculated the other
day that I
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have served with 18 percent of all of the Senators since the beginning
of this country. If I put my tiny handful of the best, Howard Baker is
in there, hands down--a wonderful, wonderful man. He was a Senator's
Senator. He believed in the Senate. He believed what a privilege it was
to serve here.
He believed that the Senate could be the conscience of the Nation. I
appreciate the tribute that was paid by my dear friend, the senior
Senator from Tennessee, who I knew as Governor and as Cabinet member.
We have always had a good personal relationship. I listened to his
tales of Howard Baker. His colleague from Tennessee painted quite a
picture of him. I thank them for doing that. I thank them for adding to
the history of the Senate by doing it.
Order of Procedure
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the
distinguished senior Senator from Illinois be recognized once I yield
the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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