[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 17]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages 24031-24032]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         HONORING HOWARD BAKER

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. NORMAN D. DICKS

                             of washington

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, October 3, 2008

  Mr. DICKS. Madam Speaker, on September 24th I was pleased to attend a 
ceremony sponsored by the U.S. Capitol Historical Society at which the 
2008 Freedom Award was presented to former Senate Majority Leader 
Howard Baker, who served in the United States Senate for 18 years. Each 
year the Society presents this prestigious award to recognize the work 
that is done under the Capitol dome to defend freedom and preserve the 
institution of Congress as a representative body. At the start of each 
Congress, all of us as Members of Congress take an oath to support and 
defend the Constitution in our role, as the Founders intended, as 
defenders of the peoples' freedom. As a means of reminding the Congress 
of this solemn responsibility, the U.S. Capitol Historical Society 
bestows the Freedom Award annually upon a Member who personifies this 
spirit and who has demonstrated throughout his or her career a 
dedication to the institution of Congress and to the cause of freedom. 
Senator Baker's remarks at the ceremony were particularly relevant and 
moving, and I would like to take this opportunity to share his speech 
with my colleagues by entering his remarks into the Record:

   Remarks of Howard H. Baker, Jr., U.S. Capitol Historical Society 
              Freedom Award, Wednesday, September 24, 2008

       It is a great honor to be with you this evening, and it is 
     an especially great honor to have been introduced by my dear 
     friend and former colleague Bob Byrd.
       In an unusual--perhaps even unprecedented--set of 
     circumstances, Senator Byrd and I served as each other's 
     majority and minority leaders for 8 very eventful years in 
     the late 1970s and early 80s.
       And while there are some things Senator Byrd and I disagree 
     on, one thing on which we're in absolute agreement is that 
     being majority leader is better.
       My service in the Senate leadership was the culmination of 
     three terms in the United States Senate. For much of my adult 
     career I have served in Congress, or my family has, so some 
     would describe me as a congressional brat--if so I am proud 
     of it.
       Having walked the halls of Congress with so many of its 
     legendary figures--most definitely including Robert C. Byrd--
     and having worked on so many momentous issues with them, I 
     have a special appreciation for the history of the Capitol 
     that this Society does so much to preserve and protect and 
     disseminate to an interested public.
       And so it is particularly meaningful to me to be honored by 
     the Capitol Historical Society this evening.
       President Lincoln--who also served in Congress, though not, 
     as you may suspect, with me--once wrote in a Message to 
     Congress in the depths of the Civil War, ``We cannot escape 
     history. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us 
     down in honor or dishonor to the last generation.''
       The genius of our system of government is not that it 
     requires a race of supermen to run it but that ordinary 
     people can do extraordinary things for their fellow citizens 
     when they have to. This very week, the Congress, in 
     particular must face a new challenge on policy and 
     legislation to stabilize and rescue our country's economic 
     system.
       To succeed it must be in the finest traditions of our 
     legislative process, worthy of Webster and Clay, Johnson and 
     Dirksen, Kennedy and Kassebaum, maybe even Baker and Byrd.
       In earlier times, we dealt with Vietnam, Watergate, civil 
     rights, the first environmental protection laws, Social 
     Security reform, the cold war and much else on similar terms 
     and with ultimate success.
       I am sure that the men and women of the 110th Congress--
     Democrats, Republicans, and Independents--will rise to the 
     challenge of the moment and validate our powerful claim to 
     the value of bipartisanship when it must serve the public 
     interest.
       Senator Byrd and I engaged in partisan warfare more than 
     either of us would like to acknowledge today, but even in the 
     midst of such warfare, we knew we were serving an important 
     political purpose: giving voice to the full range of public 
     opinion on matters of national importance.
       That is the basis for the Senate's claim to being the 
     ``world's greatest deliberative body.'' America's Founders 
     did not design the Senate as a model of efficiency but as a 
     vessel of democracy, into which the Nation's passions could 
     be poured to cool, and from which the Nation's collective 
     wisdom could be discerned.
       The two-party system, which the Founders did not design and 
     from which many of them would have recoiled, has had a 
     similarly steadying influence on our national life.
       Two broad-based political parties have over the centuries 
     become very effective means of communicating the public's 
     views to their government, particularly through the 
     legislative branch.
       Partisanship has its place--and it is an honorable and 
     useful place--in public life, and those who disdain it often 
     do not understand its value in venting the full expression of 
     our citizens' demands and dissents.
       But the greatest of America's Founders--George Washington--
     feared ``factions'' above all, and I share his fear that 
     political hostility can overcome the better angels of our 
     nature in some future hour of national peril.
       Too often in today's Washington, I see a refusal to hear, 
     much less respect, a differing point of view. I see a refusal 
     to even try to understand the other person's argument. This 
     is new, in my experience, and it is not healthy.
       Robert Kennedy was a young lawyer who served as minority 
     council in the Army-McCarthy hearings. I was chosen by Ray 
     Jenkins, a great Tennessee trial lawyer, to assist him in the 
     hearings. By the way, my principal responsibility was reading 
     the daily transcripts! Robert Kennedy and I became quick 
     friends because we had much in common--we were within days of 
     each other in age, had World War II experience, and we shared 
     an enthusiasm for convertibles, although his Cadillac put my 
     Ford to shame.
       When we returned to Washington years later as Senators 
     ourselves, just after the assassination of President Kennedy 
     and in the early years of the Vietnam war, we and our 
     colleagues--including Bob Byrd--knew that some things were 
     more important than partisanship.
       Having served in the waning days of World War II, we knew 
     that the capacity for calamity in human affairs was almost 
     limitless--and we knew how much the rest of the world looked 
     to the United States for leadership and example.
       The men and women of today's Congress know about war, and 
     terror, and now you

[[Page 24032]]

     know how quickly a strong economy can spiral out of control 
     without constant vigilance.
       These are sobering events in momentous times, and it is 
     useful for the ordinary men and women serving in this Capitol 
     today to know that others before them rose to similar 
     extraordinary challenges and rescued their country from harm.
       ``What is past is prologue,'' the National Archives reminds 
     us. ``Study the past.'' That is what the United States 
     Capitol Historical Society has been encouraging us and 
     enabling us to do for many years.
       I thank you for that valuable service. I am humbled by your 
     tribute. And I am honored to be in your company tonight.

                          ____________________