[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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 that had shaped his lifeÆs work. Indeed, it was said that
Senator ByrdÆs passion for the Senate was exceeded only by the tenderness he
felt toward his ailing wife of sixty-eight years (who has since passed
away)-and perhaps by his reverence for the Constitution, a pocket-sized copy
of which he carried with him wherever he went and often pulled out to wave in
the midst of debate.
I had already left a message with Senator ByrdÆs office requesting a meeting
when I first had an opportunity to see him in person. It was the day of our
swearing in, and we had been in the Old Senate Chamber, a dark, ornate place
dominated by a large, gargoyle-like eagle that stretched out over the
presiding officerÆs chair from an awning of dark, bloodred velvet. The somber
setting matched the occasion, as the Democratic Caucus was meeting to organize
itself after the difficult election and the loss of its leader. After the new
leadership team was installed, Minority Leader Harry Reid asked Senator Byrd
if he would say a few words. Slowly, the senior senator rose from his seat, a
slender man with a still-thick snowy mane, watery blue eyes, and a sharp,
prominent nose. For a moment he stood in silence, steadying himself with his
cane, his head turned upward, eyes fixed on the ceiling. Then he began to
speak, in somber, measured tones, a hint of the Appalachians like a knotty
grain of wood beneath polished veneer.
I donÆt recall the specifics of his speech, but I remember the broad themes,
cascading out from the well of the Old Senate Chamber in a rising,
Shakespearean rhythm-the clockwork design of the Constitution and the Senate
as the essence of that charterÆs promise; the dangerous encroachment, year
after year, of the Executive Branch on the SenateÆs precious independence; the
need for every senator to reread our founding documents, so that we might
remain steadfast and faithful and true to the meaning of the Republic. As he
spoke, his voice grew more forceful; his forefinger stabbed the air; the dark
room seemed to close in on him, until he seemed almost a specter, the spirit
of Senates past, his almost fifty years in these chambers reaching back to
touch the previous fifty years, and the fifty years before that, and the fifty
years before that; back to the time when Jefferson, Adams, and Madison roamed
through the halls of the Capitol, and the city itself was still wilderness and
farmland and swamp.
Back to a time when neither I nor those who looked like me could have sat
Page 35
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
within these walls.
Listening to Senator Byrd speak, I felt with full force all the essential
contradictions of me in this new place, with its marble busts, its arcane
traditions, its memories and its ghosts. I pondered the fact that, according
to his own autobiography, Senator Byrd had received his first taste of
leadership in his early twenties, as a member of the Raleigh County Ku Klux
Klan, an association that he had long disavowed, an error he attributed-no
doubt correctly-to the time and place in which heÆd been raised, but which
continued to surface as an issue throughout his career. I thought about how he
had joined other giants of the Senate, like J. William Fulbright of Arkansas
and Richard Russell of Georgia, in Southern resistance to civil rights
legislation. I wondered if this would matter to the liberals who now lionized
Senator Byrd for his principled opposition to the Iraq War resolution-the
MoveOn.org crowd, the heirs of the political counterculture the senator had
spent much of his career disdaining.
I wondered if it should matter. Senator ByrdÆs life-like most of ours-has
been the struggle of warring impulses, a twining of darkness and light. And in
that sense I realized that he really was a proper emblem for the Senate, whose
rules and design reflect the grand compromise of AmericaÆs founding: the
bargain between Northern states and Southern states, the SenateÆs role as a
guardian against the passions of the moment, a defender of minority rights and
state sovereignty, but also a tool to protect the wealthy from the rabble, and
assure slaveholders of noninterference with their peculiar institution.
Stamped into the very fiber of the Senate, within its genetic code, was the
same contest between power and principle that characterized America as a
whole, a lasting expression of that great debate among a few brilliant, flawed
men that had concluded with the creation of a form of government unique in its
genius-yet blind to the whip and the chain. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl freetocraft.keep.pl
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 that had shaped his lifeÆs work. Indeed, it was said that
Senator ByrdÆs passion for the Senate was exceeded only by the tenderness he
felt toward his ailing wife of sixty-eight years (who has since passed
away)-and perhaps by his reverence for the Constitution, a pocket-sized copy
of which he carried with him wherever he went and often pulled out to wave in
the midst of debate.
I had already left a message with Senator ByrdÆs office requesting a meeting
when I first had an opportunity to see him in person. It was the day of our
swearing in, and we had been in the Old Senate Chamber, a dark, ornate place
dominated by a large, gargoyle-like eagle that stretched out over the
presiding officerÆs chair from an awning of dark, bloodred velvet. The somber
setting matched the occasion, as the Democratic Caucus was meeting to organize
itself after the difficult election and the loss of its leader. After the new
leadership team was installed, Minority Leader Harry Reid asked Senator Byrd
if he would say a few words. Slowly, the senior senator rose from his seat, a
slender man with a still-thick snowy mane, watery blue eyes, and a sharp,
prominent nose. For a moment he stood in silence, steadying himself with his
cane, his head turned upward, eyes fixed on the ceiling. Then he began to
speak, in somber, measured tones, a hint of the Appalachians like a knotty
grain of wood beneath polished veneer.
I donÆt recall the specifics of his speech, but I remember the broad themes,
cascading out from the well of the Old Senate Chamber in a rising,
Shakespearean rhythm-the clockwork design of the Constitution and the Senate
as the essence of that charterÆs promise; the dangerous encroachment, year
after year, of the Executive Branch on the SenateÆs precious independence; the
need for every senator to reread our founding documents, so that we might
remain steadfast and faithful and true to the meaning of the Republic. As he
spoke, his voice grew more forceful; his forefinger stabbed the air; the dark
room seemed to close in on him, until he seemed almost a specter, the spirit
of Senates past, his almost fifty years in these chambers reaching back to
touch the previous fifty years, and the fifty years before that, and the fifty
years before that; back to the time when Jefferson, Adams, and Madison roamed
through the halls of the Capitol, and the city itself was still wilderness and
farmland and swamp.
Back to a time when neither I nor those who looked like me could have sat
Page 35
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
within these walls.
Listening to Senator Byrd speak, I felt with full force all the essential
contradictions of me in this new place, with its marble busts, its arcane
traditions, its memories and its ghosts. I pondered the fact that, according
to his own autobiography, Senator Byrd had received his first taste of
leadership in his early twenties, as a member of the Raleigh County Ku Klux
Klan, an association that he had long disavowed, an error he attributed-no
doubt correctly-to the time and place in which heÆd been raised, but which
continued to surface as an issue throughout his career. I thought about how he
had joined other giants of the Senate, like J. William Fulbright of Arkansas
and Richard Russell of Georgia, in Southern resistance to civil rights
legislation. I wondered if this would matter to the liberals who now lionized
Senator Byrd for his principled opposition to the Iraq War resolution-the
MoveOn.org crowd, the heirs of the political counterculture the senator had
spent much of his career disdaining.
I wondered if it should matter. Senator ByrdÆs life-like most of ours-has
been the struggle of warring impulses, a twining of darkness and light. And in
that sense I realized that he really was a proper emblem for the Senate, whose
rules and design reflect the grand compromise of AmericaÆs founding: the
bargain between Northern states and Southern states, the SenateÆs role as a
guardian against the passions of the moment, a defender of minority rights and
state sovereignty, but also a tool to protect the wealthy from the rabble, and
assure slaveholders of noninterference with their peculiar institution.
Stamped into the very fiber of the Senate, within its genetic code, was the
same contest between power and principle that characterized America as a
whole, a lasting expression of that great debate among a few brilliant, flawed
men that had concluded with the creation of a form of government unique in its
genius-yet blind to the whip and the chain. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]