The Last Great Senate

by Ira Shapiro

  Ted Stevens now urged the House to accept the Senate bill, even though he had previously voted against it. “This bill is the best that can be done. It gives everyone 80 percent of what they were after”—if this was accurate (or, for that matter, mathematically possible), it would be the very definition of a great compromise. The House passed the Senate bill four days later.

  An exultant Jimmy Carter signed the landmark legislation on December 2. Mo Udall said that “no president, with the possible exception of Theodore Roosevelt, had ever done more for conservation.” It was no hyperbole. Carter’s personal commitment to the issue had been extraordinary and effective. He had constantly insisted on protecting as much of Alaska as possible, using his presidential authority to do so, while pushing the Congress toward legislation. With his passion for the issue and his love of details, Carter had spent countless hours poring over maps of Alaska, understanding and making decisions on virtually every national park, monument, and wilderness area to be created. This was presidential leadership of the highest order, and a fitting accomplishment to finish off an otherwise beleaguered term.

  But the Senate, too, deserved enormous credit. It was the forum for fierce, extended debate of a magnitude appropriate for the issue. It was the place where sharply conflicting interests clashed and were ultimately reconciled through principled compromise. Neither the politics of an election year nor the fundamental differences between environmentalists and the energy, mining, and forest industries was allowed to prevent the successful resolution of an enormous issue.

  The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act set aside for conservation an area larger than the state of California, including four national forests, ten national preserves, sixteen national wildlife refuges, and seven national parks. The legislation doubled the size of our national parks, tripled our wilderness areas, and protected twenty-five free-flowing rivers in their natural state. At the same time, it opened 95 percent of Alaska for unrestricted oil and gas exploration while providing special protection to an area known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and prohibiting oil exploration within the refuge unless the president and both Houses of Congress agreed to allow it. The Washington Post editorial page called it “the most important piece of conservation legislation in decades . . . a notable, perhaps stupendous, step forward in preserving a part of the original America for future generations to enjoy and use.”

  The monumental Alaska Lands Act would stand as the last great accomplishment of a Senate shattered by the election that had just taken place.

  THOSE WHO LEFT THE Senate would take vastly different paths. Abe Ribicoff would become counsel to a major New York law firm, splitting his time between New York and Washington. Satisfied by his forty-five-year career in government service, he did not take on the kind of assignments that often go to former senators. Birch Bayh would become a Washington lawyer and lobbyist, but with a relatively low profile. He would have the pleasure of seeing his son, Evan, follow in his footsteps, elected to the Senate in 1998 after having been governor. Ed Muskie eased into senior statesman status, serving as chairman for the Center for National Policy, a Democratic think-tank, and accepting President Reagan’s request to investigate the White House role in Iran-Contra, along with John Tower and Brent Scowcroft.

  Frank Church would join a New York–based international law firm, but would live only a short time before a second battle with cancer caused his death at fifty-nine. His legacy would generate more controversy than any of his Senate colleagues. Throughout the decade after 9/11, the impact of the Church Committee investigation of the intelligence agencies would continue to provoke fierce debate.

  Gaylord Nelson made the fastest and best transition. In February 1981, Bernie Koteen, one of Nelson’s closest friends, heard that the Wilderness Society was considering strengthening its leadership structure. “What about Gaylord,” Koteen suggested to William Turnage, the organization’s president, and the match was made almost immediately. Nelson became the organization’s chairman, its chief spokesman and public face around the country. Nelson, the great conservationist of the 1950’s and environmental activist of the 60’s and 70’s, would continue his extraordinary work to safeguard the environment, in the United States and globally, for more than another twenty-five years—through the 80’s, the 90’s, and into the twenty-first century, until his death in 2005.

  Despairing about the country’s move to the right, George McGovern never stopped regretting his loss to Nixon or thinking of himself as a potential president. To the chagrin of many of his admirers, he sought the Democratic nomination in 1984 and flirted with another run in 1992. He tried to stay in the forefront of Democratic politics, writing frequently, including an article calling for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney (“Nixon Was Bad. These Guys Are Worse.”) In 1996, while grieving over his daughter’s death from alcoholism, he wrote an anguished memoir that captured national attention.

  At the same time, he continued his life’s work of fighting hunger in the United States and internationally. In 1998, President Clinton named McGovern the U.S. Ambassador to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, where he served until 2001. In 2001, he became the UN Global Ambassador on World Hunger. In 2008, McGovern, along with Bob Dole, received a World Food Peace Laureate. His fifty-year effort to combat hunger paralleled Nelson’s half-century of work on environmental issues.

  Jack Javits would be confined to a motorized wheelchair as his ALS worsened. His mind nevertheless reminded sharp, and he continued to fight on for causes that he cared about. Ken Duberstein, a former Javits staffer who later directed congressional relations in the Reagan administration and became Reagan’s last chief of staff, remembered Javits lobbying him repeatedly to get the Medal of Freedom awarded to the actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Duberstein did not tell Javits that, in fact, President Reagan was actually planning to award Javits himself the Medal of Freedom. Javits was deeply moved to receive this high honor, but at the memorial service following Javits’s death on March 7, 1986, Warren Rudman pulled Duberstein aside and said: “He told me to remind you about the Medal of Freedom for Douglas Fairbanks.”

  Duberstein visited Javits periodically as the ALS took its toll. On one of his last visits Duberstein told Javits that the White House was trying without success to get Senator Pete Domenici to support a 7 percent increase in the defense budget, rather than 5 percent. What could he say to get Domenici’s support, Duberstein wondered.

  Javits, paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair, could only speak with great difficulty. But he still answered like a great senator: “Ken, you have to understand,” Javits said. “When Pete thinks about the decision, what comes first is the state of the nation. Second is the institution of the Senate. If those two factors work, then he might go with the president.”

  EPILOGUE

  GARY HART ONCE DESCRIBED THE SENATE AS A “KIND OF CONTROLLED madhouse.” Anyone who ever served there, either as a senator or a staff member, recognized that they were operating on a narrow ledge between paralysis and chaos, working without much margin of error. Many times, when deadlock seemed insurmountable and failure seemed inevitable, senators would come together to find solutions. The senators understood, and they made their staffs understand, Mike Mansfield’s wisdom: their individual agendas did not ultimately matter; it was the Senate, and the country, that mattered. It was not the rules that made the Senate work; it was mutual respect, good faith, self-restraint, and a commitment to both the institution of the Senate and the national interest that enabled the senators to reach principled compromise.

  Senator Chris Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat, beautifully captured the essence of the Senate at its best in his farewell speech on November 30, 2010:Politics today seemingly rewards only passion and independence, not deliberation and compromise as well. It has become commonplace to hear candidates for the Senate campaign on how they are going to Washington to shake things up—all by themselves. . . . The United States Senate does
not work that way, nor can it, or should it. Mayors, governors, and presidents can sometimes succeed through the sheer force of their will. But there has never been a Senator so persuasive, so charismatic, so clever, or so brilliant that they could make a significant difference, while refusing to work with other members of this body. Simply put, senators cannot ultimately be effective alone.

  From 1977 through 1980, that was how it worked, continuing the mode of operation that began in the early 1960’s. Perennially described as the “most exclusive club,” the Senate functioned more in the spirit that Javits best captured: as a team. The constraints on partisanship remained strong, fraying only at the end. The Senate included a few members who were determined obstructionists, but they were vastly outnumbered by those who believed that the Senate had to work its collective will. Operating in that way, large legislative accomplishments that seemed unattainable still occurred routinely. For those who worked there, we did not realize that ours was a unique period until it had come to an end.

  The 1980 election brought about more than a change in party control in the Senate. Coming after two consecutive elections, 1976 and 1978, in which thirty-seven new senators had been elected, the 1980 tsunami essentially shattered the Senate ecosystem. When the new Senate convened in January 1981, it included fifty-five members who had been in the Senate six years or less. The stalwart veterans who had served three, four, and even six terms—Magnuson, Church, Ribicoff, Muskie, Javits, Nelson, Bayh, McGovern, Talmadge—men Don Riegle recalled as “the tall trees”—were gone, retired or defeated. In their place stood what may have been the weakest group of first-termers to ever walk the Senate floor. Many combined an absence of political experience with a New Right ideology, an aversion to compromise, and a lack of interest in, if not outright contempt for, the institution they were joining.

  John Sears, the respected Republican consultant, spoke for many Republicans when he quipped several years later: “If we had known that we were going to win the Senate, we would have found some better candidates.” Former Javits and John Heinz aide John Rother recalled a meeting among Republican veterans about slotting some of the weakest of the partisans in committee assignments where they could do the least damage. Paula Hawkins, Jeremiah Denton, Mack Mattingly, James Abdnor—these were senators who came out of nowhere, arrived without political accomplishments, and left six years later with their records intact. Their only legacy was a diminished Senate.

  The new Senate differed from its twentieth-century predecessors in another way. Traditionally, the House reflects the popular passions and political swings of the moment. This time, however, the House remained strongly Democratic, while it was the Senate that reflected the Reagan landslide. Senators would be the “foot soldiers in the Reagan revolution.” Bipartisan comity and considered judgment were less important than driving the Reagan program, particularly in the early 1980’s.

  In September 1982, less than two years after the Republican takeover, a major article in Congressional Quarterly captured the new and dispirited mood. “In the Senate of the ’80’s, team spirit has given way to the rule of individuals,” journalist Alan Ehrenhalt wrote. “Every man is an island.”

  The article included a famous 1954 photo of Senators Jack Kennedy, Scoop Jackson, and Mike Mansfield playing softball. “[The picture] seems to stand for a Senate that has disappeared in the years since,” Ehrenhalt wrote, “one whose members knew each other well, worked and played together and thought of politics as a team game. Today’s Senate, many of its own members complain, is nothing like that. It is seen from within as a place where there is little time to think, close personal relationships are rare, and individual rights, not community feeling, is the most precious commodity.” John Tower lamented: “Every year the Senate seemed to be a less congenial place. The professionalism and dedication that had once been characteristic of the institution were ebbing away.”

  Still, it was not yet unreasonable to expect that the Senate could rebuild and recover from its 1980 shattering. There were plenty of strong senators in both parties. The very weakest fell by the wayside quickly, soon to be replaced by promising new additions. In fact, the Senate did make a noticeable comeback in the mid-to-late 1980’s, marked by some significant bipartisan achievements. But the comeback was brief, and the Senate thereafter reentered a downward spiral, which has only continued to accelerate.

  In seeking an explanation for the Senate’s precipitous decline, the evidence points unequivocally in one direction. Certainly, many times the actions of Senate Democrats, individually or collectively, have frustrated or disappointed supporters like me. I can also recall many instances in which Senate Republicans acted as superb legislators and statesmen. Neither party has ever had a monopoly on fine senators. But overall, today’s fractured and ineffective Senate is the product of the continuous, relentless movement of the Republican Party further and further to the right, accompanied by a fierce determination to defeat their Democratic opponents and an increased willingness by some to frustrate and obstruct the legislative process and the operation of government by whatever means possible.

  Looking back over the past forty years, one finds Senate Democrats willing to work with Republican presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush 41, and Bush 43. The Senate Republicans were likewise willing to work with Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Carter. But by in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, things were changing dramatically, and it would become clear that the veterans who fell to the Reagan revolution were only the first casualties.

  ALTHOUGH THE 1980 ELECTION shattered the Great Senate of the previous two decades, the Senate’s ultimate fate was not yet determined. Indeed, the Senate was able to mount a seemingly solid comeback in the mid-to-late 1980’s thanks primarily to Bob Dole’s period as a master legislator and Senate leader. Despite his obvious talents, Dole was not a major figure in the great Senate of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Rather, he rose rapidly in his party by being chairman of the Republican National Committee; he operated through acerbic speeches, “gotcha” amendments, and slashing partisanship, rather than through constructive deal making. Of course, there were notable exceptions to his partisanship, such as his work on Bayh-Dole and the start of his historic alliance with George McGovern to combat hunger, but they were the exceptions.

  But Dole changed his approach in 1981 when he became chairman of the Finance Committee. He put together an impressive staff eventually headed by Sheila Burke, who had been handling health-care issues for him. Burke was a nurse who had moved from caring for patients to advocacy on health policy. When Dole interviewed Burke, she told him that she was a Democrat from California from a union family. Dole responded that her political background did not matter to him; what mattered was that she understood patient care.

  As Finance Committee chairman, Dole threw his great talent and energy into legislative heavy lifting, helping to engineer the Reagan tax cuts and the historic 1983 compromise to strengthen Social Security. When Howard Baker carried out his intention to retire after three terms, Dole defeated four other contenders to become majority leader in January 1985. He had come to relish legislating and deal making; he also thought, despite the experiences of Baker, that a successful record as Senate leader could be a good springboard to the White House in 1988.

  Working with a more experienced, less ideological White House in Reagan’s second term, Dole’s Senate helped bring about major legislative accomplishments. Bob Packwood, now chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, worked with Bill Bradley on far-reaching tax reform. Alan Simpson worked with Ted Kennedy to fashion a landmark immigration bill, granting amnesty for 5 million illegal aliens and making it illegal for an employer to hire illegal immigrants. Barry Goldwater and Sam Nunn championed historic reform of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Orrin Hatch had just completed his collaboration with Henry Waxman, one of the most liberal House Democrats, to give patent protection to research pharmaceutical companies while speeding the process of making generic drugs available—legislat
ion still referred to as “Hatch-Waxman.”

  Sheila Burke remembers Bob Dole constantly in motion, never happier than when he was moving from meeting to meeting, making deals or creating the environment for other senators to complete them. He turned his scintillating humor on himself and the frequent absurdities of the Senate. “If you’re hanging around with nothing to do and the zoo is closed,” Dole remarked, “come over to the Senate. You’ll get the same kind of feeling and you won’t have to pay.”

  When the Democrats regained the Senate majority in 1986, Dole and Robert Byrd switched responsibilities, but the Senate continued to function in a workmanlike, bipartisan way. When the presidency of Ronald Reagan was shaken to the core by the ill-advised decision to sell arms to Iran in order to raise money to support the Nicaraguan contras, Daniel Inouye and Warren Rudman led the most visible investigation of the presidency since Watergate with good judgment and even-handedness. Significant legislative accomplishments continued, because of strong congressional leadership and Howard Baker’s willingness to become Reagan’s chief of staff. “Congress regained its voice in the 1987–1988 session,” the New York Times opined as the Congress closed, “enacting groundbreaking legislation in areas as diverse as trade policy and welfare reform, civil rights and arms control.”