Lionized in Winter
At 85, Robert Byrd has become an overnight Internet
sensation and the Senate's unlikeliest liberal
With his white hair, benign tremor and penchant for quoting the Romans, Byrd seems more like a Senator from the 19th century than one from the 21st. He refers to the camera in the Senate chamber as "the eee-leck-tronic eye." But due to his fierce opposition to the Iraq war, Byrd at 85 has become an Internet icon with a rash of young and liberal admirers, which is ironic given that Byrd fought civil rights in the '60s and, as is often noted, briefly joined the Ku Klux Klan. Once known as a hawk ("I was the last man out of Vietnam," he says), Byrd has become the Senate's new Paul Wellstone.
The Byrd renaissance began on Feb. 12, 35 days before the first bombs fell on Baghdad, when he rose on the Senate floor to rail against the looming conflict. While other Senators muted their criticism, Byrd derided President Bush as "reckless and arrogant." He also denounced his fellow Democrats: "This chamber is, for the most part, silent — ominously, dreadfully, silent." Byrd's words lit up the Internet. Wes Boyd, the head of MoveOn.org, a liberal group that opposed the war, received 15 copies of the speech from fellow activists in 72 hours after it was delivered. "It's the way stump speeches were delivered generations ago," says Boyd. "It was tacked on a wall and a crowd gathered to read it. And it got bigger and bigger." In January, Byrd's website got just 436,000 hits; in March, 3.7 million.
Just last week Byrd drew another Internet throng, declaring that Bush had lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and would get caught: "This house of cards, built of deceit, will fall."
To understand Byrd, though, you have to understand his love of history. When John Kennedy Jr. asked Byrd to list his summer reading for his magazine George, Byrd included such page turners as The Lives of the Twelve Caesars.
For Byrd, history not only teaches the importance of rules and precedent but also offers warnings for the present. Deviation from democratic process can, he says, cloak an attempt "to dominate all branches of government." For that reason, Byrd says, "this Republic is at its greatest danger in its history because of this Administration." He cites as an example the Bush Administration's efforts to seek greater discretionary defense spending free of congressional scrutiny. Conservatives and liberals who think he's a peacenik miss the point. With Byrd, the rules aren't picayune but the bricks of democracy. His legendary 98.74% voting record grows out of his faith that every vote matters, even when it's merely procedural. For him, God — and the Republic — is in the details.
While Beltway types often dismiss Byrd as a fossil, his anachronistic style is bracing, especially at a time when the Republican-led Senate is considering revamping the filibuster rules to smooth the path of Bush's judicial nominees. Like anyone who has seen Jimmy Stewart in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Byrd knows the filibuster can be used for good and for ill and is better left alone. "It may irritate us. It may irk us, but it's stood the test of time," Byrd declares. He could well be talking about himself.
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From the Jun. 02, 2003 issue of TIME magazine
