Argument about light bulbs. He sat through the whole thing. The preacher asked him the next week why did you sit through that whole argument about light bulbs . He said i could have pulled out my wallet and bought the light bulbs, but i thought it was important for the session, the elders to all have their say, to talk all the way through the end so they would be comfortable with voting on a decision. Thats the way you look at the senate. Senator Lamar Alexander thank you very much. [applause] [indistinct conversations] thank you for being here this afternoon. Though we come together this evening in this stately and formal Senate Chamber our convocation has a light spirit of a family reunion. It is a thrill to me to see the way our colleagues react to baker on both sides of the house and even some who could not be here tonight made a special point of coming by to speak to senator baker. Tonight we welcome the second in a series of leaders, lecture series. Were hoping this will be something we will continue throughout this year. Byrd being are invited speaker in september. Im delighted the American Public is joining us this evening through television. They will hear this outstanding gentleman, who will give us a great deal of his usual wisdom and much wit. I hope they also sense the enormous affection for our speaker tonight that is almost palpable in this room. I wish they could see the display of photographs in the corridor outside this chamber for our speaker is an accomplished shutterbug. His skill in capturing with his camera the historic occasions in which he was a participant makes clear he did not have to pursue politics as a profession. The man actually had talent. [laughter] but Public Service was in his blood. It was the legacy of his parents very both them served in the house of representatives. It was the legacy of his fatherinlaw, senator eric mckinley. We were just visiting across the hall in the republican leader suite of offices and talking about the history of that room and how the british started the fire that burned the capital in a jury room, and the fact that senator dirksen had his desk right there where i have a staff desk right now. A lot of history in that suite of rooms were senator baker served. His official biography list honors and accolades positions won and positions awarded, but those details dont reveal the more important aspects of his career. How, for example, he became the first popularly elected republican senator from tennessee with bipartisan support, a pattern that continued throughout his years in congress. I was a student of the university of mississippi law school. I had seen republicans before in my life. It was the first one i had seen win an election. It had an impact on me. Howie handled the crisis of 1974 and nudged it towards a resolution. My own Freshman Service on the House Judiciary Committee at that time was one of the most difficult times ive ever experienced in at least my political life. I can appreciate how difficult the task was for senator baker at the time. Is nothing any Political Science text book that explains the unique way he led the senate. Those who were part of it remember. Ive had occasion to talk with our senior colleague, my senior colleague from mississippi senator cochran, about the unique ways that senator baker led the senate. They remember his cool in his patients even under personal attack sometimes. Their member how seemingly nonchalant he would let a policy battle raged for days on the senate floor with each senator exercising fully their right to debate. An end when the bosses calmed and tempers died down, there would be an informal gathering in his office. After a while, im told, the anxious staffers outside would hear laughter, probably the result of a nanny goat aptly anecdote aptly timed. One day last year, when one of my best friends they referred to me as having acquired bakeritis. The man for whom that condition was named called me to ask how i was feeling with my afflictions. I had just one question. Is bakeritis fatal . Insured me it was not, and apparently it was not. Some of our speakers most remarkable accomplishments came after he ended his congressional career. Two come to mind tonight. The first is Extraordinary Service as chief of staff to president reagan. Most senators would view that position as the chairman to step down to put it mildly, from the office of Senate Majority leader. Our speaker saw things in a different light. His president needed him. To be blunt, his country needed him in that position at that particular time. Some things are coming apart. He was the right person and perhaps the only person to pull them back together again. His second remarkable accomplishment after leaving the senate was to end the heart and take the hand of someone who had long since won our hearts, senator Nancy Kassebaum baker. [applause] cynics may think there is no real romance at all in official washington. There is indeed, but you have to know where to find it. Few have thought it would be in the senate of the United States. You have to know where to find real leadership to, the kind of subordinates ambition to the greater good. In 1980, our speaker ran for presidency, supported by almost all his republican colleagues but it was not meant to be. A lesser individual might have nursed resentment against the man who defeated him. Instead, this man carried the banner of his rival, led his forces here in the senate, the regular revolution of 1981. That took more than skill. It took class. It took a lifetime of dedication to something more important than party or personal advancement. It took howard baker. Im honored to present him to you tonight. [applause] thank you so much. [indiscernible] thank you. Thank you so much. I am grateful. Thank you so much. What a welcome. What a pleasure it is for me to be back here in this Historic Place and to be among you, my friends, and in many cases former colleagues. I am overwhelmed with the absolutely outrageous introduction senator lott has produced for me. It was wonderful to have a chance to visit with him and with most of you before these remarks began. I would like to do more of that, and perhaps we can after this is finished. But first, i would like to make these remarks in response to the leaderships request. I will express my thoughts on Senate Leadership. Perhaps i should start by telling you that the first time i walked into the gallery of the United States senate, it was almost sixty years ago. My great aunt mattie keene was then the personal secretary to the late senator k. D. Mckellar of tennessee, and i came here to visit her in july of 1939 as a 13yearold boy. And being the secretary to senator mckellar, she was able to procure gallery passes, and i visited the hall of the house of representatives and the senate. The senate had only the most primitive air conditioning in those days. As a matter of fact, it was principally cooled by a system of louvers, vents and skylights that dated back to 1859, when the senate vacated this chamber and moved down the hall to its present home. But in all fairness, the system didnt work very well against washingtons heat and humidity. As a consequence, congress was not a yearround institution in those days. Many of you who know me are now tempted to think that i am going to devote the balance of these remarks to a dissertation on the Citizen Legislature a congress that did its work and went home, rather than a perpetual congress hermetically sealed in the capital city. But i assure you that will not be my lecture tonight. Besides, i have heard it myself so many times, i am tired of it. In that summer of 1939, in any event, nature and technology offered little choice. On that same trip in 1939, i traveled even further north to new york, in the company of the same aunt mattie to attend the new york worlds fair. And there i had my First Encounter with a Novel Technology that would have more profound consequences than air conditioning, and it was television. It was the same k. D. Mckellar, my aunt matties boss who, a mere 3 years later, would help president roosevelt launch the Manhattan Project that would shortly usher in the nuclear age. By the way, senator mckellar was then chairman of the Senate Appropriations committee, and when president roosevelt summoned him to the white house to ask him if he could hide a billion dollars for his super topsecret National Defense project, senator mckellar said well, mr. President , of course, i can and where in tennessee are we going to build this plant . Perhaps things dont change as much as we think. I recite all of this personal history not to remind you how old i am, but to remark on how young our country is, how true it is in america that, as William Faulkner wrote, the past isnt dead. It isnt even the past. The same ventilation system that senator Jefferson Davis of mississippi presided over the installation of in the Senate Chamber in 1859 which, by the way, was just before he left the senate to become president of the confederacy was still in use when i first came here as a boy, when television and Nuclear Power were in their infancy. My friends, we enter rooms that clay and webster and calhoun seem only recently to have departed. We can almost smell the smoke of the fire the british kindled in what is now senator lotts office, burning down this building in august of 1814. Incidentally, if you smell any smoke now, i must confess that when my late fatherinlaw Everett Dirksen, was in office he told me that the fireplaces in the leaders offices didnt work because they were sealed when the air conditioning was put in. So when i was elected republican leader, i asked the architect of the capitol what it would take to make these fireplaces work, and the architect said, well, a match, perhaps which was one of the few occasions when i found senator dirksen to be entirely wrong. My dear friend, Jennings Randolph of west virginia, and my good friend ed muskie of maine, with whom i helped write so much of the environmental and public works legislation of the 1970s, have both passed away recently. Jennings randolph came to washington with franklin roosevelt, taking his oath of office in 1933. And he was still here when Ronald Reagan arrived in 1981. He was a walking History Lesson who embodied and gladly imparted a half century of american history. You may be wondering by now what all these ruminations have to do with the subject of Senate Leadership. The answer is this what makes the senate work today is the same thing that made it work in the days of clay, webster and calhoun, in whose temple we gather this evening. It isnt just the principled courage, creative compromise and persuasive eloquence that these men brought to the leadership of the Senate Important as these qualities were in restoring the political prestige and constitutional importance of the senate itself in the first half of the 19th century. By the way, it is interesting to me that at that time an Alarming Number of our predecessors in the office of the senate found the house of representatives more attractive and more promising and left the senate to find their careers over there. It isnt simply an understanding of the unique role and rules of the senate, important as that understanding is. It isnt even a devotion to the good of the country, which has inspired every senator since 1789. What really makes the senate work as our heroes knew profoundly is an understanding of human nature, an appreciation of the hearts as well as the minds, the frailties as well as the strengths, of ones colleagues and ones constituents. My friends, listen to calhoun himself, speaking of his great rival clay. He said, i dont like henry clay. He is a bad man, an imposter, a creator of wicked schemes. I wouldnt speak to him. But by god, i love him. [laughter] it is almost impossible to explain that statement to most people, but most senators understand it instinctively and perfectly. Here, in those 28 words, is the secret of leading the United States senate. Here, in the jangle of insults redeemed at the end by the most profound appreciation and respect, is the genius and the glory of this institution. Very often in the course of my 18 years in the senate, and especially in the last eight years as republican leader and then majority leader, i found myself engaged in firebreathing, passionate debate with my fellow senators and over the great issues of the times civil rights, vietnam Environmental Protection watergate, the panama canal, tax cuts, defense spending, the middle east, relations with the soviet union, and dozens more. But no sooner had the final word been spoken and the last vote taken than i would usually walk to the desk of my most recent antagonist, extend a hand of friendship, and solicit his support on the next issue for the following day. People may think were crazy when we do that. Or perhaps they think our debates are fraudulent to begin with, if we can put our passion aside so quickly and embrace our adversaries so readily. But we arent crazy and we arent frauds. This ritual is as natural as breathing here in the senate and it is as important as anything that happens in washington or in the country we serve, for that matter. It signifies that, as lincoln said, we are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies. It pulls us back from the brink of rhetorical, intellectual, and even physical violence that, thank god, has only rarely disturbed the peace of the senate. It is what makes us america and not bosnia. It is what makes us the most stable government on earth, and not another civil war waiting to happen. We are doing the business of the american people. We do it every day. We have to do it with the same people every day. And if we cannot be civil to one another, and if we stop dealing with those with whom we disagree, or that we dont like we would soon stop functioning altogether. In sometimes we have stopped functioning, and once we did indeed, have a civil war. By the way, once, representative Preston Brooks of south carolina, who was born in Strom Thurmonds hometown of edgefield, came into this chamber and attacked senator Charles Sumner of massachusetts with a cane. It is at those times we have learned the hard way how important it is to Work Together, to see beyond the human frailties, the petty jealousies, even the occasionally craven motive, the fall from grace that every mortal experiences in life. Calhoun didnt like clay. He didnt share his politics. He didnt approve of his methods. But he loved clay because clay was like him, an accomplished politician, a man in the arena a master of his trade, serving his convictions and his constituency just as calhoun was doing. Calhoun and clay worked together because they knew they had to. Because the business of their young nation was too important for them not to. And their roles in that business was too central to allow them the luxury of petulance. I read recently that our late friend and colleague Barry Goldwater had proposed to his good friend, then senator john kennedy, that the two of them make joint Campaign Appearances in the 1964 president ial campaign, debating issues oneonone, without intervention from the press, their handlers or anyone else. Barry goldwater and john kennedy would have had trouble agreeing on the weather, but they did agree that president ial campaigns were important, that the issues were important, and that the publics understanding of their respective positions on those issues was important. That common commitment to the importance of public life was enough to bridge an ideological and partisan chasm that was both deep and wide. And that friendship, born here in the senate where they were both freshmen together in 1953 would have served this nation well, whoever might have won that election in 1964. Barry goldwater and i were personal friends, as well as professional colleagues and members of the same political team. Even so, i could not automatically count on barrys support for anything. Once, when i really needed his vote and leaned on him perhaps a little too hard, he said to his majority leader, howard, you have one vote, and i have one vote, and well just see how this thing turns out. [laughter] it was at that moment that i formulated my theory that being leader of the senate was like herding cats. It is trying to make 99 independent souls act in concert under rules that encourage polite anarchy and embolden people who find majority rule a dubious proposition at best. Perhaps this is why there was no such thing as a majority leader in the senates First Century and a quarter and why it is only a traditional, rather than a statutory or constitutional, office still today. Indeed, the only senator with a Constitutional Office is the president pro tempore, who stands third in line of succession to the presidency of the United States. Our friend Strom Thurmond has in served ably in that constitutional role for the last 17 years, and i have no doubt that he will serve 17 more. [laughter] may i say, in stroms case, i am reminded of an invitation i recently received to attend the dedication of a time capsule in rugby, tennessee, to be opened in 100 years. Unfortunately, i could not attend because of a scheduling conflict, so i wrote them that i was sorry i could not be there for the burying of the time capsule, but i assured them t