Not the Year for Happy Returns
Birthdays of Longest-Serving Senators Mark a Difficult Month

By Manuel Roig-Franzia
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 20, 2008

So much for happy birthdays, senators.

They have grown old together, pals across the aisle, Ted Stevens and Robert C. Byrd. And each year, as their power swelled, they've celebrated birthdays two days apart: Stevens on Nov. 18 and Byrd on Nov. 20.

Why, was it only a year ago that Byrd's pals threw him a mondo 90th birthday party, with Stevens in the house and Byrd singing with a bluegrass band?

Now comes birthday week 2008, their 39th together in the Senate, and with it their new realities.

One defeated by crime. The other dethroned by time.

Stevens, the longest-serving Republican senator in U.S. history, lost his reelection bid on Tuesday, his 85th birthday, after a long, slow count of ballots cast Nov. 4. A federal conviction for failing to disclose $250,000 in gifts had much to do with ending more than three decades of invincibility in Alaska. Stevens conceded yesterday, issuing a statement that never mentioned his trial just minutes after Democrat Mark Begich told reporters he had not heard from his opponent.

Byrd, the longest-serving senator in U.S. history, marks his 91st birthday today, his first since relinquishing the hugely powerful Appropriations Committee chairmanship that he held so dear. The West Virginia Democrat stepped down as chairman on Nov. 7 after what Senate sources describe as months of pressure from colleagues concerned that he was physically incapable of handling the demanding job.

He retains his seat on the committee, and he remains president pro tempore of the Senate, meaning if somehow the president, vice president and House speaker were to perish simultaneously, Byrd would have a job way bigger than Appropriations chairman -- he would be president of the United States of America.

On the eve of his birthday, Byrd was in the same Senate chamber where he has argued and cajoled, pleaded and fought for nearly a half-century. After two days of avoiding crowds gathered for the lame duck legislative session, Byrd appeared again at his Senate desk with an aide by his side. In that soft West Virginia drawl, he read slowly and deliberately to a nearly empty chamber, mostly sticking to a prepared text urging passage of an economic stimulus package he co-authored. His hands jumped and trembled -- refusing to mind him. Still, he found a way to get to the next page, his chin pinned at his chest. His left eye didn't seem to want to open, he rubbed his nose, but he soldiered on -- one of the few senators to stand up for a foundering proposal.

Barely lifting his eyes from the sheet before him, he spoke of a conversation the day before with President-elect Barack Obama -- a reminder that "Big Daddy" still has some juice in this town.

"Hear me now!" Byrd said.

"Now, hear me," he said seconds later, and his voice sought a bygone oratorical height. "Listen closely and measure each word."

He closed his speech by tapping the desk, and instead of resounding thumps, his fingers delivered feathery brush strokes.

A few minutes later, a staffer rolled the senator, in his wheelchair, from the chamber.

With so many distractions this week, there hasn't been much in the way of public happy-birthdaying for these most senior of senior senators, Stevens and Byrd. But in happier, more swaggering times, they were positively festive and feisty during birthday week.

"Oh! To be 82 again!" Byrd, then about to turn 88 and at the pinnacle of power, quipped from the Senate floor in his 2005 birthday week homage to Stevens. "He's getting a little bit grumbly, but he can be forgiven for that."

Last year, at the Byrd birthday bash, Stevens offered this homage, according to the Charleston Daily Mail: "As part of the Senate family, he is not only a gentleman, he has been a person who has reached out to us in personal times as well."

This year, Byrd, who shares his birth date with Vice President-elect Joe Biden, "plans to celebrate and enjoy the day and to thank God for allowing him to live such a long and accomplished life," Jesse Jacobs, his press secretary, wrote in an e-mail. Stevens spent his birthday awaiting a verdict from his fellow Republicans on whether they would strip him of his committee appointments. With a crowd milling in the hallway outside the caucus room, the senators ultimately decided to delay their decision. Stevens emerged from the caucus room looking pale and exhausted and told the reporters swarming him, "I haven't had a night's sleep for almost four months."

* * *

Byrd, whose dazzling white pompadour and boundless energy once lent an aura of virility, now depends on that wheelchair after a fall at home and several hospitalizations. The quivers that overtake his hands are caused by what he calls a "benign essential tremor."

Erma Byrd, his wife of 68 years, died in 2006, a shattering loss that some observers blame for speeding a decline in his health -- "My wife does not call me Bob. She is kind enough to call me Robert," the ever-formal West Virginia senator once said in a speech. He has two daughters and a passel of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Senate insiders worry that his staff may essentially be acting as proxy senators on his behalf.

"There are days that he's more with it than other days," a senior Democratic Senate aide said last month as delicate and not-so-delicate attempts were being made to nudge Byrd out of the chairmanship. "He is now prone to loud outbursts that startle people. 'Amen, brother! Right on!' "

Until stepping down earlier this month, Byrd was adamantly defending his right to continue. On his Web site, his staff has posted a June 2007 speech in which he declared that "my only adversity is age."

"I feel compelled to address head on the news stories in recent weeks that have pointed out the shocking discovery that I am growing older," Byrd said. "I am not always as fast as I once was. I am not aware of any requirement for physical dexterity in order to hold the office of U.S. Senator. . . . I will continue to do this work until this old body gives out. Just don't expect that to be anytime soon."

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who praised Byrd for work on Hurricane Katrina relief measures, said in an interview that "I've got to believe there's a sense of relief for Senator Byrd. His health has not been the best lately. . . . The job does require someone who is stronger physically." But she believes he will continue to work vigorously.

Byrd has long been one of the most emotional and erudite of the Senate's long-winded members. He famously railed against dog-fighting, wept about Sen. Edward Kennedy's brain cancer and spoke up vehemently about going to war with Iraq, predicting a quagmire, a stance widely criticized at the time that proved prescient. Over the years, he spoke for hours in the Senate about Roman history, quoted Cicero, invoked "Death of a Salesman" and mourned his dear departed dog, Billy.

"There is never a day that I don't pass his little box of ashes that is sitting up in my bedroom, never a day I don't touch that little box and think of little Billy," he said in a November 2002 speech.

But now the champion talker has less to say without a script. He does not do "long informational interviews anymore," Jacobs says. Byrd's powerful chief of staff, Barbara Videnieks, declined repeated interview requests to discuss his legacy and accomplishments. The staff has tired of "people writing the obit before its time," Jacobs says. Stevens's office also did not respond to repeated interview requests.

The two senators are the twin "Kings of Pork" in the eyes of watchdog groups that track federal spending, though their supporters label them as great economic developers and job creators. Stevens had his "Bridge to Nowhere," a much-lampooned, $220 million plan to connect a small town to a tiny island, as well as billions of dollars worth of other federal projects. "Big Daddy" Byrd -- an "Exalted Cyclops" of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1940s who later repented and apologized -- has the Robert C. Byrd Hardwood Technologies Center. And there's the Robert C. Byrd Center for Hospitality and Tourism, the Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center, the Robert C. Byrd Federal Courthouse, the Robert C. Byrd Hilltop Office Complex and many more. Critics question why a state that has received so much federal money still ranks near the bottom in many education, health and economic indicators.

"Seemed like when we were in our campaign bus, and every highway and road was named after him -- that's a lot of advertising," said John Raese, a Republican whom Byrd defeated easily in 2006.

In the Senate, people have grown used to that same level of ubiquity in person.

And so Byrd caused a minor stir simply by not showing up on Tuesday for his party's caucus in his beloved Old Senate Chamber, which he once said was the Senate's home during an "exhilarating period," the Senate's "Golden Age."

That would be 1810 to 1859.

"It's a big hole; it's a big gap," Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, said of Byrd's absence from the caucus. "I dread the Senate without him. Obviously the time comes for all of us. He's the one who knows that and has spoken [with his decision to step down as Appropriations chairman]. He'll know when the time is right."

Byrd's records seem safe from being eclipsed by the younger man now that Stevens will be departing the Senate, perhaps for a federal penitentiary. Byrd, who has served 49 years and 10 months in the Senate, had a 10-year head start on Stevens, who has served 39 years and 10 months (Sen. Kennedy has served 46 years and Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye, of Hawaii, more than 45). Then again, Alaska wasn't even a state when Byrd was elected -- there were only 48 when he won his first Senate race in 1958. Alaska became the 49th state on Jan. 3, 1959, the same day Byrd took office as a senator. Nondairy creamer, soft contact lenses and Post-it notes weren't on store shelves, and Hawaii was still months away from statehood.

Byrd also has cast more votes than any senator in history -- 18,370 and counting as of last month. He has voted about 2,000 more times than Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who retired from the Senate in 2002 and died the next year, and about 3,300 more than Stevens.

The departure of the two old friends, Byrd and Stevens, from chairmanships, though, won't necessarily usher in a youth movement at the upper echelons of the Senate hierarchy, which skews heavily to seniority. Next in line to chair Appropriations is Inouye. In September, he celebrated a birthday, too -- No. 84.

Research director Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.