Defender of the Senate

The checks and balances that make up our system of representative democracy could just as easily be described as push and push back.

For much of his 51 years in the U.S. Senate and his six years in the House of Representatives, Democrat Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia was doing both the pushing and the pushing back, attempting to guard the nation against a presidency too imperial and fiercely defending Congress' constitutional imperatives.

The longest-serving member of Congress, Byrd died Monday at 92.

Byrd championed Congress as an equal branch of government and was as prone to criticize his colleagues as too deferential on this score as he was to criticize presidents for overreaching.

Today, a new president is accused of overreaching — by those opposing expansive government roles. But it should not have surprised anyone that Byrd supported health care reform — the issue that spurs this charge most often these days.

Byrd was unabashedly a New Deal Democrat, illustrated by how many dollars he brought home to his native West Virginia and his pride in having done so.

Many of us call this "pork." But to Byrd, it was a way to serve his constituents in a state he described as "one of the rock bottomest of states." His constituents' persistent poverty, he said, animated his desire to bring them succor in the form of job-producing highways, research institutes, federal offices and dams.

And by all account, he brought home billions, helped along by his chairmanship of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

One man's pork, it is clear, is another's lifesaver to drowning constituents. This Editorial Board has taken a dim view of such largesse, preferring that federal spending be vetted properly. But we don't doubt what motivated Byrd, at least, in this regard.

But "pork-barrel politician" was the least of the criticisms directed at Byrd. He was a former Ku Klux Klan member, an act he later described as a "sad mistake." And he infamously filibustered expansive civil rights legislation in 1964, claiming to defend states rights — but later defended civil rights.

And this might just show that in Robert C. Byrd, the nation had a man who demonstrated that one might change — for the better and for the betterment of us all.

REPRINTED FROM THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL.

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