Says Despite Differences, Earlier Generations Of Politicians Worked Together
by Judy Frank
posted November 29, 2006
The partisan bickering that has hamstrung Washington in recent decades is nothing new, former U.S. Senator Howard Baker told an audience at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga on Wednesday afternoon.
American history has been pocked by periodic eruptions between the White House and the Congress, and between the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, he said.
“But it does seem to me that there is more personal animosity there now than there used to be, or than there needs to be . . . During my time in Washington, personal camaraderie was not interrupted by political differences,” the former senator mused.
For example, his father-in-law, U.S. Sen. Everette Dirksen (R-Illinois) – who served eight terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1933-1949, and in the U.S. Senate from 1950 until his death Sept. 7, 1969 – was a passionate Republican.
Lyndon Johnson, a savvy Senate Majority Leader before presidential nominee John F. Kennedy tapped him as a vice presidential candidate, was an equally passionate Democrat who carried those ideals with him throughout his terms as vice president and president.
But the two men were close friends and remained so even after Lyndon Johnson became president following the assassination of President Kennedy, Sen. Baker recalled.
He said he was visiting Sen. Dirksen’s office one afternoon when President Johnson called and invited the senator to come over to the White House after he got off work. Sen. Dirksen said he could not go.
Shortly afterward, Sen. Baker said, they heard a ruckus in the hall outside Sen. Dirksen’s office.
“Here came two beagle dogs on one leash, with Lyndon Johnson behind them,” Sen. Baker said. Ignoring the Secret Service agents and other people trailing him, the president spoke directly to Sen. Dirksen.
“If you won’t come and drink with me, then I’ll come and drink with you,” President Johnson said to his friend.
The two men then retired to another room and talked for a couple of hours.
“I’m not sure what problems they were dealing with that day, but I’m sure there were some,” Sen. Baker said.
He said he’s not sure what can be done to end the strident partisanship that now permeates national politics. But American voters should demand that something be done to end it, he said.
The former U.S. Ambassador to Japan told his UTC audience the most dangerous place in the world is the Korean peninsula.
“Iraq is terrible. But it is nothing, in my view, compared to North Korea,” Sen. Baker said. “North Korea has a huge army, well over a million men. The country has a contentious foreign policy and little resistance. Their leader, Kim Jong Il, is unpredictable and has nuclear weapons.”
Saying Vietnam was the first war “fought on television,” Sen. Baker observed that the American public’s exposure to violent warfare had a profound effect on people, as has the Iraqi violence.
“This coverage diminishes the authority of every president and leader to conduct foreign defense policy. The U.S. will find a way to disengage. I hope we don’t do it in a precipitous way, and we don’t leave the Iraqi people to the wolves,” he said.
Sen. Baker rose to national prominence during the Watergate Hearings of 1973-1974 as vice chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee, the highest ranking Republican on the Committee. Saying “I have no idea who Deep Throat is,” Sen. Baker added he did not believe it was W. Mark Felt, former assistant director of the FBI during the Nixon Administration, who came forward in 2005 as the secret source of the Washington Post’s coverage of the Watergate scandal.
“Watergate had an enormous impact on the world,” Sen. Baker said. “It had an impact on politics, especially the Republicans in 1974. If you think ’06 was hard on the Republicans, we really got wiped out then. And we came right back, and we will come back again.”
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