The Byrd Center’s director, Ray Smock, will appear on C-SPAN 3 American History TV on January 3, 2015. He was interviewed about opening day ceremonies related to four past Speakers, Tip O’Neill, Newt Gingrich, Dennis Hastert, and Nancy Pelosi. The program will air at 8 AM on Jan. 3 and will repeat at 8 PM that day. The taping occurred in the Speaker’s Lobby off the House Chamber, and he also discusses the history of the Speaker’s Lobby and the portraits in the room.
By Ray Smock The Capitol dome is one of the great symbols of freedom, democracy, and representative government in the United States and it is a world-wide icon of government by the people. It is altogether fitting and proper (to borrow a phrase from Lincoln), to restore this great symbol and preserve it in all its glory for future generations. This is a massive restoration process requiring a colossal system of scaffolding twenty-five stories high which is composed of 75,000 parts and 52 miles of steel pipes. The work will take two years and cost $60 million. The restoration is expected to last for 100 years. But what are we doing to restore what goes on under this magnificent dome? There are no quick fixes or dollar amounts we can attach to this larger problem. There are no sandblasters, welders, painters, engineers, and architects who can fix a dysfunctional Congress trapped in hyper-partisanship and blinding ideology. What has happened to Congress when threats of impeachment and government shutdown follow every major disagreement with the President? This is not governance; it is warfare, with the U.S. Constitution and the American people, not partisan officeholders, as the ultimate victims. Our current crisis of governance did not occur overnight any more than the Capitol dome began to rust overnight. But neglect of cast iron leads to rust, and neglect of what Congress is supposed to be and do under the Constitution leads to another kind of rot that is so much harder to fix and far more dangerous to the wellbeing of an entire nation. By Ray Smock Today is Veterans Day and I acknowledge with deep gratitude the service of the men and women of all our armed forces whether on active duty or in the reserves. Veterans Day is a federal holiday set aside for the purpose of showing our respect for military service to our nation. We also have another day, Memorial Day, which we set aside to remember those who died in all the wars that have been fought in the history of our country. Today I combine both of these holidays to remember one soldier. I learned yesterday morning of the passing of Tomas Young, who was the subject of a remarkable 2007 documentary Body of War. Tomas was a young man of 24 who enlisted to fight the terrorists who brought down the Twin Towers in New York City, attacked the Pentagon, and downed Flight 93 in Pennsylvania on that tragic day of 9/11/2001. He thought he was going to fight in Afghanistan, but found himself deployed to Iraq instead. His spine was severed by a shot from an AK-47 rifle within days of his arrival in Iraq. He came home a paraplegic and his injuries worsened with complications until he lost the use of all his limbs and was paralyzed from the neck down. The Byrd Center for Legislative Studies was honored to host 27 mine-safety officials from the People’s Republic of China State Administration of Coal Mine Safety on Friday, Oct. 17. The delegation was led by Deputy Director General Yang QingSheng. The group came to Shepherd University to attend an all-day seminar conducted by Davitt McAteer, of Shepherdstown, a recognized world authority on coal mine safety and coal mine disasters.
We were able to impart some stories about Senator Byrd’s long-time advocacy of the mining industry and the safety and welfare of miners. The Byrd Archive contains extensive files on mining issues in West Virginia as well as national energy issues. Senator Byrd made four trips to China during his tenure as a Senate leader, including participation in the first U.S. Congressional delegation in 1975, during the Ford Administration, following up on the earlier diplomacy of President Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to begin the process of normalizing diplomatic relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. When Senator Byrd reported back to President Ford on that first trip, he made a prediction: “I will put my money on the long run development of China rather than the Soviet Union.” By Ray Smock By Ray Smock
University President Suzanne Shipley led a group from Shepherd University for a tour of historical sites in Charles Town related to the rich African American heritage of this area. I was pleased to join her and Dr. Keith Alexander from the History Department, and Christana Johnson, Assistant Vice President for Student Affairs and Student Success. We toured three historic sites and came away with a better appreciation of the work being done by our hosts, members of the Jefferson County Black History Preservation Society, to save these sites and interpret them to visitors as part of the Jefferson County African American Heritage Trail. We were invited to visit the sites by Mr. James Taylor, Mr. George Rutherford, Mr. James Tolbert, and Ms. Linda Ballard who acted as our guides. The Byrd Center for Legislative Studies recently conducted oral history interviews with George Rutherford and James Tolbert regarding their relationship to Senator Byrd and the senator’s efforts to help preserve Fisherman’s Hall, one of the sites we visited. Even though Senator Byrd passed in 2010, an appropriation he earmarked for Fisherman’s Hall in 2009 is still helping with the restoration of this important building. Work was still going on in the final phase of the building’s restoration at the time of our visit.
By Ray Smock
For Constitution Day I was asked by the editors of the Washington Times to contribute an article on Senator Byrd and the Constitution. This was included along with other articles as a feature on the Washington Times new Pocket Constitution App, which debuted on Sept. 17. It will be available soon at the App Store or it can be downloaded right now from your browser at: constitution.washingtontimes.com for $4.99. Here is my contribution to the new app. The power in Robert Byrd’s shirt pocket By Ray Smock The staff of the Byrd Center held a farewell party on September 5 for our Director of Archives Marc Levitt who will be leaving this month to take up a new position as Archivist of the Naval Air Museum in Pensacola, FL. I was pleased to present him with the Center’s distinguished service award for his outstanding leadership and contributions to the creation of the Robert C. Byrd Archive and for his path-breaking work on issues related to the access to electronic files of former members of Congress. Marc’s work at the Byrd Center over the past 4 and-a-half years has been outstanding in every respect.
We will continue to work with Marc in various professional capacities as he will remain an active member of the Association of Centers for the Study of Congress and in his ongoing work with the Congressional Papers Roundtable, a part of the Society of American Archivists. On behalf of the entire staff, the student interns, and the board of directors of the Congressional Education Foundation that operates the Byrd Center for Legislative Studies, we wish Marc and his wife Pam, and their two young children Valerie and William the very best in their new adventure in Pensacola. By Ray Smock Saturday, August 9, 2014 is the 40th anniversary of the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, the only United States president to ever resign his office. He was about to be impeached by the House of Representatives, and on July 30, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee voted overwhelmingly by a vote of 27 to 11, with six Republicans voting with the majority party, to bring articles of impeachment to the floor of the House for the president’s direct involvement in the cover-up of a burglary of Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington, DC. Anyone who was not at least 18 years old and following politics in 1974, and this includes a vast number of Americans born after 1956, may have a hard time appreciating the gravity of this major Constitutional crisis and how agonizingly slow it was for the full story to unfold. This crisis came in the middle of the presidential election of 1972, and near the end of the long and costly war in Vietnam that tore the nation apart. The burglary of the offices of the Democratic National Committee headquarters occurred on June 17, 1972, but there was no immediate connection to the president or the White House. That November President Nixon was re-elected in one of the greatest landslides in electoral history. By Ray Smock The Byrd Center notes with sadness the passing of Howard Baker, Jr., (R-TN) who served for 18 years in the U.S. Senate, and succeeded Senator Byrd as Majority Leader in 1981. Senator Baker also served as President Reagan’s chief of staff and later served as U.S. Ambassador to Japan.
During the major struggle for passage of the Panama Canal Treaties, in the late 1970s, Senator Baker, then Senate Minority Leader, worked closely with Senator Byrd on this controversial legislation. Senator Byrd wrote in his autobiography “The passage of the Canal Treaties was a victory that could not have been achieved without the strong support of Minority Leader Howard Baker.” [Byrd, Child of the Appalachian Coal Fields, 385]. Both men were highly criticized in their home states and nationally for passage of the Panama Canal Treaties. But they risked the wrath of the voters for something they felt was in the national interest. Some West Virginians called Byrd a traitor and a communist for supporting the treaties and in Baker’s case it may have cost him his party’s nomination for president in 1980. When Senator Baker became Majority Leader in 1981, Byrd became Minority Leader. Both men, whether representing the majority or the minority, often worked together on legislation. Even when they did not see eye to eye on matters before the Senate they conducted Senate business with great civility and parliamentary skill. |
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