Norman Ornstein, at TNR:
“What did the president know and when did he know it?” That phrase, uttered by Republican Senator Howard Baker during the Senate Watergate Committee hearings on June 29, 1973, will forever be associated with Baker, who died Thursday at 88 in Tennessee. While Baker, the vice chair of the committee, was attempting dutifully to protect the reputation of his close friend President Richard Nixon, the phrase, and his impeccably fair conduct on the committee, underscored the fact that the partisan divisions on the committee and in the country did not dominate the proceedings. Its balance and fairness, due in no small part to Baker, made what followed—impeachment proceedings in the House, and the ultimate resignation of the president, a time of extraordinary tension in the country—an episode that ended with far more national comity and unity than polarization and division.
Baker’s long career in politics and government, and his time since leaving public service, were testament to his credo, which he described to The Ripon Forum in 2007: “I’m a life-long and proud Republican. Unlike some, however, I don’t believe loyalty to party precludes common sense decision and policymaking. Some of our Nation’s greatest triumphs have come when political leaders have not allowed partisan differences to deter their efforts to find solutions that are in the Nation’s best interest.”…
… Baker became party leader because he faithfully worked to implement his party’s program, especially when it held the White House; after the “riverboat gamble” comment, Baker skillfully engineered Senate passage of the Reagan tax cuts. But far more important than ideology, Baker stood out for his decency and his desire to solve problems, and, as Robert Byrd said, for his courage in working to solve those problems in ways that would thwart his own ambition and cause ripples within his party…
Baker was born into the “business” of politics (his father was in the House), and married into it, twice (his first wife was Everett Dirksen’s daughter, and his second Alf Landon’s daughter and a Senator herself). He always seemed, to a partisan Democrat like me, the epitome of the “Main Street small businessman” who worked tirelessly to keep the franchise he’d inherited and the larger community sound and prosperous. Unfortunately for Senator Baker, it was his tragedy that he came to power at the exact point where his company, the Republican Party, tipped into the hands of an increasingly demented horde of grifters and revanchists. So he spent his career attempting — not always unsuccessfully — to clean up the worst messes made by his fellow Repubs, and to keep the national “business” on a sound footing. There are worse epitaphs.
RIP Howard Baker, the Last Honorable RepublicanPost + Comments (57)