My old friend, a gentlemanly senator now near 90-years-old, once wore a three piece suit to visit victims of flooding in southern West Virginia, a peacock amidst the mud, destruction and true grit of the wiped-out valley dwellers vowing a comeback.
They didn't seem to mind. They pressed up against him like he was a rock star, following him from water soaked building to demolished house.
He was their Sen. Robert Byrd, even way back then as a mere 60-year-old, a legend to folks who had tacked on their walls faded pictures of Jesus on the cross, the martyred John F. Kennedy; and, without fail, "our senator Byrd."
I remember timidly asking Byrd - for I had only been with him as press secretary a few weeks - wouldn't it be better for him to wear something less formal on his next visit to the Tug Fork Valley.
He looked at me, and simply said, "No." That big "no" hung in the air like a dark cloud for an embarrassing few moments, and then he added, "I grew up wearing dungarees. I don't wear dungarees."
Byrd, who came from barefoot poverty as an orphan raised at the back end of
a West Virginia hollow, knew leadership was earned and not taken, bestowed not appropriated.
He knew that power was best used when left on the shelf.
I think about this now with a president in America's White House who revels in a good old boy image, this graduate of Yale who for some reason always seems to be clearing brush at his Crawford ranch, as if that were a productive chore for a man often called the leader of the free world.
Byrd was often ridiculed by the Washington, D.C. press as a fish out of water when it came to leadership of what has been called the world's greatest deliberative body. They resented this serious fellow who seemed to have few friends in the Senate - but who led that Senate all the same, and with as steady and strong a hand as had Lyndon Johnson, who later would become president.
Back then, Byrd was the majority leader, and was called by U.S. News and World Report the fourth most powerful man in America.
Last January, he once again became chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, which controls the nation's purse strings.
Recently I was in Yalta, and visited Livadia Palace, and saw a picture on the wall of the Soviet cold warrior Andrei Gromyko. I was reminded of the time Byrd went eyeball to eyeball with Gromyko in the Kremlin. It was a tense meeting over nuclear arms capabilities and Byrd gave not an inch, but was gracious in not giving an inch. Gromyko respected Byrd. The Soviets respected Byrd.
In my view, by virtue of the position, the president of the United States is a mirror image of the American people. In Bush's case, he is neither popular at home nor abroad. It was interesting the other day to learn that England's Prime Minister Tony Blair had a 30 per cent approval rating at home - but a 70 percent approval rating in America.
The former president Bill Clinton - even after going through the impeachment process for, in essence, dallying with a White House intern and lying about it -left office as one of the most popular U.S. presidents in history - at home and abroad.
I believe this says something good about Britain's out-going prime minister. It says something positive about the lovable rogue Clinton. Both men made big mistakes, but retain a measure of worldwide respectability. Bush will leave office having drastically altered America's image for the worse in the eyes of the world.
Recently, on the fourth anniversary of the war in Iraq, I caught a re-run of a CNN Larry King broadcast that featured my former boss for the hour. He was warning - one of the few who did - against invading a nation before all the facts were in. Today his remarks back then seem as if from a soothsayer in a Shakespeare play.
We didn't pay attention. In the aftermath of 9-11, we drove the big ship that carries the responsibility of America's national interest over a waterfall. Virtually all of us, including me, cheered the shock and awe as if it were July 4th fireworks. It wasn't. It was the precursor to our long nightmare.
For opposing the war, Byrd lost some of the near heroic warmth he had banked by serving West Virginia in the Senate longer than had anyone served any state in the history of that legislative body.
He was considered vulnerable. Republicans were lining up to oppose him.
In the end, time intervened. The American people judged the war a mistake. No one of consequence ran against him. He won with more than 70 per cent of the vote at age 88.
Recently, the Washington Post ran an article about the frail senator, and how he was not as active as he once was, leaving leadership to others on amendments relating to troop withdrawals.
His hand shakes, but then it has for 30 years with a benign tremor. His voice is weak. He walks with two canes. He grieves for his wife of more than 60 years who died last year after a long illness.
But, by God, the man was and is a leader.
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