Majority Leader Called Master of Senate Rules but Out of Step in TV Era : Colleagues View Byrd’s Retirement as Mixed Blessing

In an era when young, untested men of privilege such as Dan Quayle and Albert Gore Jr. appear to be on a political fast track, Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) is an anomaly--self-taught, relentlessly methodical and perhaps the only man in Washington who has memorized the names of the English kings and the dates they reigned.

As Senate Democrats prepare to elect Byrd’s successor as majority leader Tuesday, his retirement from that position is being viewed among his colleagues as a mixed blessing. While many senators find his style of leadership to be out of date and often downright annoying, Democrats acknowledge that the courtly West Virginian has represented them well.

In 12 years as party leader, Byrd, 70, who will head the Senate Appropriations Committee after relinquishing his current post, has proven himself to be a master of Senate rules and parliamentary procedure as well as an able political tactician whose leadership helped to rebuild a Democratic majority in Congress in the midst of the Reagan years.

Nonetheless, Byrd has never fit comfortably into the Washington scene. Unlike many of his colleagues in the Senate, he is not a millionaire, an Ivy Leaguer, a good orator or even an interesting dinner party guest. In fact, his idea of fun is reading the dictionary.

“This is a man who is a true character--an American original,” said Linda Peek, a public relations specialist who until recently was employed in the task of trying to improve Byrd’s image. “He’s not a homogeneous, squeezed-from-a-tube, blow-dried politician.”

Many of Byrd’s eccentricities can be traced to the poverty in which he was reared--an especially bleak childhood that left him with what he calls “my great shortcomings.”

Born in North Carolina with the name Cornelius Calvin Sale Jr., he was sent to the hills of West Virginia to be reared by an aunt at the age of 1 after his mother died. He was an adult before he met his real father--with whom he spent only one week--or any of his siblings. And as he recalls, his adoptive mother never kissed him, except once when he asked her to do so.

Reminder of Tragedy

Although he treasures the fading photographs of his real parents and recalls with pride how his father mastered the banjo and other skills, friends recall that Byrd paid little attention to his own family until 1983 when he was stunned by the sudden death of his 17-year-old grandson in a traffic accident. Since then, the boy’s worn, size-15 work boot has always had a place of honor on Byrd’s office desk--a constant reminder of the tragedy.

In the Senate, which has often been portrayed as a millionaires’ club, Byrd’s backwoods roots are a genuine oddity. Seldom were the differences between Byrd and most other senators more apparent than about 2 a.m. on the morning of Oct. 22, shortly before the 100th Congress adjourned, when Gore took to the floor of the Senate to praise Byrd. In a long, rambling speech, Gore, 39, the aristocratic, Harvard-educated Tennessee senator with presidential ambitions, noted repeatedly that in modern politics there are “so few men coming from humble beginnings.”

Byrd worked as a welder and a butcher until he entered the state Legislature in 1946. He had joined the Ku Klux Klan in 1942, a decision that has haunted him throughout his political career and one which he now describes as “the worst mistake of my life.”

It was as a member of the West Virginia Legislature that he confronted the inadequacies of his childhood education. He attended college while serving in the Legislature but never was graduated. And after being elected to Congress in 1952, when he realized that most successful politicians have a law degree, he spent 10 years going to night law school before earning his degree in 1963.

But law school did not satisfy Byrd’s thirst for self-improvement, and so he launched into a lifelong, self-directed course of study that focuses on the Bible, the classics, the dictionary and English history texts, while shunning modern fiction as “a waste of time.” He confesses: “I don’t see life being worthwhile unless one tries to improve himself.”

Byrd’s fondness for memorizing names and dates is clearly what sets him apart from most modern students of history and literature. At the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner last year, the senator sought to amuse his dinner companions by listing all of the Anglo-Saxon kings and the dates they reigned on the back of the program--beginning with Egbert in 806 and winding up with Edward the Confessor in 1066.

Likewise, whenever Republicans in Congress advocate the line-item veto, Byrd likes to recall in detail how Parliament learned during the One Hundred Years War that it could use its power of the purse to control the reigning monarch--proof, in his view, that the U.S. Congress should never relinquish this or any prerogative.

Byrd also has committed to memory many long passages from the Old Testament, Shakespeare and other famous poets--lines that he frequently repeats with relish on the Senate floor.

But unlike most other up-by-the-bootstraps politicians, Byrd has doggedly resisted the tremendous pressures that Washington places on them to conform. He still strongly identifies with people of West Virginia, plays his country fiddle whenever he returns to his home state, never entertains other senators in his home in suburban Virginia and resists the advice of aides who think he should give up his bright-colored clothes for the traditional blue suit.

All of these traits have combined to give Byrd the image of country bumpkin with senatorial affectations--a reputation that his political opponents in both parties have tried to exploit. In fact, Byrd’s unprecedented decision to resign as majority leader while remaining in the Senate comes in large part because many of his Democratic colleagues think he lacks the proper image necessary to represent the party in the television age.

Byrd has made some concessions to television, however. About two years ago, apparently in response to derogatory newspaper and magazine articles, he abandoned the bouffant hair style that had become his trademark and also apparently stopped tinting his hair blue. At the same time, he hired a media consultant who taught him to shorten the lengthy, tediously detailed answers he gave in response to questions from the news media.

Nevertheless, the retiring majority leader contends he does not care how he is viewed in the media. “I’ve never worried about charisma,” he confided during a recent interview in his ornate Senate office. “I’ve got charisma that television has never ever seen. . . . I would rather been underestimated than overestimated.”

Opponents Make Mistake

In fact, many of Byrd’s previous opponents now admit that they made a mistake by underestimating him--among them Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), who was stunned in 1971 when Byrd defeated him for the job of assistant minority leader by seven votes. While Kennedy simply assumed that he was the front-runner, Byrd worked tirelessly doing small favors for other senators in exchange for their support.

Years later, Kennedy wrote a letter of tribute to Byrd, which now hangs framed on the majority leader’s office wall: “To Bob Byrd, who taught me how to count votes.”

As majority leader, the job he first won in 1976 by defeating Sens. Hubert H. Humphrey of Minnesota and Ernest F. Hollings of South Carolina, Byrd’s strength has continued to be his tenacity and devotion to detail. His worst critics on the Democratic side of the aisle admit they would rather have Byrd representing their interests on the Senate floor than someone less attentive to the task.

Although conservative himself, he is known to carry out his job without ideological bias. He also makes no pretense at being a master of policy issues and frequently defers to other leading Democrats such as Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn of Georgia on matters of substance.

Even during the years from 1981 through 1986, when the Democrats were in the minority in the Senate, Republican Leader Bob Dole of Kansas--who himself is known as a workaholic--complained privately that Byrd’s dogged attention to procedural details was forcing him to work too many long hours.

Unlike Dole, who last year allowed others to carry out his duties as GOP leader while he ran for the presidential nomination, Byrd never permits anyone else to represent his party on the Senate floor. Moreover, Dole was forced to hire an expert on parliamentary procedure in order to protect himself and his party against Byrd’s extraordinary grasp of the Senate rules.

When Democrats regained a majority in the 1986 election, Republicans were genuinely disappointed when Byrd was chosen again as majority leader--becoming the first man in history to be reelected to the position after such a hiatus. Shortly afterward, one prominent GOP senator was overheard in a hallway outside the Senate chamber viciously deriding Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.) for abandoning his effort to unseat Byrd.

It was Byrd’s intense devotion to the Senate and its members that helped him to hold on the leader’s job as long as he did, despite the frequent criticism. In Byrd’s view, only God deserves more reverence than the U.S. Senate.

“The Senate is the greatest institution under the Constitution,” said Byrd, who regularly reads Senate history aloud on the chamber floor. “I’ve tried as leader to bring about a recrudescence of the consciousness of its role.”

Ironically, even those senators who thought that Byrd’s public image was bad for the Democratic Party are seeking a new leader with many of the same abilities--particularly his skill in running the Senate efficiently. The current contenders to replace him are Sens. Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, George J. Mitchell of Maine and Johnston.

Byrd is credited with seeing that the Democratic-controlled 100th Congress, despite a majority of only 54 to 46, produced an impressive record that included legislation dealing with trade and welfare reform, plant closings, crime and drug trafficking. Byrd views this as a repudiation of his critics.

His biggest disappointment has been the Senate’s refusal to pass legislation that would have reduced the role of political action committees in funding congressional campaigns. Byrd fears that a poor boy from West Virginia could never be elected to the Senate under the present system. “It shuts out people like me,” he said.