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JOHN SHATTUCK: Good afternoon and welcome to the John F. Kennedy Library. I’m John Shattuck, the CEO of the Kennedy Library Foundation. And on behalf of Paul Kirk, who chairs our Board, and Deborah Leff, who directs the Library and Museum, let me just say how pleased I am to introduce one of our country’s most distinguished statesmen and legislators, the senior senator from West Virginia, Senator Robert Byrd.

ROBERT BYRD: Thank you.

SHATTUCK: Senator Byrd, in addition to this wonderful, warm applause, we’ve prepared a very special surprise to welcome you to the Kennedy Library -- a trip down memory lane as we show you this brief film clip from the graduation ceremonies at American University on June 10, 1963.

[FILM CLIP]

SHATTUCK: While President Kennedy certainly knew the difference between an honorary degree and one that was earned the hard way, I can imagine he would have wanted to say to Senator Byrd, were he here today, that having you here as our guest is an honor for us all. Before introducing this afternoon’s forum, let me offer special thanks to the institutions that make these forums possible starting with our lead sponsor, Fleet Boston, Bank of America. In addition, we thank Boston Capital, The Lowell Institute, WBUR, which broadcasts our forums on Sunday evenings at 8:00, The Boston Globe , and boston.com. A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 2

For more than one-half a century, Senator Robert Byrd has represented the people of West Virginia, first in the House of Representatives and then for a phenomenal 48 years ongoing in the Senate. In fact, so great is Senator Byrd’s congressional seniority and the wisdom he has gained through his years of distinguished service to our country, that it is frankly easy to think of him as one of our Founding Fathers. Today, I would say he reminds me of Benjamin Franklin, who when asked by an admirer after the Constitutional Convention of 1787, “Dr. Franklin what have you given us?,” famously replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

“A republic if you can keep it.” That’s the warning Senator Byrd has sounded with increasing frequency in recent years. In his new book, Losing America, which I had the privilege of reviewing several months ago in The New York Times, Senator Byrd argues eloquently for the defense of the Constitution against what he regards as the reckless assertion of presidential power and the weakness of congress’s response. Quoting another great senator, Daniel Webster, with whom he might be compared, Senator Byrd asks in his book, “Who shall rear again the well proportioned columns of constitutional liberty? If these columns fall, they will not be raised again.”

This afternoon we will hear from Senator Byrd about the constitutional crisis that he describes in his book and I’m very pleased to say, as we do with all authors, that we will be selling signed copies of his book in the Kennedy Library bookstore after the forum. A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 3

Robert Byrd’s story is a classic American saga of humble beginnings, hard work, and great achievement. Raised an orphan by his aunt and uncle, he grew up in the cold fields of West Virginia in the depths of the Depression. He graduated at the top of his high school class, but couldn’t afford to go to college until much later. He worked as a gas station attendant, a meat cutter, a produce salesman, and a welder, before being elected to the state legislature in 1946 and then to the Congress in 1952 and the senate in 1958. In 1963, he became, as we saw, the first sitting member of either the Senate or the House, ever to earn a law degree by attending night classes, I assume, when Congress was not in session. Senator Byrd was elected Senate Democratic Whip in 1971 and Democratic Majority Leader in 1977. He was twice elected President Pro Tempore of the Senate, which made him third in line of succession to the presidency. In fact, he has held more leadership positions in the Senate than any other senator in history. And he’s cast to date more than 17,000 votes during his Senate career, also more than any other senator in history. He has served with 11 presidents -- five Democrats and six Republicans. So, when Senator Byrd rings the alarm bell for the Constitution, I think we should pay heed.

To engage Senator Byrd in this Kennedy Library conversation, this very special conversation this afternoon, we are very fortunate to have with us someone who needs no introduction here in Boston: one of Boston’s and the country’s leading journalists, Dick Gordon. Dick, to listeners of WBUR’s award-winning program “The Connection,” is a household name. Five days A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 4

a week, he delivers to listeners in Boston and throughout the nation his own remarkable brand of wisdom and insight as he interviews politicians, poets, scientists, authors, newsmakers on every conceivable subject from this year’s presidential election to this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Before coming to “The Connection,” Dick was a senior correspondent for the Canadian Broadcasting Company. He has covered many of the major international conflicts of our time, including Bosnia, Kashmir, the Caucases, Afghanistan, and the Middle East. He has been honored frequently for outstanding reporting and has received two National Journalism Awards in Canada and two Gabriel Awards for his documentary work. So, please join me in welcoming to our stage for this very special conversation, Senator Robert Byrd and Dick Gordon.

BYRD : Yes, thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for that overly charitable introduction. How grateful I am for this marvelous opportunity to be here and to reminisce again the early days when I first came to the Senate and served with the late Jack Kennedy. Thank you all for your presence here this afternoon and thank you, may I say to the most interesting, engaging moderator that I have seen, Dick Gordon. Thank you.

In the midst of the Great Depression of the 1930s with dictators like Franco, Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin exploiting the desperate economic conditions of their times to accumulate power, the Nobel Prize-winning author Sinclair Lewis wrote his famous book It Cannot Happen Here. This was a fictional A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 5

tale of a fascist takeover of the United States, but it was a book with the dire warning that it can happen here. Lewis was showing his American readers how, in the election of 1936, a fascist dictatorship could evolve here in these United States. For those of you who are not familiar with the book, allow me to briefly summarize it for you. It begins with a hotly contested election of a bumbling, but likeable president. A president who presents himself as a reformer, but who is really a tool for powerful interest groups. A president who presents himself as a down-to-earth, good old boy, while appealing to political and religious extremists. A president who expresses compassion for minorities, while stripping them of their rights and freedoms. That sounds a little too familiar, doesn’t it? Well, there is more. Just wait.

The villain in Lewis’s book is an ambitious politician who gains power by exploiting the crisis of his day and then uses it to pressure Congress into granting him unlimited power, including war-making power and control over the purse. His rise to power and eventual dictatorship is eased by a frightened American people who have allowed the anxieties of the times to render them complacent about encroachments on their freedoms by the government.

Seventy years later, as we witness continued assaults on our constitutional system by a secret and duplicitous White House, we may be seeing the fulfillment of Lewis’s prophetic warning of a despotic government. It can happen here, has become, it is happening here. And now.

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Some of you may think I am being premature. Some of you probably think I am being an alarmist. I prefer to think that I am a realist. We are confronting, as I say on the cover of my book, a reckless and arrogant president. And I should add, it is a dangerous one. It is a dangerous one because the Bush Administration is a direct challenge to the very foundations of this country. It is a challenge to The Constitution of the United States . That is why I wrote this book Losing America to save this book The Constitution of the United States .

The Constitution is a precious document. It establishes our system of government. It is the bedrock of our rights and liberties. Just as importantly as anything else, it was intended to be a necessary, prudent nuisance and a frustration to those who grasp for power. Our Founding Fathers realized that it was imperative that no single man, no single branch of government, could gain absolute power. No single man could acquire so much authority to decide the fate of our nation. Those framers scattered the powers of government into different branches, then provided the means for each branch of government to defend itself against encroachment by the other branches.

But now comes the Bush Administration, which in its quest for raw political power considers The Constitution of the United States an annoyance and continuously tries to ignore it and evade it. This White House has changed “We the People” to “I, the President.” You think I am exaggerating? Listen to these words from President Bush. I quote President Bush himself. “I am the commander, see. I don’t need to explain. I do not need to explain why I A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 7

say things. That’s the interesting thing about being President. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody any explanation.” So much for the free and open society in which the people are sovereign. So much for the words “We the people,” the first three words in the preamble of The Constitution of the United States.

President Bush has proclaimed the divine right of President. Do you remember James I, of England? He proclaimed the divine right of King. Do you remember Charles I of England, his son? He lost his head. We have a secretive, authoritative White House running the executive agencies with an iron hand, keeping away from Congress as well as the American people information that we need to enact a nation’s laws. It is a pattern in the Bush White House. This White House does not like to answer questions. This President does not like to answer questions. This White house does not want to be held accountable for its actions and nowhere is the lack of accountability more evident, more blatant than in the President’s war in Iraq.

The chaos in Iraq has cost the lives of more than 1060 Americans, and thousands of Iraqis have perished, including innocents who had no tie to the Hussein Regime. The U.S. government has dedicated $146 billion dollars to the war in Iraq. As the President wants to spend more and more money in Iraq, our troops are getting sucked ever deeper into the bloody quicksand of the Middle East. Most astonishing yet, the White House has not held anyone in the Administration accountable for the mess that has become Iraq. The A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 8

Pentagon botched plans for post-war Iraq and the shame of Abu Graib has further turned the world opinion against the United States.

But instead of holding someone at the Department of Defense accountable for those mistakes, the Vice President said that we have the best Secretary of Defense the United States has ever had. For all the mistakes that have been made in President Bush’s unprovoked war on Iraq, not a single Administration official has been held accountable. Not a single Administration official has been called to step aside for the mistakes that they have made. In fact, the only senior Administration official that the White House has seen fit to fire was the former Secretary of the Treasury who dared to question the fiscal responsibility of more massive tax cuts. If this President cannot hold his advisors accountable for their mistakes, then the American people should hold this President accountable for his poor judgment.

Contrast, if you will, the unilateral and reckless aggressiveness of President Bush with President John F. Kennedy. It is such a pleasure to be here at the Kennedy Library tonight. It was President Kennedy who, at the height of the Cold War, spoke of the type of peace that America sought and I quote, “Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by weapons of war, but a genuine peace that must be the product of many nations.” Those words, in fact, come from the day that I received my law degree from American University, June 10, 1963. I only wish that President Bush had heeded the message of President Kennedy before launching this unilateral war in Iraq. Yet, it is not A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 9

too late. We may still learn from the example put forth by President Kennedy. Close cooperation with the international community might yet yield a plan for peace and security for the people of Iraq. Haughty statements and unilateral actions will not advance our cause. They must be put aside. We must work with the international community to forge what we cannot achieve alone -- namely, a lasting peace for Iraq and in fact for the entire Middle East.

Four years ago, candidate George W. Bush spoke about the need for humility from a great and powerful nation. He said, “Let us reject the blinders of isolationism, just as we refuse the crown of empire. Let us not dominate others with our power or betray them with our indifference. And let us have an American foreign policy that reflects American character: the modesty of true strength, the humility of real greatness.” Unfortunately, the Bush White House has forgotten the words of the candidate. It is time for the Administration to swallow its false pride and return to that philosophy of humility before it is too late.

May I conclude by pointing out that the tragic failure that we are witnessing lies not with the Administration alone. Congress must also be held accountable. Too many members of Congress are all too willing to turn a blind eye to the Bush Administration’s ruthless pursuit of power. This relentless, steady erosion of the people’s liberties is a very serious and potentially dangerous matter. As Sinclair Lewis warned, it can happen here. Thank you. Where do you want me to sit? A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 10

DICK GORDON: Wherever you are comfortable. Do you want to sit here or stay at the podium?

BYRD: I might remain standing? No, I think I’ll join you. Thank you. I think this man is the finest moderator that I have come across.

GORDON: We had a great conversation yesterday on “The Connection.” I do not know if many of you have had a chance to listen to Senator Byrd at that time. There were a couple of moments of that conversation that I wanted to go back and revisit if you do not mind. One of them just comes from exactly where you were in your remarks there. You are, of anyone I have met or of anyone in this room, a greater scholar of the balance of powers in this country. And you made the point that Congress bears responsibility as well for allowing the executive to take onto itself the powers that it has. And I am wondering so who is really to blame? Are we to blame a President who will take whatever powers he or his Administration can take, or are we to blame Congress which is supposed to be the people’s representative, the holders of the purse strings, those who are there, in fact, to prevent that from happening.

BYRD: In my book, I bring Congress in for similar blame. We members of Congress, in taking the Oath of Office, stand before God and man and pledge that we will support and defend The Constitution of the United States. A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 11

That is a serious oath and the Romans, the Carthaginians, believed that an oath once given, even to an enemy, was to be kept. We seem to forget that oath quickly. We seem to be prone to looking upon the President of the United States, whether he is a Republican or Democrat, as someone who is clothed with royalty. And it is difficult for men and women in the Congress, it seems to me, to stand before a President and say “no.” I found the most difficult of presidents to say “no” to be Lyndon Johnson. Lyndon Johnson was the most difficult to say “No, Mr. President, I just cannot do that.” But one can do it if one really believes in The Constitution and believes that we are there and he is there or she is there to defend that Constitution and to stand up for the American people who cannot be there. So, yes, we are entitled to our share of the blame and it seems to me that it is a share that is a sad and sorrowful share and I have not been able to get over it.

GORDON: Something turned for you two years ago when a resolution came before the Senate. Something … you talked about it yesterday on the program that brought you … You used a couple of the words in the title of your book, “reckless and arrogant.” I noted a couple more, “grasping President,” or “cocky and relentless Administration,” “ineptitude supreme,” as words to describe the President himself. And I thought to myself whatever could it have been? There must have been one moment when you lost faith in that man’s willingness to consult you as a Senator or to consult Congress, that man’s willingness to work within the system. And was it that request of his, that demand of his for the resolution that changed your mind?

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BYRD: It was a number of things. A combination of things. The quotation I gave you, which I first found in Bob Woodward’s book, that is a quotation by the President of the United States. That was arrogancy supreme. When he as much as said, “I don’t need to explain to anyone.” Well, to me, a person who has been in political life now 58 years, I abhor. I abhor that statement. I feel that I have to explain to people if my constituents ask me a question, I am bound to answer it if I can. And then, too, I noted the cause. Not the cause, but I noted the shallowness of the reasons why this President chose to go in Iraq. When Mr. Bush first became President, I was quite impressed. I was impressed by his speech prior to the campaign when he said we must be, we ought to be humble before other nations. And then, when Ted Stevens and I went down to see the President early in the Administration, we were invited by the President together with our wives to dinner. And the President said grace over the food. That made a great impression over me. He didn’t call on me to say grace; he did not call on Ted Stevens. He said grace himself. I said to my wife, Irma, as we went away, “I believe that this is a man with whom we can talk. I think we can get along with this man.” But I was chagrinned to find very, very early in the Administration that his apparent feeling toward the legislative branch as being one of domination. And I felt that he looked upon the Administration -- I mean upon the Legislative Branch -- as an adjunct of the Executive. I perhaps am taking too long on this answer. Would you bring me back?

GORDON: Oh no, it’s exactly what I wanted to hear from you. I mean, the other thing that the Founding Fathers put in place was a system of elections A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 13

so if there are people who are not answering the needs of their constituents or if there are presidents in power, they will be voted out of office. And I’m curious to know whether or not in your description of the situation in Washington, in the country today, constitutional crisis is such that this, perhaps, cannot be resolved with an election. Are you saying, are you thinking that something has changed, something fundamental has changed in the balance of power in Washington as a result of the way this particular executive has behaved?

BYRD: I think more and more we in the Congress and the people in the country look upon the attributes of power, the attributes of a president as being the attributes of a king. The people do not ask enough questions. Congress does not ask enough questions. The press does not ask enough questions. That is what happened in the run-up to the war. Few people ask questions. Few people dare challenge this President. After all, we still had this psyche that was developed in the immediate wake of that attack upon our country by the 19 hijackers. There was that psyche that developed. Yes, I was behind George Bush in his immediate reaction to the hijackers. I was behind him. The people were behind him. We had been attacked. Our country had been attacked. Our country had been invaded. Numbers, hundreds, thousands of men and women had been killed. Yes, let us go get them. And so here we were attacked, and I was fully behind the President in his attempt to get the attacker, run them down, get the leader, dead or alive. That sounded a little strange to me, but I was supportive of the idea.

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Then came a great change. A change in which we were the attacker. We invaded a nation that had not attacked us. And it was because of the Bush doctrine of strike first, the preemptive doctrine which is antithetical to The Constitution of the United States , which flies in the face of The Constitution . Because The Constitution says that the Congress shall have power to declare war, the Bush Doctrine of Preemption in essence says the President shall have power to declare war. It is in contrast, it flies in the face of The Constitution because we cannot have a preemptive doctrine and have the Congress declare war because this is going to be preemptive, a president is going to determine when we shall strike, and it is going to necessitate secrecy.

GORDON: So having had one White House…

BYRD: Yes.

GORDON: … take that preemptive action, take it upon itself…

BYRD : Yes.

GORDON : …to declare war, as you point out…

BYRD : Yes.

GORDON : Can that be put back in the box? A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 15

BYRD : It can be. It can be. The American people are going to have to come to the conclusion that we have drifted too far from the shore as the old song goes. We in Congress are going to have to take a good look at ourselves. And this nation has to have new leadership. I say this because this President has turned the back of his hand to many of our former friends, turned the back of his hand to Turkey, to Germany, to France, to Canada, and the U.N. And our word is not counted for very much anymore. So in order for our word once again to be good, I think that we are going to have to have a new face. And that, to me, is an answer. After the first debate, I said to John Kerry, “You did well, but I did not hear The Constitution mentioned by anyone on either side.” He said, “I knew you were going to say that.” And he said, “I was going to get to that shortly.” Well, in the debate by Mr. Edwards, I noticed The Constitution was referred to. So I figured that Mr. Edwards had been talked to by John Kerry.

Then, in the third debate and the second presidential debate, Mr. Kerry, himself mentioned The Constitution. The Constitution is the anchor. The anchor. It always has been. It always will be. We have got to get back to The Constitution . If we get back to that, yes, we can again become “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” A nation believed and admired by many nations.

GORDON: Just a word to those of you who have a question for Senator Byrd, we’ll be taking a couple of questions from the mics. If you want to A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 16

make your way there, this would, perhaps, be a good time to do that. I want to ask you about … there was a series that many of us in this room read, written by Susan Milligan and a number of her colleagues at The Boston Globe. It was a serious, in-depth look at the problems with the functioning of Congress, the problems of the late night conference committees and rules committee, the truncated debate. The fact that senators and representatives are getting four and five hundred pages of legislation dropped on their desk just a few hours before they have to vote on that. If any one party can do that at any given time, and all of us get to watch that, we end up thinking Congress is in and of itself not working very well. Anyone can ram something through. Again, when we get back to living by The Constitution, the book that you have in your breast pocket, how do you get the leaders of Congress to respect that? Because it seems to have deteriorated to a “tit for tat.” And the Republicans are called into question for the way that they are pushing legislation through Congress. They say, “Well the Democrats did it when the Democrats held the House and the Senate so why should we not do the same thing?” And I must say I fear that there is enough ill will there when the Democrats regain control of either of those houses, there would be some of that sentiment going back the other way and nobody wins.

BYRD : It will be. It will be. Things were not like that when I came to Washington. The Republicans of that day in the Senate, when I went to the Senate, were not like those of today. When we had Everett Dirkson, Norris Cotton, Jack Javits, Mr. Tabor, who is the Republican Chairman in the House of Representatives when I went there, and the Speaker was Joe A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 17

Martin of Massachusetts, it was not then like it is now. They respected The Constitution . They remembered that sovereignty comes from the people and it has changed. The matter of raising money in elections has made thieves of us all. I tried to change that system when I was Majority Leader in 1987, I guess it was. And because therein lies a tale when we have to go all over the country holding out, as it were, a tin cup in our hands asking for money, money, money; it is belittling and the whole, it, it, it. And it makes us beholden to special interest groups in particular. And this method of campaign financing has become so rotten that the main objective, it seems, is to get elected and then raise money enough to pay for that election if we went in debt for it and run the next time. I found when I was Majority Leader that it was extremely difficult to operate the Senate because of this Senator, that Senator wanting to know if we are going to have votes on Monday morning, we are going to have votes on Tuesday, we are going to have votes on Friday. I need to get away. I have a campaign to run, and all that. And that method of financing has ruined the Senate. And today, so many come to the Congress, I think, with the idea, and especially the Senate, they do not have any institutional memory because they have not been there, for one thing. They do not come, really, with, in so many instances, with a basic knowledge of The Constitution and, of course, with a love and reverence for it. And I must say that these 46 years in the Senate have caused me to grow in that respect. But when I was in the House of Representatives, I used to say, “Thank God for the U.S. Senate.” I wanted to go there because you could stand on your feet and you could speak as long as you wanted to speak and you couldn’t do that in the House of A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 18

Representatives. Today it seems that members who come over from the House, Lord bless them, they simply want to change the United States Senate to a second House of Representatives with six-year terms. They do not have any intellectual memory. They are interested in being re-elected. This is not to say that they are not smart. They can say more in thirty seconds than I can say in five minutes and they are, they know how to make that thirty-second [inaudible]

GORDON : Yes, not much of it is very [inaudible]

BYRD : Yes.

GORDON : Meaningful. I can tell you.

BYRD : And so much has happened to us over these years to bring about this terrible situation. It is a terrible, it is a bad situation in which we are in. We do not … I vote on bills that I do not, for the moment, know what in the world is in that bill. It is so massive. The committee systems help us to an extent. But I almost weep for not only my country but my Senate. And I don’t know whether we will ever have the answer to this or not. But it has become, I cannot blame the American people for saying, “Fie on both your houses.” I do not blame them. I think that is about all I will say. I share the feeling that you have expressed. And I worry about it.

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GORDON : Although I note that of the 17,000 odd votes that you have passed, your most recent one was yesterday, your vote on the corporate tax bill I am reliably advised was “no.”

BYRD : Yes.

GORDON : Thank you very much and maybe [clapping] that’s part of the start. I am going to start on this side.

AUDIENCE : Senator, I was interested in your discussion of preemption and I was wondering if, in fact, there had not been preemptive doctrines employed in the past by prior administrations, but with a much higher standard along the lines of blockading Russian ships in 1962 or some other type of activity that would aim at disabling an identified threat. Would you be more comfortable with allowing the executive to employ preemptive action if there were, in fact, some type of identifiable threat and there was some type of limited action aimed at disabling it?

GORDON : Who makes the case on the identifiable threat though? I mean in this case, were a member of the executive to be sitting with us on the stage, they would say they had their identifiable threat in October of 2002. What is the different test that you are suggesting here?

AUDIENCE: Well, I thought that the test that was alluded to by Senator Kerry in the first debate was not a global test, but in fact a raised bar test in A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 20

terms of pointing out with specificity what the identifiable real threat was. It is the photographs and there was an allusion to the fact that when the case was made or brought to foreign heads of state in 1962, they said “No, the credibility of the United States executive was enough.” But was the case ever identifiably made? It seems as though the preemption doctrine is backtracking continuously from immediate threats of 45-minute strike capability to the world is better off without him.

GORDON : Okay, let us just keep it at whether or not if there was a higher test for a president to make the case for preemption. We are not saying that that is something that should be necessarily taken away from the president, but what would that test be? What is an acceptable level test for the president to have that power?

BYRD : I am not sure that I can answer that question as it has been phrased. I do want to say, however, that in all of this talk The Constitution is being pushed aside. The Constitution says Congress shall have the power to declare war. Now some wars have not been declared, but they have been authorized, the large wars, except for the war in which Mr. Truman took us into a war there. But we just cannot get around it. Listen, we have so much power. We do not need to be afraid of a little country like Iraq. We did not have to strike that country without its … Now every president has the inherent power, to start with, to defend this country if need be against invasion or against a sudden attack or against an attack that we know is about to fall. The president has that inherent power. Nobody questions that. A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 21

But when we think about the run-up to this war, how the American people were mislead. I remember Karl Rove in January 19 of 2001 saying to the National Republican Committee meeting in Texas, in essence, “The war … this is, we should make this our strategy. This war against terrorism. Make it our strategy. It is a winning strategy. The American people have more confidence in the Republican party to defend the country…” etc., etc. And so he advised the National Committee to use this as the central strategy, that this was a horse that they could ride right on through the election. And now, I’m getting off a little bit, but I am talking about the real thing here. Every time I saw President Bush after that, I could not help but when he spoke against the backdrop of marines, our national guardsmen and women, I couldn’t help but remember the words of Karl Rove. Now is the President using the military, I thought, for political purposes? Is he following that strategy? And that caused me to, early on, have suspicions that that was the case. We cannot get around the … Remember the old time religion of civics and what their responsibilities are? You know they used to have greater sense of responsibility in this regard. We are so consumed today with T.V. In my house we watch it very little. It is a great medium. It could be a tremendous medium for the education of our people. And it is, in many respects. There are some channels that are … but the American people are much more interested in ball games. I say to you, ladies and gentlemen, I used to like ball when I was in high school. I did not have much of anything, but I was a good student because I wanted to learn. No ball game ever changed the course of history. Think about that. No ball game ever changed the course of history. No nation’s destiny was ever decided by any A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 22

ball game, and I don’t say that with disrespect towards sports. I know people love … I decided one fall or one Christmas season I said to my wife, “I’m going to listen to the ball games throughout this season. It’s a holiday.” And I listened to them. I got on the edge of my seat, gripping my chair, like this, and wondering why they do not pull this player or that one. And I got to where I could mimic any play there was in the football game. And after it was over, I said to myself, look here how much time I have wasted. All this time. What I could have been doing. Reading, reading history. Reading the bible, reading biblical history or reading great literature or reading Emerson’s essays or reading Milton’s Paradise Lost . What a waste of time. [clapping] But that is the American people for you. They want to be entertained. And that is what they are getting. A very poor entertainment when they listen to T.V., for the most part.

GORDON : No talk about the Red Sox, okay? [laughter]

BYRD : When I was a lad, I liked Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Jack Dempsey. I can remember in 1927 when my dad, my uncle took me to the Grill, down in the community, the co-camp there and he said, “Robert, if you are good I will take you down to listen to the radio. And the second day you would have to turn to prize fighting. Jack Dempsey had loaded coal in West Virginia so he was a great idol of the coal miners. That night we went down to listen to that radio. I think it had been bought for about $23 dollars from Montgomery Ward. And it was the only radio I had ever seen. It must have been 50 people gathered around that room that night to listen to this great A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 23

fight. I went home a disappointed lad. Jack Dempsey did not win. And there was only one set of earphones. [laughter] So you did not get to hear the fight. So there you are. But that was 1927. That was the year in which Lindburg flew across the ocean sometimes ten feet above the water, sometimes 1,000 feet above the water.

What a great country this was then. What a great country. And it still is, if the American people would become awake. And I think they are becoming awake. I will tell you we have got to have a president who will be a different face, who presents a different face to the world so that the other countries in the world will once again believe us. They will not believe us now under this Administration. They will not. If we want America’s word again to be taken seriously, we have to have a different president. [clapping]

GORDON : We are not going to have time for all the people at the mic. We actually have time for one more question. I apologize to those of you who have been on your feet.

BYRD : I owe the apology. I owe them the apology.

GORDON : No, you don’t!

BYRD : Yes, I do.

GORDON : I will do that. A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 24

BYRD : I talk too much.

GORDON : Go ahead, ma’am.

AUDIENCE : My name is Jacqueline Walker. I am a student at the John D. O’Brien. And, actually, I am here because of an American history class. And you talk about the loss of … how do I say this? Of forgetting of The Constitution and turning of the hand to the U.N. and France. I just wanted to know what do you think Kerry has to do to restore all of those things that Bush has lost? And do you think Kerry can do it in his term in office?

GORDON : Did you get all of that?

BYRD : Would you rephrase the question?

GORDON : What does Kerry have to do to rebuild America’s international alliances. If he were to be elected president, could he do that in his first term? Is that a fair repetition of the question?

AUDIENCE : Yes.

BYRD : I think that he could go along way in rebuilding the confidence of countries around the world, in America, and in his Administration. I think he has to be willing to be truthful to the American people, be willing to say A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 25

“no.” And it is going to be very difficult for him because I have to say that this country is bankrupt. And whereas we once had a surplus of $5.6 trillion dollars going into this Administration, we now owe a deficit of almost $300 trillion dollars. So we went from $5.6 trillion dollars surplus to … So you can see what I am saying. It is going to be hard for any president. And he is going to have to face up to that. And the American people are going to have to face up to it. We have squandered. We have squandered the opportunity to do a lot of good things for Social Security, for Medicare, for education, for public health, for access to public health. But that’s one …

GORDON: In international relations, what about the trust? What about the faith that other nations have in the word of America? I mean if you are saying that that has been called into question under President Bush, how difficult will it be to win back that respect?

BYRD : I say under a second administration of Mr. Bush it will be extremely difficult because the other peoples of the world, many of them who have had the back of the hand extended to them and their efforts to work with this country and certainly the United Nations, that is going to be very difficult. With a new face, that in itself I think will give the other countries hope that they can at least trust this country’s word again. [clapping] That would be my hope.

GORDON : I am going to ask my friend and colleague John Shattuck to come back up and thank the Senator. But I’ll take just a moment to say it A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 26

was a great pleasure to have him on our program, on “The Connection” at WBUR and it has been one of the pleasures and honors of my time here in Boston to share the stage with him this afternoon. Thank you. [clapping]

BYRD : Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

SHATTUCK : Senator, I want to add the thanks of all of us here at the Kennedy Library and I think I introduced you as Benjamin Franklin and Daniel Webster, but I think you have added Tom Paine and Paul Revere here tonight. [laughter] In fact, I can hear those hoof beats of Paul Revere somewhere right here on Columbia Point. You have talked about the great issues of war and peace, but also of liberty and democracy in our Constitution and you even dared venture into the area of history and baseball, a very dangerous topic on the first night of the Red Sox-Yankees series, which starts in about fifteen minutes. [Laughter] But we all are extremely honored by your presence here, by your service to our country, and by the way you have, I think, established a new category of founding fathers. I would call them the re-founding fathers. Thank you. [clapping]

BYRD : May I say just one word? May I thank again, John Shattuck. May I thank again, Dick Gordon. May I thank Deborah Leff. May I thank W.W. Norton, the publisher of the book. And may I thank Ted Kennedy and John Kerry, two senators from the state of Massachusetts. May I thank, profusely, my erstwhile political enemy, Ted Kennedy. Ten years ago, when A CONVERSATION WITH ROBERT C. BYRD PAGE 27

he did not like me and I did not like him, we did not care who knew it, but today he is my closest friend in the Senate. We do not, I am not saying we socialize. I do not socialize with anybody much being age 87 and my wife, being in ill health. But I thank him. He is a good, a good senator. He prepares his way, he prepares his work. He is an excellent Chairman of the Committee and let me, while I am here in this state, pay tribute to Ted Kennedy. He has fought the fight that I have been trying to fight concerning The Constitution and the institution of the United States Senate in opposing this ill-begotten war which has taken over one thousand of our men and women, killed thousands of Iraqis and caused our friends around the world to look askance at us.

SHATTUCK : Thank you Senator and thank you Dick Gordon for such a wonderful evening.

GORDON : Thank you very much. [clapping]

SHATTUCK : The book is in our bookstore.

END