Several months before Senator Byrd passed away, then Governor Manchin, made a special trip to DC to meet with Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader. Manchin definitely incurred the ire of Senator Byrd.
During the Reagan Administration I was protesting and lobbying against the U. S. wars in Central America. Robert Byrd was the Majority leader in the Senate at the time. I visited him in Washington and begged him to resist the administration's support for the dictatorships in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. After calmly listening to my plea and evidence against the rationale for war, I challenged Byrd, as leader of the opposition Party, to abandon his support of Reagan and his war mongering cabinet. His very polite and brief rebuff was, "But John, that's what the president wants." Twenty years later, in the lead up to President Cheney / Bush's invasion of Iraq, Senator Byrd supported our protest against the war and against Cheney's assertion that Iraq's oil would pay for it. Was this a humanitarian change of heart, a feeling that , so late in his career, he could protest without political consequences or maybe just the knowledge that the boogie man of communism was not involved? I will never know, but by his public statements and support for the anti Iraq war movement in Charleston and across the nation, I think it was sincere compassion for the terrible suffering of the people effected.
Thank you for this recollection, John. The man did make some big sea changes in his views and votes. As J. Michael Willard, his staffer notes in his piece in this issue [https://westvirginiaville.com/2022/06/first-person-byrdmobile]: "In league with old-line southern senators, [Byrd] also filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, four years later, he voted in favor of the 1968 Civil Rights Act and called his earlier vote against the act his worst ever." I appreciated author Denise Giardina's observation in our Q-and-A with her, speaking of Byrd (and maybe this reflects the change of heart you describe) — that he an ability to actually HAVE a change of heart, as so politicos in the Trump era do not seem to possess. DENISE GIARDINA: “I think he had a quality that is too rare in human beings, the ability to continue to learn and grow over time as he aged.”
Several months before Senator Byrd passed away, then Governor Manchin, made a special trip to DC to meet with Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader. Manchin definitely incurred the ire of Senator Byrd.
During the Reagan Administration I was protesting and lobbying against the U. S. wars in Central America. Robert Byrd was the Majority leader in the Senate at the time. I visited him in Washington and begged him to resist the administration's support for the dictatorships in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. After calmly listening to my plea and evidence against the rationale for war, I challenged Byrd, as leader of the opposition Party, to abandon his support of Reagan and his war mongering cabinet. His very polite and brief rebuff was, "But John, that's what the president wants." Twenty years later, in the lead up to President Cheney / Bush's invasion of Iraq, Senator Byrd supported our protest against the war and against Cheney's assertion that Iraq's oil would pay for it. Was this a humanitarian change of heart, a feeling that , so late in his career, he could protest without political consequences or maybe just the knowledge that the boogie man of communism was not involved? I will never know, but by his public statements and support for the anti Iraq war movement in Charleston and across the nation, I think it was sincere compassion for the terrible suffering of the people effected.
Thank you for this recollection, John. The man did make some big sea changes in his views and votes. As J. Michael Willard, his staffer notes in his piece in this issue [https://westvirginiaville.com/2022/06/first-person-byrdmobile]: "In league with old-line southern senators, [Byrd] also filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1964. However, four years later, he voted in favor of the 1968 Civil Rights Act and called his earlier vote against the act his worst ever." I appreciated author Denise Giardina's observation in our Q-and-A with her, speaking of Byrd (and maybe this reflects the change of heart you describe) — that he an ability to actually HAVE a change of heart, as so politicos in the Trump era do not seem to possess. DENISE GIARDINA: “I think he had a quality that is too rare in human beings, the ability to continue to learn and grow over time as he aged.”