The Washington Spectator

...watching him enter the Senate chamber one instinctively checked (in vain, as it turned out) for the tell-tale white shoes and matching belt...

...Senator Byrd's cockatoo-sweep of silver-blue hair is his most magisterial feature...

...Some methods work better than others...

...I arrived at the Capitol early Friday morning to watch the final day of what we insiders call "the ratification process...

...There had been a minor breach in senatorial decorum the evening before—Majority Leader Robert Byrd, angry that Jesse Helms insisted on bringing up various "crippling amendments" to the treaty, had sent the senators home early—and I hoped, if not for a resumption of hostilities, at least for a tense moment or two...

...Without prodding from the reporters he proceeded to outline the day's business...

...Howard Baker, also waiting to fly to Moscow, remained in Washington, hoping to bring the approved treaty with him...

...it is now mostly considered a petty annoyance...

...and some of these too can backfire, with horrible consequence...

...With outstretched arms he made an expansive gesture to indicate the fullness of the panoply...

...The Senate isn't a family, and when tout le Washington unites behind a single project, as it has with INF, something's amiss...

...I've been urging the Administration to Latinize this matter all along, and go the diplomatic route, so we can avoid any recourse to military action...

...President," Leahy said, as Byrd and Bob Dole sorted out some bit of business, "my seventeen-year-old son, still in school, has been reminding me, apropos of what's happening here today, that the Senate does not ratify the treaty...

...Here is a man who will never need resort to tonsorial wizardry...

...A few minutes before ten, I walked with some other reporters onto the Senate floor and waited by Senator Byrd's desk for the "dugout," the majority leader's pre-session briefing to give the press an idea of the strategy he hopes to follow in maneuvering a bill through whatever process (legislative, ratification, nomination, deliberation—so many processes, so little time) presents itself...

...A word to the wise in such matters should be sufficient...

...For that reason Senator Patrick Leahy began killing time by giving a little lesson on English usage...

...Leahy shot his cuffs, greatly enjoying his unlikely role as the H. W. Fowler of the Upper Chamber...

...I didn't stay much longer after that...

...Readying itself for a session of complicated legislative activity, the Senate resembles nothing so much as a dress rehearsal for a high school variety show, with Senator Byrd as the slightly addled faculty adviser...

...The Senate had settled into one of its long stretches of collegiality—no more fireworks—and the truth is that senatorial collegiality can be a snooze...

...After the dugout I went back up to the press gallery and resolved to watch the entire treaty day process...

...When he needs a moment to collect his thoughts or clarify a request, he signals for one of his allies to begin talking for the record—with the C-SPAN cameras rolling, the show must go on...

...he called to the hacks gathered around his desk...

...The Senate hustled, as the world now knows, and didn't disappoint Howard...

...Hello, everybody...

...In place of a clipboard, the majority leader uses a scrap of paper on which he jots down the order of business, as the senators chat among themselves or make demands on his attention...

...It will be ratified next week in Moscow, with, I'm sure, a full panoply of fanfare...

...Hundreds of thousands, according to the newspapers, head to the beaches of the Eastern Shore in search of soothing littoral breezes, and find themselves instead beneath the unblinking eye in a traffic jam on the Chesapeake Bay bridge...

...Under the circumstances, what resentments must poor Bill Proxmire harbor against his majority leader...

...Other remedies will have other consequences, also unforeseen...

...The final vote on the treaty was 93 to 5. "As the vote was announced to the hushed chamber," wrote Helen Dewar in the Post, "the public gallery burst into rare applause...

...This may have something to do with his decision not to seek re-election...

...And troubling, too...

...Within seventy-two hours he was dead...

...At the Capitol a White House aide remarked, "Air Force Two is sitting on the runway out there at Andrews [Air Force base], with the motor running, just waiting for Howard to get aboard with the treaty...

...It advises and consents to the treaty...

...On this historic Friday he had chosen from his wardrobe a synthetic seersucker and a tie of pale-blue stripes...

...Then, in the almost family way that the Senate operates even at momentous events, [senators] posed for photographs . ." "In the family way": it is a phrase pregnant with meaning...

...a smaller number, though in their way no less romantic, fly off to temperate Moscow, for palaver—leading to what, nobody knows...

...It was the heat of one Washington summer afternoon, historians warn, that induced President Zachary Taylor to seek remedy by "consuming an excessive quantity of cucumbers, washed down with copious drafts of iced milk...

...Let's not cross that bridge till' he paused and backpedaled—fl_et's not roll up our britches till we cross that creek [crick...

...A few senators were already in the chamber, which, since the intrusion of C-SPAN, is now as brilliantly lit as a movie set...

...The President ratifies the treaty," he continued...

...Summer couldn't have come at a more opportune time: for along with the bay bridge traffic jams and the tanning oil, the cucumbers and iced milk, Summer means congressional recess, and recess means the senators disperse, before too much damage can be done...

...In his demeanor no trace of the rancor from the night before remained...

...Also wearing thin, incidentally, is Proxmire's celebrated hair transplant from several years ago: the crop has degenerated to the point where he has had to opt for a poor modification of the George McGovern rope-throw, a style first popularized by the Sage of South Dakota in which the hair above the left ear is allowed to grow long enough to be tossed sideways across the pate, giving the illusion of a bale of pampas grass scattered over a sheet of ice...

...Senator William Proxmire, a notorious early-riser, wandered about, talking in a loud voice and casting an occasional glance to the gallery to see if he was being noticed...

...We hacks laughed and Byrd smiled, happy to have brought an endearing bit of West Virginia, however canned, into this august chamber...

...Today is treaty day...

...On the Friday before Memorial Day, as Summer pressed down on the city like a damp blanket, the Senate escaped the heat by burrowing deep into its chamber and voting at last on the INF treaty...

...Those of us who remain behind—those of us, for example, who have seen Deliverance—have our own methods of coping: there is the surrender and resignation of sun bathing, or the opium pipe of a televised ball game watched in a darkened, air-cooled room, or the companionship of steady drinking in a drafty saloon...

...Did that mean Senator Byrd would countenance military action against the Panamanian slimeball...

...After an uncertain spring of random showers and backsliding cold spells, Summer chose the week of Memorial Day finally to enfold Washington in its sweaty embrace...

...II The horrible consequence being, in this case, Millard Fillmore...

...Byrd outlined other legislative business, and then interjected some comments about Manuel Noriega, whose protracted negotiations with the State Department had broken off the day before...

...AF 48 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY 1988...

...President Reagan was in Helsinki, waiting to fly to Moscow...

...Proxmire's shtick as the crotchety-but-lovable eccentric, which at one time made him the object of an adoring press, has been wearing thin over the last several years...

...Out at Andrews, remember, the motor was running...

...More than an embrace: it's a death clutch, and Washingtonians thrash dumbly in attempts to give it the slip...

...I'm confident that, with a little help from the other side in tackling this thing, we can finish today...

...Some drive deep into the Blue Ridge to mountain retreats, there to be harassed by shotgun-toting gangs of moonshiners aflame with perverted desires...