"The Floor Is My Domain"

By WALTER ISAACSON

How Howard Baker holds a cantankerous Senate together

It was the night of Nov. 21, and in one hour the Government would go out of business if the necessary appropriation bill was not passed. In the Senate cloakroom, Majority Leader Howard Baker was trying to put together enough votes for a continuing resolution that would keep programs funded through the fiscal year. Michigan Democrat Carl Levin, who objected to proposed increases for defense spending, threatened to filibuster. Ted Stevens of Alaska, the Republican whip, began shouting at Levin. When Georgia Democrat Sam Nunn tried to intercede, Stevens turned his wrath on him. The mild-mannered Nunn stalked away.

Amid the chaos, Baker quietly began rebuilding egos and bridges. He first went to Stevens and persuaded him to apologize to Nunn. The three of them then joined to calm Levin down. Baker was eventually able to forge a consensus: a compromise resolution to keep programs funded for four months was passed, 60 to 35. Said Baker's Senate confidant, Republican Richard Lugar of Indiana: "He just remains congenial until the other side runs out of gas."

No stirring speeches resound from the majority leader's seat, front and center in the Senate's stately chamber. No grand initiatives are launched. No crafty deals are struck, no arms are twisted. Yet easygoing Howard Henry Baker Jr., 56, of tiny Huntsville, Tenn. (pop. 519), has become one of the most effective shepherds in the history of the cantankerous club that he leads. With an amiable aw-shucks manner, he wanders the corridors keeping his troops in line and his opponents placated. "The cloakroom becomes my office," he says. "The floor is my domain."

This insider's pragmatism makes Baker a perfect complement to the doctrinaire crusader in the White House. "I'm the President's point man here," Baker says. He and Reagan first became friends in 1976, when the Californian was campaigning in Tennessee for the Republican nomination. Although Baker supported Gerald Ford, he invited Reagan to his Huntsville home for dinner. It was a grace note that Reagan remembered, and a relaxed relationship blossomed.

The two men touch base at least two or three times a week--more often if events warrant. "My approach with the President is very straightforward and direct," says Baker. "We communicate easily." In order to salvage the Administration's proposal to sell AW ACS radar planes to Saudi Arabia, Baker carefully choreographed the President's lobbying effort, even deciding details like which Senators should ride together to and from the White House. A special telephone in Baker's Capitol Hill hideaway--White House extension 806--gives him a direct line to the President. "I've got one at home too," says Baker with a smile. His other direct line to the White House is through Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada. Because of Laxalt's close friendship with Reagan, some saw him as a potential rival to Baker as leader of the Senate. The morning after Election Day, Baker asked the Nevadan to support him for the majority leadership. Laxalt agreed, and became a member of Baker's inner circle. Says Baker: "He's a good friend to have."

The ongoing battle over the 1983 budget has provided the greatest test of the Reagan-Baker partnership, and of the majority leader's skills as a conciliator as well. Baker knew from the start that the President's deficit-laden plan could not possibly pass Congress, and bluntly told Reagan as much. Baker encouraged other Senators to become part of the process by suggesting their own alternatives and expressing their feelings to the White House. But at his regular Tuesday lunches with Republican Senators, he worked to ensure that no one fired any public salvos before a compromise could be reached. "Now keep your powder dry," he drawled to impatient colleagues. When Reagan threatened to criticize Congress for "ad hoc alternatives" coming "from both sides of the aisle," Baker called the White House to complain: "You're talking about us." The President dropped the offending phrase from his speech.

Baker's style contrasts with that of his Democratic predecessor as majority leader. Robert Byrd of West Virginia was an astute nose-counter; Baker relies on intuition to get the sense of the chamber. Whereas Baker sees himself as presidential point man, Byrd often opposed President Carter on domestic matters, just as Mike Mansfield fought Lyndon Johnson on the Viet Nam War. Baker also differs markedly from L.B.J., who first made the post powerful. Johnson used to joke that when he needed a vote, he would yank a Senator's hair so vigorously that "sometimes the skin comes with the fur." Baker has thus far been able to keep his colleagues in line while leaving their scalps unscathed. When he needs a vote, he simply asks for it. Says he: "I ask them pretty directly. 'Look, I've got to have this vote. What can I do to make it easier for you?' " Adds Lugar: "He's always understanding when you say no."

Baker's patented patience is supplemented by an uncanny sense of timing, "a sixth sense of when to push and when not to push," as Indiana Republican Dan Quayle puts it. When Reagan read Baker a long speech he had written on Social Security, the majority leader counseled, "It's a magnificent speech. But you ought not to give it now." The President accepted the advice. Baker was also successful last year in postponing potentially divisive debates on such volatile social issues as abortion and busing, by promising conservative Senators that he would find time for them this session. When he kept that pledge last February by calling up a bill to curtail busing as a way of desegregating schools, Baker faced another challenge. His party's maverick liberal, Lowell Weicker of Connecticut, waged a last-ditch filibuster. Baker let Weicker run on for two days. Then, shortly before midnight on the second day, he called up all of Weicker's delaying amendments for quick voice votes, ending the debate and satisfying the antibusing advocates.

Baker's political savvy is disguised by the disarming aura he creates with his self-deprecating wit. He tells of talking with Paul Volcker about towering interest rates and realizing that they might not seem so high to the 6-ft. 7-in. chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. The solution, puckishly suggested Baker (who stands all of 5 ft. 7 in.), is to have shorter men in important positions. His humor helps him to avoid the arrogance that tends to accompany power. He is genuinely well liked, by Democrats as well as Republicans. "When you see him coming you start to feel better," says Colorado Republican William Armstrong.

These political skills seem to flow naturally from being what Baker calls a "congressional brat." His grandfather was a judge, his grandmother was a county sheriff, and both his father and stepmother served in Congress.* Baker's father sent his son the Congressional Record to read and, more important, introduced him to friends he made in Washington. Among them was the flamboyant Republican leader of the Senate, Everett Dirksen of Illinois; Baker married Dirksen's only child, Joy, in 1951.

Baker was elected to the Senate in 1966, on his second try, becoming the first Republican to represent Tennessee in that chamber since 1913. He had yet to learn the value of patience: during his first term, he made a somewhat impertinent bid to succeed his late father-in-law as minority leader. He was soundly defeated by Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania, who beat Baker again two years later. When Scott retired in 1977, Baker was hesitant to make a third attempt. But he put his name forward at the last minute and edged out Robert Griffin of Michigan by one vote. In 1980 the G.O.P. won a three-seat Senate majority and Baker became the first Republican majority leader since California's William Knowland in 1954.

Outside of politics, Baker's greatest passion is photography, a hobby that allows him to hone his skills as a detached observer even during an event like the presidential Inauguration. He is also fascinated by old cars; he owns a 1950 Packard, a 1951 Studebaker, a 1962 Ford convertible and a 1963 Chrysler. (But he is driven to Capitol Hill from his home in northwest Washington, promptly at 8:30 every morning, in the brown Cadillac that is one of the perks of his office.)

Baker's weaknesses as a national leader are in some ways outgrowths of his strengths. His affection for pork-barrel projects for the folks back home seems particularly inappropriate for someone trying to shepherd a budget-cutting revolution through Congress. The most egre gious example is the Clinch River breeder reactor, a costly ($3.2 billion) boondoggle that both Jimmy Carter and, initially, Ronald Reagan tried to scuttle. Baker was "in every direction" trying to win votes for this pet project, says Senator Lugar. Baker, a former member of the old Atomic Energy Committee, says he truly believes in breeder reactors, which produce as much fuel as they consume or more, despite the skepticism now expressed by most nuclear-energy scientists.

Critics also charge that Baker's pragmatism betrays a lack of deep ideological commitment. Though his voting record is generally conservative, he is not totally trusted by his party's right wing because he supported the Panama Canal treaties and civil rights legislation, and has at tempted to find a middle ground on controversial social issues like abortion.

Although he became a media celebrity with his dogged questioning during the Senate Watergate hearings ("What did the President know, and when did he know it?"), his reputation was tarnished when White House tapes disclosed that he was relaying information about congressional strategy back to Nixon's aides.

This lack of crusading drive and clear ideals on his banner scuttled Baker's half hearted bid for the presidency in 1980.

MI MS Voters were uninspired by an old-style Washington insider who offered no stirring vision. Baker, who would probably be prime minister today if the U.S. had a parliamentary system of government, hopes to run for President again. Even those closest to the congressional brat from Hunts ville feel that his special blend of talents is best suited to the job he now holds. Says one of Baker's close friends: "If you're looking for a guy with a banner to lead the country, that's not him. He is a pro's pro. Howard may have better skills for majority leader than for President." -- By Walter Isaacson.

Reported by Neil MacNeil and Evan Thomas/Washington

* Elected to the House of Representatives from Tennessee's Second District in 1950, Howard Baker Sr. served until his death in 1964; his widow, Irene Bailey Baker, won a special election and served the balance of his term until January 1965.

With reporting by Neil MacNeil, Evan Thomas/Washington

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.