The Long Goodbye to Byrd

By MARGARET CARLSON

When Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd announced last week that he would step down next January from the post he assumed a decade ago, relief among many Democrats was palpable. Senators appreciate Byrd for his obsessive attention to their personal needs, but little else. Increasingly, he has seemed unable to control his flock. None of the Government's 13 appropriations bills came to a vote last year, forcing the adoption of an omnibus spending bill whose full content was not known to a single Senator; in February, Byrd's own campaign- finance bill could not make it through the Senate. Moreover, with his silver- ^ blue pompadour and dour expression, Byrd, 70, has proved no match as an adversary to Ronald Reagan's polished role as the Great Communicator. As a Democratic spokesman following Reagan's State of the Union addresses, Byrd, with his stilted manner, came across on television like a clerk calling roll.

Byrd's graceful exit gives the Democrats a chance to choose a new majority leader, one who may have to counter another four years of a Republican White House by setting a more vigorous style of leadership in Congress. Anticipating that Byrd would resign or be pushed aside, Senators Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, George Mitchell of Maine and J. Bennett Johnston of Louisiana have been jockeying behind the scenes since last year.

None of them has a commanding lead, although Inouye, 63, the no-nonsense insider who came to national prominence during the Watergate hearings, was once the favorite. But his fortunes fell last summer when his plodding, imperious handling of the Iran-contra hearings turned what should have been a Democratic triumph on national television into a showcase for Lieut. Colonel Oliver North. Inouye's standing slipped further in January, when he was found to have sponsored an unnoticed proposal to give $8 million to build schools for North African Jews in France. Even without these setbacks, Inouye may be too Byrd-like for younger members. "Inouye is the direction you go in if you really want to play it safe, not rock the boat," says Norman Ornstein, resident Scholar of the American Enterprise Institute.

Mitchell's stock has risen over the past year. During the Iran-contra hearings, he appeared judicious and intellectually rigorous. Under the glare of television lights, his wooden speaking style vastly improved. A Senator since 1980, Mitchell, 54, has been around long enough to have developed respect for tradition but not so long that he is inured to Senate logjams. "Tradition," he says, "ought not to be a justification for unreasonable delay and unconscionable deadlock," a sentiment that resonates loudly with the bloc of eleven freshmen Senators pushing a "quality of life" package to reform arcane Senate rules. As chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee -- he defeated Johnston for the post in 1985 -- Mitchell has a leg up with the members he helped elect in 1986. Says one Senator: "A lot of those guys are going to think, We're gonna dance with the fella who brung us."

This will be the second try at the majority-leader post for Johnston. Elected to the Senate in 1972, Johnston, 55, made an aborted run against Byrd in 1986, when Democrats recaptured the Senate majority they had lost six years earlier. Johnston dropped out of the contest when he realized the awful truth: thanks to a secret ballot, Senators may pledge their troth in advance to more than one candidate. "I thought I had the votes earlier on," he recalls. "But they go like a covey of quail, all flying off in one direction. I saw the first one take off, and I could read that very easily." Johnston's classic Dixie charm plays well with Southern Senators. While he does not believe the election will turn on back scratching and horse trading, he has done his share of both, and it could prove helpful. "When a Senator's ox was in the ditch and you helped pull it out, he'll remember that," he says.

Although Mitchell seems to have a slight edge now, anything can happen in a race that has less in common with grown-up politics than a contest for student-council president, where the best leader can easily lose to the candidate who can organize the best mixers and loosen up hall passes. A former Senate aide points to Byrd's upset victory over the charismatic but inattentive Edward Kennedy for Democratic whip in 1971. Democrats talk national leadership, says the onetime aide, but they vote self-interest. "They want someone to manage their lives, make them look good," he says, "especially the ones with complicated social lives or a drinking problem."

No one this time around is as elaborately courteous as the whim-conscious Byrd, famous for sending cars for colleagues who need to get someplace in a hurry. A longtime Byrd supporter said, "If you took a pencil out, he'd sharpen it for you." Inouye is said to have the best shot at Byrd's endorsement if he can show enough solid early support, a rare commodity in a secret ballot, where Senators have been known to make up their minds early, but often.

Whatever the result, this race could hardly be as dramatic as the 1971 contest, which set up Byrd's accession to majority leader six years later. The weekend before the vote, Kennedy relaxed over dinner, telling friends he had the job wrapped up. Meanwhile, Byrd was feverishly collecting chits, and believed he had a one-vote margin as long as he could count on the proxy of Senator Richard Russell of Georgia, who was near death in a Washington hospital. On the day of the vote, aides gave Byrd the signal that Russell was still alive and his proxy good. Byrd won with three votes to spare. Russell died four hours later.

With reporting by Hays Gorey and Ted Gup/Washington