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Chapter 18 z ELECTED PRESIDENT PRO TEMPORE n 1989, upon being elected to the office of president pro tempore, I promised: “As president pro tem, I will continue to serve in the Senate leadership, and I will continue to try to bring West Virginia values—hard work, patriotism, dedication to duty—to the leadership.” I pointed out that “with this election, I shall be the only senator ever to have held all of the party leadership positions that are available to any senator.” With reference to the new leader, I said that Senator Mitchell “has an inclination to try to develop a consensus, he is bright, and will make a good majority leader.” In taking a look backward over the twenty-two years in which I had served in all of the other Senate leadership positions, I had a feeling of satisfaction— satisfaction that I had done my best, satisfaction that I had done my job well. I had had my share and more of the critics, the skeptics, the cynics, but I had never let them discourage me nor had I ever trimmed my sails to suit them. I had shortcomings which I recognized, and I had tried constantly to improve myself and to be worthy of the confidence placed in me by my colleagues and by my constituents. And I have never been sorry. During my twenty-two years of service in the Senate Democratic leadership—four years as conference secretary, six years as party whip, and twelve years as party leader—I had played a role, sometimes a major role, in manysignificantachievements.Amongthese,Ishallrecallonlyafew:theSenate approval of the Panama Canal Treaties and the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty; the introduction of radio and live television broadcasts I elected president pro tempore 469 to Senate debates; the creation of several new governmental departments (Energy; Education; and Veterans Affairs); the creation and enactment of the 1974 budget reform legislation; my stiff committee questioning on the nominations of Gerald Ford and Nelson Rockefeller to be vice president; my interrogation leading to the withdrawal of the nomination of L. Patrick Gray to be director of the FBI; modifications of Senate Rule 22 dealing with filibusters; and legislation dealing with social programs, foreign affairs, and federal budgets. Between 1977 and 1989 I had sat down with most of the great leaders of the world. It was my privilege to have met and talked one on one with Great Britain’s Prime Ministers James Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher, German Chancellors Helmut Schmidt and Helmut Kohl, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, Soviet leaders Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev, Israel’s Prime Ministers Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir, French Presidents Giscard d’Estaing and Francois Mitterand, Chinese Premiers Hua Guofeng and Deng Ziaoping, Syrian President Hafiz al-Assad, Jordanian King Hussein Ibn Talal, Iran’s Shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, President and Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek of the Republic of China, and other leaders in Turkey, Italy, Spain, Belgium, and Saudi Arabia. My discussions with such figures were an essential part of my efforts as Senate Democratic Leader to develop an independent viewpoint on foreign and defense matters during both the Carter and Reagan administrations. Erma was with me on all such occasions. During the years that I was party leader, when the going became tough I worked all the harder. I seldom suffered a defeat as majority leader. One of the few times that I was not successful in achieving an objective, however, was when I tried to bring campaign financing reform legislation to a vote during the One hundredth Congress. I worked hard at it; I believed in it; I tried unsuccessfully eight times—the most ever—to get cloture on a filibuster, and I was disappointed that I was unable to get such reform legislation enacted. My party colleagues elected me to be the leader, and I meant to be the leader. I did not hesitate to do things my way, although I realized that others sometimes did not like my approach. If I felt that the Senate ought to stay in session to get the job done, we stayed and got the job done. If Hamlet had been the Senate majority leader, he might well have soliloquized:“To be loved? or to be respected? That is the question.” If there had to be such a choice, I chose to be respected. The Senate could not march to the tune of a hundred different drummers; senators would have...

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