Swallow it!
Robert C. Byrd served 51 years in the United States Senate, longer than anyone else in history, and with his six years in the House of Representatives, he was the longest-serving member of Congress. But it was how he used that record tenure that made him a pillar of Capitol Hill — fighting, often with florid words, for the primacy of the legislative branch of government and building, always with canny political skills, a modern West Virginia with vast amounts of federal money.
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times
r. Byrd as minority leader in 1981, with Senators Russell B. Long of Louisiana, Howard H. Baker Jr. of Tennessee and Bob Dole of Kansas. More Photos »
He had become an institution within an institution, as President Obama suggested in a statement of tribute on Monday, hours after Senator Byrd died at the age of 92 in a hospital in Fairfax, Va.
Was all that after his younger years as The Grand Hoo-Haw Wizard of the KKK?