Howard Baker’s Legacy
Howard H. Baker Jr., former US senator whose ability to work with Democratic and Republican lawmakers earned him the nickname of “The Great Conciliator,” died on Thursday, June 26, 2014. He was eighty-eight. Baker earned his law degree from UT in 1949. The Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy at UT was founded in 2003 as a nonpartisan institute devoted to education and research concerning public policy and civic engagement. Baker received the university’s first honorary doctorate in spring 2005.
“Our country has lost a great statesman and a great Tennessean. Senator Baker will live on in our hearts forever as a man who believed that government was to serve the people,” Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek said.
To many, Baker symbolized the civility and bipartisanship of a bygone political era, one where lawmakers from both parties set aside personal convictions and party ideology to work together in the public interest.
“For Senator Baker, principle was more important than politics in his work. It was about doing the right thing. I have a great appreciation for the role Senator Baker played in terms of his bipartisan approach to policy, as well as the demeanor he carried with him in debate. The words ‘civic engagement’ really do characterize his perspective on political discourse and how it should take place in this country,” said Matt Murray, director of the Baker Center.
Remembering Senator Baker
People from around the world share their memories of Senator Baker and we highlight Senator Baker’s legacy on American politics in these video clips.
Elected to the US Senate in 1966—and then re-elected in 1972 and 1978—Baker’s diplomatic style was instrumental in the passage of such bipartisan efforts as the Panama Canal Treaty, the Clean Air Act, and the Clean Water Act. But his position as Senate minority leader, and later Senate majority leader, was anything but easy, and Baker famously commented that leading the Senate was like “herding cats.”
But Baker’s ability to work with politicians across the political spectrum impressed President Ronald Reagan enough for him to personally ask Baker to become his chief of staff in 1987, when goodwill between Congress and the White House was at a low point following the Iran-Contra scandal. Baker is credited with greatly repairing the relationship between the two branches.
Straight Out of Tennessee
Howard Henry Baker Jr. was born in Huntsville, Tennessee, on November 15, 1925. His father, Howard H. Baker Sr., served as a state representative and a district attorney general during Baker’s childhood. His mother, Dora Ladd Baker, died when Baker was a child; several years later, his father married Irene Bailey. From 1950 until his death in 1964, Howard Baker Sr. served in the US House of Representatives; when he died, Irene took his place and served out the rest of his term.
As a young man Baker showed little interest in pursuing a political career, planning instead to become a lawyer like his father and grandfather before him. After graduating from a military preparatory school in 1943, he enlisted in the US Navy as part of its V-12 officer training program. At the conclusion of his tenure in the navy, Baker earned his law degree.
“Senator Baker is our college’s most illustrious alumnus and has made such a difference for the country, the state, and the university. He represents the best of what we do, thanks to his commitment to the legal profession and his commitment to community,” said Doug Blaze, dean of UT’s College of Law.
In 1951, Baker married Joy Dirksen, the daughter of US Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois.
After helping run his father’s successful 1950 congressional campaign, Baker settled down to practice law, joining the law firm founded by his grandfather in 1888. But after the death of his father, Baker began to make forays into the political world. In 1964 he ran—albeit unsuccessfully— against Ross Bass to fill the US Senate seat left vacant by the death of Senator Estes Kefauver. But in 1966 he won the election for that same seat, marking the beginning of his three terms as US senator from Tennessee.
Personal Politics
When he ran for re-election in 1972, Baker touted his friendship and close working relationship with President Richard Nixon. Thus, Baker found himself in an awkward position a year later when he became chair of the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, also known as the Senate Watergate Committee. But despite his personal admiration for Nixon, Baker maintained impartiality and pressed for information during the hearings, asking the now famous question, “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” In the decades following Watergate, Baker maintained that he believed Nixon did not know about the break-in; however, Baker added that when Nixon did find out about the incident he failed to act appropriately.
Baker’s ability to place his civic duty above his personal convictions impressed his colleagues in the Senate, and he was elected Republican minority leader in 1977 and majority leader in 1981. As majority leader Baker brokered many complex deals between Congress and the White House, often garnering bipartisan support among his colleagues for compromises on issues like spending cuts and tax hikes.
Murray says Baker’s bipartisan approach to policy is sorely lacking in today’s political landscape.
“He played a big role in helping push the Clean Air Act through Congress. As a Republican in a southern state to push so hard on an agenda that may have been viewed as being liberal, or counter to business, his was a signature action to protect the environment. You’d be hard pressed today to find leadership in Congress to take a stand like that,” Murray stated.