A Light in the House: Farewell to a Senate Friend

By JAMIE STIEHM

“Every single member (will) vote their conscience.” nnConscience, did you say? House Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-La.) words cut cleanly through the House of Representatives noise. Seldom are they told to rise above the partisan rabble.

After months of darkness and delay, Johnson did the right thing for the nation and world. He opened the gate for Ukraine aid in its perilous war with Russia.

Johnson, 52, deserves credit for refusing to “play politics” as he allowed a grave vote to advance.

“History judges us,” he stated in an emotional voice. “I believe (Russian president) Putin would continue to march through Europe.”

The CIA chief’s urgent briefing convinced Johnson, but so did a personal matter. His son will be a first-year “plebe” at the Naval Academy.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told Johnson he would always regret not answering Ukraine’s call for help.

Ousted former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Ca.) never appealed to the good heart and sense of lawmakers. Everything he did was to keep his job. Ironically, the slippery McCarthy lost his job in a far-right rebellion.

Johnson stood up to shrill pressure and threats from Chip Roy (R-Texas), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). Stumbling blocks all, they are allied with former President Donald Trump’s isolationist view of a world without our leadership.

America’s $60 billion could make all the difference, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said in grateful thanks. Still, it’s not coming a moment too soon after Ukraine lost ground this winter.

This foreign aid package finally passed 311-112 on the floor in a rare Saturday session, with strong approval from all Democrats and about half of Republicans.

The cheers that broke out were not only for Ukraine but for the House itself turning on a light of hope.

It’s quite a moment of sea change in the most miserable Congress anyone can remember. Lawmakers are leaving the House in droves.

This event might stop the exodus.

When you’re a rookie reporter, you never forget when a senator takes the time to really talk with you.

Democrat David Pryor recently died at 89 in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was one of the best in the Clinton era, when giants strode the Senate.

As governor, Pryor mentored the younger Bill Clinton. Arkansas punched above its weight in political talent then.

I clutched my heart’s memory as I found legal pad notes from interviewing the senator years ago. Pryor began his Capitol Hill life as a page and recalled domineering Sen. Joseph McCarthy snapping his fingers, saying, “You, get me my bedroom shoes.”

One day Pryor invited me to a reception in his Russell office for Arkansas artists and added, “the president” would come. Sure enough, President Clinton waded through a throng with a kind word for every man, woman and child. For the boy with a flag necktie: “That’s a good tie for a president.”

That was once Harry Truman’s office. “Old Harry Truman still kind of lives in this office,” Pryor mused. Indeed, he and Truman were cut from the same small-town cloth in seeking a fair shake.

Pryor related a country courtroom case where he represented the owner of a stolen coon dog. “The dog walked into the courtroom, stopped and sniffed, and put his paws on my client’s chest.

“You could hear a pin drop.”

Disarming and low-key, Pryor championed seniors, labor and the environment in 18 years of Senate work. He resented “hate groups trying to demonize” the federal government. How prescient.

Before his political career, Pryor published a “little paper,” the Ouachita Citizen. He opposed — and later defeated — the rigidly racist Gov. Orval Faubus.

Pryor served with loquacious Sen. Dale Bumpers from the same Southern state. He chuckled, “Three former governors of Arkansas (Bumpers and Clinton), all of us gainfully employed!”

He never lost his reverence for the dignified Senate’s traditions.

“I can remember my first day in the Senate, how much in awe I was. I chose the right clothes to make my first speech. ... I love the Capitol building itself. We tend to forget (it’s) an absolutely grand place to work.

“I hope (the Senate) does not succumb to become a House.”

Jamie Stiehm is a former assignment editor at CBS News in London, reporter at The Hill, metro reporter at the Baltimore Sun and public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. She is author of a new play, “Across the River,” on Aaron Burr. See JamieStiehm.com.