January 6 is a date that already lives in infamy.
The live, televised evisceration of the next Republican Speaker of the House by his own party - whoever that Speaker turns out to be - which is still playing out in the US House and will continue on Friday - will only add to its infamy.
What really makes the day, January 6, a Day of Infamy is what happened on that date at the Capitol two years ago - a violent, attempted, coup. A mob was sent to the Capitol by a President of the United States who lost an election. He sent it to stop the counting of the electoral ballots that would certify his loss, overturning the results of a democratic election. More than 140 police officers were injured and at least five deaths resulted from that violence.
If that doesn’t qualify as a Day of Infamy, nothing does.
Yet even today, two different views persist about it. That’s surprising for an event that was televised live for all to see, and that has also now been thoroughly investigated and documented by the House January 6 Committee.
Still, one camp claims what we saw on TV didn’t happen - that the crowds at the White House and the Capitol that day were just families who came to Washington, DC to peacefully tour the US Capitol. Also that the violent mob was actually (Trump flag waving and Trump cheering) members of Antifa who stormed the Capitol. You can pick one of those stories or the other. Both if you want.
The other camp chose reality. They believe what they saw and also what the bi-partisan January 6 Committee was able to document with help of professional investigators and sworn testimony, mostly from Republicans, many of whom worked for Donald Trump.
The two sides still disagree. The newly minted Republican majority in the House, which still denies everything, vows to “investigate the investigators” - if they can ever to crank up the House of Representatives and get it operating, get themselves sworn in, and get the Speakership settled.
So it may surprise you to learn that within the US Senate, at least, there was an instant and bipartisan reaction to one aspect of the the events of January 6, that still remains. Nobody really talks about this and we should because it holds some hope for the future.
Let me say at the outset, this is not about the biggest issue involving the January 6 insurrectionist attack on the Capitol. But it is a significant “behind the curtains” look at one aspect of it.
The reaction shared by Democrats and Republicans who worked in the Senate during the time West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd was there was this: “Thank God, Senator Robert Byrd wasn’t here to see this!”
Byrd was the highly respected Democrat who, over his long career in the Senate, held literally every high ranking leadership office in the chamber. He served in the body from 1959 - 2010. He was member of the US House for six years before moving to the Senate.
Senator Robert Byrd revered the Senate, its place and role in our constitutional government, its history and its traditions.
Even today, Associate US Senate Historian Kate Scott says she thinks of Byrd as the “Dean of the Senate,” a term normally used for the longest serving US Senator, which Byrd was for many years, but also “in the sense that he knew the Senate rules and procedures backward and forward, and also was deeply invested in reminding others of the seriousness of the environment in which they worked.”
Byrd is remembered as a “protector” of the Senate as an institution, she said “because he would often remind Senators and others of the Senate rules and traditions. He was, in many ways, the enforcer of those rules and traditions.”
Scott said Byrd would tell the Senate and those who worked there that the Senate chamber “is a serious place. Americans have sent us here to do serious work. We’re fulfilling constitutional obligations and responsibilities here. This place is sacred. The chamber is a sacred place where much of that work is done.”
One of the traditions Byrd established to underline that “sacredness” is a patch of “hallowed ground” at the front of the Senate chamber that was absolutely off limits to anyone but Senators. It’s called the “well” of the Senate. You can see it on C-SPAN every time a roll call vote is called in the Senate. It’s the place at the front of the chamber, sunken several inches into the floor and directly in front of the dias, where you’ll see Senators milling about, talking with each other.
You’ve not seen staffers in that space, however.
That’s because Senator Byrd established the “well” as a place where only Senators are allowed. They can talk informally and privately there with one another, impromptu, without having to track each other down in the sprawling Capitol complex. They can talk candidly with one another beyond earshot of even their staff. It’s a work space where plans are made and agreements are often reached with one another without the need to run the gauntlet of their own bureaucracies.
I will never forget the day when I worked in the Senate that a staffer forgot the rules of that space and walked into it to hear a conversation his boss was having with other Senators. That is not an uncommon practice anywhere else on Capitol Hill. But not in the “well” of the Senate.
Byrd took to the floor immediately and admonished the staffer - and all staffers who might even think about doing the same someday.
“He even shamed Senators,” Scott said. “He’d remind Senators when the rules were being broken. No one could shame people like Senator Byrd.”
Scott tells stories of a Senator who attempted to use a blackberry in the Senate chamber, and another who had a lunch delivered to his desk there. Both received stern, public rebukes from Byrd, on the Senate floor. “The Senate is not a cafeteria,” Byrd lectured his hungry colleague. “This is a place where we do serious work for the American people.” The lunch was removed. The Senator ate his lunch elsewhere forevermore.
Byrd’s rule about the Senate “well” being sacred space, off limits to all but United States Senators, was even enforced by US Capitol Police who guard the chamber when the Senate is not in session.
It is a rare occasion when a small tour group steps onto the Senate floor, especially these days. But when one did when I worked there and was able to go along with them, one of the first things we were told by the officers on duty was to avoid even briefly walking through the “well.” When an individual in the group inadvertently did step into it, they were immediately shooed out of it.
Byrd’s rule was cited as the reason.
I understand that since Byrd’s passing in 2010, the “not in session” enforcement of that tradition has been relaxed. But the fact that it existed at all during Byrd’s time makes the point of just how important he felt the work of the Senate is in our constitutional government, what a sacred place the Senate chamber is because of the work done there on behalf of the American people, and the degree to which he was able to get his colleagues to share those views.
If you worked in the Senate during Byrd’s time, you understood the reverence he had for the Senate. Which is why so many of us from both parties had the same initial reaction to the invasion of the Senate chamber, and of the “well” in particular: “I’m glad Senator Byrd isn’t here to see this.”
It was mortifying - shocking in a time when so little seems to shock us anymore - to see a mob wandering through the Senate chamber, rifling Senate desks - 48 of which date back to 1819 and all of which have documented histories of who has occupied them throughout our history; to see people sitting in the presiding officer’s chair, wandering at will throughout the chamber, and standing around in the Senate “well.”
The enormity of the crimes - constitutional crimes and other crimes - that were committed on that day, the deaths and injuries - ensures that January 6, will forever have a prominent place on America’s list of Days of Infamy.
What happened on that day also ought to remind every one of us that Senator Robert Byrd was right: the work of our constitutional democracy is vitally important, and the spaces where that work of the American people is done is, indeed, sacred ground.