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Subject: Chafee Roasting in Hell
Date: Tuesday, October 26, 1999 3:44 PM
On the other hand, one less Liberal Republican and Goldwater backstabber. All in all,
not a bad day.
Freely as ever, SEK3
P.S. Next time we're in Rhode Island, anyone else want to join me dancing on his grave?
October 26, 1999
John Chafee, Republican Senator and a Leading Voice of Bipartisanship,
Dies at 77
Related Articles
Chafee Decides Not to Seek Fifth Term in Senate (March 16, 1999)
Political Tools: Congressional Guide � Senator John Chafee of
Rhode Island
Campaigns: U.S. Senate 2000 � Rhode Island
By ADAM CLYMER
ASHINGTON -- Senator John Hubbard Chafee of Rhode
Island, the last of the Rockefeller Republicans and an
increasingly isolated voice of internationalism and bipartisanship in
his party, died on Sunday.
Senator Chafee died of heart failure at the National Naval Medical
Center in Bethesda, Md., a Washington suburb, his office
announced. He was 77.
His major domestic efforts involved the environment and health
policy, and he was responsible for a vast expansion of Medicaid, the
Federal health program for the poor, in the 1980's.
A Marine veteran of Guadalcanal and the Korean War, Chafee
made his last major effort in the Senate this month in seeking to
postpone a vote on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. When the
Senate went ahead and voted on the pact that would have banned
underground nuclear testing, he was one of four Republicans to
support ratification.
In his final Senate speech, on Oct. 13, he said, "We signed this treaty
recognizing that discouraging other nuclear powers and would-be
nuclear powers from testing these weapons would lessen the
unthinkable possibility that the nuclear option would ever be
employed."
Far from threatening American security, he said, the treaty "locks
in a status quo in which the United States has an enormous
advantage."
In partisan terms, his death will not change the Senate's 55 to 45
Republican advantage. Lincoln C. Almond, Rhode Island's
Republican Governor and a Chafee prot�g�, will appoint a successor
to serve until Jan. 3, 2001. Among the early favorites is Lincoln
Chafee, the Senator's son, who is the Mayor of Warwick. Lincoln
Chafee was already a candidate for his father's seat after the elder
Chafee announced on March 15 that he would retire when this
term ended.
The most immediate impact in the Senate could be on
environmental issues. Senator Chafee, as chairman of the
Committee on Environment and Public Works, has bottled up a
number of pro-business changes in environmental laws that other
Republicans want. Senator Robert C. Smith of New Hampshire,
who announced this year that he was leaving the Republican Party
but who still enjoys its seniority, is next in line for the chairmanship.
But a spokesman for Senator Trent Lott, the majority leader, said
today that it was "premature for any kind of discussion" of the
chairmanship.
In a larger sense, Chafee's death leaves the Senate with only two
relatively moderate Republicans in positions of power. Senator John
W. Warner of Virginia is chairman of the Armed Services
Committee, and Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana heads the
Agriculture Committee. But neither has been as eager as Chafee to
work with Democrats or as ready to cross the Republican
leadership.
In recent years the Senate has lost a significant group of
Republicans who found it natural to seek bipartisan alliances, from
Mark O. Hatfield of Oregon to Alan Simpson of Wyoming to John C.
Danforth of Missouri to Nancy Kassebaum Baker of Kansas to
Hank Brown of Colorado.
Today that talent, exemplified by Chafee, was cheered chiefly by
Democrats. Senator John B. Breaux of Louisiana, a frequent
collaborator on issues like health care and welfare reform, said: "We
lost one who was part of our centrist coalition, and the country has
lost someone who was always putting his country ahead of party
politics. He was part of a group that should be growing in numbers,
not diminishing, but we become more polarized each year.
"The Senate and this country have lost a leader who put his
country's interests before partisan politics."
President Clinton, who had hoped in vain for Chafee's help on
national health insurance in 1993 and 1994, said on Monday:
"Rhode Island and America have lost a great leader and a fine
human being, who in 23 years in the Senate and in his service as
Secretary of the Navy, always put his concern for the American
people above partisanship. When you think of the term 'bipartisan,'
you immediately think of John Chafee."
And while some Republican conservatives have sniped at Chafee
over the years, and even dumped him from the chairmanship of
their party conference in 1990, their reactions today were warm.
Senators were visibly upset as they spoke and after they left the
floor. One whose voice broke with emotion was Senator Jesse Helms,
Republican of North Carolina. Senator Mitch McConnell,
Republican of Kentucky, declined to speak to a reporter about a
national security budget matter, saying he had just finished giving a
Chafee tribute.
Chafee was descended from one of the "five families" of Rhode
Island, Yankees who ran the state before immigrants changed its
political complexion in the 30's.
He was at Yale when World War II began and he enlisted in the
Marines, serving in battles at Guadalcanal and Okinawa, and was
commissioned as a second lieutenant. He returned to Yale and then
went to Harvard Law School before being recalled to active duty in
Korea in 1951.
He practiced law and served six years in the Rhode Island
Legislature, becoming minority leader of the State Assembly. In
1962 he became only the third Republican elected governor in 30
years, squeaking through by 398 votes.
He was an unabashedly liberal governor. He pushed for
anti-discrimination laws in housing and employment before the
Federal Government passed them. He advocated the construction of
Interstate 95, developed parks throughout the small state and
pushed through a state plan of health care for the elderly before
Congress enacted Medicare.
In Presidential politics, Chafee had opposed Barry Goldwater's bid
for the 1964 Republican nomination, and in 1968 he backed
Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York against Richard M.
Nixon and Ronald Reagan. While Rockefeller got all 14 of Rhode
Island's delegate votes, it was not nearly enough.
Chafee himself was victim of a political upset that fall, losing a bid
for a fourth term as governor to Frank Licht. Chafee had halted his
campaigning after his 14-year-old daughter, Tribbie, had died a few
weeks before the election after being kicked in the head by a horse.
But despite his support for Rockefeller, the Nixon Administration
found a place for him, and he reveled in the post of Navy Secretary.
His most striking decision was made on May 6, 1969, when he
blocked any court martial of the commander and the intelligence
officer of the U.S.S. Pueblo, which had been captured by North
Korea in 1968.
They had been held prisoner for 11 months, and Secretary Chafee
said, "They have suffered enough." Moreover, he concluded that the
capture was the result of a failure shared by the entire Navy chain
of command.
"The major factor which led to the Pueblo's only confrontation by
unanticipated bold and hostile forces was the sudden collapse of a
premise which had been assumed at every level of responsibility and
upon which every other aspect of the mission had been based --
freedom of the high seas," he wrote. "The consequences must in
fairness be borne by all, rather than by one or two individuals whom
circumstances had placed closer to the actual event."
He resigned in 1972 and ran for the Senate against Claiborne Pell.
But in a strongly Democratic state, he lost despite Nixon's landslide.
After that Chafee returned to practicing law in Providence, until he
ran again for the Senate in 1976 and won.
The Senate he joined in 1977 was a far less partisan institution than
today's, and he could support President Carter and the Panama
Canal treaty without repercussions from his Republican colleagues.
And when Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, Chafee eagerly
proclaimed it a Republican victory, not a conservative one, and
promised moderate support on major issues like the economy.
But he also moved forward with his own priorities. Year after year
in the 1980's, as Congress cut the budget for other social programs,
he engineered expansions of Medicaid, extending coverage to
millions of pregnant women and children.
Taken together, the changes altered a basic concept of Medicaid,
breaking the link that for more than two decades had tied Medicaid
eligibility to the receipt of cash welfare benefits. As a result of his
efforts, Congress allowed and in some cases required states to help
pay medical bills for certain low-income people who were not
receiving welfare.
Chafee helped write a provision of the 1996 welfare law intended to
guarantee continued Medicaid coverage for families losing cash
assistance.
Sara Rosenbaum, a professor of health law and policy at George
Washington University, said: "Senator Chafee was involved in
virtually every important change in the Medicaid program since
the late 1970's. He led efforts to expand maternal and child health
programs. He had an undying commitment to Medicaid recipients
with disabilities. He made great efforts to preserve and strengthen
the health care safety net, assuring adequate payments for
community health centers that care for huge numbers of
uninsured patients."
Despite fighting the Reagan Administration over military spending,
he was elected to the Senate Republicans' third-ranking position,
chairman of the Republican Conference, in 1984. He was ousted
from that position in 1990 by the more conservative Thad Cochran
of Mississippi, who in turn was pushed aside by more conservative
rivals.
But that year he also played a central role in reauthorizing the
Clean Air Act, one of the nation's landmark environmental laws.
That was only one of the achievements hailed by environmentalists
today. Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, cited that bill
and also said Chafee played an even greater role later as a
"one-man front line" defending laws against the "Republican
far-right wing."
"No one will ever know how many bad things did not happen in the
last three years because John Chafee was there," Pope said. At least
one of Pope's evils was easy to identify. When Republicans
recaptured the Senate in 1995, Chafee became chairman of the
Environment Committee. He showed a chairman's power when he
simply refused to bring up a rewritten version of the landmark
Clean Water Act of 1972. The House-passed measure would have
weakened or revoked a number of pollution control requirements.
In the 1990's, despite the loss of his formal Republican Party
leadership position, his friend Senator Bob Dole of Kansas put him in
charge of a task force to define Republican policy on national health
insurance. The Chafee group rejected the idea of requiring
employers to buy coverage for their workers, which was central to
the Democratic plan, but instead advocated requiring people to get
insurance, with Federal subsidies for those who could not afford it.
As the issue heated up in 1993 and 1994, Dole backed away from it.
When Chafee, Breaux and others struggled, in dozens of meetings
in a Capitol hideaway, to compromise with the Clinton plan, they
could get no more than a handful of Republicans who would vote to
break the Dole filibuster. Their effort, like Clinton's, foundered.
Danforth, a central ally in that cause and a frequent dinner
companion during late Senate nights, reflected on Monday that one
of the best things about Chafee at that moment was that "when it
fell apart, there was no bitterness." Danforth added: "He was a
person who really wanted to make things better. He was the
opposite of an 'aginner.'"
And while the big effort failed, elements of the Chafee-Breaux
"Mainstream Coalition" plan reappeared in law in later years, and
Chafee played a major role in getting a plan to insure more children
-- though it was initiated by Senators Edward M. Kennedy,
Democrat of Massachusetts, and Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of
Utah -- enacted in 1997.
But while Chafee clashed often with the increasingly conservative
Republican Senate leadership, he was hardly predictable. Among
his last votes was opposition to an effort to cut off debate on
campaign finance legislation last week. He said the bill had been
weakened too much.
He is survived by his wife, Virginia; four sons, John Chafee Jr. of Los
Angeles, Lincoln Chafee of Warwick, Quentin Chafee of North
Kingstown, R.I., and Zechariah Chafee of Providence, R.I.; a
daughter, Georgia Nassikas of McLean, Va.; three sisters, Janet
Cushman of Quebec, Susan Welch of Bethany, Conn., and
Alexandra Reynolds of North Kingstown, and 12 grandchildren.
Chafee's sense of history was central to his final public appearance,
last Thursday night. He spoke at the Washington National
Cathedral to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the National Trust
for Historic Preservation.
He said: "Naysayers may ask, What difference does saving one
train station or post office truly make in the future of America? My
response is this: Preservation is not just about preserving brick and
mortar, lintel and beam. It is about the quality of life, and the
possibility of a bright future. Carl Sandburg expressed the danger of
losing touch with our past when he said, 'If America forgets where
she came from, if people lose sight of what brought them along, then
will begin the rot and dissolution.'"
Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
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