“Baker’s Dozen” Rules for Senate Leadership

Leadership Lessons from Howard Baker “The Great Conciliator”

Our team kicked off a road trip across Tennessee this week for the launch of our POPVOX/Tennessee pilot. Our first stop was the Howard Baker Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.

Howard H. Baker Jr., was the first popularly elected Republican senator from Tennessee and known as “the Great Conciliator” for his work across the aisle as both majority and minority leader of the Senate.

He was vice chairman of the Watergate committee that investigated President Nixon, asking the famous question: “What did the President know and when did he know it?” Baker later served as chief of staff to President Ronald Reagan and Ambassador to Japan.

While Baker is known for a wider range of policies and deals struck throughout his time in the Senate, the way in which he worked with others is perhaps his greatest Senate legacy.

“Very often … I found myself engaged in fire-breathing, passionate debate with my fellow Senators over the great issues of the times… But no sooner had the final word been spoken and the last vote taken than I would usually walk to the desk of my most recent antagonist, extend a hand of friendship, and solicit his report on the next issue for the following day.

People may think we’re crazy when we do that. … But we aren’t crazy and we aren’t frauds.

We are doing the business of the American people. We do it every day. We have to do it with the same people every day. And if we cannot be civil to one another, and if we stop dealing with those with whom we disagree, or that we don’t like, we would soon stop functioning altogether.”

In a 1998 speech in the old Senate Chamber, Ambassador Howard Baker shared his philosophy, the so-called “Baker’s Dozen” Rules for the Senate to maintain civility in the midst of stark opposition and disagreement.

“What really makes the Senate work — as our heroes knew profoundly — is an understanding of human nature, an appreciation of the hearts as well as the minds, the frailties as well as the strengths, of one’s colleagues and one’s constituents.”

(Read the full speech.)

A Baker’s Dozen (Rules for Senate Leadership)

(Reproduced verbatim from Ambassador Baker’s remarks on July 14, 1998).

1. Understand its limits. The leader of the Senate relies on two prerogatives, neither of which is constitutionally or statutorily guaranteed. They are the right of prior recognition under the precedent of the Senate and the conceded right to schedule the Senate’s business. These, together with the reliability of his commitment and whatever power of personal persuasion one brings to the job, are all the tools a Senate leader has.
2. Have a genuine and decent respect for differing points of view. Remember that every Senator is an individual, with individual needs, ambitions and political conditions. None was sent here to march in lockstep with his or her colleagues and none will. But also remember that even members of the opposition party are susceptible to persuasion and redemption on a surprising number of issues. Understanding these shifting sands is the beginning of wisdom for Senate leaders.
3. Consult as often as possible with as many Senators as possible, on as many issues as possible. This consultation should encompass not only committee chairmen, but as many members of one’s party conference as possible in matters of legislation and legislative scheduling.
4. Remember that Senators are people with families. Schedule the Senate as humanely as possible, with as few all-night sessions and as much accommodation as you can manage. I confess with great sin in that category, but it is good advice for the future.
5. Choose a good staff. In the complexity of today’s world, it is impossible for a Member to gather and digest all the information that is necessary for him or her to make an informed and prudent decision on major issues. Listen to your staff, but don’t let them forget who works for whom.
6. Listen more often than you speak. Once again, as my late father-in-law, Everett Dirksen, once admonished me in my first year in this body, “occasionally allow yourself the luxury of an unexpressed thought.”
7. Count carefully and often. The essential training of a Senate majority leader perhaps ends in the third grade, when he learns to count reliably. But 51 today may be 49 tomorrow, so keep on counting.
8. Work with the President, whoever he or she may be, whenever possible. When I became Majority Leader after the elections of 1980, I had to decide whether I would try to set a separate agenda for the Senate, with our brand new Republican majority, or try to see how our new President, with a Republican Senate, could work together as a team to enact our programs. I chose the latter course, and I believe history has proved me right. Would I have done the same with a President of the opposition party? Lyndon Johnson did with President Eisenhower, and history proved him right as well.
9. Work with the House. It is a coequal branch of government, and nothing a Senator does — except in ratifications and confirmations — is final unless the House concurs. Both my father and my step-mother served in the House, and I appreciate its special role as the sounding board of American politics. John Rhodes and I established a Joint Leadership Office in 1977, and it worked very well. I commend the arrangement to others.
10. No surprises. Bob Byrd and I decided more than twenty years ago that, while we were bound to disagree on many things, one thing we would always agree on was the need to keep each other fully informed. It was an agreement we never broke — not once — in the eight years we served together as Republican and Democratic leaders in the Senate.
11. Tell the truth, whether you have to or not. Remember that your word is your only currency; devalue it and your effectiveness as a Senate leader is over. And always get the bad news out first.
12. Be patient. The Senate was conceived by America’s founders as “the saucer into which the nation’s passions are poured to cool.” Let Senators have their say. Bide your time — I worked for 18 years to get television in the Senate, and the first camera was not turned on until after I left. But patience and persistence have their shining reward. It is better to let a few important things be your legacy than to boast of a thousand bills that have no lasting significance.
13. (The Baker’s Dozen) Be civil, and encourage others to do likewise. Many of you have heard me speak of the need for greater civility in our political discourse. My friends, I have been making that speech since late into the 1960s, when America turned into an armed battleground over the issues of civil rights and Vietnam. Having seen political passion erupt into physical violence, I do not share the view of those who say that politics today are meaner or more debased than ever. But in this season of prosperity and peace — which is so rare in our national experience — it ill behooves America’s leaders to invent disputes for the sake of political advantage, or to inveigh carelessly against the motives and morals of one’s political adversaries. America expects better of its leaders than this, and it deserves better.

A look inside the archives at the Howard Baker Center for Public Policy at the University of Tennessee Knoxville.

Special thanks to Nissa Dahlin-Brown for the tour of the Baker Center and to UTK students for some great conversations!