By John Krull
TheStatehouseFile.com

INDIANAPOLIS – The surviving old lions paid tribute to the fallen one.

Just hours after former U.S. Sen. Birch Bayh, D-Indiana, died, I chatted by phone with his onetime opponent and colleague, former U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Indiana.

Lugar talked about Bayh’s friendliness and approachability. He said Bayh had made a great contribution to the state and country as the author of two amendments to the U.S. Constitution – “that has never occurred for any (other) public servant in the history of our country,” Lugar said. He also said Bayh would be remembered as a champion of civil rights and the rights of humanity.

Bayh and Lugar ran against each other in 1974 for the Senate seat Bayh held. Bayh won.

Then, as now, it was a contentious time in America’s history. Political battles over Watergate, civil rights and the last days of the Vietnam War threatened to tear the country apart.

Lugar said he didn’t want to run against Bayh. But the Republican Party had been so wounded by Watergate and the eventual resignation of President Richard Nixon, Lugar found himself “almost drafted” by the GOP to run..

Lugar considered Bayh a formidable figure, one who would be tough to beat under any circumstances. Bayh was, Lugar said, “a great shoe-leather politician” – one who knew how to connect with people at a human level.

It was that quality of Bayh’s, former U.S. Rep. Lee Hamilton, D-Indiana, told me over the air a little later that made the senator so effective.

Hamilton said he would bring people who were opposed to Bayh’s politics in to meet him. Inevitably, Hamilton said, they would leave the meeting saying they still didn’t agree with Bayh, but that they really liked him.

“He was the best retail politician in Indiana history,” Hamilton said.

Hamilton said Bayh revolutionized Indiana politics. Prior to Bayh’s emergence as a force, Hamilton explained, Hoosier political candidates tended to run “front-porch campaigns,” where they presented themselves for office and waited for the voters to come to them.

Bayh didn’t do that.

He went to the voters with an energy never seen before in Indiana.

Hamilton recalled times when Bayh would show up to campaign at a county fair or parade and find a line of cars two miles long. Bayh would work his way down the entire two-mile line, shaking hands and exchanging a few words with everyone in every car.

Hamilton and Vi Simpson – former Democratic state senator from Bloomington and her party’s 2012 lieutenant governor candidate – told me Bayh’s down-to-earth approach wasn’t feigned. He was a Hoosier through and through, one who couldn’t wait to get to Dairy Queen every time he returned to Indiana.

Lugar said Bayh’s sheer likability made him effective. Two years after they ran against each other and Bayh won, Lugar prevailed in a contest with Sen. Vance Hartke, D-Indiana, and joined Bayh in the U.S. Senate.

The two men then did what good Americans and good Hoosiers are supposed to do. They put differences aside and worked for the good of the state and country they both had vowed to serve.

“I cannot recall an occasion when Birch and I had reason to be angry with one another,” Lugar said.

Amid the recollections, Vi Simpson urged everyone to think about the people Indiana had representing and leading it 40 years ago. She’s got a point. If Indiana had its own Mt. Rushmore, the visages of Birch Bayh, Richard Lugar, and Lee Hamilton would be carved into the mountain’s stone.

Different men with different beliefs, they all had at least one thing in common. They could battle their political opponents without hating them. Once in office, they focused on finding common ground and building upon it. They all believed that the politician’s calling was to achieve the greatest good possible, even if that meant compromising. And they all preferred a solution to a fight.

No wonder they don’t seem to have a place in the politics of today.

An old lion named Birch Bayh died a few days ago, and other old lions paid tribute to him.

In the process, they remind us that, somewhere along the way, we’ve lost much more than a solitary man.

Much, much more.

FOOTNOTE: John Krull is director of Franklin College’s Pulliam School of Journalism, host of “No Limits” WFYI 90.1 Indianapolis and publisher of TheStatehouseFile.com, a news website powered by Franklin College journalism students.