Robert C. Byrd served 51 years in the United States Senate, longer than anyone else in American history, and with his six years in the House of Representatives, he was the longest-serving member of Congress. But it was how he used that record tenure that made him a pillar of Capitol Hill — fighting, often with florid words, for the primacy of the legislative branch of government and building, always with canny political skills, a modern West Virginia with vast amounts of federal money.
He had become an institution within an institution, as President Obama suggested in a statement of tribute on Monday, hours after Senator Byrd died at the age of 92 in a hospital in Fairfax, Va. Mr. Byrd, his health failing in recent years, had been admitted there late last week, experiencing heat exhaustion and severe dehydration as temperatures in the Washington area approached 100 degrees.
“America has lost a voice of principle and reason,” the president said.
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