Clinton: Byrd Klan episode evoked rural background

Sen. Robert Byrd's membership in the Ku Klux Klan as a young man was a function of his rural background, former President Bill Clinton said at Byrd's funeral on the steps of the West Virginia State Capitol today. (Video from Talking Points Memo)


Near the end of what The Washington Post called "a rousing tribute," Clinton said Byrd joined the Klan because "He was a country boy from the hills and hollows of West Virginia. He was trying to get elected. And maybe he did something he shouldn't have done. And he spent the rest of his life making it up. And that's what a good person does," Clinton said, waving his index finger and winning applause. "There are no perfect people. There are certainly no perfect politicians."

"In defending the compromises Byrd made to attain power, Clinton could just as easily have been defending his own." Steve Kornacki writes in Salon's War Room. "The usual excuse for his Klan association is that he had been young and naive, and that as the years went by, he saw his error, repented, and went on to rack up a laudable legislative record on civil rights issues," Kornacki writes of Byrd, and then of Clinton: "The important thing, he seemed to believe, was to be in office and to make as many right decisions then as politics would allow." (Read more)

President Obama, delivering the final tribute of the 140-minute service, including the formal eulogy, recalled that Byrd referred to the brief Klan episode the first time they met, telling him "There are things I regret in my youth. You may know that." Obama said he replied, "None of us are absent some regrets, Senator. That's why we seek and enjoy the grace of God." Obama told the crowd, "As I reflect on the full sweep of his 92 years, it seems to me that his life bent toward justice."

Byrd joined Southern Democrats' filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act, but not many years elapsed before he changed his views. As Vicki Kennedy, the widow of Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, told the crowd, "Robert Byrd moved with our country and he moved  our country forward." For all the speeches, transcribed by The Charleston Gazette, click here.