Caffeinated Politics

Nancy Kassebaum died last Friday, and unless you’re one of the dwindling Americans who still read newspapers, you might have missed it. Television news, with its breathless devotion to storms with rain or planes that blew a tire, largely shrugged. A former U.S. senator with an amazing history passed away, and the national broadcast networks barely cleared their throats.

Well, the woman will not be forgotten on Caffeinated Politics.

It’s a strange kind of cultural amnesia. Kassebaum wasn’t a footnote. She wasn’t a trivia answer. She wasn’t “the daughter of Alf Landon,” though she was, and that alone placed her squarely inside the architecture of 20th‑century Republican politics. She wasn’t “the wife of Howard Baker,” though she was that too — married to one of the most consequential Senate leaders of the modern era. She was quite rare in politics, a topic I have read about for decades. She was both influential and unassuming, powerful but never showing the bombastic, performative nonsense we see far too much of today.

Kassebaum represented Kansas from 1978 to 1997, a period when the Senate still functioned like (GASP!) a deliberative body rather than a rowdy bunch of pre-scholars needing a nap. I recall her expertise in foreign policy and arms control. I loved her family history. While she did not ride on a husband’s political coattails, she was the daughter of 1936 Republican presidential nominee and Kansas Governor Alf Landon. She famously noted of her famous father, “I can’t think of any better coattails to ride on.” In office, she proved wise and informed.

She co-sponsored major health insurance reform legislation with Senator Ted Kennedy and supported key human rights measures, including overriding a veto on South African apartheid sanctions

In a 2013 interview for this obituary, she said that because of her views on abortion and her support for a ban on assault weapons, “I couldn’t get elected today” in Kansas. She was a critic of President Trump from his first campaign, and endorsed Kamala Harris in her race against him in 2024. In recent years, she also endorsed Democratic candidates for governor and senator in Kansas.

She had no trouble winning her three terms, though, and was a heavy favorite to win again in 1996. But like many moderates, then and now, she had tired of the political strife in the capital.

In December 1995, after she announced her retirement, she told The New York Times: “The higher the decibel level gets, the more it’s like a boxing match. It’s really different from when I came here.”

A year later, in December 1996, shortly before her third and final term ended, she married former Senator Howard H. Baker Jr. of Tennessee, an influential Republican politician who had served as majority leader and whose first wife died of cancer in 1993. For years, they lived at his home in Huntsville, Tenn., and on her ranch in Burdick, Kan., which she said in 2013 was so peaceful that “at night the only thing I hear is the coyotes.” Mr. Baker died in 2014, at 88.

Her death matters because her life represented a huge swath of American politics that is slipping away. You and I know what that means. We see it slipping off into the sunset every day.

The type of politics where competence outweighs theatrics, where bipartisanship wasn’t a slur, and where senators often behaved like adults. She lived through and participated in the hinge moments of the 20th century. The Cold War, the Reagan Era, the politically strong creation of the modern conservative movement, and the end of the Cold War. Forgetting all that and overlooking her now is a mistake.

Remembering her, and forgive me if I sound reasonable at this time of utter incompetence and never-ending embarrassment from the Trump White House, but public service used to mean something beyond personal branding. She is a great example that women in politics didn’t just break ceilings but made a difference in office when they served.

Noticing the lack of coverage of her passing, I recognized this was more than just a former leader’s death. It also marks the closing of a long chapter in how the governing class once conducted itself on the public stage.

The networks did not pause to honor her, but this little place on the internet highway did.

Godspeed, Nancy. Say hello to Howard, for us, too.