Last week, I was proud to join Senator Bill Frist (R-TN) and Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) in introducing a Senate resolution to honor retiring U.S. Ambassador to Japan Howard Baker, Jr. The resolution recognizes Howard Baker’s 30 years of dedicated public service to the president, the United States Congress, and the citizens of Tennessee.
When Howard Baker left for Japan, there was an enormous ceremony hosted by President Bush in the East Room of the White House. It was a signal of the importance of the United States’ relationship with Japan, a signal of the importance of a long list of United States Ambassadors to the country of Japan, and a reminder of the importance that Ambassador Baker would have at this listening-post and action-post in Asia.  
Howard Baker’s coming home deserves a little bit of fan-fare, too. The relationship between Japan and the United States has never been better. A good bit of that credit goes to President Bush and Prime Minister Koizumi for their close relationship, but Howard Baker also had a lot to do with it. His homecoming helps bring to a close another chapter in one of the most distinguished public careers in our country.
Howard Baker was a very successful senator, and there really wouldn’t have been a Reagan presidency as we know it without Howard Baker.
I remember Howard Baker telling me that when the tax cuts passed in the early 1980s after the Republican majority was elected, that he, as the majority leader, “took the tax cuts and walked them over to the House of Representatives and handed them to Tip O’Neill.”             
Senator Baker put his own presidential aspirations aside a few years later and served as chief of staff for President Reagan. I was living in Australia at the time, and I remember the relief that Australians had in 1987, hearing on the radio that Howard Baker was going to the White House to help straighten out some problems.
I saw Howard Baker up close, and I’ve seen him up close for a long time. I first came to the U.S. Senate in 1967 as Senator Baker’s legislative assistant.
Howard Baker was not a shy first-termer. I remember sitting in the staff seats in the back and waiting until he and Ted Kennedy, then another young senator, took on Everett Dirksen and Sam Ervin on “one man, one vote.” The youngsters beat the oldsters on that vote. In 1977, he changed the name “minority leader” to “Republican leader.”
He began to talk about the second best view in Washington being from the Senate majority leader’s office, and we knew he was thinking about trying for the first best view in Washington—which is from the White House.
When he accepted the post of Ambassador to Japan at President George W. Bush’s request, some people said to me, “Why in the world would Howard Baker do that, after all that he’s already done in his life?”
I was not one bit surprised that he did it. Howard Baker has always had the bit in his teeth. And he’s done everything with consummate skill.
Howard Baker is the reason I’m in public service today. There was a whole generation of us—former Senator Fred Thompson, the late Howard Liebengood, a number of us— who were a generation of people inspired by Howard Baker. Now there’s a second generation, including our Majority Leader Bill Frist.
There really wouldn’t be a two-party system in Tennessee without Howard Baker.
We used to say the best thing about Howard Baker was that when people saw him on TV, he always made Tennesseans look good.  We can now say that about the country. When people see Howard Baker around the world, he makes us Americans look even better.  He represents the best of us. We welcome him home just in time for his 80th birthday on November 15, and just in time, I’m quite confident, to prepare for another sparkling chapter in one of our country’s most distinguished public careers.

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