In many ways, the very best Democrat in either house was not fit to change Strom Thurmond’s Depends. He was a segregationist, but an implacable foe of lynch mobs. Robert Byrd recruited klansmen, and once wrote to a high Klan official that he’d rather see the US flag trampled in the dust than permit the military to be integrated. Strom on the worst day of his life never would have said such a thing. But hey. As you say, he got senile and retired. McCain is getting worse and worse, but he’s like the Energiser Bunny with his foot in his mouth. He keeps going and going and going and going...
Thurmond was a bit loopy at the end, but the guy never became as totally messed up as Byrd. The old Klansman required a whole team of nurses to get him going in the morning and he’d sometimes become resistant and combative. Last time he showed any sign of being mentally with it was a 2003 speech condemning the Iraq War. His later speeches were pitiful to listen to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIBFWxjDj9I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjhVRjaXLSk&feature=fvwrel
But as I said, the West Virginia voters needed him to keep the pork flowing, even if he no longer had any clue what he was voting on. That’s unfortunate, but as I said, it’s democracy.
As for Strom, he was at least never a member of the KKK and he did acknowledge towards the end that the world had changed and that institutionalized racism was no longer acceptable.
One thing I might add is that Congress as a whole is getting older. The average age of Congressmen and Senators is 10 years above what it was in the 1950s.