The most astute comment made so far on President Trump's shocking and unceremonious firing of FBI Director James Comey came from Harvard's David Gergin, perhaps the wisest, most balanced and experienced analyst of American Presidential politics, having served in the White Houses of Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton.Sitting on a panel on CNN last night debating the Comey firing, an incredulous Gergin asked the vital question “who will be the Howard Baker?” in this controversy.Forty five years ago Howard Baker, largely forgotten today in our ahistorical world of 130 characters and twenty second attention spans, was a household name in America.  A Republican Senator from Tennessee and an ally of President Richard Nixon, Baker later became known in the Senate as “The Great Conciliator” for his ability to bridge divides within his own party and between the Republicans and the Democrats on all manner of issues.But in 1973, the forty eight year old Senator was the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee investigating the Watergate break-in and cover up.  He became famous in that context for asking a one line question during a live televised hearing of the Committee-- “What did the President know, and when did he know it?”As the Senate Watergate Committee dug deeper and deeper into the crime and the cover up, the partisan side of Mr. Baker evidently gave way to the lawyer and statesman sides.  As Baker said at the time, "I'll dig for the facts, and I'll follow wherever they lead…What I'm trying to do is identify the forces that caused this to happen. Is it the aura of the presidency…presidential isolation or what?"Very astute questions from a statesman that apply as much today as then.In the final analysis those Senate Committee hearings proved to be the downfall of Richard Nixon's presidency.  And Howard Baker, Nixon's erstwhile friend and supporter, played a key role in bringing down a President and an administration that committed crimes and acted as if they were above the law.  In other words, Mr. Baker helped ensure the system of American government worked.Although the US Congress and American politics were fiercely partisan in those days—during the final spasms of the seismic culture wars around Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement, and just a few years after the assassinations of the Kennedys and Martin Luther King—that era pales in partisan comparison to the Washington of today.In an obituary in the New York Times at the time of Howard Baker's death in 2014, David Stout wrote that the former Senator described his political philosophy as “moderate to moderate conservative.”  Baker's stepmother apparently once said that he was “like the Tennessee River..he flows right down the middle.”  As Mr. Stout observed, such a political figure is almost unrecognizable on Capitol Hill today.  It is hard to imagine someone like Howard Baker having any kind of leadership position among today's Congressional Republicans.That is a big problem for a country that seems to be on a slippery slope to what Conservative writer David Frum calls illiberalism or even autocracy.  In just 100 days or so in office Mr. Trump has tried to do a number of things that flaunt the law and perhaps even the constitution of the United States, notably his immigration orders.  The biggest restraint so far on Trump and his administration have been the Courts.But that isn't enough anymore.  With the firing of Comey in the midst of an FBI investigation of Mr. Trump's associates, their connections with the Russian government, and Russia's involvement in last year's presidential election, and in the context of a Republican controlled House and Senate, Americans need a senior Republican lawmaker or two to put statesmanship ahead of partisanship and as Baker said forty five years ago “dig for the facts and follow wherever they lead”.Sadly, if not pathetically, apart perhaps from John McCain, the eighty one year old renegade Republican Senator from Arizona, it seems unlikely that any senior Republican in Congress has the character to put country above party.Eugene Lang is Adjunct Professor, School of Policy Studies, Queen's University