MSNBC "Hardball with Chris Matthews" - Transcript: Ted Kennedy

Interview

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MATTHEWS: I`m joined now by Senator Edward Markey of Massachusetts.

Senator, let me ask you about what it meant to you personally. You served
with Ted Kennedy all those years. How did you feel walking into that
replica of the United States Senate, into his office, that replica?

SEN. EDWARD MARKEY (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Well, what John F. Kennedy meant to
the presidency of the United States, to an entire generation, that`s what
Ted Kennedy meant to the United States Senate.

He made impossible dreams come true, because he was the greatest senator of
all time. He kept crossing the aisle over to Trent Lott, to John McCain,
to Orrin Hatch, to Nancy Kassebaum, to find a way to make the Senate work,
to make a way for the country to work. And that Senate that has been
recreated down to the finest detail at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute is
going to be a place where young people all across our country can visit and
to have the debates in a civil way that can show them the pathway to making
our country work.

MATTHEWS: I will get back to you, Senator, on that one.

But let`s look now. Here`s Republican Senator John McCain. He was there
today. He made the ceremony a big bipartisan event. Here`s what John
McCain said about his former colleague Ted Kennedy.

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MATTHEWS: Well, McCain loves a good fight, Senator, as you know.

One of the stories you always hear about Ted Kennedy is that, after hours,
when the Senate was out of session, he`d be hanging around in some room in
the Capitol with a bunch of Southern conservative Democrats in the old
days, and they were friends. Is that still possible in the U.S. Senate?

MARKEY: It`s less the way the Senate was back then, but it`s the only way
in which it`s going to work.

If we`re going to break down the gridlock, if we`re going to make this
country a place where people can dream of a future that is better than
today, it has to happen. And that`s why I think so many people long for
the Ted Kennedy era, that crossing of the aisle, the hard fight, but with a
big laugh at the end of it, so that it wasn`t personal. It was just a
dispute over an issue.

We need to get back to that day. We need to get back to a day where people
can work together. Ted Kennedy was an idealist without illusions. He knew
that you had to fight hard for the causes, the principles that you believed
in, but he also had no illusions about how difficult it was and how you had
to cross over the aisle to work with Republicans to finally get a good
result. And I think many, many people want to see that day return to the
United States Senate.

MATTHEWS: Thank you so much, Edward Markey of Massachusetts.

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