Remembering Senator Edward M. Kennedy

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, I, too, would like to speak of our departed colleague, Ted Kennedy, whose passing last month focused the attention of the Nation and whose extraordinary life has been memorialized over these past weeks in so many poignant stories and heartfelt expressions of gratitude and grief.

Today, the Senate also grieves--not only because he was a friend but because the Senate was so much a part of who he was and because he became so much a part of the Senate.

The simplest measure is sheer longevity. At the time of his death, Ted could call himself the third longest-serving Senator in history, having served almost one-fifth of the time the Senate itself has existed. Or consider this: When I was an intern here in the sixties, Ted was already a well-known Senator. When I was elected to the Senate nearly a quarter of a century ago, Ted had already been here for nearly a quarter of a century. He served with 10 Presidents or nearly 1 out of every 4 of them.

No one could have predicted that kind of run for Ted on the day he became a Senator back on November 7, 1962--no one, that is, except maybe Ted. Ted had signaled what his legacy might be as far back as 1965, when he spoke of setting a record for longevity. Mike Mansfield saw a glimpse of it, too, a few years later. When somebody mentioned Ted as a possible Presidential candidate, Mansfield responded:

He's in no hurry. He's young. He likes the Senate. Of all the Kennedys, he is the only one who was and is a real Senate man.

As it turned out, Mansfield was right. But Ted knew even then that his legacy as a lawmaker would not come about just by sitting at his desk; he would have to build it. And over the course of the next 47 years, that is exactly what he did, slowly, patiently, doggedly, making his mark as much in tedious committee hearings as on the stump, as much in the details of legislation as in its broader themes.

Ted's last name ensured he was already one of the stars of American politics even before he became a Senator. To this day, he is still the only man or woman in U.S. history to be elected to the Senate while one of his relatives sat in the White House. But to those who thought Ted, even if elected, would avoid the rigors of public life, he became a living rebuke. In short, he became a Senator.

He surprised the skeptics, first of all, with his friendliness and his wit. When he made his national political debut in 1962 on ``Meet the Press,'' a questioner asked him if maybe there were already too many Kennedys. His response: ``You should have talked to my mother and father ..... ''

Russell Long was an early admirer. In what has to go down as one of the falsest first impressions in modern politics, Long spoke approvingly of the new Senator from Massachusetts as ``a quiet ..... sort of fellow.''

Ted got along with everybody. The earliest memories family members have are of Ted laughing and making other people laugh. His secret weapon then, and years later, as CHRIS DODD rightly pointed out at one of the memorial services, was simply this: People liked him, so much so that he could call people such as Jim Eastland, somebody with whom he had absolutely nothing in common, a friend.

Ted had learned early on that he could be more effective through alliances and relationships than by hollering and carrying on. We all know he did a fair amount of that as well. He provided some of the best theater the Senate has ever known. But once he left the Chamber, he turned that off. He sought out allies wherever he could find them--Strom Thurmond, Dan Quayle, ORRIN HATCH, JOHN MCCAIN, and even George W. Bush--and he earned their cooperation by keeping his word and through thousands of small acts of kindness. Senator McCain has recounted the birthday bash Ted threw 10 years ago for his son Jimmy's 11th birthday. Senator Barrasso remembers the kindness Ted showed him as a new Senator. And Senator Barrasso's family will long remember how much time Senator Kennedy spent sharing stories with them at the reception after the swearing in and that he was one of the last ones to leave.

Like so many others, I have known Ted's graciousness firsthand. Anyone who watches C-SPAN2 could see Ted railing at the top of his lungs against my position on this policy or that policy. What they didn't see was the magnificent show he put on a few years ago in Kentucky at my invitation for students at the University of Louisville or the framed photo he gave me that day of my political role model, John Sherman Cooper. I interned for Cooper as a young man. Ted knew that, and he knew Cooper was a good friend and neighbor of his brother Jack's.

Ted's gregariousness was legendary, but his passion and intensity as a lawmaker would also reach near-mythic proportions in his own lifetime. Even those of us who saw the same problems but different solutions on issue after issue, even we could not help but admire the focus and the fight Ted brought to every debate in which he played a part. Over the years, we came to see what he was doing in the Senate.

When it came to Ted's future, everyone was always looking at it through the prism of the Presidency. They should have focused on this Chamber instead. It was here that he slowly built the kind of influence and voice for a national constituency that was common for Senators in the 19th century but extremely rare in the 20th.

He became a fiery spokesman for liberals everywhere. Ted and I would have had a hard time agreeing on the color of the carpet when we were in the Chamber together. Yet despite his public image as a liberal firebrand, he was fascinated by the hard work of creating consensus and jumped into that work, even toward the end, with the enthusiasm of a young staffer. Ted's high school teammates recall that he never walked to the huddle; he always ran. Anyone who ever sat across from Ted at a conference table believed it.

Ted realized Senators could do an awful lot once they got past the magnetic pull Pennsylvania Avenue has on so many Senators. His brother Jack once said that as a Senator, he thought the President had all the influence, but it wasn't until he was President that he realized how much influence Senators had. It was a similar insight that led Ted to tell a group of Boston Globe reporters in 1981 that for him, the Senate was fulfilling, satisfying, challenging, and that he could certainly spend his life here, which, of course, he did. Then, when it was winding down, he saw what he had done as a Senator and what the Senate had done for him. He wanted others to see it too, so he set about to establish the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, a place that would focus on this institution the way Presidential libraries focus on Presidents.

The Founders, of course, envisioned the legislative and executive branches as carrying equal weight. Article I is about Congress, after all, not the Presidency. His life and legacy help restore that vision of a legislative counterweight of equal weight. That is an important institutional contribution every Senator can appreciate. It is something he did through hard work, tenacity, and sheer will. It was not the legacy most expected, but it is the legacy he wrought, and in the end he could call it his own.

Toward the end of his life, one of the great lawmakers of the 19th century, Henry Clay, was asked to speak to the Kentucky General Assembly. Thanks to Clay's efforts, the Compromise of 1850 had just been reached, and Clay had become a national hero through a job he had spent most of his career trying to escape. His speech received national coverage, and, according to one biographer, all acknowledged his privileged station as an elder statesman.

For years, Clay had wanted nothing more than to be President of the United States. But now, after this last great legislative victory, something else came into view. Clay told the assembled crowd that day that in the course of months and months of intense negotiations leading up to the Great Compromise, he had consulted with Democrats just as much as he had with members of his own party and found in them just as much patriotism and honor as he had found with the Whigs. The whole experience had moved Clay away from party rivalry, he said, and toward a new goal. ``I want no office, no station in the gift of man,'' he said, ``[except] a warm place in your hearts.''

Every man has his own story. Ted Kennedy never moved away from party rivalry. He was a fierce partisan to the end. But over the years, he reminded the world of the great potential of this institution and even came to embody it. We will never forget the way he filled the Chamber with that booming voice, waving his glasses at his side, jabbing his fingers at the air, or the many times we saw him playing outside with his dogs. How many times did we spot him coming through the doorway or onto an elevator, his hair white as the surf, and think: Here comes history itself.

As the youngest child in one of the most influential political families in U.S. history, Ted Kennedy had enormous shoes to fill. Yet in nearly 50 years of service as a young Senator, a candidate for President, a legislative force, and an elder statesman, it is hard to argue that he didn't fill those shoes in a part he wrote all by himself.

It is hard to imagine the Senate without Ted thundering on the floor. It will be harder still, I am sure, for the Kennedy family to think of a future without him. You could say all these things and more about the late Senator from Massachusetts, and you could also say this: Edward Moore Kennedy will always have a warm place in our hearts.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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