[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 43 (Tuesday, March 26, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Page S2886]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          EDMUND SIXTUS MUSKIE

  Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, few who ever served in this body have been 
as universally mourned as those of us from both sides of the aisle who 
knew him will mourn our former colleague, Ed Muskie, who died here in 
Washington early this morning.
  The reports already circulating on the news wire services and the 
obituaries that will appear in tomorrow's newspapers, all will make 
much, and rightly so, out of his long and distinguished service as a 
public man.
  Few men or women in our history have contributed so much to the 
Nation as Ed Muskie did as a U.S. Senator for 21 years and as Secretary 
of State; few have contributed as much to their native State as Ed 
Muskie did as a member of the Maine House of Representatives and as 
Governor of the State he loved so much; and few have contributed as 
much to one of the major political parties as Ed Muskie did to the 
Democratic Party, which he served as a Vice Presidential candidate in 
1968 and as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
  It is fitting that, upon his death just 2 days before his 82d 
birthday, Americans should be reminded of his long and faithful public 
service and leadership--but those of us who knew and served with Ed 
Muskie will remember him more familiarly as a man of principle, as a 
powerful personality, and, most of all, as our good friend.
  One thing that I learned very quickly, serving with him on the Budget 
Committee and the Foreign Relations Committee, was that while he 
exhibited the gravitas--the character and substance--that might be 
expected of a man whose full given name was Edmund Sixtus Muskie, he 
was a very human, very good-humored man--most of the time--who was most 
comfortable simply as Ed Muskie, and who if he was your friend was your 
friend for life.
  It is true that his good humor would sometimes momentarily desert 
him--he had a temper that verged on the volcanic, and he was capable of 
weeping public tears over an insult to the wife whom he loved--but 
those moments occurred, for the most part, because Ed Muskie never 
believed that a career in politics obliged his head to divorce his 
heart; despite a powerful intellect that won him a law degree, a Phi 
Beta Kappa key and a long, successful career both in law and in 
politics, he never believed that political feelings must somehow be set 
aside.
  He was passionate about his politics--he believed the work we do here 
is important to improving the lives of Americans--and he believed that 
what he felt was as important to achieving that end as what he thought.
  But though Ed Muskie sometimes wore his heart unashamedly on his 
sleeve, he was also very much a Yankee, very much a man of Maine, who 
put great stock in getting things done, and getting them done at the 
right price.
  By that I am not referring so much to his chairmanship of the Budget 
Committee--although he certainly exerted a strong hand at that helm, 
often to the dismay of bureaucrats throughout the land and not 
infrequently to Senate colleagues who failed to make a strong enough 
case for their favorite program--no, for him, getting things done at 
the right price meant achieving that meld of idealism and realism which 
we often say a democratic system of Government requires but which few 
of us ever achieve with the grace and consistency of an Ed Muskie.
  The people of Maine understood that as well as we did here in the 
Senate, and he understood and loved them, as well.
  I remember him saying one time, ``in Maine, we tend not to speak 
unless we think we can improve upon the silence.''
  Out of his wisdom, out of his passion, out of his drive to get things 
done, Ed Muskie often spoke up for Maine and for America--and we need 
only feel the silence of his passing gather about us now to know how 
much he improved upon it during a long and accomplished life.
  In the words of William Shakespeare, ``he was a man, take him for all 
in all, [we] shall not look upon his like again.''

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