[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 12 (Tuesday, February 4, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Page S928]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




        RESPECT FOR DEMOCRACY AND THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS

  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, 2 weeks ago I came to this floor and spoke 
of an event that happened in the late 1930's in Montpelier, VT, the 
capital of Vermont, the city where I was born. I will recount that only 
briefly because we have the state of the Union message tonight. I hope 
it may be instructive to some.
  In the late 1930's, then-President Franklin Roosevelt visited 
Vermont. To put this in context, during the Roosevelt landslide, 
President Roosevelt carried all States but two: the State of Maine and 
the State of Vermont. We were not a hotbed of Democratic action, 
Vermont.
  The president of the National Life Insurance Co. of Vermont was 
standing on State Street. That building was directly across the street 
from where my family lived. He was standing next to my father, who was 
probably the lone Democrat in Montpelier.
  President Roosevelt's car went by, and the president of National 
Life, an ardent, lifelong, fervent, and proud Republican, stood at 
attention, took his hat off, and held it over his heart as a mark of 
respect, as did other men on the street.
  My father, who knew him well, chided him a little bit and said, ``I 
never thought I'd see the day you would salute Franklin Roosevelt.'' He 
turned to my father and said, ``Howard, I didn't salute Franklin 
Roosevelt. I saluted the President of the United States.'' As a child I 
remember that same gentleman repeating the story to me in my father's 
presence.
  I mention this because he was also very proud of the fact that he was 
one of the ones who, as he said, voted for sanity when he voted for Alf 
Landon and not Franklin Roosevelt.
  In a way it reflects a different time, but in many ways, a good time. 
The United States was, in the late 1930's, approaching our eventual 
entry into World War II, when we had to pull together. We also showed 
that we respected our institutions.
  Tonight there will be some of us who agree and some of us who 
disagree with what President Clinton says in the state of the Union 
message. I hope that in expressing both our agreements and our 
disagreements we will resolve that there are three great institutions 
deserving our civil respect in this country: the institution of the 
Presidency; the institution of the Congress itself, which is demeaned 
when we do things that harm or degrade it; and the institution of the 
judiciary.
  This great democracy exists because of the respect of its people for 
these three institutions. This great democracy is diminished if we, 
especially we in the Senate, diminish any of these. Debate, yes; but 
respect our institutions, also, yes.
  I yield the floor.

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