[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 39 (Wednesday, March 7, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2788-S2790]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                TRIBUTE TO THE LATE SENATOR TOM EAGLETON

  Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, Missouri's own Harry Truman once said:

       A politician is a man who understands government. A 
     statesman is a politician who has been dead for 10 years.

  Somehow, another son of Missouri, Senator Tom Eagleton, managed to be 
both a keen master of government and a statesman in his own lifetime, 
as well as a dear friend of many in this Chamber. On this past Sunday, 
Tom passed away at age 77.
  Tom Eagleton was a man who radiated wit, warmth, and a brand of 
intellectual and moral seriousness that

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commanded respect, even as he won the affection of all those around 
him. A Senator and a statesman, a humanitarian and a humorist, Tom left 
his indelible mark on the issues that mattered most to him. His 
proudest accomplishment in a superb career in public life, and in the 
Senate particularly, was an amendment to cut off funds for America's 
disastrous bombing of Cambodia. He was also a principal author of the 
Senate's War Powers Resolution, which sought to dramatically limit the 
President's ability to commit forces abroad without the consent of 
Congress.
  Ever true to his principles, Tom voted against the version that was 
reported by the conference committee, which he believed the executive 
would ultimately exploit as a 60-day blank check to use armed force. 
Over President Nixon's veto, and without Senator Eagleton's vote, the 
bill was passed. As usual, Tom Eagleton's concerns proved only too 
prescient.
  Senator Eagleton was a fierce and passionate critic of the Vietnam 
war, and he worked tirelessly to end that conflict. In 1971 he made a 
statement before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, one that I 
remember. It came about 3 weeks or so after I had been privileged to 
testify to that committee. He made an argument that resonates as 
clearly today as it did at the time he made it. He spoke of the need to 
set a firm date for withdrawal.
  In an essay he wrote entitled ``Whose Power Is War Power,'' he quoted 
Justice Story:

       In a Republic, it should be difficult to make war and easy 
     to make peace.

  And yet, he said:

       In Vietnam, war came easy and peace comes hard.

  His words ring equally true of the war in Iraq, a war he fervently 
opposed from the outset.
  For a brief period of time, for the 2 years our careers overlapped in 
the Senate, I had the privilege of working closely with Tom. He was as 
decent and as humble as he was passionate. I remember, when I first 
came to the Senate in 1985, Tom and I were unlikely seatmates, the two 
most recent additions to the Foreign Relations Committee. He wrote a 
letter, spontaneously, to Senator Pell, then the committee chair. If 
there was an opportunity for him to serve as a ranking minority 
Democrat on a subcommittee, he said: ``I would prefer to forego [it] in 
favor of Senator Kerry.''
  It was a magnanimous gesture that impressed me enormously, and also 
made a difference to my early involvement in the Foreign Relations 
Committee. In a place where seniority counts--then a lot more than even 
today, where prerogatives matter--and sometimes far too much, it was 
unusual to defer to a freshman Senator as he did. But that was Tom 
Eagleton.
  Tom's collegiality didn't stop at the aisle. One of his great friends 
in the Senate was his junior Senator, his colleague from Missouri, 
Republican Senator John Danforth. He championed Jack's nomination to 
become U.N. Ambassador and the two cooperated on countless issues, most 
recently as ex-Senators, cochairing Missouri's stem cell initiative to 
protect all forms of stem cell research allowed under Federal law. They 
were friends for 40 years, and colleagues in the Senate for 10. They 
showed a spirit of bipartisan cooperation too often missing from 
today's politics.
  On so many issues, Tom Eagleton was a trailblazer and a visionary. He 
helped to write the Clear Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 
1972, foundations of today's environmental protection regime.
  He was among the few in the Senate to oppose the Reagan tax cuts as 
he said: ``Once again, once again,'' shouting in his famous baritone, 
``largesse to the rich.''
  As he left Washington 20 years ago, he sounded an early warning that 
there was too much money in American politics, and he was a staunch 
critic of the Iraq war, from its initial walkup to the present.
  Tom Eagleton blazed other trails as well. In 1956 he became the 
youngest circuit attorney in the history of St. Louis, a record that 
still stands. And in 1960, when he ran for Missouri attorney general on 
the same ticket as another Catholic, John F. Kennedy, he held his 
ground when anti-Catholic bigots scrawled graffiti over his campaign 
posters. Tom Eagleton, in all of his career, never lost a Missouri 
election in his entire life.
  Tom's pre-Senate career took him from the Navy to the district 
attorney's office to the lieutenant governorship. I might add, 
parenthetically, it happens to be the exact same course I followed. He 
was the youngest Lieutenant Governor in Missouri's history. I 
empathized personally with his quip that Missouri's No. 2 spot was good 
for standing at the window and ``watching the Missouri River flow by.''

  Tom Eagleton was a quick wit, but he was also a man fully committed 
to living by his conscience, whether it led him to take conservative 
positions on social issues or even to censure a colleague from his own 
side of the aisle after ethical lapses. As the Senate debated ousting a 
Democratic Senator who had been convicted of bribery and conspiracy, 
Senator Eagleton was firm. He said, ``We should not perpetrate our own 
disgrace by asking him to remain.'' He loved justice, and it is fitting 
that the Federal courthouse in downtown St. Louis now bears his name.
  In 1968, his commitment to reform led him to challenge a sitting 
Democratic Senator whose record, many believed, was tarnished by 
corruption. After the race, his defeated opponent said bitterly:

       The man who builds a house on public service builds it of 
     straw and on sand.

  But Tom Eagleton proved that wrong. He retired in 1987 with the love 
and admiration of millions in his home State of Missouri and across the 
country. When he announced in 1984 that he would not seek reelection to 
a fourth term, his statement was full of the same personal humility 
that had led him to hand over his seniority to a freshman Senator. He 
declared that ``public offices should not be held in perpetuity'' and 
added that he had enjoyed ``a full and complete career.''
  As his colleague Dale Bumpers of Arkansas said:

       Tom's goal was never to be carried out of the Senate in a 
     pine box. He chose his career in politics because he 
     considered it the best place from which to promote justice, 
     nobility, freedom and dignity.

  When Tom announced he would not seek reelection, the Kansas City Star 
summed up the legacy he was leaving behind:

       Senator Thomas F. Eagleton is the kind of politician the 
     system is supposed to produce but so rarely does. He has 
     elevated the job of politics because he does not accept the 
     conventional denigration of politics. He believes it is a 
     noble profession, and in the hands of such as himself, it is 
     exactly that.

  In the two decades since he left the Senate, Tom never let go of his 
indefatigable sense of justice, his unique sense of humor, his taste 
for politics, or his love of Missouri. Once, after a ``Meet the Press'' 
appearance a few years ago that I was on, Tom sent me a handwritten 
note afterward. He said that while he thought I ``demolished'' my 
Republican counterpart, I really ``should have knocked his toupee off 
his head.'' That was Tom Eagleton, always seeing the humorous or 
absurd, and he sent a lot of Senators personal notes such as that over 
the years that made us laugh. He was the point man for the effort that 
wooed the Rams football team from Los Angeles to St. Louis, and even 
Tom was stunned by the affection that football fans showed him on the 
streets of St. Louis--particularly after the Rams' Super Bowl victory 
in 2000.
  After a plane crash killed Governor Mel Carnahan, the Missouri 
Democratic nominee for the Senate in October 2000, it was Senator 
Eagleton who took the lead in knocking down spurious claims that it 
would be illegal to keep Carnahan's name on the November ballot.
  In addition to his three books, Tom wrote over 50 op-eds for his 
hometown newspaper after leaving the Senate at age 57. He truly 
believed in the word ``citizenship.''
  In the last of those op-eds, published November 3, 2005, Senator 
Eagleton was candid in his analysis of the current disaster in Iraq. He 
wrote:

       Hubris is always the sword upon which the mighty have 
     fallen.

  And:

       From here on, any President will have to level with the 
     American people before going to war.

  Tom Eagleton loved the Senate. He loved this institution. He was an 
expert in its rules and procedures and he believed in the 
constitutional power to

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make decisions of war and peace. In addition to his most famous book, 
``War and Presidential Power: A Chronicle of Congressional Surrender,'' 
he also coauthored a textbook for high school students called ``Our 
Constitution and What It Means.'' Most of all, you could see the 
pleasure he took from simply being here.
  Above all, Tom Eagleton loved his family, his home State of Missouri, 
and the St. Louis Cardinals. At one point he even considered applying 
to become the Commissioner of Major League Baseball, but he couldn't 
give up his Senate seat as long as Missouri had a Republican Governor 
to appoint his successor.
  This January, Tom celebrated his 50-year anniversary with his 
wonderful wife Barbara. Together they raised two children, Terence and 
Christy, and three grandchildren. Tom Eagleton was the quintessential 
family man. He never stopped giving. He gave his life to serving his 
State and his country, and when he died he left instructions that his 
body was to be given to Washington University for medical research.
  Senator Tom Eagleton lived a full and remarkable life, and all of his 
colleagues and all the country will miss him dearly. He died with no 
regrets. ``My ambition,'' he said, ``since my senior year in high 
school was to be a Senator.''
  Not everybody achieves their ambition. Tom Eagleton actually did a 
lot more than that. He achieved his own ambitions and earned the love 
and enduring respect of millions. Along the way, he inspired so many of 
us, not least of all the no-longer-freshman Senator from Massachusetts 
who, 23 years later, rises sadly and proudly to pay tribute to the man 
who once gave up his seniority but never gave up his principles.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Alaska is recognized.

                          ____________________