[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 127 (Thursday, September 10, 2009)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9193-S9195]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 REMEMBERING SENATOR EDWARD M. KENNEDY

  Mr. REID. ``A freshmen Senator should be seen, not heard; should 
learn, and not teach.''
  Mr. President, that is a quote from Senator Ted Kennedy. These are 
the very first words he spoke on the floor of this Chamber. He was 
hesitant to rise and speak that April day when he said those words. He 
had been a Senator for less than 18 months. The country was still 
reeling from President Kennedy's death just months before.
  But the question before the Senate was the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 
and Senator Kennedy knew he could hold his tongue no longer.
  He rose to speak because he loved his country. He waited as long as 
he did to give that maiden speech because he loved this institution. In 
that speech, he said a Senator of his stature at the time should be 
seen and not heard. But 45 years later, we can still hear his great 
booming voice. He said young Senators should learn and not teach. But 
who can list all we learned from his leadership?
  It was a thrill to work with Ted Kennedy personally. He was a friend, 
the model of public service, and an American icon. He was a patriarch 
of both the Kennedy family and the Senate family. Together, we mourn 
his loss.
  At so many difficult times in their family's history, the Kennedys 
have turned to their Uncle Teddy for comfort. At so many critical times 
in our country's history, America has turned to Ted Kennedy for the 
same.
  We can all remember how he walked solemnly with the grieving First 
Lady at Arlington National Cemetery. We can remember how his deep love 
for his brother helped him somehow summon the strength to deliver a 
defining eulogy in New York. We can all remember how, as patriarch, he 
memorialized his nephew off the shores of Massachusetts.

  For decades, Ted Kennedy was a rock to his family. The impact he has 
etched

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into our history will long endure. It is now left to us to remember the 
man who helped remember the lives of so many others. He was a very 
famous man. If you take the subway, people would always come up to 
Senator Kennedy. I would joke with him, ``Ted, are they coming for me 
or for you?'' It was obvious whom they were coming for. It was a joke.
  Ted was so good. When he thought you did something well, he would 
drop you a note or give you a call. It meant a lot to me that he would 
take the time to do that. I have come to learn since his death that he 
did that for so many people. You didn't have to be a Senator. He would 
do that for anybody whom he thought deserved a pat on the back. It is 
up to us to celebrate a Senator who helped so many live better lives.
  I have long been a devotee of the Kennedys and an admirer of their 
service to our Nation. As a student at Utah State University, I founded 
the first Young Democrats Club--in that bastion of Republicanism. I 
worked for President Kennedy's election in 1960.
  A week before President Kennedy took the oath of office and implored 
us to ask what we can do for our country, John Kennedy sent me a 
personal letter of thanks. He had won the election, but he had not yet 
been inaugurated.
  That letter still hangs at the doorway of my Capitol office, just a 
few feet off the Senate floor, where the three youngest Kennedy 
brothers ably served. That letter he sent me was for the work I did out 
West for that campaign.
  Many times, Ted would come to my office, and he would stop and look 
at that letter. He would always say, ``That's his signature,'' 
indicating that some staff hadn't signed it or some machine hadn't 
signed it. He was proud that his brother had done what he learned from 
his brother to do--send these very meaningful letters. He was proud of 
his brother. He was proud of his own work in the Western States during 
the 1960 race and proud that I kept that memento in such a prominent 
place.
  President-elect Kennedy's letter was short, but it overflowed with 
optimism. He wrote to me that the incoming era would allow us to ``make 
our country an even better place for our citizens to live, as well as 
to strengthen our country's position of leadership in the world.'' 
Think how I felt getting that letter. I was still a student.
  Ted Kennedy shared the dream his brother had, and he never stopped 
working to realize it.
  Ted Kennedy's legacy stands with the greatest, the most devoted, the 
most patriotic men and women to ever serve in these Halls. Because of 
Ted Kennedy, more young children could afford to become healthy. 
Because of Ted Kennedy, more young adults could afford to become 
college students. Because of Ted Kennedy, more of our oldest and 
poorest citizens could get the care they need to live longer, fuller 
lives. Because of Ted Kennedy, more minorities, women, and immigrants 
could realize the rights our founding documents promised them. Because 
of him, more Americans could be proud of their country.
  Ted Kennedy came from a family of great wealth and status. He didn't 
need to work hard for himself. So he chose a life of working hard for 
others. When he was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1959, the 
application asked him to state his main ambition. Ted Kennedy answered: 
``The public service of this State.''
  To quote one of his favorite poems--the Robert Frost verses that now 
rest on his desk on the Senate floor--that has made all the difference.
  Ted Kennedy's America was one in which all could pursue justice, 
enjoy equality, and know freedom. That is Ted Kennedy.
  Ted's life was driven by his love of a family who loved him and his 
belief in a country that believed in him. Ted's dream was the one for 
which the Founding Fathers fought and which his brothers sought to 
realize.
  The liberal lion's mighty roar may now fall silent, but his dream 
shall never die. One of his older brothers was killed in World War II. 
He was a pilot going into a mission, and he recognized going into it he 
would probably never come back. His other brother--the President--was 
assassinated. His other brother, as a Senator running for President, 
was assassinated.
  Again, Senator Kennedy's dream shall never die.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The Republican leader is 
recognized.
  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

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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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