Senator Quotes - page 12
And so Benet's opening description of Daniel Webster might have foretold Arizona U.S. senator John McCain, who fashioned himself a would-be president, once adored for his anti-establishmentarian streak and revered for his personal Vietnam War POW sacrifices. John McCain could have been Daniel Webster in dissuading misguided Americans from electing a fraudulent, dissembling, and America-loathing Barack Obama. Instead, John McCain ran an inept, cowardly, and deliberately underwhelming presidential campaign in 2008. McCain was AWOL on the campaign stump just eight weeks before election day. He squandered a respectable résumé, settling for a historical annotation as a ballot placeholder, enabling eight years of progressive and race-hustling hell. John McCain, unwilling to confront Barack Obama's elaborate deceptions and racial animus, surrendering to the nation's infatuation with identity politics, was scorned and rejected, shunted aside for a darling nobody.
John McCain
Madam President, on Saturday evening, a great loss echoed throughout our country. Six decades of patriotic service came to an end. We have suspected for some time that we would bid farewell to our colleague, the senior Senator from Arizona, John McCain. John took full advantage of the months since his diagnosis. His hard work continued, but happy reminiscing, fond farewells, final reflections, and time with family actually came to the fore. I was privileged to spend a small share of that time with John. We sat on his back porch in Sedona under the desert sky, replaying old times. John did things his way these last months. For his colleagues here, the time confirmed a sad but obvious truth: The Senate won't be the same without John McCain. I think it is fair to say that the passion John brought to his work was unsurpassed in this body. In more than 30 years as a Senator, he never failed to marshal a razor-sharp wit, a big heart, and, of course, a fiery spirit.
John McCain
One of the most fascinating parts of their story is the Game Change authors' insistence that John McCain – he of the clenched fists and frequent outbursts, the infamous temper – never publicly repudiated Sarah Palin. McCain's advisors, staff and friends, yes. They complained long and hard and nastily about her in ensuing years. But never the senator, Heilemann and Halperin write. And now, as the nation says farewell to one of the most fascinating politicians in history, a question remains: Will all of John McCain's railing against Donald Trump ever make up for the fact that it might have been the senator's own desperation to win in 2008 that led the nation to this point? Only time will tell.
John McCain
Senator Graham observed that John will not be replaced by any one Senator. It is going to take all of us working together. It is going to take all of us to really accomplish what John knew we were capable of. By coming together, respecting one another, one another's principles, even when we disagree, and working through these disagreements to compromise--that is how we really honor John's legacy. There are a lot of words, and these words will come and go, but the way to truly honor him is to live out what he believed this Senate is capable of doing. We were reminded that there is a little John McCain in all of us. I think it would be good for us to remind one another of that, to urge the inner John McCain in each of us to present itself in a way that betters our institution.
John McCain
And then there was his complicated relationship with our state. John McCain lived in many places after Vietnam, but for the last 36 years he called Arizona home, and represented the state in Congress - from 1982 to 1986 as a representative, and then from ‘86 to his death as a member of the United States Senate. McCain embraced Arizona, adopting the pretty landscape of central Phoenix and Cornville, posting photos of red-rock hikes, but doing very little during his tenure to support the state. In fact, his stand against "pork-barrel politics” at a time when his colleagues in Congress were busy lining their own states' pockets with infrastructure cost Arizona dearly while increasing McCain's popularity as a refreshingly honest leader who turned down handouts. In a lot of ways, it didn't matter what state he lived in. John McCain was America's senator, not Arizona's, a transplant (or a carpetbagger - again, it depends on your perspective) who adopted the state as his own.
John McCain
The reality is that while McCain's ghost may be smiling over the karma of Trump's loss of Arizona, the McCain-Trump feud was only one factor. While the senator was beloved by many in Arizona, not least because of his heroism in Vietnam (Trump avoided service claiming bone spurs), many residents new to the state have little knowledge of him. About half of the state's total population was added between the time McCain was first elected to the Senate in 1986 until his death, based on US Census Bureau data from 1980 and 2019. In addition, while many people came to the state every year, a significant number left -- even if the total kept growing. Arizona added 2.2 million residents from 2010 to 2018, while seeing 1.7 million move to other states. In other words, it's entirely possible that this churn prevented the kind of civic attachment that would have left a large cohort of Arizonans holding a grudge against Trump over his treatment of McCain.
John McCain
Third will be Senator Mack's amendment on the role of the States. We oppose his position, and we are supported by the Governors, as well as the heads of the State agencies dealing with education. We hope that the Senate will reject this amendment. Next will be the Helms amendment requiring parental consent for distribution or provision of condoms or other contraceptive devices or drugs or information about contraception. We recommend voting no, and instead we hope that the Senate will support an amendment which Senator Jeffords and I have offered restating the law which has been in effect since 1981, which involves parents to the extent possible. So we will vote on the Helms amendment first and then on the amendment which Senator Jeffords and I have offered.
Ted Kennedy
Just east, beyond the heavy door, lies the Senate chamber and a world Edward Kennedy has made his own, building a record of legislative accomplishment far more durable than his brothers'. It is an arena of triumphs and debacles and a legacy still half-built, still awaiting history's rendering. In the other direction, looking west through the tall windows, the senator has a stunning vista of the federal city and the great republic beyond. Two miles down the Mall, past the Washington Monument and Reflecting Pool, Lincoln stares back from his throne. Pivoting slightly to the right, Kennedy can see the broad sweep of Pennsylvania Avenue: beyond the Canadian Embassy and the National Archives, beyond the FBI and the Treasury to the white mansion at the bend in the road, to the house where, perhaps, he was never meant to live.
Ted Kennedy
As a senator, as the de facto leader of liberal Democrats for decades, even as a failed presidential candidate, Ted Kennedy was always the same, pursuing his goals no matter the odds. Where brother Bob cautiously waited until Lyndon Johnson withdrew from the presidential race to begin his anti-Vietnam War campaign in 1968, Ted Kennedy in 1980 challenged the incumbent, Jimmy Carter, simply in the belief that Carter had abandoned the principles of the Democratic Party. Kennedy suffered a humiliating defeat but returned to the Senate unbowed and fashioned a career unique in both its legislative accomplishments and the range of his personal friendships. His mourners range from conservative Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah to liberal neighbor Chris Dodd of Connecticut -- and scores in between.
Ted Kennedy
Madam President, in that year 1932, a writer for the Saturday Evening Post asked John Maynard Keynes, the great British economist, whether there had ever been anything like the Depression before. "Yes," he replied. "It was called the Dark Ages and it lasted four hundred years." This was calamity howling on a cosmic scale, but on at least one point the resemblance seemed valid. In each case the people were victims of forces that they could not understand. Mr. President, in that same year of 1932, there was born a child in Massachusetts, and his name was Edward Kennedy. In 1932, of course, I knew nothing about Edward Kennedy or Edward Kennedy's birth. But today I rise on this Senate floor to salute one of the outstanding Senators in the history of this great body. He is a man whose expertise, hard work, and courage have set a lofty example to which every fledgling Senator should aspire.
Ted Kennedy
Senator Kennedy has for years, also been a dynamic leader on a wide range of other issues of central importance to the people of this Nation, including education, raising the minimum wage, defending the rights of workers and their families, strengthening civil rights laws, assisting individuals with disabilities, fighting for cleaner water and cleaner air, and protecting Social Security and Medicare for senior citizens.
Ted Kennedy
I would say that in more than 45 years, Ted Kennedy has had more impact on the actions and passions of our time than any other senator, maybe any other elected official. He has devoted his life to the Senate, public service. He has been an active participant in all of the major debates. There's hardly an issue or a law that's been passed that he hasn't had some imprint on. Beyond his public life, he was a great person, a great spirit. People talk about that great Kennedy humor -- his laugh that could draw a crowd, his smile that lit up a room and that great Kennedy heart that had been broken so many times. He'd be the first to put his arm around your shoulder when you were going through a tough time personally.
Ted Kennedy
Bernie Sanders is no Ted Kennedy. For Hillary Clinton, that must come as a relief. We're talking about political effect here, not ideology. Senator Sanders is a lion of the liberal left, as was Senator Kennedy, after all. But Sanders has swallowed his pride after a bruising primary campaign and endorsed his party's presidential choice well before the Democratic National Convention. That's something Kennedy didn't do when he ran against President Jimmy Carter in 1980. The result was a split in the party that probably cost Democrats at the polls that November.
Ted Kennedy
It is true. We are all part of a continuum. In the history of our Nation, only 1,864 Americans have ever served in the Senate. Carved or penned into the drawers in our desks are the names of some of the giants--men such as Clay, Webster, Calhoun. But we don't have to open our desks or open a book to see one of the greatest Senators ever to serve in this body. All we have to do is open our eyes. He is right here, at the same desk he has occupied now for the last 40 years. I have been a Senator for 16 years. I count it as part of my good fortune that I have been able to call Ted Kennedy a colleague all of those years. I consider it an even greater privilege to call him my friend. Today it gives me enormous pleasure to join the rest of my colleagues in wishing my good friend a happy 70th birthday.
Ted Kennedy
If Kennedy is sincere - if his chief concern is that Massachusetts not be left for months without the services of a full-time senator - then he should do the right thing right now: He should resign. For well over a year, Massachusetts has not had the "two voices...and two votes in the Senate'' that Kennedy says its voters are entitled to. Sickness has kept him away from Capitol Hill for most of the last 15 months. He has missed all but a handful of the 270 roll-calls taken in the Senate so far this year. Through no fault of his own, he is unable to carry out the job he was reelected to in 2006. As a matter of integrity, he should bow out and allow his constituents to choose a replacement.
Ted Kennedy
Senator Kennedy began his career setting a high standard when it comes to birthdays. It was when he reached the minimum constitutional age, 30, that he first came to the Senate--1 of just 16 Senators elected at such a tender age from a total of over 1,895 Senators in all of American history. By his 70th birthday he was one of just 28 Senators to ever cast over 10,000 votes. But what we celebrate along with Ted at 75--Democrats and Republicans, all in awe of a lifetime of achievement--is the way in which literally every year since he has been marking the passage of time by passing landmark legislation. The Boston Globe put it best, writing not long ago that "in actual, measurable impact on the lives of tens of millions of working families, the elderly, and the needy, Ted belongs in the same sentence with Franklin Roosevelt."
Ted Kennedy
Six years ago, when John McCain, the Arizona senator, last worked on an immigration bill, his partner was Ted Kennedy, of Massachusetts. Kennedy, especially in his final decade in the Senate, was known for working closely with ideological opponents to pass major pieces of legislation. On a recent morning, McCain sat in his dimly lit office, across the street from the Senate, and said how much he missed Kennedy.
Ted Kennedy
I was very sorry to hear that Senator Kennedy has taken ill, and like millions of Americans, Cindy and I anxiously await word of his condition. Senator Kennedy's role in the U.S. Senate cannot be overstated. He is a legendary lawmaker, and I have the highest respect for him. When we have worked together, he has been a skillful, fair and generous partner. I consider it a great privilege to call him my friend. Cindy and I are praying for our friend, his wife, Vicki and the Kennedy family.
Ted Kennedy
