In an unusually emotional speech, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) bid farewell to his colleagues Wednesday by rejecting criticisms of a “broken Senate,” forcefully defending the chamber and all its unique rules as an institution that’s meant to forge great compromise among competing personalities.
The next secretary of state — once considered aloof and always searching for a promotion out of the Senate — tearfully sketched out a 50-minute rebuttal to the growing cacophony that deem the Senate’s customs and procedures outdated in today’s political environment. He declared the current version of the chamber “a lasting memorial to the miracle of the American experiment.”
He specifically rejected the calls for reforming the Senate rules to lessen, or even eliminate, filibusters, warning junior Democrats who have pushed such changes to the institution that they would regret such a move. “It’s not the rules that confound us, per se,” Kerry said. “It’s the choices people make about those rules.”
The speech began with Kerry greeting his fellow Vietnam War hero, former senator Max Cleland (D-Ga.), in an embrace as he entered the chamber to deliver the speech, and ended with a bipartisan standing ovation amid hugs and handshakes from about 20 colleagues on hand. While few Republicans attended, those on hand included a pair of freshmen who are generationally and ideologically a world apart from Kerry, Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), anti-spending conservatives who sat through the entire speech listening intently. Cruz was one of just three Republicans who opposed Kerry’s confirmation in Tuesday’s 94 to 3 vote.
Without singling out Republicans for derision, Kerry chastised the GOP for its inflexibility and abuse of the chamber’s rules, leading to the gridlock that helps eat away at the public support for Congress. “The problems that we live through today come from individual choices of senators themselves, not the rules,” he said. “When an individual senator or a colluding caucus determine that the comity essential to an institution like the Senate is a barrier to individual ambition or party ambition, the country loses.”
Kerry acknowledged how his own ambition and its failings helped shape him into a much better senator. His party’s 2004 presidential nominee -- as well as a runner-up to be the vice-presidential nominee in 2000 and the secretary of state in 2009 -- Kerry became the sort of senator that won acclaim from both sides of the aisle only after he gave up on higher ambition. He dug into the chamber and fashioned a resume of bipartisan work that included sweeping passage of a nuclear arms treaty with Russia and close work with another Vietnam war hero, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), on “Arab Spring” issues.
“Eight years ago, I admit that I had a very different plan [to leave the Senate], but 61 million Americans voted that they wanted me stay here with you,” Kerry joked about his close loss to George W. Bush in 2004. “And so staying here, I learned about humility and I learned that sometimes the greatest lesson in life comes not from victory but from dusting yourself off after a defeat and starting over when you get knocked down.”
John Kerry defends Senate, bidding farewell to a ‘great’ institution
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John Kerry defends Senate, bidding farewell to a ‘great’ institution
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John Kerry defends Senate, bidding farewell to a ‘great’ institution
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