01/15/2009
Kerry Pays Tribute to Biden's Lifetime of Public Service
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Senator John Kerry (D – Mass.) today honored Senator Joe Biden’s lifetime commitment to public service hours before Biden resigned his Senate seat in preparation to be sworn in as the next Vice President of the United States.
Senator Biden’s resignation marks Kerry’s official transition to Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a post most recently held by Biden.
Below is the full text of Kerry’s speech as prepared:
It’s hard to imagine the Senate without Joe Biden. Not just because he came here as a kid, not just because he chaired some of the institution’s most important committees, but because of this moment. This is the kind of Senate legislative moment that Joe Biden loves to be in the middle of.
Obviously, we take special pride in knowing that one of our own is about to become Vice President. And while this makes him President of the Senate, for once I wish Dick Cheney was right, and Joe was still a part of the legislative branch. But, make no mistake: the Senate’s loss is President Obama’s and the country’s gain. Joe will bring terrific strategic thinking and legislative experience to the challenges we face.
This is a special moment in so many ways – and, it is an emotional one. I’ve known Joe since we were both kids in terms of this journey -- since we first ran for office in 1972. We learned about each other then, reading the press clips and hearing stories from our mutual friends and joint campaign workers. The conventional wisdom that year held that Joe couldn’t win his race against an incumbent, Cale Boggs, who’d been winning elections in Delaware for 26 years. I was favored to win mine. It didn’t turn out that way.
To this day, I like to kid our long time mutual friend John Martilla, who was deeply involved on both our races that year, that if he’d spent more time in Lowell and less time in Wilmington, things might have turned out differently. But for Joe and me, both in politics and life, things turned out pretty well, and I’ve loved sharing this journey with him.
In a lot of ways Joe Biden is an old fashioned kind of guy – he lives life and politics by the old rules – unfailingly loyal, your word is your bond, tell the truth, act on principle not ideology, keep faith with family and home, never forget where your roots are or who you are, be consistent and be honest. Joe Biden is a patriarch to the core, in the best, time honored understanding of that word. He never smiles more broadly or laughs more deeply or talks more personally than when the subject is family. Frankly, to know Joe Biden is to know all the Bidens. Dozens of our colleagues—and hundreds over the years—know that if you called Joe Biden with a late-night question, the odds were pretty high you would have caught him on that train, riding Amtrak home to be there with Jill, Beau, Hunter, Ashley, and the grandchildren. And there’s something pretty great about a United States Senator who makes sure to stop by his mom’s house for ice cream or a kiss goodnight on his way home—and that is exactly what Joe would do with his 92-year-old spitfire mother, Jean Finnegan Biden.
It’s the lessons of that big, Irish, warm, protective family that Joe brought to the Senate. He’s the big brother whose sister Val remembers him as her protector on the playground, the dad who Beau and Hunter remember urging them to get up when they got knocked down on the soccer field—the boss who calls a staff member when they have a sick parent—or who threatens to fire you if you miss your kid’s birthday because you’re working late for him. This is somebody in the Senate who had a reputation for not just talking about family values but living them.
As Joe Biden said so movingly this morning, he saw the Senate as an extended family - and here he applied the lesson his dad taught him in Scranton: that everything comes down to dignity and respect. He has always respected the institution and the dignity of every one of his colleagues.
One of the great stories Joe told today – which has always spoken to me -- is one that tells us a lot about ushering in a new era of bipartisanship. When Joe first arrived in the Senate he complained to the Majority Leader, Mike Mansfield, about a speech by another new Senator named Jesse Helms. And Mansfield told him, “Joe, understand one thing. Everyone's sent here for a reason, because there's something in them that their folks like. Don't question their motive."
And every one of us who has worked with Joe Biden knows just how much he took this lesson to heart, and how much we can gain by applying it today. His example is clear: if you treat people decently, if you look for the best in them, you can sit down and work through divisive issues not to score political points but to get something done.
Joe likes to talk about his first impression of Jesse Helms, but he’s often too modest to talk about what happened later. Some people might’ve been surprised that Joe Biden, Jesse Helms and I teamed up in the fight against global AIDS. And some never would have believed that together we could bring about the largest public health expenditure in world history. That’s what happens when a Joe Biden takes to heart the message of a wise warhorse like Mike Mansfield and looks past the stereotypes, past the party labels and throws out all the ideological baggage to find common ground.
Nowhere did I see that more than on the issue of crime. Coming from the vantage point of being a prosecutor in the 70s who became a Senator in the 80s, I can tell you there was no more divisive, ugly, emotionally-charged issue than crime -- until Joe Biden and the 1994 Crime Bill. Joe put an end to the Willie Horton-izing of this issue. We worked closely together to put more cops on the streets of America and I remember Joe’s passion and tenacity on that bill. It was a huge, landmark piece of legislation, requiring enormous skill to shepherd through the ideological minefields. Joe was simply not going to accept defeat. Dozens of trips to the White House, dozens of meetings with Congressional leadership, all to find a way to create common ground and ultimately pass a bill that resulted in the lowest crime rates in a generation. And every step of the way, he sought out friends, colleagues, and potential allies and invited them to share not just in the work but to share in the credit. That is leadership in the Senate, and that is how you get things done.
He also brought great skill to his stewardship of the Foreign Relations Committee. When Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, respecting Georgia’s sovereignty became a sound bite for many. But for Joe Biden, it was a moment to pick up the phone and call an old friend, someone he’d met as a young parliamentarian in his 20s. And so Joe Biden got on the plane, took that flight, and sat on a hilltop with his old friend Misha Saakashvili, and together they talked not just about the security of Georgia, but also the security of a man who was in very real danger, a man Joe Biden believed was willing to die for democracy.
This is just one small example of the emotional intelligence and personal touch that have been the calling cards of Joe’s career in public life for decades.
And as we all know, he is blessed with a good sense of humor and an ability to have fun amidst it all. We still joke about the trip we took with Chuck Hagel to a Forward Operating Base in Kunar Province, Afghanistan, when our helicopter wound up getting caught in a blizzard. We had just received a briefing that where the modern road system ends, the Taliban begins. And lo and behold, the next thing we knew, we had a forced landing on a dirt road on top of a mountain.
We sat around swapping stories for awhile, and we came up with some plans in case the Taliban attacked. First we thought about using the hot air of 3 talkative senators to get the helicopter back in the air. Failing that we decided to just talk the Taliban to death. That or have Joe lead the snowball charge. But our superb military protectors, efficient as always, soon had us safe and rescued. Later when I told Joe my plan, reliving his Blue Hen college football glory days, Joe flexed his right arm and said, in that inimitable Joe Biden way: “The Taliban—they’re not worth my rocket arm.”
As Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee Joe applied a no-holds-barred, unvarnished truth-telling to many politically sensitive issues. In the middle of his own Presidential campaign he didn’t hesitate to ask whether our counterterrorism policy has “turned a deadly serious but manageable threat – a small number of radical groups that hate America – into a ten-foot tall existential monster that dictates nearly every move we make.” It wasn’t a poll-tested or popular question—but it was a sign of leadership and a mark of vision that will serve America well when he takes the oath as Vice President of the United States.
Let me share one last story involving my senior Senator, who has been an incredible mentor both to me and to Joe since we got into this business. Years ago when Ted Kennedy joined the Armed Services Committee, Senate rules dictated that Ted had to step down from the Judiciary Committee. It would make Joe chairman. And what Senator in their mid-forties wouldn’t have loved to have had that responsibility? But Joe Biden went to Caucus and told the powers that be, “This is ridiculous. I won’t serve as Chairman unless I have Teddy Kennedy by my side on this Committee.” Well make no mistake, Ted Kennedy moved to Armed Services and he stayed on the Judiciary Committee—and together they fought some of the greatest confirmation battles in the history of the Supreme Court.
No one can imagine the Judiciary Committee without Ted Kennedy’s decades of focus and fire. But the Senate should know that it wouldn’t have been possible if not for Joe Biden’s youthful challenge to the leadership to keep him there.
Joe, you’re one of the people I’ve most enjoyed serving alongside. We’ve been through a lot. We’ve shared a lot, good and bad, ups and downs. And what’s exciting is we still have a lot more to come. While you’re just making that short ride up to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, I know there is one thing that will never change. We can always count on you to be the same Joe Biden and we know we can take it to the bank, when you say “I give you my word as a Biden.” We’re proud of you, Joe and we wish you well.
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