VT Senate Calls For Unity In Farewell Speech

[Webster]

(The Guardian) Leahy stands down with call for unity
The long-serving Democratic senator Patrick Leahy has delivered an emotional farewell speech on the Senate floor, including an ill-disguised dig at Donald Trump and a call for a return to the bipartisan collaboration of another era.

Leahy, 82, the Senate president pro tempore, is standing down after 48 years in the chamber, a tenure than began with the Watergate scandal and concludes in a highly partisan era in which he said the scoring “of political points have reduced debate oratory to bumper sticker slogans”: When I arrived here, bipartisan cooperation was the norm, not the exception.

Make no mistake, the Senate of yesterday was far from perfect. [But] the Senate I entered had one remarkable, redeeming quality. The overwhelming majority of senators of both parties believed they were here to do a job. Bills had nothing to do with whether a senator was a Democrat or a Republican. Each one of them understood that to do our jobs, the right way, we had to work together. And we did.

In a look back at his political career, Leahy did not mention Trump’s name. But it was clear that the January 6 Capitol riot incited by the former president was a defining moment. -- I began my time in the Senate in the aftermath of a constitutional crisis. We faced the nation broken by the Watergate scandal, the resignation of President Nixon and an endless war in Vietnam.

And as I leave in a few days, the nation is coping with strains and challenges of other kinds. Of very real threats to the whole concept of a working democracy, the sanctity of our Constitution, our elections and the strength of the rule of law.

Another thing I could never imagine as that young law student sitting up there in the gallery is that one day this chamber itself, and the Capitol, would be stormed by a lawless and violent mob.

Leahy spoke for 30 minutes and was given a standing ovation at the conclusion. In his own tribute, Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said Leahy was “an institution all of his own”, and that this period of history in the chamber would come to be known as “the Leahy era”.