Political Quotes

“whenever a Senator, such as Senator Pryor from Arkansas, has to announce to the Senate the loss of a near personal friend, especially one he has been friends with, and with their parents, for years, it is always a tremendous loss. We are coming up in a couple of days on the 25th anniversary of another great loss in this country, when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded before our eyes on our television screens on January, 28, 1986. It was such a shock to the Nation, and it hit deep in our psyche because the symbol of America's technological prowess was the space shuttle in the early infancy of the program. The Challenger was only the 25th flight of the space shuttle that the Nation witnessed. In that rerun over and over of the close-up view of those solid rocket boosters going off in different directions 10 miles high in the Florida sky, the Nation witnessed that extraordinary loss. I will never forget the memorial service in Houston at the Johnson Space Center, when the President of the United States--as sometimes happens in times of grief--became not the President of the United States, not the Commander in Chief, but the comforter in chief.”