Roy Blunt: “a lot of things have been said today, and some things will be repeated, but as I sit here, it occurs to me that the mark…”

“a lot of things have been said today, and some things will be repeated, but as I sit here, it occurs to me that the mark of a truly great legislator and a great friend is how many people have an individual story about Johnny Isakson. That helpful word at a right time, the ability to come in and solve a problem and get a piece of legislation passed or to get over a particular bump in a piece of legislation--those are the kinds of things that define a great legislator. All of us have our own personal stories about Johnny Isakson. My first memory of Johnny Isakson is long before I met him personally. In 1992, I was hiring a new pollster who also happened to be Johnny Isakson's pollster. After I hired that pollster, Linda Duvall, she brought in somebody she likes to work with in campaigns. I was looking at some campaign commercials they put together, and there was Johnny Isakson playing basketball with a bunch of seventh grade boys. If you can play basketball with seventh grade boys, you can do almost anything. I am going to come back to the seventh grade boys in a minute. Linda called me a few days later and said: We have been trying to figure out which of our clients you remind us of. She said: We have decided you remind us of Johnny Isakson. So in 1999, 2 years after I got to the House, when Johnny Isakson ran for the House, I was eager to meet this guy whom Linda said I reminded her of.…”