Political Quotes

“Mr. President, let me begin by thanking my senior Senator, Jack Reed, for calling us to the floor to reflect and memorialize a truly splendid Senator who represented the State of Rhode Island, our friend and a great Rhode Islander, Claiborne Pell. I think my senior colleague has done an exemplary job of following in Senator Pell's footsteps of decency, civility, and quiet determination in the seat that Senator Pell once held. I cannot claim to hold the seat the Senator once held, but I can claim to have the desk at which Senator Pell once sat. If you look here right under where it says ``Pastore''--a Rhode Island Senator--in carved letters, you see in very small letters ``P-e-l-l'' and then ``R.I.''--like anybody needed to know that Claiborne Pell was from Rhode Island. Claiborne Pell was very important in my political life. He spent years--in fact, decades--refusing to get involved in primaries. ``It is up to the party,'' he would say. When I ran for attorney general the first time I ran for elected office, I was in a three-way primary, and Claiborne Pell, for the first time in his career, endorsed me in that primary. He more than endorsed me; we went to a little park near his house in Newport, and he allowed me to film myself walking with him and conversing with him for my first commercial.…”