Jay Rockefeller: “I have to start off anything I say-- and I will be short--about Jim Jeffords with the word ``friendship,'' based upon…”

“I have to start off anything I say-- and I will be short--about Jim Jeffords with the word ``friendship,'' based upon his unbelievable qualities of kindness, of goodness, of steadfastness, being the same person every day under any circumstance. We sit together. We have sat together for quite a long time on the floor of the Senate. And we talk a lot. I have the honor of talking with his staff, too, a superb staff, who adores him. The business of friendship in the Senate is underpracticed. If you know Jim Jeffords, then you know why you should take more time to know your colleagues better. Because the fact is--although it has been more so recently--it is not your politics or your party that determines how you vote, but your conscience and your sense of a moral compass that guides you. In that practice, you have to think of Jim Jeffords. He is an extraordinarily wonderful human being. He has got a ferocious sense of humor, which is always delivered very quietly. And yet he is deep, he is profound, he sort of looks like Vermont: chiseled; his nose is just the right shape. And, of course, he talks that way. But he is humble, not because he wants to be, just because he is. Nothing about his record is humble. But his nature is humble. He is gentle; and he really is. He listens, does not interrupt, does not insist on his point of view--except when it counts, and then he is unmovable.”