Word: speeches
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...Kennedy took a surprisingly passive role in the 1991 Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas, who was accused of sexual harassment. This upset many of Kennedy's liberal supporters who remembered his leadership in defeating the nomination of Robert Bork a few years earlier. In a 1991 speech at Harvard, after the hearings, Kennedy acknowledged his misbehavior and apologized. "I recognize my own shortcomings - the faults in the conduct of my private life. I realize that I alone am responsible for them, and I am the one who must confront them," he said. Shortly afterward, he did reform...
...Liberty Baptist College (now Liberty University). The Senator delivered an address on the topic of "Faith, Truth and Tolerance," but it was less a personal discussion of his faith than a chance to prove that he wasn't afraid to show up in the lions' den. In a speech that went after critics in the Religious Right, Kennedy quoted Pope John XXIII's words at the start of the Second Vatican Council: "We must beware of those who burn with zeal but are not endowed with much sense...
...speech was designed as a worded symphony, rising and rousing the audience then falling to a quieter level and aiming to transfix listeners before the tempo picked up again. It was alternately serious and joyful, and it was movingly personal about the individuals and families in trouble whom Kennedy had met on the campaign trail. As he finished, Kennedy, who avoided mentioning his slain brothers in political speeches, now did, but in a carefully understated way, recalling the "words of Tennyson that my brothers quoted and loved, and that have a special meaning for me: 'I am a part...
...time. He was responsible for more progress than many Presidents. Unlike his brothers, he had the gift of length of years, and how magnificently he used it. He reached across partisan divisions without sacrificing his convictions; he compromised on issues but never ideals. There is in that 1980 speech an insight into the long arc of his achievement: his belief in something bigger than himself, his persistence despite the odds, his capacity to express the conscience of his party and his country's best possibilities. And one other thing: as he also said in that speech, "We have learned...
...plane back to Hyannis, we swapped stories. One was about my cutting the speech in half just hours before he gave it to make it easier for him to get through. He looked at the cuts and teased me, "You took out some of my favorite parts." He laughed, this indomitable man who had given his life to the dream - the dream that in many ways because of him does live...