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Joe Biden: “He Made Them More Graceful By the Way in Which he Conducted Himself”

Summary: 
The Vice President spoke with great emotion and depth this morning on the passing of his good and long-time friend Senator Kennedy
The Vice President spoke with great emotion and depth this morning on the passing of his good and long-time friend Senator Kennedy. He spoke at length, and the full transcript is posted here -- read an excerpt below:
 
He and I were talking after his diagnosis.  And I said, I think you're the only other person I've met, who like me, is more optimistic, more enthusiastic, more idealistic, sees greater possibilities after 36 years than when we were elected.  He was 30 years-old when he was elected; I was 29 years-old.  And you'd think that would be the peak of our idealism.  But I genuinely feel more optimistic about the prospect for my country today than I did -- I have been any time in my life. 
 
And it was infectious when you were with him.  You could see it, those of you who knew him and those of you who didn't know him.  You could just see it in the nature of his debate, in the nature of his embrace, in the nature of how he every single day attacked these problems.  And, you know, he was never defeatist.  He never was petty -- never was petty.  He was never small.  And in the process of his doing, he made everybody he worked with bigger -- both his adversaries as well as his allies.
 
Don't you find it remarkable that one of the most partisan, liberal men in the last century serving in the Senate had so many of his -- so many of his foes embracing him, because they know he made them bigger, he made them more graceful by the way in which he conducted himself.
 
You know, he changed the circumstances of tens of millions of Americans -- in the literal sense, literally -- literally changed the circumstances.  He changed also another aspect of it as I observed about him -- he changed not only the physical circumstance, he changed how they looked at themselves and how they looked at one another.  That's a remarkable, remarkable contribution for any man or woman to make.  And for the hundreds, if not thousands, of us who got to know him personally, he actually -- how can I say it -- he altered our lives as well.
 
Through the grace of God and accident of history I was privileged to be one of those people and every important event in my adult life -- as I look back this morning and talking to Vicki -- every single one, he was there.  He was there to encourage, to counsel, to be empathetic, to lift up.  In 1972 I was a 29 year old kid with three weeks left to go in a campaign, him showing up at the Delaware Armory in the middle of what we called Little Italy -- who had never voted nationally by a Democrat -- I won by 3,100 votes and got 85 percent of the vote in that district, or something to that effect.  I literally would not be standing here were it not for Teddy Kennedy -- not figuratively, this is not hyperbole -- literally.
 
He was there -- he stood with me when my wife and daughter were killed in an accident.  He was on the phone with me literally every day in the hospital, my two children were attempting, and, God willing, thankfully survived very serious injuries.  I'd turn around and there would be some specialist from Massachusetts, a doc I never even asked for, literally sitting in the room with me.
 
You know, it's not just me that he affected like that -- it's hundreds upon hundreds of people.  I was talking to Vicki this morning and she said -- she said, "He was ready to go, Joe, but we were not ready to let him go."