http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0308/8811.html How do you go home again and still hold on to that political drive? How do you continue to push a strong agenda in the Senate with your wildest dream and largest ambition in your rearview mirror?
How do you return, period?
“You just have to get off your butt, dust yourself off and get back on the horse,” Kerry said in an interview last week. “Outsiders think is a competitive place where everyone is gunning to be No. 1. But the truth is, I think especially when you’ve been knocked on your butt, your colleagues are there for you in the most genuine way.”
In the days after he lost to Bush, Kerry said that he and his wife, Teresa, invited Tom Daschle and his wife, Linda, over to their Georgetown home for a cathartic dinner. Daschle, then the Senate minority leader, had just suffered a mind-numbing defeat of his own, losing his long-held South Dakota Senate seat to Republican John Thune.
“We’d both had tough ends to 2004 in similar ways, but it was just one of those nights in Washington that don’t happen enough these days,” Kerry said.
Kerry had another one of those nights two months later. As Bush bounced from one black-tie ball to the next to celebrate his second inauguration, the Kerrys settled in at their house for dinner with Kennedy and his wife, Vicki, and Chris and Jackie Dodd.
“You never forget those moments,” Kerry said. “The people who are there for you, it just leaves a lasting impression.”
“All the people who quote Harry Truman’s adage that ‘if you want a friend in Washington, buy a dog’ don’t know a damned thing about the special and lasting friendships you make in the Senate, and how much that sustains you,” Kerry said.
It seems to me that the Senate colleagues who spent that painful day with Kerry had to have been his best friends. Kennedy and Dodd.
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