STAMFORD, CT – Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT) today announced his plan
to retire from the United States Senate at the end of his fourth
term. Senator Lieberman was joined by his wife, Hadassah, their
children and grandchildren, and other family members as he shared his
decision with friends and supporters at an event in Stamford,
Connecticut.
In his remarks, the Senator explained
his decision:
He spoke of his career in public
service:
He also spoke of his future:
The full text of Senator
Lieberman’s speech as prepared for delivery is below:
Twenty three years ago, in February 1988, on a wintry day in Hartford,
I announced that I would be a candidate for the U.S. Senate.
Standing with me as I began that long shot campaign were Hadassah, who
was pregnant, and our three children—Matt, Becca, and Ethan.
Today, Matt, Becca, and Ethan are here again, this time I am happy to
say with their spouses, Elizabeth, Jacob, and Ariela. These three
couples are now the proud parents of their own children—ten
children—six of whom, in order of age—Tennessee, Eden, Yitz, Maddy,
Yoav, and Camilla—are able to be here today. Our youngest child,
Hani, who was born a month after I announced for the Senate in March
1988 is also here, with her husband, Daniel, and—as you can see—Hani is
now pregnant. Next month, with God’s help, she will give birth to
their first child, our eleventh grandchild. Talk about the circle
of life.
I am a very lucky guy—privileged since 1988 to be a United States
Senator and blessed since 1988, along with Hadassah, to have this
miraculously growing family. I thank my wife and each of our children
and grandchildren for the love, support, and inspiration they bring to
every day of my life, including this special day.
There is a personal reason why I wanted to make this announcement at
this hotel, and it too involves a life circle. During the first
eight years of my life, my father, mother, sister and I lived in a cold
water flat on the second floor of my grandmother’s house at 42
Hawthorne Street here in Stamford. That house was demolished in
the early 1960s as part of redevelopment, but it was located right
about where this hotel is today. As I think about the journey I
have traveled from my childhood home to this day, I can’t help but also
think about my four grandparents and the journey they traveled more
than a century ago, as immigrants to this country. They came to
America seeking freedom and they found it. They came to America
hoping for opportunity and they got it. But even they could not
have dreamed that their grandson would end up as a U.S. Senator and a
barrier-breaking candidate for Vice President.
But that is America!
For the extraordinary opportunities to serve our state and country that
I’ve had, I’m personally grateful to the voters of Connecticut whom I
can never thank enough. But I have tried to thank them—to thank
you—by working hard, to get good things done for you, our state and our
country.
Some of the most satisfying moments of service I’ve had are the ones
that usually don’t get public attention, when my staff and I have been
able to provide support to one of you, a constituent in a moment of
need, whether it was protecting a family from losing their home to
foreclosure, helping the parents of a sick child get the health care
they needed, or ensuring that a World War II veteran finally received
the medals and recognition he was due for his service decades before.
I’m also grateful for what I’ve had the opportunity to accomplish in
the Senate itself: what I’ve been able to do, for instance, to protect
our environment—leading the fight against air and water pollution and
climate change, cleaning up Long Island Sound, protecting the
Connecticut River, and creating Connecticut’s first and only National
Park site, Weir Farm.
I’m also proud of what I’ve been able to do for Connecticut
businesses—helping them to keep and add jobs in our state, particularly
in our defense industries, and to save Submarine Base New London.
And I’m proud of what I’ve been able to do to keep our country and
people safe in a dangerous world—as a member of the Senate Armed
Services Committee, supporting our troops and providing them with the
best equipment possible—and in the years since the terrorist attack of
9/11/01, as Chairman or Ranking Member of the Senate’s new Homeland
Security Committee, I’ve been at the center of Congressional efforts to
strengthen our homeland defenses, including the creation of the
Department of Homeland Security and the enactment of the
recommendations of the bipartisan 9-11 Commission, which together are
the most sweeping reforms of our national security institutions since
the start of the Cold War.
I’m also proud of my work across party lines in support of the strong,
bipartisan American foreign and defense policies carried out by the
four Presidents under whom I’ve been privileged to serve—Presidents
Bush, Clinton, Bush, and Obama—policies which ousted the invading Iraqi
military from Kuwait, ended the genocide of Muslims in the Balkans, and
liberated Iraq, Afghanistan, and the world from brutally repressive,
anti-American dictatorships.
And I’m proud of the work I’ve done to make the promise of equal
opportunity and justice under the law more real for all Americans
including, particularly in my time of service, African-Americans,
women, and gay and lesbian Americans.
Along the way, I have not always fit comfortably into conventional
political boxes—Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. I have
always thought that my first responsibility is not to serve a political
party but to serve my constituents, my state, and my country, and then
to work across party lines to make sure good things get done for them.
Whatever the partisan or policy differences that divide us, they are
much less important than the shared values and dreams that unite us and
that require us to work together to make progress for all. To me, that
is what public service and leadership is all about.
My interest in public service was inspired by President John F.
Kennedy, who—coincidentally 50 years ago tomorrow in his Inaugural
Address—asked us to ask ourselves what we could do for our country and
challenged us to bear any burden to assure the survival and success of
liberty. The politics of President Kennedy—service to country,
support of civil rights and social justice, pro-growth economic and tax
policies, and a strong national defense—are still my politics, and they
don’t fit neatly into today’s partisan political boxes any more either.
One thing that has not changed over the years is my love for
America. We are a unique nation with a unique mission—to secure
the rights to life, liberty, and happiness that are God’s endowment to
every person. To a remarkable degree, succeeding generations of
Americans have advanced that mission at home and abroad. The
truth is that no other nation in history can match our ideals or our
accomplishments. I know that we have gone through tough times
recently, but I could not be more confident about our future. So
don’t let anyone convince you that America’s best days are over.
Believe with me that America’s best days are ahead of us. The
fact is that we the American people have repeatedly come together and
done what others said we could not do. And we will do so again
and again in the future.
Now I want to talk to you about my future. In two years, I will
complete my fourth term in the U.S. Senate, and as you know, I have
been thinking a lot and talking with family and friends about whether I
should seek a fifth term.
Let me tell you first what I have decided and then why.
I have decided it is time to turn the page to a new chapter, and so I
will not be a candidate for re-election to a fifth term in the U.S.
Senate in 2012. This was not an easy decision for me to make
because I have loved serving in the Senate and I feel good about what I
have accomplished. But I know it is the right decision and, I
must say, I am excited about beginning a new chapter of life with new
opportunities.
I know that some people have said that if I ran for reelection, it
would be a difficult campaign for me. But what else is new? It probably
would be. I have run many difficult campaigns before—from my first one
in 1970 against the incumbent Democratic State Senate Majority Leader,
to my 1988 campaign against the incumbent Republican U.S. Senator, to
my campaign for re-election to the Senate in 2006 at the height of the
controversy over the Iraq war. In all three of those elections
most observers and pollsters thought I would not win. But with a
lot of help from Independents, Democrats and Republicans—including many
of you here today—in each case I did win.
I’ve never shied from a good fight and I never will.
The reason I have decided not to run for re-election in 2012 is best
expressed in the wise words from Ecclesiastes: “To everything there is
a season, and a time to every purpose under Heaven.” At the end
of this term, I will have served 24 years in the U.S. Senate and 40
years in elective office. By my count, I have run at least 15
full-fledged political campaigns in Connecticut.
For me, it is time for another season and another purpose under Heaven.
I do not intend today to be the end of my career in public service.
Having made this decision not to run enables me to spend the next two
years in the Senate devoting the full measure of my energy and
attention to getting things done for Connecticut and for our country. I
will keep doing everything in my power to build strong bridges across
party lines -- to keep our country safe, to win the wars we are in, and
to make sure America’s leadership on the world stage is principled and
strong. I will keep doing everything I can to keep our economy growing
and get our national debt under control, to combat climate change, to
end our dependency on foreign oil, and to reform our immigration
laws. And when my Senate chapter draws to a close in 2013,
I look forward to new opportunities that will allow me to continue to
serve our country—and to stay engaged and involved in the causes that I
have spent my career working on, and that I care so much about.
I go forward with a tremendous sense of gratitude for the opportunities
I have had to make a difference. As it says in Psalm 13: “I will
sing to the Lord, because He has treated me so kindly.” And I
will also sing to everyone who has supported and sustained me over the
years—beginning with my family, my parents of blessed memory, Henry and
Marcia Lieberman, my wife Hadassah who has been such a steadfast
soul-mate and life partner, our children, grandchildren, siblings, and
extended family, all the people who volunteered in my campaigns and all
the voters—first in New Haven and West Haven and then throughout the
state who elected me to 5 terms as a State Senator, 2 terms as Attorney
General, and 4 terms as a U.S. Senator; all the able and
honorable public servants I have worked with, and the gifted and
devoted people who have served with me as staff and who are exemplified
here today by my chief of staff and valued counsellor Clarine Nardi
Riddle, who began work with me in 1978, and my state director and
undefeated campaign manager Sherry Brown, who started in 1980. Thank
you all.
One of my favorite metaphors for America’s spirit and history comes
from the great American novel written right here in Connecticut by Mark
Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. In it, Huck and Jim
ride the raft along the big river, that to me represents American
history. In one sense, Huck and Jim could not be more different,
but in another deeper sense, they are both Americans, unified by a
common humanity and shared destiny as they travel down the river.
So every time Huck and Jim come to a bend in the river, though they do
not know and cannot see what lies beyond the bend, they are never
fearful or pessimistic. They are always excited, confident, and
optimistic.
That is the spirit that I believe has always inspired us Americans and
propelled us forward together. It is the spirit I saw as a young
man in the early 1960s in the civil rights movement in
Mississippi—where white and black heroes refused to accept the
injustice of racial segregation. It is the spirit I have seen in
our men and women in uniform—heroes who are serving in Afghanistan and
Iraq today for a cause greater than themselves—protecting and advancing
freedom—and in the wounded heroes I have visited at Walter Reed who
want nothing more than to rejoin their brothers and sisters in arms. It
is the spirit that every day inspires all our heroes—our first
responders and educators, our entrepreneurs and innovators, our citizen
activists and religious leaders. And it is the spirit that
inspires hundreds of millions of seemingly ordinary Americans—the
unsung heroes—who work hard and play by the rules every day—driven by a
dream, inspired to imagine a tomorrow that is better than today, for
themselves, their children, our country, and our world.
That is the spirit that has defined the American people for 235 years
now and that I know will continue to make us the greatest nation in the
world.
And that is the spirit that fills me today.
Thank you. God bless you. God bless America.