September 30, 1976
Page 33809
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, of all the retirement tributes I have made during my Senate career, this is the most difficult.
For the retirement of PHIL HART is both a public and personal event for me.
He leaves us after 18 years of service. With him goes the respect and admiration that few other Senators have earned.
We will long remember the courage and determination he has displayed with a rare combination of gentleness and steel.
For years, he pursued the improvement of our antitrust laws to break up the concentration of wealth that has continued in recent decades. That culminated in legislation just sent this month to the President for his signature.
He has consistently championed the rights of consumers in such areas as energy and insurance.
He has been a leading spokesman for the rights of the individual, whether it concerned privacy, freedom of the press, wiretapping, intelligence, or any other area. He was probably the most formidable opponent of the ill-considered S. 1.
And when the times called for an unpopular stand, he took it. In 1972, at the height of antibusing sentiment in his home State, he helped lead the successful Senate fight against enactment of antibusing legislation.
But the public record of PHIL HART does little to explain the effect he has had on all of us.
For his greatness will always lie in a spirit that was always gentle, compassionate, courageous, and decent.
He has consistently helped to quiet the rancor, to soothe the bitterness during some very turbulent years of this Senate.
He has taught us the value of the gentle word.
He has helped remind us of the meaning of public service — that duty, honor and sensitivity must always be foremost — that service to our country is a personal, as well as public commitment.
I have known PHIL. HART more than 20 years, longer than we have been in Washington.
He is my closest friend in the Senate.
And as I contemplate his retirement, I am reminded of these words from Shakespeare:
His life was gentle, and the elements so mixed in him that nature might stand up and say to all the world, "this was a man!"