After winning his first election in 1974, newly sworn-in Sen. Patrick J. Leahy was told he’d be reading George Washington’s Farewell Address on the Senate floor — back then it typically went to the most junior member of the chamber, Leahy said. But he was sidelined because of an illness and couldn’t deliver it.
The Vermont Democrat was asked once again to give the speech this year, nearly a half-century later, and all he could think was how the responsibility has evolved. Instead of the new guy, he’s now the Senate dean and president pro tempore, with a sense of history and experience that a 34-year-old Leahy couldn’t have imagined.
“It would have been exciting when I was first there, but it’s meaningful now,” he said Friday. “And of the two, I’ll take meaningful.”
