Ted Kennedy Remembered as Obama Evokes More Bipartisan Era

The president says the U.S. Senate is a changed institution without the late Massachusetts Democrat.

US President Barack Obama embraces Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy before signing the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act at the SEED School in Washington, DC, on April 21, 2009.
SAUL LOEB/AFP/Getty Images

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By Angela Greiling Keane

March 30, 2015 at 5:16 PM UTC

Updated on

March 30, 2015 at 6:47 PM UTC

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Even though Ted Kennedy died less than six years ago, the U.S. Senate today is a changed institution, President Barack Obama said as he remembered the Massachusetts senator and Democratic Party icon.

Obama, the keynote speaker at Monday’s dedication of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, said Kennedy “waited more than a year to deliver his first speech on the Senate floor in 1964. That’s no longer the custom.” Obama, who didn’t even serve a full term in the Senate before running for president, was quick to admit that, like others in the current generation of senators, he didn’t wait to speak or take action either.