Funding for this program has been provided in part by Abex, a developer and manufacturer of engineered products for the transportation industry worldwide.

Fisher Scientific International supplying instruments, equipment and other products to the scientific community since 1902.

The Concord, New Hampshire law firm of Rath, young Pignatelli and Oyer.

Serving the legal, legislative, and regulatory needs of the citizens and business community throughout New Hampshire and New England.

And Raytheon, a diversified technology company with sales in electronics, aircraft products, energy and environmental services, and major appliances.

♪ He never was afraid to stand up for something that he thought was important.

Warren Rudman has guts.

My feeling is about a crisis, it’s better.

We have a crisis while the banks are open than have a crisis after the banks are closed.

He’s uh, blunt, very forceful.

Doesn't pull his punches and is about the closest thing to a human sledgehammer that I've seen in public policy.

The American people have the constitutional right to be wrong.

And what Ronald Reagan thinks or what Oliver North thinks, or what I think, or what anybody else thinks makes not a whit.

If the American people say enough.

You don't need a translator.

Senator Rudman says, this is my position.

This particular report is one in which the editors separated the wheat from the chaff, and unfortunately, it printed the chaff.

He's a true New Hampshire guy.

You know, a sort of flinty Yankee sort that doesn't take any grief from anybody.

I came here in January of 1981 hoping that I could leave a legacy to people who aspire to public office of hard work, integrity.

Forthrightness and some achievement.

And others will have to judge whether I've done that.

♪ Do we have a lot of things here today?

Things here that have really- We only did this a few days ago.

I know, it’s quite a few things here.

Some you've seen before.

Yeah.

Senator Warren Rudman has always been in demand.

They want me to go to the Mediterranean and give a lecture.

Isn't that nice?

Yeah.

Isn’t that Wonderful?

That sounds great.

They want me to go to the GNC in the spring and give a lecture.

Wow.

A popular speaker on issues like the budget deficit, the Gramm Rudman act, ethics, and the Iran-Contra affair.

I'm not doing that.

I can't do that.

I can't do that.

I can't do that.

Let's go to the other one.

Put it down.

I'm not sure I can do it, but the demand today is not because Warren Rudman is a senator.

The demand is because after two terms in the United States Senate and a third term, his for the asking, Warren Rudman decided to call it quits.

And in doing so, he's become a strange kind of hero.

The man who walked away.

By Washington standards, Warren Rudman, is nothing less than a rebel.

Is it is it really true that, you have only been to the white House once and not attended other social events in Washington?

No, I don't go to social events in Washington at all.

I don’t go to black tie dinners.

I do drop bys for friends like the Prince of Saudi Arabia, who’s a friend of mine.

I've never accepted a formal invitation to the white House.

I've had dinner privately with President and Mrs. Bush and with President and Mrs. Reagan privately.

But I've never gone to a state dinner.

I've never gone to an embassy dinner.

Why is that?

I don't want to.

Why?

Because I don't like them.

They take up huge gobs of my time.

I could get better things done.

And I don't, I don't like all of the, All the pomp and the circumstance.

I don't like black tie.

I mean, I just, I just don't go for that sort of thing, but that doesn't hurt me any, obviously.

I think that some people are seduced by the power, by the fact that you can pick up that telephone and reach the President of United States in short order, if it's important.

Reach, the vice president that the cabinet will all return your phone calls.

The president of any major corporation.

If you place a call from this office, you will get a return call.

That the press is very interested in what you have.

That's kind of heavy stuff.

Indeed.

So what you have to do is, you know, when the day ends, you have to realize who you are, where you come from, what your roots are.

And most important, you have to remember that you're only here for a blink of time.

♪ Unless we took a new view toward the career possibilities in the office of Attorney General then the state of New Hampshire would be the one that would suffer and suffer greatly in the coming years.

Our salary structure is very good to bring in young lawyers from law school.

We start around 9 to $10,000 a year, and we can attract people at that salary.

It was 1972, and I was looking for work.

And one of the jobs, one of the letters I wrote was to the attorney General's office, and it was answered by a fellow named David Souter, who was the deputy.

And he allowed us to have, they had a couple of jobs left, for that year's hiring.

And I was given a day to come up to New Hampshire and interview.

And I came up to interview with the, the deputy attorney general.

Mr. Souter.

And I walked into the office, and there was this kind of whirlwind going on outside of Mr. Souter's office, with this rather florid faced fellow who was kind of, he was dressed in a sport coat.

I remember that, and, rather vigorously talking to a couple of reporters and kind of shouting instructions to people as to what was going to get done.

And I was led around this little scene back into David's office, and he said, that was the attorney general.

So that was the first time I met Warren Rudman.

Tom Rath got the job in the New Hampshire Attorney General's office, and he, Rudman and Souter became close friends.

It was as attorney general that Rudman earned his reputation as a tough guy.

I think it was the time of the, one of the gas crises.

And the truckers were complaining, I think, that there was an unfair allocation of gasoline, and they were going to take their protests to the statehouse, and what they were going to do was encircle the state House, the New Hampshire State House, with their semis and their trailers, and just basically stop state government.

Now, Warren had been suffering, as he was periodically in the mid 70s, from some remnants of some of his time in combat, and periodically his back would go out on him and, he would get real pain.

He had to wear a neck brace and would wear a turtleneck and, instead of a shirt, you know, shirt and tie.

And he would wear this neck brace.

And the word came that these truckers were going to encircle the statehouse.

And he was, we were right across the street from the statehouse.

And as the first couple of trucks came there.

Warren decided to go see them.

And then there he was really in quite a bit of pain, and I was running down the stairs to go out there.

I said, what are you going to say to them?

What are you going to do?

And I'm going to tell them to move the trucks.

And I remember him ripping off the neck brace and going out there and pointing to them and saying, you're going to move these trucks and you're going to move them immediately.

I'm the attorney general of the state, and if you don't move them, I've instructed the state highway department to come in here with trailers and wreckers and move them and dump them over the river into the Merrimack River.

And while, of course, he had no basis to say it, there was no legal basis for this to happen at all.

But they all looked at him and he was out there, and he was absolutely adamant about it By God, they moved the trucks.

It was if, I walked back and started to laugh.

I said, you had nothing.

He said.

They didn't know that.

He said they didn't know I had no authority to do it.

But he, that was typically the kind of way he ran the attorney general's office.

Not that he wasn't a very good lawyer, but he also knew there were times when you just had to assert the power of the office.

And he did that a lot.

When Warren Rudman decided to run for the Senate in 1980, Tom Rath was his campaign chairman.

In his first attempt at elective office, Rudman beat another rising star of New Hampshire politics, John Sununu, to win the Republican primary.

He then went on to defeat incumbent Democrat John Durkin in the general election.

Rudman had based his campaign on a pledge to accept no money from out of state interest groups.

We, and this small but wonderful state have an opportunity.

In the 1980 senatorial election to show the entire nation that it is possible to be independent of the special interest groups that threaten to devour the lifeblood of this nation.

I will give the citizens of this state the chance to elect a Senator who is beholden to nobody, but to the people who elected him.

And I think we have.

♪ Well, I don't think many people accuse him of being just another pretty face in the United States Senate.

What is Warren Rudman's legacy?

I think his legacy is going to be, that he came here with some fundamental ideas, that are deeply rooted in the way his state works.

He often talks about how people in individual cities in New Hampshire set priorities, how they have to tell people no, how they look at each dollar and each expenditure.

And Warren Rudman is one of these remarkable people.

That when he got to Washington and people tried to explain to him that people back in New Hampshire and in Texas didn't really understand these problems, that they weren't experts like us, and that what applied in New Hampshire, in some little town, in dealing with thousands of dollars, didn't apply in Washington, when you're dealing with billions of dollars.

Warren Rudman was one of these people that was so clear thinking that he realized that that was baloney.

In September of 1985, Warren Rudman joined forces with Senators Phil Gramm and Ernest Hollings to co-sponsor a bill known as the Gramm Rudman Hollings Deficit Reduction Act.

It was Rudman's first major assault on the federal budget deficit, and his first real venture into the national spotlight.

My feeling is about a crisis is better.

We have a crisis.

While the banks are open than have a crisis after the banks are closed.

Stated simply, this is a way to make the budget process meaningful, to set out a target that the American people support, and to set in place a budget process that is binding and that is geared toward achieving the national goal of bringing the deficit down, to control and balancing the budget.

The idea behind the Gramm Rudman Hollings Act was to reduce the budget deficit by instituting automatic across the board spending cuts whenever the national debt exceeded a fixed level.

It was a legal device designed to force Congress to say no to deficit spending.

One of the things you find out in being in politics, and I think Warren is perhaps one of the exceptions to this, but the easiest way to stay popular and to stay elected is to keep saying yes, yes to everyone and everything, every program.

And that way you, you don't make many enemies.

It's, the people who have to say no are the ones who are going to have to pay the price of the, at the polls.

And I think Warren has always been willing to just say no.

You see, Gramm Rudman Hollings originally was designed to cover the entire federal budget.

All except really interest.

Because you can't you can't sequester interest.

You have to pay the interest.

So about, about 70?

About 78% of the budget at that time.

But then when we finally got to the floor, where it became obvious that we had to pull the entitlement programs out.

So Gramm Rudman ended up only addressing the discretionary budgets, including defense, the compromise, Gramm Rudman Hollings Act that Ronald Reagan signed into law in December of 1985 affected only 40% of the federal budget.

Entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare remained unchecked.

That's something you just don't mention.

It's like it's almost like like cursing in church, you know, you just don't do it.

Well, you know, talking about entitlements around here is, is is like handling, you know, a deadly virus.

I mean, God forbid you get infected with it.

Seven years later, as Senator Rudman left office the deficit was projected at almost $400 billion, Gramm Rudman had only half worked.

It kept discretionary and defense spending down.

But entitlements and the debt continued to rise.

It's all smoke and mirrors, the whole thing.

They created.

It's all an image, a national image beyond the state image, Warren Rudman was able, with that bill, create a national image.

The fact is that you don't need no Gramm Rudman law.

The fact is plain, if you want to have a balanced budget and government, unless you want to be a hypocrite or a chicken, there are only two things you can be.

It's very easy to create a balanced budget.

Just tell those who are proposing the budget or when you vote for it.

I am not going to vote for a budget that doesn't have the same amount of money coming in and the same amount of money going out.

Look, we know how to solve the problem.

That's not the issue.

If we could get everybody here to suddenly have a dose of enormous political courage, I could walk down to the Senate floor with an amendment right now, if we could pass it, in the Senate and the House and get the president to sign it all by midnight tonight, we could get this thing on track.

Not going to happen.

♪ [Bell rings] [Doors open on Subway] [Indistinct chatter] I'm for him.

I, if he were running, I would have voted for him.

I think he's the greatest Republican I've ever known.

They’re gonna put that on television That's all right, I don’t mind saying that!

That's why I say it more.

I'm for him.

The United States of America has been generally a very unideological sort of how do you make it work?

Rather than I'm right and you're wrong sort of society.

And Warren Rudman is very much of how do you make it work kind of guy.

That's what he's all about.

And, you know, that's been, I think, the root of his effectiveness as well as, you know, you think about the Granite State.

I always think about the Bulldog State, like Warren wrote about that.

But I mean, his his tenacity and his commitment to making it work have been the root of his, very significant success in the Senate.

I am not highly partisan, and I don't believe that everything that comes on the floor that is sponsored by a Democrat is ipso facto wrong, bad, evil, wicked.

And by the same token, I don't think that everything that our side produces is, the world's answer for humanity.

And what I try to do is to broker compromises between groups.

I've always been open to conversation with anybody who wanted to talk to me.

I may, I did not come here with a list of enemies that I didn't like, because they were too liberal or too conservative.

I have found some redeeming value in everybody that I've worked with here, and I think it's the ideal way to approach government.

When Ronald Reagan came to office in 1980, his coattails helped bring a Republican Senate along with him.

But in 1986, the year of Rudman's landslide reelection, the Republicans lost control of the Senate, and passing legislation became even more dependent on the fine art of compromise.

I think I'm popular on my own side of the aisle for that reason.

And we had a little thing happen today, which you did not cover.

[Clears throat] we had a matter in the Defense Appropriations subcommittee in which people were at loggerheads.

And I sat there and did some scribbling.

And it happened to be proposed by a Democratic senator and Republican senators were arguing against it.

And I just wrote on a little, excuse me a little, note to myself and I.

And I got the floor on the committee, and I said, no, wait a minute.

If you put this in as an, as an amendment to this, amendment, as an addendum to it, wouldn't that solve your problem?

And the Republicans said, well, yes, it would.

And I turned to my Democratic colleague who was sitting around on my left, and I said, well, would that be all right with you?

That would achieve it?

And so, as a matter of fact, I said, fine, well, can we do it?

And it was passed and the debate ended.

Well, I just try to do things like that.

I mean, that's what, I believe you ought to be solving problems here.

You shouldn’t be part of the problem here.

There are very few Republicans who really kind of are able to cut the balance in the center, like Warren Rudman could do.

Republicans are increasingly, far to the right.

They're increasingly kind of way out there.

And the Republican Party is taken over by the New Right, taken over by the religious, evangelicals taken over by these, you know, really, strident right to lifers.

And consequently, they move way out to the right.

The Democrats have had their own problems that have tended to move left.

And that kind of collegiality that is necessary to make the Senate work is gone.

Warren Rudman is the quintessential Republican.

He is, about as solid a conservative in the best sense of the word that one could ever hope to, to have.

And I think what he is seeing and what a number of us are seeing is the, perhaps the changing of the word conservative to become something of a, one has to be a religious fundamentalist, or a, philosophical fundamentalist.

Warren, as a conservative in the tradition, I would say of Teddy Roosevelt, of someone who carries a very big stick and walks pretty softly, although not that softly.

I take it back.

He makes a pretty loud noise when he walks as well.

Oh, that's an understatement.

Yeah, but he can get his point across a minute.

He is.

He's a very bright, incisive kind of person.

He's got the kind of quick mind and he gets right to the bottom.

He don't waste a lot of time.

And he spells out his point of view.

And he has respect on both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans.

And that's how you become effective.

On the other hand, he, he doesn't mind being in the minority if he thinks he's right.

He's not out there trying to, you know, put something together just to say, well, this is, I've done this.

If he doesn't agree with it or if he thinks he has to compromise too much, then all bets are off.

You know, I'll vote for the on the party line on something I'm not that excited about it, but there's no great amount of principle involved, an ethical issue or a matter of principle involved in the country, procedural battle on the floor.

But I will tell you this much in the key responsibilities that I've had in this place where you could play a lot of politics, Iran-Contra one, the Senate Ethics Committee.

Two I have never played politics.

And to the contrary, I guess I'll have to say this.

I have been praised by editorialists of all stripes across this country for calling it, as I saw it, on Iran-Contra and ethics, irrespective of whose ox was gored.

♪ Do you solemnly swear that in the testimony you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help you God?

I do.

Shortly after his reelection to the Senate in 1986, Warren Rudman was appointed vice chairman to the Senate Select Committee investigating the Iran-Contra affair.

Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North listened more today than he talked.

Members of the Iran-Contra committees took up most of the former white House aides fifth day, making statements of the wronged They were about Colonel North's activities and the Iran-Contra affair.

Among the strongest words were those from Republican Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire.

The American people have the constitutional right to be wrong.

And what Ronald Reagan thinks, or what Oliver North thinks, or what I think, or what anybody else thinks, makes not a whit.

If the American people say enough.

And that's why this Congress has been fickle and has vacillated, that is correct, but not because the people here necessarily believe differently than you do.

But there comes a point that the views of the American people have to be heard.

I have passion about truth.

I have passion about fair play.

You know, when North was lecturing our committee about how wrong the American people were and Congress should have done what he and his people wanted done, even though the American people at that point or against the, aid in Central America.

And by the way, I didn’t disagree with North on the issue In fact, I had voted just that way.

You know, that's when I told North that the American people have the constitutional right to be wrong.

That particular phrase, which I don't know where it came from, will probably be on my tombstone.

There was no doubt in anyone's mind that he had a passion for getting to the, the facts, to the truth.

And he didn't, shave, the facts, didn’t shade them.

He was determined to find out exactly what happened, regardless of the consequences to, uh, to party affiliation.

When fellow Republicans issued a minority report vindicating President Reagan's role in the Iran-Contra affair, Warren Rudman would have none of it.

As for the minority report, which was ironically leaked to the press on Monday.

While it still bore a classification rather ironic.

Consider the accusations of those who leaked it.

I have looked at that report carefully, and I'm regretful to say that I'm reminded of Adlai Stevenson’s great remark about the press.

This particular report is one in which the editors separated the wheat from the chaff, and unfortunately, it printed the chaff.

It is a pathetic report.

Back home in New Hampshire, the conservative Manchester Union later was outraged by Rudman's attacks on Oliver North and others in the Reagan administration.

But most news organizations from The Boston Globe to ABC praised him for his actions.

And finally, this evening, our person of the week.

We are attracted to men and women who have a streak of independence, particularly when it seems to come naturally.

This week, we chose a politician who had never been elected to anything until seven years ago, but who, as this particular week points out, has made an indelible mark.

Let me tell you, this is not a Democratic report.

I am not a Democrat.

Thankfully, I am a Republican and I'm a loyal Republican.

But I think the minority evidently believes that Republicans somehow don't want the truth laid out.

My Republican constituents want the truth laid out.

Senator Warren Rudman of New Hampshire.

To be polite about it, you would have to say that until 1985, he was obscure, at least on the national stage.

Today, thanks to his candor and his thoughtfulness about the way we govern ourselves, he is a credit to the Congress and to himself.

That's our report on World News Tonight.

I'm Peter Jennings.

Have a nice weekend.

Good night.

Well, he set a standard for ethics.

I think if anybody associates Warren Rudman with anything other than the deficit, which is sort of a I hate to say it, dull topic!

But, Um, I think in terms of, an ethical standard for honesty and straightforwardness and a willing to challenge even the people within your own party, that's what people will remember him for.

♪ [Phone rings] Senator Rudman’s office, So, yeah, I just.

Hello?

Well, I'll tell you something.

This great telecommunications system stinks.

Hello.

Great.

Hi.

I think, hello?

Hello?

You know something, Kathy?

I don't believe this.

Yeah, I'm here, and you're there.

But he's not there.

No.

It's like, do me a favor.

Blank all the lines out and let him start all over again.

This this phone system is fooling itself.

We have this great new high tech phone system.

It's so high tech that sometimes you get calls in there and you can't get them out.

So how many phone calls do you take a day?

Do I actually take?

Probably not more than 50.

How many do you get?

300.300?

400.

[Phone rings] Warren Rudman, Janet.

Yeah.

How are you doing?

Good.

He is around.

He's on the phone right now.

He should be off shortly.

My official title is scheduler.

I do all the scheduling, but, in New Hampshire, out of state, around the country, whatever.

In addition to that, I'm his personal assistant.

Whatever he needs we do here.

There are three of us back here, and, um, [Phone rings] There's the phone.

I'd normally get it, [Laughs] and, so you know, screen his phone calls and do correspondence for him.

And just keep him moving.

Keep him on the right track.

Let him know when his time's up.

When he needs to get to the next appointment.

And, try to fit in about a million things a day.

Isn't there quite a, uh, isn't there quite a, difference between various companies on this issue?

I mean, I thought this is being pushed by the major American companies.

They're they're, they're pushing it because they're unhappy with the, hybrid situation of these vehicles coming in.

You know, they're coming in either are they trucks or are they cars and, which tariff or they subject to and, bringing and then the EPA problems and I understand that, Ford and maybe Chrysler are all for this.

I think this is a great idea because it will obviously make it more difficult for the imports to compete.

Is that accurate?

It probably is.

We're here representing our constituency in the New Hampshire auto dealers.

Right.

That actually the National Auto Dealers Association and the the basis is that it's not fair.

They're not trucks.

I'm just curious that the Ford and Chrysler dealers agree with this position.

I mean, I'm going to ask you a tough question.

Yes, yes, yes.

Why would they if I were, 400 people in the room today and they all agreed with the position, there are two people who disagree.

Really?

If I were a Ford dealer, nothing I'd like more to see all those Japanese vans go up in price.

$10,000.

That'd be terrific for me.

Why would I be for this?

Our guess is.. Are they, is everybody losing their mind?

He has so much on his plate, he takes on so much that, he tries he has so many irons in the fire that he's just got so many things going at a time that that he runs from place to place to place.

I think that, uh, he just, uh, I don't know whether it's a flaw or whether it's just the way he is.

He just takes on a tremendous amount of.

And perhaps, I think, too much sometimes.

Hey, Kim.

I'll grab that.

That's great.

Thank you very much.

Oh, sure.

Thank you.

Tell me what.. She’s gonna call us right back some of what's on this list this morning.

Jim Brady, Nina Gross, doctor Barry Horowitz from Niter Corporation.

Dick Darman, David Unich Glickman I spoke to Al, in Paris yeah.

What time did we book the Christian Science Monitor?

Was that 11:30?

Or noon?

Noon?

Okay.

That's fine.

Okay.

And AP is at 11:30, then.

All right.

Good.

Thanks.

Right.

Sure.

Right.

And I know that we've got to go today or tomorrow, because Rudman is not going to be here for Saturday session no matter what.

So, you know, Janice is indicating to me yesterday that we might be able to go quietly with this thing that none might put it in a package and it will just go.

But if that doesn't happen, we need to be as loud as possible, I guess.

So?

[Indistinct chatter] I'd love a boost of caffeine, Kathy Would you mind?

And just so you know, it’s Christine's birthday, they're having a small cake in the kitchen for her right now.

All right, go, don't run away.

I'll be right in there.

Is it chocolate cake?

I believe it is.

It better be.

And guess who called this morning?

[Typewriter clicks] how long?

We're going to be?

15 minutes.

Okay.

Because I'm running a little a little late on my schedule, unfortunately.

But one time, a few years ago, where he was here all night Thursday night.

Went home for a few hours.

Was there all day Friday night, all night.

Went home for a few hours, all day Saturday.

Didn’t even go home, Sunday morning, just stayed through.

The pizza companies do a big business around here when they're in session, late.

Yeah, It's a typical day.

Unbelievable.

Don't you get tired?

No.

You really don't?

No.

Just go like this from 6:00 in the morning to 10:00 at night.

I do, but I- It's my father.

It's my father.

At the age of, 91.

He died at 93, about a year and a half ago.

I think it's hereditary.

My father had boundless energy up until the time that he died.

I mean, my father's idea of fun would be go out at 5:30 in the morning into his garden and be on his hands and knees weeding and planting until noon time, and then come in and do something in the house, and then go off with the kids and do something else, and then go back to his office that night and work for three hours.

I mean, I'm a lot like my father in a lot of ways.

Uh, I'm not sure that I could ever be quite like him, because he had a far different upbringing than I did.

He came from very poor immigrant parents growing up in Bangor, Maine.

They didn't have anything as youngsters.

They worked very hard.

They they really had to fight hard for everything they got.

And, my father used to give me the devil sometimes when I was a young guy growing up, because I did something he thought was a bit irresponsible.

And he would say to me, the trouble with you is you never had the advantage of poverty.

And that's a very interesting statement.

So I can never be quite like him.

His whole value system was based on knowing what it was to have nothing.

I never had that misfortune, nor have my children, or I had most people that we know, but in many ways we’re alike, He believed in hard work.

His word was his bond.

God forbid my father catch you lying about something.

It was like capital punishment.

He was really strict.

Oh, yeah, about things like that.

I mean, when you were supposed to do something, you were supposed to do it when you were supposed to do it.

You're not supposed to procrastinate.

And when I was a kid growing up.

Hard to believe, but I was a bit of a procrastinator.

My father really believed in, doing it when it was supposed to be done and and being upfront about things and being responsible, being good to your two younger sisters, certainly being good to your mother and and, you know, it was, how did he feel seeing you as a U.S. senator?

Oh, he he he at first was very concerned about it.

He didn't like politics and politicians He thought it was kind of a not a very honorable profession.

And, and he didn't think it was such a good idea when I decided to leave a very successful law practice.

And, uh, and, run for the Senate.

But after I got here, he loved it.

I mean, he he loved watching me on television.

He would write me letters.

I mean, you know, my dad, when I was elected, was then in his 80s.

Yeah?

We have a vote?

It just started?

Well, tell me one of those two bills.

And he wrote me a lot of letters, which I've kept.

And he watched me successfully when my campaign, He campaigned for me extensively in both campaigns.

My mother was a graduate of the Juilliard School, pianist My father's a great storyteller.

And they would go to the senior citizen homes in 80, and my mother would play the piano.

My dad would talk to the people, and they did the same in 86.

Uh, and, you know, uh, as a parent, I can imagine it must have been an enormous thrill to see your son get to the United States Senate and, and have a good career here And, and-It must have made you feel pretty good, to make him proud too?

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah.

♪ I think he has enormous respect for the profession of the law.

Is something that because he did it at night while he was running his his father's company, then he got to drive to BC law School every night.

It means a lot because he had to work hard to get into that profession.

I mean, it wasn't something that he just did as a normal progression.

You know, you'd go to high school and you go to college and you go to law school.

And he served in the military.

He was helping his family's business, and he was doing law school at night.

He had to really work to get into this profession.

And and he has enormous regard for the law as a force which orders society and which is somehow greater than those who practice it.

I present to you a good person, one who will bring honor to the Supreme Court and to our constitutional system with enthusiasm and with deep personal conviction.

I urge you a favorable consideration of a dear friend and a deserving nominee.

In 1990, Warren Rudman led the charge to get David Souter, his former assistant in the New Hampshire Attorney General's office, and one of his closest friends, a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States.

I think probably the crowning jewel was the Souter nomination, where he almost went house to house, made house calls with, I don't know how many senators I should remember, but 50 or 60 whatever, and sort of took that as a personal mission.

I must say that it is remarkable that there are some here in Washington who view a man who has a single minded dedication to his chosen profession, the law, and possesses great qualities of humility, graciousness, frugality, charity, reverence to his faith and to his family is somehow regarded as an anomaly and somehow out of touch with life.

That will always, always in my memory be, very emotional thing.

Because he is my friend, and, how many people get a chance to go to a president United States and say, here is a man that should sit on the United States Supreme Court and have the president agree with you and then say you've got the responsibility to make sure this man gets confirmed and to work for months to make it happen, see it happen, watch him go to the court, and then be so proud of what he has done.

Well, they're very different.

They're, where, where Rudman is, He’s very outgoing and and, um, and aggressive personally.

David is is reserved almost to the point of shyness, but it really is sort of an extraordinarily well developed politeness.

They are obviously from different backgrounds, different, ethnic upbringings.

But, they are both very bright.

They share a love of politics.

That is unusual and more about how politics works and how you get politics to get a result and how you make people work together.

They both have very quick senses of humor.

They both are willing to have themselves be the butt of the humor.

And they're extremely loyal to each other.

It's a really remarkable combination.

Souter is, a good appointment and, one that Rudman should be proud of.

On the other hand, how somebody like Rudman could support and vote for Clarence Thomas is beyond me.

I mean, Clarence Thomas figures to be an embarrassment to the American legal system for decades.

And, I would have expected that Rudman, being a man of principle on his way to leaving the Senate, would want to leave a legacy not just of, David Souter, but of voting against Clarence Thomas.

Clarence Thomas is a real embarrassment to the people who have put him there, including both President Bush and the members of the Senate who voted to confirm him.

I'll give you the very practical political answer for that.

Had my vote been able to defeat Clarence Thomas, I would have voted against him.

I had come to that conclusion reluctantly, In the last few days before the vote.

It became apparent my vote could not.

That he would be confirmed anyway, and I had a lot I wanted to do in terms of the judiciary before I left.

And you've all seen what I've done and the extraordinary people that I've been able to convince to serve beyond David Souter.

I'm talking those now serving on the Federal and Circuit bench None of that would have happened had I cast that meaningless vote against Clarence Thomas.

Now, if people want to call that compromising principle, so be it.

I think it's very practical politics.

And that's what the Senate really is all about.

I had grave reservations about Clarence Thomas at the very end.

I was deeply concerned about it.

It became apparent to me he would win on that basis to cast a vote, to say I voted against him, it made no sense to.

♪ But the fact is that.

We are unable institutionally to do what has to be done.

We are literally not watching the fiddler fiddle when Rome Burns.

We are watching the entire orchestra.

The last three years have been very rough.

The Congress has become very partisan.

We've had a gridlock, the likes of which I don't think we've seen in the, certainly in the postwar period, maybe never in this century.

I've had many of my Democratic friends as well.

And most of my Republican colleagues ask me, what are you going to do this year?

You haven't announced your intentions.

You have a reasonably good rating.

You say, are you going to run for reelection?

And people tie it to all sorts of things, you know, making lots of money and having more free time, and that's all important.

But it is really unimportant.

I didn't to say this this morning, but I'm going to.

The thing that has really been troubling me for the last 3 or 4 months to try to determine whether to spend another six years of my life in this place with so many fine and wonderful people.

Is is it worth it?

Can you do anything?

Can you accomplish anything?

Can you make the country better?

This institution, like much of the Congress, has truly got a for sale sign on it.

There's much too much money being spent on campaigns.

They last much too long.

Various heavy concentrations of money are able to influence politicians and political outcomes.

And the level of debate and the level of brave decisions is therefore eroded year in and year out.

Is it not possible, with the extraordinary leadership that we have in this chamber with a Democratic leader, my friend from Maine, with the Republican leader, my friend from Kansas, with the distinguished chairmen and ranking members of committees, with the brilliance, with the goodwill, with the good sense.

Could we not all come together finally and say, it is time to do something for America and stop this politics as usual, which is tearing the country apart?

And ruining it at the same time.

It's kind of now a popular cliché to talk about gridlock and frustration and can't get things done.

But the reality is, that's the way our system was created.

That's the purpose of the American system of government, to make it hard to let bad things happen.

In the process, the founders made it hard to have good things happen.

And so it takes tremendous effort, tremendous perseverance to enact legislation and not very much effort to prevent it from being enacted.

Every day we vote on spending bills and amendments to spend money and all these special interest groups are looking over your left shoulder, sending letters back home, telling people whether you care about the old the poor, the sick, the tired, the bicycle rider list goes on and on.

More often than not, nobody's looking over the right shoulder, sending letters back home, telling people whether you care about the future, whether you care about people who do the work, pay the taxes, pull the wagon in this country, and as a result, the whole process is skewed toward copping out.

Now, I have cause for frustration more than any other individual senator, perhaps more than all combined in my position as majority leader, because I'm responsible for the management of the operations of the Senate, and I endure frustrations on a daily basis.

I told Warren that he couldn't stand being majority leader for 15 minutes, and he agrees.

Well, I understand that I endure it, but the fact of the matter is, I'm sorry that he's leaving.

I wish he'd stay.

I wish he'd stay and had stayed and fight for the things that he believes in.

This has been a long and difficult decision for me.

I feel mixed emotions this morning, but there comes a time that everybody ought to come home.

And, This is my time.

Because, frankly, although I am not discouraged beyond repair, I am terribly frustrated.

Then his voice caught.

And he said, and this is my time.

And that was it.

That was about the only shred of emotion you're going to get out of Warren Rudman.

And then he went back to his pie charts and all these other sort of official trappings that he had surrounded himself with that day in the Hall of Flags in Concord and, and, you know, you might have a sense if you were looking at him, that he was almost trying to shield himself, from what was certain to be some emotional moment as he left the Senate.

Pardon me for being emotional when I say I thank my family, represented by my son, Alan.

I thank the people of this state.

For... giving me a unbelievable opportunity to serve.

If you can't come into this office every day with absolute enthusiasm and dedication and devotion, you’re gonna give it everything you've got a 110%.

You ought not to do it.

And quite frankly, I was not convinced that I wanted to give a 110% for six more years.

Thank you.

Thank you, you did a great job.

[Indistinct chatter] ♪ As I've often said, balancing the budgets is like going to heaven.

Everybody wants to do it.

They just don't want to do what you have to do to make the trip.

Warren Rudman is one of those that's willing to do what you have to do to make the trip.

Let me be blunt.

The two political parties are unable to truly speak the truth because the American people, frankly, don't want to hear it because they don't understand it.

Warren Rudman's great cause remained unresolved after 12 years in Congress.

The passage of the Gramm Rudman Act and constant warnings on the floor of the Senate, the budget deficit had only gotten worse.

Rudman was ready to take his message to the streets This year, The 175 or $180 billion being spent in interest, much of it to those overseas, will in fact, be the third largest item in the federal budget, the largest, interest group in this country.

It's very underrepresented.

Those are the working people of this country.

I refer to them, sometimes a little, whimsically as the, AAWP, the American Association of Working People.

Now, I think they ought to have some influence here.

I don't think they ought to watch their FICA taxes go from 7.5% to 20%.

Just sit back there and say, oh, there's nothing I can do about it.

I wash my hands of it.

They've got to organize and organize, is what Rudman has done.

Together with former Democratic Senator Paul Tsongas and former Commerce Secretary Pete Peterson, Rudman has put together an organization known as the Concord Coalition, named after the Massachusetts town where the idea was first born.

You know, I have great admiration for Paul Tsongas and Pete Peterson.

It's incredible the number of calls we've received in the last two months since we first talked about it.

I think there were literally not thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of Americans, maybe millions who energize Who are going to join up in this organization.

Paul and I, of course, are doing this strictly as a labor of love, and we both are going to have work for livings as he does now.

But I'm going to take a good chunk of my time to speak out across the country to young people on college campuses, to working people, essentially, Rudman and Tsongas have created their own special interest group of concerned citizens to educate the public about the dangers of the budget deficit and activate voters to demand change.

Those of you in this audience that are working, particularly those who are young, will find that more in your more of your money will go to pay off this debt to pay this interest, never mind paying off the debt, and your standard of living will be nothing like your parents and your grandparents enjoyed.

Government is supposed to make our lives better, and what this government is doing because it tolerates this intolerable situation on the deficit, is it's making not just our lives.

More importantly, what it's going to do to our children in their lives.

It can make it worse.

And I think to him, when he intellectually has worked that number around and he understands it economically and what it's going to do in in the impact of that, not just what it's going to do in terms of tax dollars, but how it's going to impact all of society and bring the economy to a halt.

That, to him, is a it creates a passion in him, you know, worthy of a crusade.

I think it's very hard for people to understand the budget until it starts getting cut and it has to get cut.

And, you know, let's hope a new administration coming in is going to put together a major package, do it all by itself, and say, this has to be done all in one piece.

Get the cooperation of Congress, get Rudman and Tsongas to be helping out to do that get business and labor and senior citizens and so on.

Everybody's got to get together, form a wedge, try to push that ball down the field.

It's very tough.

What is at stake is what kind of a standard of living this country will have after the year 2000.

What we are doing is saddling our children with debt and that debt.

Although it does not have to be repaid itself, the interest must be paid.

It will soon be over $200 billion.

That would be more than the entire discretionary budget of this country, more than we spend on education, more than we spend on health research.

I mean, it is a shame that a country spends money like that will which not educate one child or buy a homeless person a meal or a shelter will not do basic research that industry needs to do will not advance the needs of technology and science, but rather is simply interest.

I mean, it is it, it is.

It is an outrage and we're going to try to change that.

♪ You know, this week I walked around with one of my assistants and put little tags on all of the literally hundreds of things hanging on the walls, the pictures, the awards, the citations, the honorary degrees and said where they were going to go.

And, that was a sad experience because it was a beautiful office and a lot of wonderful memories of great things.

So that's kind of a sad feeling, but it's a wonderful feeling to know that I'm leaving.

Having a record that I, I am personally satisfied with.

And I hope the people of New Hampshire are satisfied with, people of the country are satisfied with, I'm going out to do some exciting things.

I'm looking forward to working with Paul Tsongas on our Concord Coalition to help spread the word about the danger of deficits to our economy.

So it's a bittersweet experience.

I, you know, I I'll walk out that office on the 29th of December.

That's when I'm actually moving all of my personal things out.

And I won't go back, except to visit my successor.

Uh, but, it's, it's an odd feeling, but your next question would be, you have any regrets?

And the answer is no, I don't.

Everyone has to hope that, the president elect, president elect Clinton succeeds.

As we tape this, there were there was discussion about, who he will name to the cabinet, some of the names that really, are quite good.

And, and I think very exciting.

They're good people with sound views on the economy.

I think having a president and a congress of the same party could have very good results for the country, so long as there is some restraint there, obviously, of some of the traditional tax and spend ideas that some segments of the Democratic Party, are back in vote, then there's going to be a terrible battle and I think more economic problems.

But, essentially, as I said, in Concord I think you might have been there, when I announced that I would not run for reelection.

That as an American.

I almost was about ready to say, fine, let's let's have one party Republican or Democrat, I would have preferred Republican congress in present.

Let's try to solve the nation's problems.

And uh, we're going to give Clinton and the Congress a chance.

Now, the central issue is whether or not America is going to pause on its wild spree of consumption, be it individual consumption or corporate devouring of other corporations and takeovers and so forth, and start a policy of investment, of building, of education, and of sound evolution of our industrial base.

That's the central issue.

The reason the deficit, of course, is so important is because if the deficit continues to rise unabated.

You just can't do those things.

So the real issue will be, is America gonna evolve as we move into the next century as a very strong industrial power, preeminent in the world, the world's greatest market with high productivity?

Or is America going to continue to see its education system fail?

Its industries continue to be taken over by, by other countries?

Its industrial products, its markets.

That's really what this is about.

And I believe that by the early part of the next century, which is only about 7 or 8 years away, we'll know.

There was no question that the strong Reagan policies, opposed by many who wanted nuclear freeze.

And many times I debated that even here on this station with other people, that that he was steadfast.

He, he said, build a strong defense, force The Soviets to reconsider, forced that system to complete collapse.

He called it the evil empire.

People didn't like that.

But he wasn't far from from being correct on that statement at the time he made it George Bush continued, we saw the collapse of the Soviet Union.

We saw a whole new world out there where the traditional enemy was no more.

That is a great legacy for this Republican.

12 years, as well as for Republicans in the Congress who were steadfast in supporting those policies.

On the economic side, there have been sound things done in terms of getting some of the regulation, out of, the system, which I believe impeded free enterprise.

On the negative side, there was a legacy of run runaway deficits, high national debt and irresponsibility, which is shared by both the Republican and the Democratic Party.

But Republican presidents for the last 12 years, certainly, in my view, should have done more.

Now, they will say they tried, but they didn't have support from the Congress.

Well, that's partially true, but I reject that.

I believe both parties had an obligation to work together.

It's one of the reasons that I decided not to serve again.

The best advice I can give and I give it to young people.

When I speak to them, I say, you know, I'd like to have a career in politics.

What's your advice?

And I say, look, go out and get some real world experience.

I mean, just don't become a professional politician and get out of college and and work for some on the hill and run for something and eventually end up at the age of 55, having done nothing but government because government doesn't produce anything.

It's the system that produces things.

So do something, have a set of values, know who you are, know what you believe.

Because if you get there and you don't know that it's too late.

The strongest piece of advice I give people, the other advice I give them, of course, is maintain your independence.

Be true to what you believe, even if it means taking on your own president and your own party.

Which of course, I have done.

Well, if being very independent and being rebellious against the established positions of your party or or the institution when you think they're dead wrong is being a rebel then I'm a rebel.

Others have called me an iconoclast.

I'm not sure exactly what that means sometimes, but I'm very independent and a little rebellious sometimes, but only when I think that there was a reason.

I mean, if you look at my voting record, I have voted with my party and my president overwhelmingly a great deal.

I get criticized by Democrats for that, and that's fine.

That's the American system.

But on very key, important issues.

When I felt the party was wrong, I have spoken out and, I guess some people think that's rebellious.

I think that's in the great American tradition.

I think it's the great New Hampshire tradition, frankly, of Daniel Webster.

♪ I think he's going to miss the Senate.

I think he'll be active in public affairs.

And I think he ought to be and will be a serious contender for the Republican nomination for president in 1996.

I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility.

I think he's still a very young, vigorous man.

He's hooked up with Bill Weld, the governor of Massachusetts and other moderate Republicans to try to counter the the impact that many people see of the hardcore conservative right in the Republican Party.

I think he intends to be a player.

I think anybody who's been in public life who thinks they can get anything done would probably like to be president, and I wouldn't deny that.

I would like to be president.

I'm not sure I'd want to put my family and friends and myself through what it takes to get elected president today.

I don't like the process.

It's become something that I don't think is is, in the American spirit of, of elections.

It's become very nasty, very personal.

I don't think I want to do that.

But, you know, a lot of people have made that suggestion.

I come from the right state to run, so who knows, right.

We’ll leave that just a little open.

So we get people talking about it.

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