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The speech he didn't give Way to GoBy Rick Horowitz Withdrawal announcement, first draft:
Thank you. Thank you all very much. Thank you, Governor. Thank you, Senator, my family and friends and all of you. In June of 1972, like many college students of my time, I decided to travel through Europe for a few weeks. While I was away, the Watergate break-in occurred. So they can't pin that one on me. Still, I've often wondered: Had I been in the country at that time, would I have better grasped the hardships that can befall public officials when they violate the public trust? But then I ask myself, "What's that got to do with you?" And of course I'm right. Thirty years have passed. I've loved almost every moment of it. I've witnessed friends build families and businesses, sometimes fortunes, and I never had any regret. As a young man in college, I worked in this office for years. One day Governor Byrne said to me, "Bob, why are you here first, and why do you leave last?" I said, "Governor, it's easier to loot the place when nobody's around." A few years later, I had the opportunity to travel the world with Walter Mondale. One night in Egypt, after everyone else had gone to bed, I walked out to the shores of the Mediterranean, and there was Anwar Sadat, sitting in a chair. He said, "Son, who are you?" I said, "I'm Bob Torricelli." And he said to me, "What is it you want to do with your life?" I said, "Mr. President, I'm going to wear custom-made suits that somebody else pays for." A few years later, I entered the Congress of the United States, and I was never prouder in my life than to take that oath and represent my country. And then in the Senate, where I sat at the same desk where Hubert Humphrey sat, and Fulbright and Wayne Morse and so many other great Americans over two centuries. I've tried in my own way to add a little bit to whatever they left on that floor, and unless somebody brings in one of those industrial-strength carpet cleaners, I certainly succeeded. Some little girl in Bergen County will play today in a park that I funded, on land that I saved. And this weekend, that little girl and her family will go down the shore and enjoy herself on the boardwalk that I refurbished, and in the Atlantic Ocean that I created. So don't feel badly for me; I changed people's lives. And I cashed people's checks. But in a strange irony of life, control of the Unites States Senate is now at issue, and I am a part of that issue. I am a human being, and while I have not done the things that I have been accused of doing, I most certainly have made mistakes. If I had more time, I'd tell you exactly which things I've been accused of doing that I didn't do, but then you'd figure out which ones I left out -- who needs the aggravation? And if I had more time, I might even tell you which specific "mistakes" I made, and for that matter, how I define "mistakes." But there are times in life when you rise above self, and this is one of those times. So let me stop talking about myself for a second and pose a couple of deep and meaningful questions about society as a whole: When did we become such an unforgiving people? When did we stop believing in and trusting in each other? Now back to me. President Clinton called me several times today from Great Britain, and we remembered all the times I went to the White House and told him in the darkest days that what I admired about him is that "You never give up, you never compromise, you never stop, you never give up." The phone connection wasn't the best, but I could hear his voice crack. Or else it was static -- those English phones are just the pits. Anyway, enough about President Clinton. Let me tell you about the time I met the queen.... Posted 10/1/02. Get
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Rick Horowitz
