Kerry Says Goodbye to the Senate

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts bade a long and emotional farewell to the Senate on Wednesday, as he prepared to leave it after 28 years to become the secretary of state.

With his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, looking on from the gallery overhead, Mr. Kerry, 69, spoke on the chamber floor for 50 minutes about his career, which began on a wave of anti-war activism and included a failed 2004 presidential run against President George W. Bush.

“Eight years ago, I admit I had a very different plan, a slightly different plan anyway, to leave the Senate,” he said. “But 61 million Americans voted that they wanted me to stay here with you. And so, staying here I learned about humility and I learned that sometimes the greatest lesson in life comes not from victory but from dusting yourself off after a defeat and starting over when you get knocked down.”

Noting that his credibility as the nation’s top diplomat depends partly on what hppens in Washington, Mr. Kerry encouraged his soon-to-be-former colleagues to build bipartisan relationships to counter the gridlock gripping the Senate.

“The Senate runs on relationships,” he said, recalling his evolution from a liberal activist to a lawmaker who built bipartisan relationships. He spoke at length about his friendship with Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, formed when they visited the cell in Vietnam where Mr. McCain had been held during the war there, and those of other political odd couples who reached across party lines to advance common policy interests.

“If we posture politically in Washington, we weaken our position across the world,” Mr. Kerry said. “If democracy deadlocks here, we raise doubts about democracy everywhere.”

Mr. Kerry rejected the notion offered by lawmakers who departed before him that the Senate was irreparably broken. But he warned that three challenges â€" the decline of comity, a deluge o! f money and a disregard for facts â€" threatened to leave the Senate “irreversibly poisoned, unless we break out.”

Mr. Kerry, a veteran of the Vietnam war, said there were “whispers of progress” among a new generation of senators, whom he praised for being vocal and ambitious. He also noted how the Senate, which was exclusively made up of heterosexual white men when he entered in 1985, now included 20 women and its first openly gay member.

He said he felt a wistfulness about leaving the Senate. He choked up twice during a speech in which he thanked the 561 staff members and 1,393 interns who have worked in his office, as well as everyone who makes the Senate work â€" from the Capitol subway operators to the Capitol police â€" and reporters who have weathered changes in their industry to “dutifully document the first drafts of American history.”

“They are really the glue and we couldn’t function without them,” he said.

Mr. Kerry said that testifying before the SenateForeign Relations Committee last week completed a journey that began 42 years ago in front of that same committee when he testified as an activist opposed to the war in Vietnam.

“It completed a circle which I never could have imagined drawing, but one our founders surely did, that a citizen voicing his opinion about a matter of personal and national consequence could one day use that voice as a senator, as the chairman of that same committee before which he had once testified as a private citizen and then as the president’s nominee for secretary of state,” he said.

“That is a fitting representation of what we mean when we talk about a government of the people, for the people and by the people.”

Mr. Kerry’s resignation takes effect at 4 p.m. on Friday, after which he will be sworn in as the 68th secretary of state. Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts appointed his former chief of staff, William Cowan, to replace Mr. Kerry in the Senate until a special election is held.