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Floor Speech
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Mr. BOOKER. Did I miss that? The Senator from New Jersey.
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Mr. BOOKER. Will the Senator yield?
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Mr. BOOKER. Mr. President, I rise to object. I will not let this man go quietly into the night. I would ask for unanimous consent to force him to stay in the Senate, but like all of my unanimous consent requests over the last 10 years, none of them have ever passed.
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Mr. BOOKER. Case in point.
I didn't necessarily expect to speak, but I found myself sitting there getting sad and angry that we are losing Mitt Romney, first of all, because we have--obviously, to the naked eye--so much in common: I am Black, and Mitt Romney is Black adjacent. Mitt Romney is a man of great personal net worth, and I am a man of great personal net girth.
The reality is, the more I served with Mitt Romney, the more I found myself hoping to have more in common with him. I have watched somebody from this seat for years now give a master's class in what I believe America needs most. I ran for President because of this drive and this feeling that our Nation was becoming too tribalistic. I watched time and time again from this seat a person who put aside the desires for partisan adoration for a deeper conviction to stand up for our Nation. I watched a man not confuse tribal celebrity with leadership significance. I watched time and time again and saw it with my own eyes him being harassed in airports and being scorned for taking principled stands that he saw as the best way to try to hold our country together.
I disagree with him, even though I see him now from one of his colleagues getting great approbation for a moment I remember when I was a mayor watching him run for President where he was asked what the great national security threat is, and he said Russia. At the time, many people made fun of him, and I now have been in classified briefings with him and other Senators where his wisdom in perceiving a threat was not only appreciated, but I literally saw in a classified briefing people applaud the insight of the man.
But I disagree with him now. I disagree with him because, to me, the greatest threat to America, despite other comments that have been made here, including from one of my esteemed colleagues yesterday who said it was our national debt, I think the greatest threat to America is our inability to come together as a country, because when Americans are united, there is nothing we can't do. We can beat the Nazis. We can send someone to the Moon. But, indeed, the greatest calling of our country right now is to put more indivisible back into this one Nation under God.
I have sat here for years now, and I have watched, perhaps, someone show with clarity of purpose that I have got to be what his faith and mine call for: Blessed are the peacemakers. Blessed are the people who stand in the breach. Blessed are the people who heal, who try to weave together the torn threads of our great Nation back into a mighty whole.
This body is lesser, is lesser with this loss. When I heard the news that he wasn't running again, I wasn't happy for him and his family. And I know his values start with that core of faith and family, but I do worry about this body. I do worry about our Nation. The one thing that gives me hope is the light that he has shined into this place will endure. And perhaps many of us, as he departs, will try our best, despite the forces that pull us apart, to pick up the work that he has left behind to do more to affirm a principle that he clearly has kept centered in his eyes, as is in the center of the aisles of this great institution, which is those words from a dead language: ``e pluribus unum.''
Mitt Romney, thank you for being my friend. Thank you for being someone who has inspired me to be better. And thank you for being a great American patriot.
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