U.S. President Barack Obama inaugurated Monday in Boston an institute in honor of the late Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy, which will allow visitors to learn about politics in a full-scale replica of the U.S. Senate.
Obama visited Boston, home of America's most famous political dynasty, to pay homage to the brother of both President John F. Kennedy and of Sen. Robert Kennedy - assassinated in 1963 and 1968, respectively - and asked today's senators to learn from the "humor and grace" of the man who became known as the "lion of the Senate" in his more than 40 years in office.
"What if we carried ourselves more like Ted Kennedy? What if we worked to follow his example a little bit harder?" Obama asked in a speech during the inauguration ceremony of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate.
Now that "bipartisanship has become so very rare," it becomes more and more necessary to remember the spirit of Kennedy, "who bridged the partisan divide over and over and over again with genuine effort and affection" and strengthened the collegiality of the upper house, even with his political adversaries, Obama said.
The new institute contains a full-scale replica of the Senate where Ted Kennedy served from 1962 until his death from brain cancer in 2009, because Sen. Kennedy had wanted it to be "an experience where people could see what it was like to be a Senator and act in the best interests of their State and the United States," the institute said.
Obama called the John F. Kennedy presidential library next door "a symbol of American idealism," while regarding "the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate as a living example of the hard, frustrating, never-ending, but critical work required to make that idealism real."
The Edward M. Kennedy institute and museum, which opens its doors to the public this Tuesday, is dedicated to the civic and political education of the people and was built with public and private investment totaling some $78 million.
The interactive experience is the great venture of the new institute, a cutting-edge component will allow visitors to become "apprentice senators" and debate and vote on bills "such as immigration reform" for which Kennedy fought in 2007, his widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, said. EFE
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