Remarks at a Reception for Senator Hayden Following the Senator's Announcement of His Decision To Retire.

Senator Hayden and Members of the Senate and their staffs:

I came here with mixed emotions this afternoon. On the one hand I am tempted to take Carl Hayden at his word, and believe the unbelievable, that this Congress is finally to lose the strength and the wisdom and the inspiration of Carl Hayden's leadership.

But then I remember what strange times we are living in. It is very hard to believe any announcement of political intentions these days.

One day the politicians who have declared out are back in. The next day the politicians who have declared in have backed out.

It may well be that Carl Hayden has rendered another great service to the Nation by his announcement today, and I came here to help him.

Looking at us two noncandidates, both models of long-term credibility, no American in his right mind could any longer doubt the veracity of any politician.

Carl Hayden and I both are on the brink of new careers. We are looking back to our old professions. I know there is still a need for teachers, and I am going back to where I began. But I wonder if Carl has recently cased the market for frontier sheriffs.

We are both young men, both Democrats, both from the Southwest, both have served many years in Congress, and I believe that he is the only man who is now in the United States Senate who was in the United States Senate when I came to Washington.

Now it seems we both have reached retirement age together. In fact, I understand the same man¹ who was after my job last election, Carl, is now after your job.

¹Former Senator Barry Goldwater opposed President Johnson for the Presidency in 1964 and declared his candidacy for Senator Hayden's seat in 1968.

Some men have had long and very distinguished careers here in the Senate because of their oratory, some by becoming the champions of some particular cause, some by the glamour of their personalities, some by their ability to work harder, longer, and better.

Carl Hayden is not famous as an orator. His glamour is the old-fashioned kind that we associate with a handsome sheriff in the Arizona Territory. But the people of Arizona sent him here, and they sent him back again, again, and again, simply because he worked harder for their interests, more intelligently for their interests, for the benefit of all the people, than anyone else they could ever find in 56 years who lived in the State of Arizona.

He has told generations of freshmen here in the Senate, and I was one of them, that when he first came here he asked a man how to get reelected, and he said, "Well, you know, Carl, there are two kinds of horses, show horses and work horses."

Without disparaging the show horses a bit this afternoon, he made the case by his example of being a work horse.

His work was the arduous kind that is done in the committee rooms. It was long; it was painstaking; it was nighttime sessions. It was poring over testimony and figures of a thousand appropriation bills involving billions of dollars, trying to bridge the gap between public needs and public resources, always trying to serve his main client: the people, the people of the United States-serve them with integrity, with imagination, and always with great care.

Whatever his intentions, he became a kind of show horse as well as a work horse. He became the Senator whom his colleagues would always point out to their constituents and say, "There is the Senator's Senator. There is Mr. Integrity from the State of Arizona."

I might say that all that nonpolitical hard work turned out to be the best politics that anyone around here ever saw. And if I am not mistaken, there never was a glamorous public figure, there never has been a silver-tongued orator in the Senate, who served as long as 56 years in the Congress of the United States.

His monuments are everywhere in the State of Arizona. But he was never a one-State Senator. He was the third Senator in every State.

His understanding, his generosity of spirit, knew no boundaries, and no man will ever leave this Hill--and I say this as sure of anything as I am sure my name is Lyndon Johnson--no man will ever leave service on this Hill with more friends than Carl Hayden has.

And no man will ever leave here with a prouder record of accomplishment.

The name Carl Hayden will stand for serving the public interest as long as there is a Congress.

My friend, it is an understatement to say that we shall miss you.

America is stronger for what you have done in these 56 years, and it is going to be poorer when you have left these halls.

I came here from the other end of the Avenue today to speak on behalf of all the people, to tell you that you fought a good fight.

You haven't finished the course, but you have kept the faith. Everybody that knows you respects you and--I am speaking for ladies, too--loves you.