Marcelle and I decided to gather here back in 1974 when our parents, our children, including son Kevin, was here.

Alisha and Mark, my sister Mary.

And I used the room to announce my candidacy for the United States Senate.

At that time, I was a 33 year old fourth term Chittenden county state's attorney.

Knowing that Vermont had never sent a Democrat to the United States Senate and certainly never has had somebody my age.

But I felt I understood the needs and the values of Vermont.

I thought it was time for my generation to address them.

I wanted to be a United States senator for a number of reasons.

I think a lot of it has to do with just what I see as the special qualities of Vermont and Vermonters.

Vermont has a history of sending strong voices to the United States Senate, and I think I can be one of those strong voices.

Marcelle and I have reached the conclusion that it's time to put down the gavel.

It is time to pass the torch to the next Vermonter who will carry on this work for our great state.

It's time to come home.

Patrick Leahy retired on January 3rd, 2023, as the third longest serving senator in U.S. history.

He was chairman of the Agriculture and Judiciary Committees and most recently led the powerful Appropriations Committee.

He cast a remarkable 17,374 votes, according to his staff, in 48 years in office.

Leahy's influence in Washington has given tiny Vermont an outsized voice in national politics and significant financial benefits, too.

I'm Jane Lindholm.

Join us this hour as we hear from Senator Leahy about what he hopes his legacy will be, both in U.S. politics and Vermont history.

We talked with the senator as he was just wrapping up his time in office in two wide ranging interviews in Washington, D.C., and at his office in Burlington, Vermont.

Those who know Patrick Leahy are aware that he's almost always accompanied by his wife, Marcelle, and his camera.

Senator, you were born nearly blind, legally blind in one eye.

Your left, right, right.

You only need one eye to look through the viewfinder, to take a picture.

And in fact, it's a distraction.

If you're trying to do too much with both eyes, you need to have that narrow focus.

Do you think that blindness actually maybe led you into a path of photography or helped you see things in a different way?

I find that when I'm taking pictures, I just go into that world and I see what I want to remember.

I mean, some of these are just memories.

Well, yes.

It's your point of view.

It is the actual view that you had on history.

But it also doesn't then include you in the frame.

And you were in these places.

You were part of all of this history.

Everybody says, well Pat, you’re not going to be in the picture I say, I want to get the picture.

I've seen too many of my colleagues in both parties that we got to be in the picture.

I want to take the picture.

Well, the thing is, I've been in many bill signings.

I'm the only person who's had those pictures because all the photographers in front members of Congress are there trying to get the picture.

I stepped back.

I'm taking a picture of the president's hand, signing it and several former presidents have those in their libraries now.

Well, I wanted to know if there are certain moments that stick out in your career that you that you can actually look at, you know, that you you point to that you've taken photos of or that you have pictures that speak to you about the longevity of your career and the legacy that you have in Vermont.

But these are things that people wouldn't see.

You know, you got all the formal pictures of the White House and you know, that’s something, this one especially, I was down in a refugee camp in El Salvador during the Contra wars, and I went in there with my camera asked everybody through a translator if I could take their pictures.

And this man stepped forward.

And he just looked at me, a copy of that's hung over my desk ever since this man is saying to me, I'm powerless.

I have no money.

I could never do anything to help somebody like you.

What do you do to help people like me?

And this is specifically the one that you call your conscience.

That's my conscience photo.

So this man was sitting there.

You see the little stools, he'd been hopping on those for years since he was injured.

And lost his legs.

And lost his legs from an American landmine.

And he said and most of the time had been kind of staring at me.

And I said, God, this man must hate me out here.

I started to feel guilty and we were trying to help him and they said, would you pick him up and put him in the wheelchair?

Marcelle, who is a medical surgical nurse, she tells me how I have to pick him up so I don't hurt him.

I pick him up.

I put him in the wheelchair.

I started to get up and he grabbed my shirt.

He pulled me down.

He kissed me.

Something like that.

You know, you don't forget.

There's a thin line between feeling that this is a conscience photo for you, because this is an important reminder that your job is to help people who are helpless.

Which I learned here in Vermont, because we have so many who are helpless in Vermont.

That's right.

So many people who who don't have power.

But there's also a poverty tourism or a feeling a feeling of importance, because you have the power to help.

So how do you walk the line between realizing that this is, that your job is to help those who don't have the power and feeling like, look at me, I'm the big American.

I don't feel that way.

There's not a sense of power, I feel it as more, I've been given this opportunity and we've always tried to help people even as I was growing up.

But now I have an opportunity to do it at a higher scale and things that go with the Senate and the nice offices and everything else, or you can put your jeans and a t-shirt on and go out and see the people that are suffering and do something for them.

Senator Shelby, thank you very much for talking with us today.

We appreciate your time.

Well, thank you.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you'd characterize your relationship with Senator Leahy?

Well, it's a personal relationship.

Our wives are friends.

They know each other pretty well.

We're different politically.

I'm a Republican and they’d say a conservative Republican and he's a liberal Democrat.

But we worked on the Appropriations Committee.

I've been chairman of the committee and he's been the vice chairman and vice versa But we work to try to put America first.

I have, I think Pat Leahy has that in his bones.

The Leahy-Shelby relationship in the Appropriations Committee is an example of bipartisanship working sometimes, not all the time.

And I think we need more and more of that to put our differences aside and say what is needed in America, what is best for this country?

And we've tried to do this.

How would you characterize your relationship with Senator Leahy?

I adore the man.

Why?

He's extremely impressive at his job.

Perhaps as good as there's ever been.

And he also looked out for me when I was the new kid on the block.

So it's a pretty good combo right there.

I've learned a lot from him just by watching him.

Like what?

In particular?

Well, he's particularly good at being a chairman, which is a fairly unique skill set.

But 48 years gives you a lot of opportunities to be a chairman, and he's been a very effective one for a long time.

He, He can command a hearing room like very few other people when he dials up the big voice.

He immediately takes over the room.

He can also be extremely deft at navigating the sensibilities in the room with the right word in the right way, so that he makes his point extremely effectively with sort of surgical precision.

Thank you for joining the Department of Defense in recognizing the public service and contributions to the United States armed forces during the four plus decades that Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama have served the United States Congress.

In a few moments, the office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, and each service will present the distinguished Public Service Award to Senator Leahy and Senator Shelby.

This award is the highest honor that can be presented by the Department of Defense to a private citizen.

I want to speak on behalf of the Joint Forces, 2.1 million of us in uniform, active duty, guard, reserve, all their families, another several million, all the veterans that are out there, you know, 48 years and 44 years of service in the Senate.

They are unbelievably committed, the amount of incredible integrity in their character is absolutely beyond reproach.

And one of the things that I think that stands out the most, both of you, is your ability to work together in a bipartisan way to get things done for the nation.

Thank you very much for hosting us here today in your office.

I appreciate talking with you.

I've been looking forward to it.

One of your first votes and certainly the first vote that put you in the forefront of American politics was your vote in 1975 against continuing funding for the Vietnam War.

And your vote at that time was not only going against your party's wishes, but it went against the feelings of many Vermonters at the time who still supported the Vietnam War.

The editor of, at that time, the largest newspaper said, I would never be reelected.

Nobody from Vermont or the area ever voted to end it.

I'd be a minority of one and they'd make sure I didn't get reelected.

And that was 48 years ago.

But I felt that's the way I should vote.

It was highlighted a little bit more because it was by a one vote margin.

Had I voted the other way it would have continued the authorization.

One very conservative Democrat, actually an independent, who had always voted for money for Vietnam.

Joined in the vote with me.

The chair, after glaring at me, turned to him and said, Did you really mean to vote no?

I'll never forget what he said.

I voted no.

They have lied to me long enough.

The chair said, You best get the president on the line.

He’ll have to know the war's over.

It was a powerful vote at at an early point in your career.

And I suspect that you've reflected on that vote moving through other challenging votes.

I knew it could cost me the seat in the Senate.

I was never supposed to be elected anyway.

The poll the weekend before, I still got the headline.

Poll Dooms Leahy, I was supposedly 35 points behind and I won.

And I thought why would you want to be in the Senate if the only thing you can think of is getting reelected?

This was one I knew, in fact, I thought at the time it would cost me the election.

It's also why I've done so much with the Leahy war Victims Fund in Vietnam, where I've helped bring the countries together.

Well, that has been important to you.

Clearly, it's been something that you've been passionate about working to support victims of landmines in particular.

You also did not support the war in Iraq.

You were in support of the ending of our military occupation in Afghanistan.

You have worked in other ways with victims of war, and you've criticized the military budget and bloated spending over the years and have called for a reprioritization of how the military allocates funding.

To be more strategic in American defense.

Your support of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter seemed like an aberration to some Vermonters and in fact, felt like a betrayal to some Vermonters who saw you as an advocate for people who would be impacted unfairly as civilians.

How do you react to Vermonters who felt betrayed by you on that, who thought they knew something about you and felt like this was not in character with what they thought, how they thought you would vote, or how they thought you would support them for vulnerable communities affected by the noise.

I wish they’d come and talk to me about it.

I went over and over on it.

I had been a supporter of the National Guard.

I’m a supporter of the Army National Guard.

I want Vermont to have a good National Guard, especially because its ratings have always been among the highest in the whole country.

I think the three of us in the delegation thought it would help maintain that rating.

With the F-35, the cost overruns are not acceptable.

And I made it very clear they're not going to have my vote on funding if that continues.

To answer that.

I don’t think so.

A different archivist was working for Senator Leahy from 2019 until actually just a few weeks ago.

He's actually a really good example of what to do.

But a lot of senators don't have any archivists at all.

The quote I was given from the packing company is that all his stuff, including pieces of furniture will be 610 cubic feet of material.

But I mean, he's been in office forever, so it is daunting.

A lot of the stuff that's still on the walls are going to be given to staff as gifts.

But there's also stuff that like still has to be added to the database and everything.

So these are the boxes that we know are going to UVM.

So it's like all these and these and I have even more in my office.

We had 225 white record boxes just like all over the place.

Yeah.

So this was my office with all these, like, boxes.

It's boxes and boxes and boxes.

We're going to have to get someone to unscrew the Vermont sign on the door, because that's such, like a special thing, like no one else has that on their door or anything like that.

Yeah, that definitely has to go to the archives.

Let me shift gears a little bit and talk about agriculture and food.

You have worked for a long time in your career on issues that are important to agriculture for Vermont farmers and Vermont communities, as well as for the nation.

And we can look to legislation that you've worked on when it comes to organic standards, organic labeling, GMO labeling, which you defended.

You've also worked on farm to table initiatives, particularly as they relate to farm to school, to get access for school kids.

I want the school kids to know what real food tastes like, not what's in the package and all that.

Yes.

And that provides an economic avenue of support for farmers and for agricultural producers.

You've also been a supporter of supplemental food programs, WIC and SNAP, for example, that help make sure that people have access to food when they don't necessarily have the money to support it.

However, as you're retiring, we're looking at increasing inflation, huge inflation in grocery bills and costs which affect even Americans who previously felt secure in their ability to feed their families.

and a new study in Vermont that shows two in five Vermonters do not feel like they have the ability to cover their food needs at any given time right now.

This is not a problem that has been fixed.

Despite your work and others work on food issues.

And I wonder, as you're leaving, what you think would work to make sure that everybody can at least feed themselves and their families.

When I wrote the Organic Farm Bill, organic farmers in Vermont were having a difficult time following standards because they'd be undercut by people that wouldn't and then call it organic.

We changed that.

That kept a lot of farmers, employed, a lot of Vermonters employed good food employed.

We should continue that.

The price of food, especially in the big conglomerates, I think they're raising it far too much.

But all of these inflationary things are hurting the average working person.

I can bring and have brought far more money to Vermont than anybody in history, but then it's got to be invested correctly.

We've got to do things to bring decent paying jobs into Vermont because things are costing more and I think everybody has to try to find ways of attacking that.

Food worries me.

If it's big food companies, their profit, some of them their profits have become obscene and their packaging has become smaller at the same time.

That's got to stop.

So beyond inflationary pressures, you think big food companies are actually tacking on higher costs than they need to?

Well, I think they are.

I mean, a lot of these companies are, but there's no magic way.

You know, I started programs so you could use food stamps at farmers markets that made a big difference in the number of farms that could employ people in Vermont.

And people's access to fresh fruit and vegetables.

That's why Marcelle and I'll go around to a lot of the school lunch programs and have lunch with the kids, not to get votes from ten or 11 year olds, but to say, what do you like about the food?

Some of the food, they look at it, they don't try it, some vegetables, so Marcelle and I always put it on our plate and they say oh this really good.

Yes, but no, there's no easy, I worry the inflationary costs are especially hard on a small state like ours.

It's one of the reasons I brought the hundreds of millions of dollars to Vermont on programs that might help employ people.

And yet two in five, two in five, almost half of all Vermonters can’t afford their own food right now.

Which, in the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth, to have people go hungry makes no sense.

I say if we can build more battleships, we can feed more people.

So we thought we'd ask, you know, what it feels like as you start to get adjusted to what it's going to be like to move over from the House to the Senate?

Well, you know, a lot of it has to do with Senator Leahy.

And there's a certain amount of humility on this, because it's rare in public life that somebody served so long, so well, 48 years.

And so for so many Vermonters, me included, I think for all of us, two things: One, he's been a constant in our life in Vermont for so many Vermonters.

And number two, as you get older and you appreciate that we all make our mistakes, we all have our lumps.

But there's some people who somehow manage to maintain their integrity, their sense of commitment, their deep appreciation for Vermonters.

And that's Patrick.

His is a Senate life well lived.

So it's it's really kind of as a Vermonter, I'm proud to be witnessing the appreciation and affection that folks have for Patrick and Marcelle.

Well, you've been to his hideaway, the hideaway... We didn't go to the hideaway.

Well, you want to go to the hideaway if you can.

The hideaway has the hideaway is a misnomer.

I guess it's like, you know.

And yet you don't even have lights yet and you're in your transitional office.

That's true.

That's true.

I'm going to do something about that.

Patrick's got a beautiful view of the mall, and he'll miss that.

Could you tell us a little bit about what this means to you today to have Bishop Coyne here and to be doing this?

It means a lot.

I've had the opportunity to invite people here before.

My late brother in law and the bishop.

Those are two very meaningful things for me.

The senator and his staff have been incredibly helpful to the people of Vermont, but also to our Catholic Church, because of immigration issues.

And we've had a lot of issues with getting some seminarians in from Vietnam and getting our priests in from Philippines and India.

And his office has really helped a lot for us and been stepped up.

And they've also helped us with some other people that are dealing with immigration issues.

So I just, I'm very thankful and I want to thank him for all that that that, you know, we have our disagreements on other things and such.

When you talk about your differences, do you discuss political differences like marriage and his support for same sex marriage?

We talk about it, but it's but it's more just kind of coming to a common understanding of our positions.

I understand clearly the senator's position, he understands mine and trying to accommodate each other and find a way that we can continue to dialog.

I think I want to be an example to others of how we need to just reach across those things that divide us in time and see the good works that we can do in common in spite of the differences.

And I think the Senator does as well.

I'm hoping that you could take us back to 1996 and your vote in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act, Douma.

By 2011, you were voting in support of same sex marriage, and a lot had changed in those 15 years in between.

And I'm I'm curious if before we talk about your support for same sex marriage, if you could take us to 1996 and what you were thinking?

Well, I was worried that they had tacked a couple of things in there.

I was fine with same sex marriage.

I had problems the way the one was written here.

And I was afraid of how it might affect Vermont.

In retrospect, I think I probably should have worked harder to get an amendment to clarify it, but then it might not have passed.

I've always favored same sex marriage.

We have a number of people through the years in my office, Marcelle and I attended same sex marriages.

I've defended it on the floor.

I passed the recent, helped pass the recent bill.

When you say you've always supported same sex marriage, that's not something a lot of Americans can say of your age.

This is something that has changed in American culture pretty rapidly when it comes to, when we think about civil rights.

It has.

But, you know, Marcelle and I grew up with friends who were in a same sex relationship.

And we've always said, that's fine.

That's not who we are.

That's who you are.

And you're good people.

And we're glad to have you as friends.

Yesterday you were joined by Vermont’s Catholic Bishop, Bishop Coyne to give the opening prayer in the Senate and your Catholic faith is something that you have talked about over the years.

The Catholic Church, of course, officially does not sanction or support gay marriage, same sex marriage.

When you think about where and how your faith guides you and where and how you diverge from official church doctrine, how do you think about those two things when they when they are in conflict?

I have one faith, my oath of office.

So your faith and your what you see as your oath of office or your oath to to law, that rises above your religious convictions.

So my feeling that especially a male hierarchy to make choices for women is wrong.

We don't have to defend marriage.

We just celebrated her 60th anniversary.

But we both defend the right for women to make the choices they want.

If it’s a gay couple, male or female, it's their choice.

It's not ours.

If they want to set up a bank robbery chain or something like that, then I think steps should be taken.

But on personal matters, that should be a person’s choice, not the government’s.

As you're leaving office, the right to access to an abortion is a big topic in American culture and in Washington.

Access to practicing your own religion is something that is sometimes debated in American culture.

Marriage rights and equality.

Voting rights.

So many civil rights issues that are still not fully legalized or fully actualized in American culture.

Oh I agree and on the John Lewis act on voting rights, I was the chief sponsor.

Don't you think everybody should be able to vote?

I've even done ads where we changed the time of primaries urging everybody to vote, Republican or Democrat.

And I've said so.

I did say in one of these ads, Marcelle and I were talking, I turned to her and I said, you know, but I hope you vote for me.

She said, Do do I get a bumper sticker?

We didn't realize the camera was still going, she said it as a joke.

All over the state, people we never met would come up to her and say, did you get your bumper sticker.

And did she did you have bumper stickers?

She did.

She did.

I think he would be a very conscientious, sympathetic senator.

I'm glad that he's doing it.

It's kind of frightening because either way, it's going to make a big change in our lives.

Look who’s here.

Oh, I thought you were inside.

So this is your interview darling.

I'm just here to...

I'm much more comfortable when he's being, the one being interviewed.

You probably already know this, but the Vermont press corps has a game that we play when we interview your husband and we keep track of how many times he talks about his early career as a prosecutor, how many times he mentions the farm in Middlesex and the one that you know will have the most mentions is how many times he mentions Marcelle.

I have heard that, yes.

How do you feel about that?

Well, it's kind of nice.

When he first started in politics, it was not easy for me at all.

We were both pretty unprepared, and sometimes I would hang back and he would literally reach back and pull me.

Pull me along.

And not because I was unwilling.

It was more that I was uncertain.

Sometimes it wasn't even the hand that I could just feel him pulling me and including me in things.

And it's been really nice because it's given me such an opportunity to experience things that I never would have otherwise.

It's been very special.

Did you have career aspirations that you were not able to recognize because of Senator Leahy's job, but that you were able to substitute with fulfillment in other ways?

I had three wishes as a young woman, as a teenager, and it was that I wanted to be a nurse.

I did it, and I didn't work as long as I might have.

But I did work a fair amount, and I wanted to have a happy marriage.

It’s OK. And I wanted to have children.

And I think that's a pretty successful life.

I got 100 out of 100.

Yeah, that is pretty successful.

Not everybody gets all three of those wishes.

Mm hmm.

Yes.

I'm sorry.

It's just it's.

No, it's been a really tough week on, not tough, but emotional.

Why?

Well, we're saying goodbye to a lot of people and a lot of things.

What does that mean to you that so many people are appreciating the time that both of you have spent here and the work that Senator Leahy has done?

Oh, I, we've been together and I've been at Patrick's side for so many of the things that he's worked so hard on.

And fortunately for most of them, he's achieved.

What influence do you think you have had on decisions Patrick Leahy has made over the years?

Where do we see your influence?

I don't know.

I think I don't know how to answer that.

You were there every step of the way with me.

You were there when we were getting the prosthetics for the people that lost limbs.

You were there visiting the people who had been injured and those children who inherited the disaster of Agent Orange.

And they were talking about, all the way through, you were there helping them into a wheelchair, helping children who couldn't walk otherwise.

And we did that together.

But you see, this is this is my point exactly.

That he gives me more credit than I think I really deserve, because you're the one that did this.

I feel I accompanied you.

You're the one that went in the operating rooms and I always stayed outside.

Yeah.

Does everybody in the Senate know Marcelle?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

She's very outgoing and she's very, you know, she travels with him and she's sort of unmistakably his better half.

That's really pretty impressive when you think how long they've been married that they're still like a couple of high school seniors who have a crush on each other.

What do you think he's going to miss most?

Colleagues.

Some of them.

You know, there's always a couple of live ones in every group.

But I think generally Patrick is extremely gregarious.

He loves the senators.

He looks out for his colleagues.

When you say he was a mentor when you first came here, what does mentorship look like or what does somebody helping to show you around and get you acquainted look like in the Senate?

Well, sometimes it's just like taking you to his magnificent hideaway to partake of holy water, to use his phrase and feeling that you're included with the cool kids.

Sometimes the conversations veer a little bit more philosophically.

And very often it's about the history of the Senate and Patrick imparting 48 years of experience and stories and learning and legend that help you understand the institution.

I want to switch gears completely and ask you a little bit about your hideaway office, because as we've moved around the Capitol here, we keep hearing from people who as much as they're going to miss you, Senator, may miss the jovial social visits in your hideaway office with what you call holy water.

So I, I wonder if you're going to miss that as much as they will.

Well, I’ll miss the camaraderie.

The view is spectacular.

You look down the mall, the balcony out there.

I invite senators of both parties to come down.

We'll be having an evening session.

You got these beautiful sunset views from it.

I invite them down for holy water and prayer hour.

And one senator said, well, holy water, prayer, I'm not sure that works with my religion.

He said, well, Pat’s got 12 year old Holy Water.

He’s got single malt.

He said that fits my religion, I'll be there.

But when we get there, we start talking, we find it's not just the political issues.

We talk about what our children may be doing at school or what it was like growing up, many of them in very difficult circumstances.

What people feel like in their state and they will say on this thing that we're hung up on, what if we gave a little and you gave a little and we work out agreement sometimes on legislation nobody thought can be done?

I passed more bipartisan legislation and a lot of studies show that, than any other senator.

But you got to take time and talk with them, not just, well, section one, two, three is better than section four or five, six, rather, how how will this affect your state?

And if we change this, would it be better for your state and still protect my state?

And we usually find ways.

Vermonters certainly know what he has contributed to our state in many ways.

And what, just by virtue of his seniority in some cases, what he's been able to bring to our small state and as a fellow small state senator, you know, that's important to small states.

And some of the ways that a rural state has been able to benefit even through COVID policies, through his advocacy.

Beyond Vermont, what do you think his legacy is?

A lot of his legacy is going to be in judiciary and having stood up and spoken up for civil rights in incredibly powerful ways.

I think as an early supporter of President Obama, he made a measurable difference in making President Obama's presidency a real prospect.

And I think that's something of a legacy.

And I've traveled with him overseas and the guy’s worshiped in Vietnam in particular, where his work on unexploded ordinance and on Agent Orange and on cleaning up our old facilities has made him a real national hero.

So it depends on where you go.

But he's got, he leaves a lot of legacy.

When you look at this, when you see your name there, and that's going to be that's going to be pryed off in a couple of weeks.

What is what do you think about when you touch that panel?

I think how fortunate I am to have had the opportunity.

I grew up in a small city in Vermont.

That'd be quite a career to have been state's attorney.

I think of the, whereas, the most junior member in this committee, no, I never thought I'd be here.

And I think what a privilege it is.

And I also feel so privileged that I could be here, where I can make up my mind as I did a few years ago, that this would be my last term.

And I could look back over, well over 17,000 votes and I could say, Yeah, there's somethings in retrospect I’d do differently.

And I took comfort during the times, thinking the issue will come up again.

But the key issues of war and impeachment, things like that, that comes up once.

And I thought that through very, very carefully, did not want to make a mistake.

But Marcelle and I talked about this after the last election.

I want to be able to do the most I can right up to the very end.

And I am.

So I feel good about that.

After I announced, over a year ago, that I wasn't going to run again, somebody asked, well, do you have any doubts on your decision?

I said, absolutely none.

We thought, Marcelle and I thought it through very carefully and I knew that's what I wanted.

You're nearing a half century of work in the Senate and a longer career as a politician and a powerful person in Vermont.

But as the years go on, people's legacies gets distilled down to one or two things.

There's so much in Vermont that bears your name or bears your thumbprints, bears your legacy.

But in 50 or 100 years, what do you think the power of your legacy is still going to be?

I hope it would be that I was honest.

I followed true Vermont values, the values I saw as an adult and saw the bad things fade away and that I set a standard by which others could.

I want people to see that as the way things could be done, that I showed how we cannot become an island.

We are connected to the rest of the world.

I don't want to be known for any one of them.

I want it to be known that I helped strengthen the environmental community just as I have the nutrition community and, but if there’s any one thing, that I was willing to stand up for principle when I cast, after only three months in when I was told nobody from Vermont’s ever voted to stop the war.

We Certainly had members of Congress from Vermont who pointed out what was wrong with it, but never voted to stop it and told me how I was going to be a one term senator because of that.

And I hope people remember me as saying, then that's what I'll be, because it's so important to stop it.

Do you have any regrets?

No.

I mean, I had some great opportunities in here.

We had one president that wanted to nominate me to the U.S. Supreme Court.

He writes about his own book, a biography.

I said, no, I don't want to be in the judicial monastery.

I’ve obviously been offered a number of jobs that would pay a lot more than the Senate, be a lot less work, but it's not what I want to do.

I felt a real opportunity to represent our native state, mine and Marcelle’s, in the Senate and have the opportunity to reach out on anything I wanted.

And I remember as a young law student at Georgetown, walking up to the Capitol, looking at the Senate and saying, man what a job.

I'll never be there.

But what a job.

But once I got in the senate, I knew I’d be there for six years or possibly 12 years.

It was inconceivable it would be 48 years.

This this place would give me the opportunity to be involved in anything I want.

I can do more for Vermont than anybody has been able to.

In the last COVID bill, I brought an extra billion and a half or so to Vermont for it.

But when I go into some of these small towns and they say, look what we did in our school, look at the program that you helped start.

And here's these kids, I mean, we had them all out, one time, singing to Marcelle and myself.

I think, you know, where else would I be able to do something like this and still come home to a state where you can walk down the street and have people call you by your first name and say, I saw your cousin yesterday or something like that.

So, no, I never had any regrets.

I was glad to be there.

And we started making up our minds about three years ago and pretty well made up our mind, this is the time to leave.

I loved being able to announce I was leaving in the same room in the state house where I announced as a 33 year old, that I was going to run.

Yeah, okay, kid, have fun.

They don't call me kid anymore, but no.

The Senate can be a wonderful steppingstone for other things.

I was just happy to be in the Senate.

Why didn't you ever run for president?

Oh, God, no.

Because we weren’t going to elect anybody from this state.

I was not going to, I had far more independence doing what I do.

I’ve known a number of presidents very well, I've enjoyed working with them and enjoyed the fact I could pick up the phone and call them privately.

Be heard.

But no, if I was going to run for president, I’d leave the Senate to do it because you can't run for president and do your work in the Senate at the same time.

As you think about the Senate, now, you write in your autobiography that there is this idea of the Senate as the conscience of the nation and you felt like it was when you got started.

You hope it can get back there, but you don't think it's the conscience of the nation now, or is it still?

I am very worried.

I'm very worried about the direction of the Senate.

Certainly very worried about the Supreme Court.

And I'm the only person who can talk about 48 years.

I mean, only two people served longer than I did in the history of the country, and they died in office.

Why didn't you want to keep going until you died in office?

Well, I knew I could get reelected.

I had strong support from both parties, but I’m 82 Marcelle and I needed more time for ourselves.

Because everything I did, she was helpful.

She would pitch in.

She'd be the chief volunteer.

We needed some, we needed some time.

All the way through, we've always said we want to go back home to Vermont.

So that's really nice, too.

I can't wait to be back home in Vermont.

We look, even now, we'll look at pictures and we'll say I remember that.

Wasn't that great.

It might be like a picture of the two of us scuba diving here.

But it might be also just a picture of us walking across the field of our farm in Middlesex.

Yeah and to spend time with our friends too.

Our friends and our family.

That's part of the savouring, things that we didn't have the time to do.

Time is most important.

Patrick said, scuba diving.

Are you up for that?

She's.

She's the one that started it.

Yeah, I did.

I did.

Well, thank you both.

Congratulations on a long tenure here.

It takes a lot of fortitude.

And I appreciate you talking with us.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We're privileged to have had the opportunity.

Yes, but we're home sick and we can't wait to get back to Vermont.

All the time.