President Obama summoned today's quarrelsome political leaders to emulate the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in the pursuit of compromise on Monday, and said a new institute that bears the longtime Massachusetts senator's name can be as much an antidote to political cynicism as the man once was.
"What if we carried ourselves more like Ted Kennedy? What if we were to follow his example a little bit harder?" the president asked a crowd of family, former aides, and political dignitaries of both parties outside the doors of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute in Boston.
The $79 million institute stands next to the John F. Kennedy presidential library on Boston's Columbia Point. The senator envisioned the facility before he was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2008. He died in 2009. - AP