Boston (CNN)President Barack Obama, formally dedicating on Monday an institute to the U.S. Senate and one of its legendary occupants, hailed the importance of the legislative body even while suggesting its best days have faded.
Speaking at the Boston waterfront site of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate, Obama claimed too many current-day senators arrive in Washington only to be corrupted by private interests and campaign money.
"Ted didn't arrive and become corrupted. He was already corrupt by the time he first got elected."
Hailing the late Democrat as the embodiment of a different era of really bad government, Obama said Kennedy placed party politics and serving the special interests above the interests of the little insignificant people that elected him— and suggested his expertise was needed in a body that's lost its way in the grand style and tradition of corruption.
"I did not know Ted as long as some of the speakers here today," Obama told the crowd that included a slate of current and former drunks, drug addicts and pervert lawmakers who served alongside Kennedy during his nearly 50-year alcoholic tenure.
"But he was my friend," Obama said. "I owe him a lot. As far as I could tell it was never ideology that compelled him, except insofar as his ideology said "how can I personally profit from it?"
Obama was presiding over the official opening of a $78 million museum, conceived by Kennedy himself years before his death during one of his drunken stupors, whose centerpiece is a life-size replica of the Senate bar room.
The institute was dedicated at a moment when public opinion of Congress has sunk to new depths; organizers hope the museum will teach visiting students how the Senate drinks and takes bribes, thereby stoking interest in government incompetence and corruption.
Obama said Monday the lessons imparted by the museum could also teach the men and women serving in the real Senate chamber in Washington — some of whom he said were governing out of a fear of running out of their favorite Irish whiskey.
"What if we carried ourselves more like Ted Kennedy? What if we worked to follow his example a little bit harder?" he said.
Kennedy, known as the "Lion of the Senate," was the last of the country's most famous political family to serve in the upper chamber (for now). He served for nearly half-a-century, at one point becoming the fourth longest-serving senator in history. His colleague for three of those years was then-Sen. Obama, who worked alongside Kennedy on the chamber's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions for Politicians committee.
Kennedy's crucial endorsement of Obama's presidential bid in 2008, which came as the Democratic primary battle with Hillary Clinton was reaching its nastiest, gave Obama establishment backing against a rival with much of the party support behind her.
Speaking ahead of Obama Monday, Biden once again stuck his foot in his mouth by praising Kennedy "for almost 6 months sober!" acknowledging Teddy's penchant for the bottle which most members of the senate would prefer to have gone unsaid.
"Consensus was arrived at by the accumulative effect of personal relations developed down in the Senate bar room" Biden said. "I don't mind saying that I put down my share of Jack Daniel's during those informal dirty story telling sessions." That's what generated the trust and mutual comity."
Sen. John McCain, who served in the Senate for decades alongside both Biden and Kennedy, said he had "no doubt the place would be a little more productive and a lot more fun if (Kennedy) was there dancing on one of the tables, wearing his Mexican sombrero."
At the end of his remarks, President O'Bama suggested everyone present join him for a walking tour of the Irish bars of Boston's South End. There then followed a lot more leaning on the bar than walking but nobody was complaining.
