On November 4, 1979, fifty-two Americans were taken hostage in Teheran by Iranian revolutionaries. The televised images of mobs swarming the U.S. Embassy and of blindfolded American diplomats being led through hostile crowds aroused public opinion in our country. Each night, as the newscasts reminded Americans of the length of their captivity, the pressure mounted on President Carter to do something. Overriding objections from his secretary of state, Carter authorized a military rescue mission. It proved to be a disastrous failure. When Secretary Vance resigned in protest, Carter turned to Ed Muskie for his replacement. Less than a year earlier, at the age of forty-six, I had been sworn in as a federal judge. I did not, indeed could not then have imagined that by the time I turned forty-seven I would be a U.S. senator.
Viewed objectively, filling Muskie’s seat was a huge risk not worth taking. I loved being a federal judge and I was assured (if I maintained good conduct) of lifetime security. Most of those whose advice I sought urged me to stay where I was. One very good friend, a Portland lawyer, pointed out, “If you stay on the bench you’ll almost certainly get the chance to move up to the First Circuit,I and then you’ll have a good shot at the Supreme Court.” The possibility that I would someday be offered appointment to the Supreme Court seemed very remote and unrealistic to me. I later joked that so many of the friends I called for advice urged me to decline that I stopped calling. Instead I made the decision on my own. I was able to do so because my vision was no longer clouded by inadequacy, insecurity, or fear. I had been a partner in a small, good law firm, working with men I liked and admired. I was confident that even if I accepted appointment to the Senate and was defeated at the next election I could return to a successful law practice in Maine. Twenty years earlier that had been my principal goal in life. A few years earlier I had lost an election and discovered that the world didn’t end, for me or anyone else. I felt I had acquitted myself well as U.S. attorney and was confident that I also would have done so had I remained a federal judge; I had developed the habit of working hard to prepare myself for every task I undertook. While I knew accepting the Senate seat was a risk, I decided it was worth taking. I was influenced in part by the reality that while judges play a crucial role in our society, they are involved only in disputes that others choose to bring to them; they have virtually no independent authority to act on their own initiative. Elected officials, by contrast, and U.S. senators in particular, can initiate action on any issue they deem important enough to address.
Cy Vance was a man of integrity. I had gotten to know him well. When I saw him for the first time after entering the Senate, I thanked him for making it possible for me to become a U.S. senator. He laughed and replied, “Well, I’m glad some good came out of it.”
Entering the Senate was a major turning point in my life, and it was due largely to chance. In many other instances—some large, some small—chance has intervened to alter the course of my life, usually for the better. I believe that to be true of all other human lives as well. Life is unpredictable and random; we are unable to fully control it against the vagaries of chance. So we should anticipate chance, even without knowing when and how it will occur, and view it as offering an opportunity that might otherwise not be available. Chance can offer an escape from tedium, from a dead end, from failure; it can offer redemption from error; in some dramatic cases it can offer a new life, as it did for me.
I. One seat on the U.S. First Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Boston, is traditionally held by a judge from Maine.