Prez: Politicians should carry themselves more like Kennedy.

Byline: David Espo and Nedra Pickler

BOSTON -- President Barack Obama summoned today's quarrelsome political leaders on Monday to emulate the late Sen. Edward M. Kennedy in the pursuit of compromise, 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 under a tent in raw weather just outside the doors of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute.

''To his harshest critics who saw him as nothing more than a partisan lightning rod, that might sound foolish,'' the president added. ''But there are Republicans here for a reason.''

Among them were former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi, who is on the institute's board of directors, and Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who said he recalled how much he enjoyed fighting with the Massachusetts colleague in the Senate.

''It's getting harder to find someone who loves a good fight as much as he did,'' said McCain, who has spoken less highly of tea party-aligned members of his own party with whom he has had differences. ''The place hasn't been the same without him.''

The $79 million institute stands next to the John F. Kennedy presidential library on Boston's Columbia Point. The late senator envisioned the facility before he was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2008. He died in 2009.

The centerpiece of the new facility is a replica of the Senate floor where Kennedy had a desk for 47 years.

Envisioning children visiting the institute and playing the role of senator, Obama said the institute can help change the cynicism that permeates politics. ''Imagine a gaggle of school kids clutching tablets, turning cloakrooms into classrooms. Imagine their moral universe expanding as they hear about the great battles'' that have been waged in the Senate.

Kennedy was known during his career as a liberal partisan, but the president said Republicans also knew him as ''someone who was willing to take half a loaf'' and then endure the anger of supporters who had wanted him to hold out for...