A couple of years ago I sat down at my computer to write a post on some topic, I don't remember what. Before I typed the first word I got distracted by a thought that came out of nowhere. The thought was that Senator Ted Kennedy was getting old and I thought that I should write something on him while he was, as he was then, still healthy. And so I did.*
I am old enough to have grown up under the legacy of the Kennedy family. I still remember that early afternoon in the third grade when our homeroom teacher informed us that President Kennedy had been shot and was in "critical" condition, a condition that, upon inquiry from a classmate, I opined meant that he was going to be fine.
I remember that June day, I was on vacation with my family, when we heard on the car radio that Robert Kennedy had died after being shot the night before in Los Angeles.
And I remember Chappaquiddick.
Chappaquiddick, although indefensible, did not dampen my enthusiasm when in 1979 Senator Kennedy decided to challenge President Jimmy Carter in the Democratic primaries. For me, and others (however not enough others to make the challenge to Carter successful) Ted Kennedy was an inspirational figure at the time. Of course that had a lot to do with the patina that attached to his martyred brothers. But when he said at the Democratic convention that "the dream will never die" he stepped out of their shadow, and with his own memorable line.
It will be said that Kennedy was one of those polarizing figures who "you either loved or you hated." That is true for some people but not all. I remember reading Arthur Schlesinger's biography of RFK and his description of the funeral service. Among the attendees were Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago and Tom Hayden, founder of the radical Students for a Democratic Society. Daley was representaive of the old conservative guard of the Democratic party. Hayden wore the guerrilla's beret of the implacable anti-war activist. Schlesinger wrote that Robert Kennedy had the ability to touch figures on both political extremes because what had struck Schlesinger so powerfully at the service was that both Daley and Hayden were weeping.
So it can be said of Ted Kennedy.
His closest friend in the senate was Orrin Hatch. Hatch is from Utah, he is Mormon, he doesn't drink, he is very conservative. But many an evening, after the day's political arguments were over, would find the one in the chambers of the other just talking about life and its travails.
Although Kennedy was red meat to Republicans and the mere mention of his name was a political aphrodisiac that got wallets to open and spread wide, nearly every single piece of major legislation that bore Kennedy's name had the name of a Republican attached as a co-sponsor.
Those of us who admired his two brothers have little counter to the argument that our admiration is without sufficient basis. President Kennedy was in office only one thousand days and RFK wasn't given time enough to live even to capture the nomination. But in the career of the least promising male issue of Joseph and Rose Kennedy we may see a sign of what might have been. For this least promising son was one of the most effective legislators ever to serve in the United States Senate and his name is affixed to every major piece of legislation passed during his forty year career.
And so it may be truly said that an era has ended, that the remarkable DNA that produced Jack and Robert Kennedy has been spent with the death of Edward Moore Kennedy, the most accomplished Kennedy of them all.
*June 18, 2007
