True North

For better or worse - depending upon your partisan perccadillo - Ted Kennedy has remained a fixture upon the American political scene for the past 46 years.  And for a man whose last name epitomized family tragedy and who cheated death not once but twice, this latest and perhaps final bout with mortality in the form of a brain tumor seems an anti-climatic end to a political career and life.  Yet as many political writers will likely soon notice as they begin shifting between the ashes and the grains of sand left in Ted Kennedy’s hourglass, they might find such a finale quite fitting.

Ted Kennedy’s political life was always equal parts agony and ecstasy.  Too young to inherit his oldest brother’s Senate seat in 1960, Teddy found himself “waiting his turn” until 1962, winning a contest of dueling dynasties between himself and Henry Cabot Lodge’s son George.  Yet even in the wake of John Kennedy’s assissination, Teddy’s place in the Kennedy pantheon seemed relegated to the back.  Teddy seemed resigned to such a status.  As the media snapped pictures of a recovering Teddy who had narrowly survived a deadly plane crash in 1964, a few photographers shouted for Bobby Kennedy, then running for US Senate in New York, to move as he cast too far of a shadow for Teddy to be seen.  Teddy replied “that’s the way it will be when we’re in the Senate.”

It took losing another brother for Ted Kennedy to emerge from the shadows of Massachusetts’ royal family.  But despite being the last elected member of the Kennedy Clan, Teddy never quite turned promise and potential into power.  For all his years in the United States Senate, Kennedy never rose further than Majority Whip, and then only briefly holding the post from 1969 to 1971 before losing the title to fellow Democrat Senate icon Robert Byrd.  Supporters urged Kennedy to enter the 1972 and 1976 presidential races (even gaining support from 13 delegates at the 1972 convention without ever tossing his hat in the ring), but again Teddy failed to live up to the hype of his family’s name, chosing instead to challenge a sitting Democrat incumbent in 1980.

His 1980 bid bore all the hallmarks of Bobby Kennedy’s upstart 1968 campaign; unsuprising given that Teddy bears many more similarities to Bobby than John.  From his choices in policies to his choices in politics, Teddy has remained the well-groomed rebel, the slightly mainstreamed radical.  But Kennedy’s flair for risk did not serve him as well as it did his brother.  Clutching a bare 38% of the primary vote and slightly over 1,100 delegates, Kennedy carried on a quixotic floor fight culminating in his convention address that may well have signaled the beginning of the second phase of Kennedy’s political career.  Defining himself as the champion of the “New Deal” and “Great Society” liberal Democrats, Kennedy concluded:

And may it be said of us, both in dark passages and in bright days, in the words of Tennyson that my brothers quoted and loved, and that have special meaning for me now:
“I am a part of all that I have met….
Tho much is taken, much abides….
That which we are, we are–
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
              …strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

It remains more than a little tempting to ravage Kennedy, who in the preceeding 28 years after that address personified every liberal stereotype in the eyes of both conservative critics and skeptical independents.  Sometimes a parody onto himself, Kennedy would bluster his way on to the national stage for every issue of note, spout the need for some massive government intervention, take a hard but blunt strike at Republican opponents of the measure and then retreat to Kennebunkport.  Often lacking title in the Democratic ranks yet still given deference by pols and the media alike, Kennedy seemed more like a member of the “Patres Conscripti” of the Roman Senate - old men selected by the Roman powers that be, unencumbered by such concerns as elections.  Given that Kennedy’s only received less than 60% twice in his Senate career (in 1962 and 1994), the description seems somewhat apt.

Unlike some other Senate giants such as Robert Byrd or Bob Dole, Kennedy never held significant power - but he nevertheless always held sway.  Whether that sway stemmed from the Senator’s last name or political skills depends greatly upon one’s own political views, but since the passing of John Kennedy Jr., it has become obvious that when the Senate’s liberal lion no longer emerges from his den, a gigantic chapter in American history will have at last written its ending.

Cross-posted at Truth Vs. The Machine. Comments welcome.