| May his memory bring comfort to those he left behind. |
Sen. Ted Kennedy died shortly before midnight Tuesday at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, at age 77. "We've lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever," the Kennedy family said in a statement. "He loved this country and devoted his life to serving it." I thought about several different headlines for this article: "Teddy Deaddy" or maybe "Teddy & Mary Jo: Together Again." Then I decided not to pay attention. De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est and all that. But after a while, it occurred to me: What if The Distinguished Gentleman from Chappaquiddick had died in 1980? Or 1970? Or any time after 1969? What would we be saying about him now, if anything? I come to bury Teddy, not to praise him.
Sen. Edward Moore Kennedy, the youngest Kennedy brother, was left to head the family's political dynasty after his brothers President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated. Kennedy championed health care reform, working wages and equal rights in his storied career. In August, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom -- the nation's highest civilian honor -- by President Obama. His daughter, Kara Kennedy, accepted the award on his behalf.
Kennedy championed every liberal prescription there was. He was the baseline of liberalism, utterly lacking in any concept of cause and effect or the Law of Unintended Side Effects. As a result, programs he championed have been damaging the nation for year after year, and will form a legacy that will live on for years after his Eternal Flame has flickered out. Mocked by Vaughn Meader when his elder bother was president as the dumbass of the boyz, he lived up to his billing when he inherited the Senate seat -- with the exception of his political skills, which were machine-like in their smooth workings. He was returned to the Senate for term after term by the people of Massachussetts, who are legendary in the willingness to abide and even take pride in corruption that would make the Tweed Gang blanch.Kennedy was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor in May 2008 and underwent a successful brain surgery soon after that. But his health continued to deteriorate, and Kennedy suffered a seizure while attending the luncheon following President Barack Obama's inauguration.
Being polite and well-bred folk, we've mostly been reluctant to gloat at Kennedy's illness. On the other hand, it hasn't distressed me all that much. I didn't like him, thought him a bad person personally -- entirely too conscious of the inferiority of the Little People® he championed, with cocktail waitresses high on the list. He was a souse. He was a serial ass-grabber and an adulterer. He probably practiced several other sins I don't know about.
For Kennedy, the ascension of Obama was an important step toward realizing his goal of health care reform. At the Democratic National Convention in August 2008, the Massachusetts Democrat promised, "I pledge to you that I will be there next January on the floor of the United States Senate when we begin the great test." Sen. Kennedy made good on that pledge, but ultimately lost his battle with cancer.
I had no doubt he was going to lose his battle with inoperable brain cancer at the age of 76. It was merely a question of how long he was going to last, and how much further damage he cold do to the nation before Beelzebub came to carry him off.
Kennedy was first elected to the Senate in 1962, at the age of 30, and his tenure there would span four decades. A hardworking, well-liked politician who became the standard-bearer of his brothers' liberal causes, his career was clouded by allegations of personal immorality and accusations that his family's clout helped him avoid the consequences of an accident that left a young woman dead.
That would be Mary Jo, of course. I remember listening to His Enormity's talk on the accident on the radio a day or two after it happened. That was 40 years ago, so I can't recall the exact words. I can remember my eyebrows bumping into my hairline, though. It sounded phony at the time, and what I was left with was the certainty that he had left the girl to drown. His description of the event couldn't disguise that, even taking his description as literal truth. He spent the night sleeping in bourbon-induced slumber, while her body bobbed inside the car.
But for the younger members of the Kennedy clan, from his own three children to those of his brothers JFK and RFK, Ted Kennedy -- once seen as the youngest and least talented in a family of glamorous overachievers -- was both a surrogate father and the center of the family. And certainly it was Ted Kennedy who bore many of the tragedies of the family -- the violent deaths of four of his siblings, his son's battle with cancer, and the death of his nephew John F. Kennedy Jr. in a plane crash.
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