Love him or hate him, Ted Kennedy was the last of his kind.
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It was not simply that he was the last of four brothers bred for destiny. Or that his name was Kennedy. For five decades Ted Kennedy has been the essential stitching in the broadcloth of the American political experience.
Ted was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1962 where he replaced his older brother Jack. Teddy had to wait two years to take Jack’s place because the Constitution set the minimum age for a U.S. senator at 30.
Warming up To Be the Main Event
Although he was a political novice, Teddy earned his stripes by managing John’s successful 1960 campaign for President. Ted learned to fly. During the campaign, he barnstormed the western states, bonding with delegates who ultimately put Jack over the top at the 1960 Democratic National Convention.
Following Jack’s assassination in 1963, Ted almost met his maker in a 1964 fatal plane crash. He was pulled from the wreckage by a fellow Senator, Birch Bayh. Teddy spent months in the hospital, recuperating from a punctured lung, internal bleeding and severe injuries to his back.
In 1968, Teddy carried the Presidential banner for brother Bobby. No one of my generation will soon forget the image of grief and anguish etched on Teddy’s face as he bore his brother’s casket from St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
Like his name, Teddy’s foibles were larger than life.
His drunken dalliances were fodder for the tabloids. Despite his long marriage to Joan, Teddy couldn’t be in the company of another woman without finding his mug splashed on the cover the National Enquirer.
Chappaquiddick and the death Mary Jo Kopechne should have ended his career in public life. But he was a Kennedy.
Questions about his conduct following the 1969 incident, however, effectively ended his 1980 run for President before it started. He lost in the primaries to Jimmy Carter.
No one would have faulted Ted if he’d called it quits after the death of his two older brothers. Many pleaded publicly pleaded with him to do so.
Ted eschewed the pundits and ignored his critics. While some may vehemently disagree, America is a better place because Teddy refused fade away.
Like his brothers, he was a gifted and often fiery orator. He believed passionately in civil rights. Despite his life of privilege, he was a tireless advocate for the working man.
He championed the fight for a national minimum wage, arguing that no fulltime worker should be destined to a life of poverty. He was an early opponent of intervention in El Salvador as well as aid to the Contras. Kennedy led the international fight against South African apartheid, and he was a driving force in bringing about a nuclear freeze between the world’s two remaining superpowers.
[img]662|left|||no_popup[/img]Ted fought to strengthen the provisions of the Voting Rights Act, and carried the first bill to promote federal research into AIDs. Much to the chagrin of many of the old boys, he supported equal funding for women’s sports under Title IX.
Even before his eldest son, Edward Jr., lost his leg to cancer, healthcare was a centerpiece on Kennedy’s legislative agenda. Despite his liberal reputation, Ted frequently reached across the political aisle to achieve many of his legislative goals, including healthcare reform.
Jean, the Lone Survivor
In 1971, he partnered with Republican Sen. Jacob Javits to pass the National Cancer Act. Kennedy used his political skills to pass the COBRA Act, which extended employer healthcare benefits to workers who lost their jobs. Despite his minority political status, he garnered enough Republican support in 1990 to pass the Americans with Disabilities Act.
He later formed an alliance with Republican Sen. Nancy Kassenbaum to pass the landmark Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act in 1996. The same year, he successfully sponsored the Mental Health Parity Act that compelled insurance companies to elevate mental health treatment to the same level as other physical ailments.
In 1997, he successfully convinced his Republican colleagues to use tobacco taxes to extend Medicaid to the youngest Americans under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP).
Now with the debate over national healthcare reform rising to a political crescendo, it’s likely that Ted Kennedy will continue to wield sway over the debate, even from his grave.
Kennedy’s support of Barack Obama when he was a political newcomer may have changed the face of American politics forever.
Kennedy had been a longtime ally and confidant of the Clintons. In spite of this relationship, he broke ranks and became the first major political figure to endorse Obama. Throughout the campaign, Kennedy relentlessly stumped for Obama, working crowds into a frenzy before the candidate took the podium.
Clearly, Teddy saw in Obama the embodiment of the President he never would be, the promise that was lost when assassins’ bullets prevented his brothers from fulfilling the dream of their father.
The Kennedy dynasty is the closest thing America has had to political royalty. From their compound in Hyannis Port, the progeny of Rose and Joseph, including Ted, have had an unmatched influence on the course of American politics.
Teddy’s sister Eunice Shriver, founder of the Special Olympics, wife of one-time vice-presidential candidate and creator of the Peace Corps, Sergeant Shriver, and mother of California’s First Lady Maria Shriver, passed two weeks ago.
With Eunice gone, only Teddy and his older sister Jean Kennedy Smith, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ireland, remained. Now Jean stands alone.
His oft-quoted tribute delivered during the eulogy to his brother Robert seems to have been his life’s anthem.
My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: “Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.”
Goodbye, Teddy. You will be missed.
John Cohn is a senior partner in the Globe West Financial Group, based in West Los Angeles. He may be contacted at www.globewestfinancial.com
