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Robert Scheer: Remembering Ted Kennedy, the Real Deal
The light has gone out, and with it that infectious warm laugh and intensely progressive commitment of the best of the Kennedys. Not, at this point, to take anything away from the memory of his siblings — Bobby, whom I also got to know, was pretty terrific in his last years — but Sen. Ted Kennedy was the real deal.
Unable to move with his brothers’ intellectual alacrity, sometimes plodding in impromptu expression but smooth and skillful while reading from a script, the youngest Kennedy made up for his shortcomings early in his Senate career by resolutely working the substance of issues. His principled determination, plus his capacity to truly care about the real-world outcomes of legislation for ordinary people rather than its impact on his or anyone else’s election, became his signature qualities as a lawmaker.
But for those same reasons, he also wanted legislation passed, and his ability to work with the opposition, as he did three years ago with Sen. John McCain on immigration reform, now grants him a legacy as one of the nation’s great senators.
Oddly enough, for one born into such immense familial expectations, he was a surprisingly accessible and down-to-earth politician in the eyes of most journalists who covered him. I think of him as always authentic and never oily. As opposed to most politicians, the offstage Ted Kennedy was the more appealing one.
Although he excelled as an orator, never more so than delivering the speech that Bob Shrum crafted for him at the 1980 Democratic Convention but which was informed by Kennedy’s own deeply felt passion, it was in his less choreographed moments that he was at his best. I spent quite a few hours over the years interviewing him on subjects ranging from health care to nuclear arms control, mostly as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, and while his grammar could be troubling, his sentiments never were.
Not once in those interviews did I find Kennedy to equivocate or slide into the amoral triangulation that defines almost all successful politicians. They position themselves, but he took positions, and as in the case of health-care reform, he would end his life fighting for those causes with his last breath.
I would put Kennedy alongside my other hero, George McGovern, as the two most trusted standard-bearers of the Democratic Party’s too-often-sabotaged liberalism. I just could never imagine either of them ever selling us out. Indeed, I haven’t felt quite so sad about the passing of a political leader since the day when people started bawling all over the Bronx with the news that FDR had died. In a political world dominated by bipartisan cynicism, there are few touchstones of integrity for the common folk, and Kennedy was one of them.
Lest I be accused of surrendering to the emotions of the moment, let me quote from a column I wrote in January 2008 when the Democratic presidential primary battle hung in the balance: “It should mean a great deal to progressives that in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Ted Kennedy favors Sen. Barack Obama over two other colleagues he has worked with in the Senate. No one in the history of that institution has been a more consistent and effective fighter than Kennedy for an enlightened agenda, be it civil rights and liberty, gender equality, labor and immigrant justice, environmental protection, educational opportunity or opposing military adventures.
“Kennedy was a rare sane voice among the Democrats in strongly opposing the Iraq war, and it is no small tribute when he states: ‘We know the record of Barack Obama. There is the courage he showed when so many others were silent or simply went along. From the beginning, he opposed the war in Iraq. And let no one deny that truth.’”
Hopefully, it will be added to Kennedy’s legacy that he was right about Obama, just as he was consistently right on every major issue that he dealt with as a senator. Indeed, Kennedy’s endorsement of Obama was critical to the president’s historic nomination and election, and it is therefore fitting that the favor of that all-important endorsement be returned with a significant reform of the ailing U.S. health-care system.
In the first year of the George W. Bush presidency, I wrote a column for the Los Angeles Times titled “Bush Could Really Use a Fireside Chat with FDR,” stating, “This is a president who never learned that it is possible to be a leader born of privilege and yet be absorbed with the fate of those in need. ... Not so Roosevelt, a true aristocrat whose genuine love of the common man united this country to save it during its most severe time of economic turmoil and devastating war.” Kennedy wrote me a note thanking me for the column and adding, “I can think of at least 50 on the Senate side of Capitol Hill that could benefit from a good fireside chat as well.”
That’s also a worthy epitaph for Ted Kennedy: born of privilege, yet absorbed with the fate of those in need.
— TruthDig.com editor in chief Robert Scheer‘s new book is The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America. Click here for more information. He can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
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» on 08.27.09 @ 06:44 AM
He was a murderous corrupt drunk. No mention of leaving Mary Jo Kopechne for ten hours, leaving her to drown while he slept in Chappaquiddick? This is your “hero”?
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» on 08.27.09 @ 09:27 AM
And we are the prey. The champion of taking from those who work and giving to those who don’t. The hero of the poor and illegals. I wonder how much of his estate went to the poor and illegals?
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» on 08.27.09 @ 11:20 AM
Too bad some readers are so small that they cannot find kind words even for someone who just lost an agonizing battle with cancer, after devoting 47 years to public service.
Was Kennedy perfect or saintly? Of course not. His youthful vices and character lapses were many, and well documented. He had big feet of clay.
Did he stay the course, accepting blame, and keep fighting for what he thought was right? Yes.
Was he willing to reach across the aisle, and cut a deal with anyone, to move forward education, civil rights, health and human services? Yes he was.
Was he the greatest senator ever? Probably not. Was he a giant of his time? Without
a doubt.
Let us simply agree that both his virtues and his vices were oversized. That he did
much with the former, and might have done even more, if not for the latter.
RIP.
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» on 08.27.09 @ 01:01 PM
Yes it looks like the Kennedy’s family curse has struck again by taking the life of a 77 year, womanizing, some say murderous, traitorous, chronic morbidly obese, alcoholic.
Sorry, I have no respect for a man that at best was guilty of voluntary manslaughter. As well as using family privilege, which I thought was intolerable to the left, to get into Harvard (then cheating and getting kicked out). Then again using family privilege (from a family that ran illegal rum and whose father was a NAZI sympathizer) to get a nice cushy assignment in Europe during the Korean WAR. Then once again using family privilege to become a senator that did more to bring down the economic standard of average Americans than any single person in history. A man that was the supreme womanizer using family privilege to get out of rape charges for himself and his spawn. I hate to think of the damage that an illegal rum running NAZI sympathizer’s son did. This is the traitor that sought USSR help in stopping Reagan’s cold war concepts that eventually stopped the communist.
I will grieve for his family not for his life.
Teddy, say hi to Tookie for me.
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