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Wed Aug 26, 2009 at 16:29:49 PM EDT
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It is a little after noon. And I just turned on the television for the first time today. It was hard enough to hear the news on the radio this morning. TV would be too much. The news from the clock radio had crashed through my slo-mo wake up. And, first, selfishly, I thought "Oh, no!" The central force in our fight for real health care reform stilled. How can this be? And what of the many great ventures advanced in the Congress on behalf of the people? Kennedy became mired in self during his relative youth, and early tenure in the Senate. And then he became one of the most selfless men ever to serve in Congress, always advancing programs that would serve the people, not special interests. As a Virginian with no Democratic Senator I felt I could call during the John Warner, George Allen days, I called Kennedy's office to thank him and them for being there. I called him during the late 1990s when the Republican Congress sought mightily to take down Bill Clinton. "My" Senator--because I had "none." And then, this morning, I brought myself back from selfish thoughts and thought about the loss of the man and the Senate legacy to America.
For 47 years Sen. Ted Kennedy, in many ways, was the Senate. How to imagine it without him there? Through good times and bad, the Kennedys always showed how to rise from tragedy and personal failings. They showed us how to mourn and how to fight one more time, no matter how difficult things become. From admonitions of responsibility from his patriarch father to personal failings to his reborn career in the Senate, Sen. Ted Kennedy's journey was part of who were and are.
It is more than heartbreaking that he has died before realizing the dream he fought for nearly forty years, universal health care. |
| KathyinBlacksburg :: "And the Dream Shall Never Die" (Ted Kennedy) |
| They were not perfect, but in many ways, the Kennedys stood in sharp outline of who we could be come, that we could, no matter who we were, reach for greater things. And those greater things were about making this country better for others. With Irish Catholic roots, I lived my older youth immersed in the Kennedys. I could not yet vote when JFK ran for the president (one had to be 21 to vote back then). But, when he campaigned near our town, I and other family members headed to a shopping mall a little over a mile from our home. And there we stood in the throng of thousands waiting for a glimpse of our orator candidate. My mother shook his hand, and then got down the rope line to do it again. I was further back and my glimpse less clear. It was the only time a presidential candidate came our way back then. It was a singular experience in my early life.
Though I am aware of his shortcomings, I loved having JFK for our president and was devastated upon his death. And though he had his Nixonian critics at home, he was beloved both at home and abroad-as was his extended family. Despite my admiration of JFK, and my profound reaction to his loss, I did not support Bobby for president. And it was not until McCarthy showed LBJs vulnerability that Bobby jumped in the race. Many of us thought he should have done so earlier. McCarthy would have supported him too had he been the one to lead the way. As we left McCarthy HQ on election night in Los Angeles, we heard the news as we started up our car in the garage of the Beverly Hilton. I will never forget that night that made Teddy the only surviving Kennedy brother. Even McCarthy supporters stayed up all night watching in disbelief the unfolding nightmare that had occurred at the Ambassador Hotel. And we tried to embrace that artful George Bernard Shaw quote Bobby loved so much: "Some dream things as they are and ask why. I dream things that never were and ask why not." That night, Teddy stepped up and never looked back.
Though his flawed life cost him presidential ambitions, his best life played out, as they say, as the Lion of the Senate. Few would have dreamed it 47 years ago, or in some of his darkest hours.
In July 1969, however, the Chappaquidick incident...in which he drove off a bridge with a young campaign worker, Mary Jo Kopechne, literally derailed his ambition for higher office. The young woman died, the circumstances of the story remain hazy even 40 years later -- but one thing was clear, Kennedy didn't seek out help immediately. And while Kennedy subsequently won back the respect of his colleagues, winning back the nation took a little more time. CBSNews.
--SCHIP
--ADA
--OSHA
--Title 9
As MSNBC summarized:
His answer was the 1964 Civil Rights Act, enacted in the wake of JFK's assassination, that outlawed discrimination on the basis of race; the 1965 Voting Rights Act, where Kennedy was especially proud of his sponsorship of the amendment banning the poll tax, which had been used for generations by Southerners to disenfranchise blacks; and the 1965 Immigration Reform Act, the bill that first allowed non-European immigrants into the United States in significant numbers, managed skillfully on the Senate floor by the young senator from Massachusetts. For more go here.
Hundreds of bills, indeed more legacy than anyone perhaps since the founding of our country. Ted Kennedy showed the real meaning of bipartisanship, strong partisanship, compassion for his opponents, and bridge building across the aisle. The capstone of Kennedy's life may well have been his help making Barack Obama our president, the looming Kennedy figure there before the crowds, rising oratory swelling once more as if our country depended upon it. And in some ways it did.
Ted Kennedy stood strongly against the Iraq war when few would. A hero in so many, many ways.
Many brilliant editorials will be written this day, but none so dear as the pain we each carry in our hearts today. Teddy can't bring us universal health care now. Nor any other of the things he hoped and dreamed for us. Today, that job is our own. |
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