For a generation or more, Edward M. Kennedy held two roles in the political life of the country. He was the vibrant symbol of American liberalism in an era of conservative ascendancy. He also was the vigorous embodiment of a pragmatic legislator in an era of deep partisan divisions and polarization in the nation’s politics.
Kennedy’s death from brain cancer late Tuesday brought an end to one of the most storied political careers of the past half-century.
That he died at a moment when one of the greatest causes of his lifetime — enactment of universal health insurance — faces major obstacles on Capitol Hill only underscored the void his absence has left.
Kennedy was the last of the Kennedy brothers, the patriarch of one of the most glamorous, influential and star-crossed families in American political history. He was father, uncle, sibling and leader in carrying on the traditions established by his two slain brothers, John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy. He knew tragedy and triumph, disappointment and elation, scandal and ultimately enormous success.
He sought the presidency but never achieved the ultimate prize in politics that once seemed part of his destiny. But with his defeat at the hands of President Jimmy Carter in the 1980 Democratic primaries, Kennedy seemed liberated from the burden of having to follow his brothers in a quest for the White House and went on to become what President Barack Obama on Wednesday called the “greatest senator of our time.”
“Dream shall never die”
Obama owes his presidency in part to the endorsement he received from Kennedy at a critical moment in the Democratic nomination battle in 2008. Kennedy urged Obama to run in 2008, not to wait, as others were counseling. Kennedy knew that Obama’s hopes of becoming president would diminish the longer he stayed in the Senate.
Kennedy saw in Obama something of his own brothers, and his eventual endorsement— which ruptured his relationship with Bill and Hillary Clinton — represented a passing of the Kennedy mantle to the young senator from Illinois. In return, Obama agreed to make health care legislation one of his first priorities as president.
Kennedy was steadfast in his political ideology. He was the champion of the poor, the downtrodden, the weak and the dispossessed. He battled for the causes of civil rights and women’s rights and health care and education spending. He believed in the power of government, whether it was in or out of fashion, as a force for change and for good. He voted against the resolution authorizing the Iraq war in 2003 and remained one of the conflict’s fiercest critics.
Kennedy fought for those causes in the Senate and spoke for them as the leader of his party’s liberal wing. The senator’s website, marking his death, featured the quotation that summed up that commitment, taken from his remarkable address to the Democratic National Convention in New York in 1980 as the last flames of his presidential candidacy were extinguished.
To tears throughout Madison Square Garden, Kennedy issued the call that echoed through the rest of this life: “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.”
Ronald Klain, chief of staff to Vice President Joe Biden, recalled that speech as he reflected on Kennedy’s death.
“For many of us active in politics and policy,” he said, “Sen. Kennedy’s stirring speech at the 1980 Democratic convention is a statement of idealism, determination and principle in politics that still inspires and guides.”
Followed his own compass
Charles Campion, a Boston-based political consultant who recalled standing for 12 hours at a Veterans of Foreign Wars hall in West Roxbury, Mass., during Kennedy’s first race for the Senate in 1962, said Wednesday, “His greatest legacy was his own faith and unwavering beliefs. He followed his own compass and regardless of polls and even his own political vulnerabilities, he would never compromise or finesse on his principles.”
Those convictions made him a lightning rod for criticism from conservatives. Through much of the past quarter century, the name Kennedy was used by Republican strategists to tar other politicians running for office, a guilt-by-association label that became a staple in many GOP campaigns.
Kennedy seemed an easy target in those political conflicts, an old-fashioned liberal who in an age when many prefer the label “progressive” never flinched from defending liberalism or ran from the label and what it stood for. Yet, when George W. Bush came to the White House in 2001, it was Kennedy to whom he reached out for help in passing his education reform initiative, the No Child Left Behind Act.
That, too, was typical of Kennedy’s life and legacy. As much as he was the liberal’s liberal, he was the legislator’s legislator, a man willing and able to work across party lines, a politician of deep conviction who knew how and when to cut a deal, who believed in the end that the role of a politician was to make progress, if not all at once, then step by step.
