Farewell to a Senator

It’s hard to picture the Senate without Ted Kennedy. Over the last 47 years, his name has become synonymous with the liberal movement, and his face, with his thick white hair and ruddy cheeks, his sharp jaw and sharper tongue, has become a symbol of the American Left. Though born into uncommon privilege, Kennedy made a career of defending the downtrodden. President Barack H. Obama praised his voice as one that spoke for the “poor and powerless,” and his funeral Mass this weekend was attended not only by political bigwigs and members of the Kennedy clan, but also by 50,000 supporters from all walks of life. Senator Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy’s life-long commitment to public service has made his career a triumph and his death a time of sadness for Massachusetts and for the nation.

Kennedy’s Senate tenure, the third-longest in U.S. history, has been definitively liberal, but Kennedy also developed a reputation for making compromises to pass landmark, bipartisan legislation. For years, Kennedy was ahead of the curve on pressing political issues, and many of his great legislative causes—such as immigration reform or health care reform—continue to be relevant today.

Kennedy’s death comes after a half-century in public service. Kennedy first gained national exposure for managing his brother John F. Kennedy’s 1960 presidential campaign in the western states. He later won a special election to take his brother’s former Massachusetts Senate seat in 1962 when he turned the minimum age of 30. Great Society reforms occupied much of the young Senator’s agenda. Kennedy helped pass the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended the quota system favoring Europeans and opened the doors to immigration for millions of Asians, Africans, and Latin Americans.

As a Democratic leader under Reagan, Kennedy helped pass sanctions against apartheid South Africa as an override to Reagan’s veto, and clashed openly with Reagan over weapons development and support for the Contras. Kennedy also grew to be a staunch supporter of gay and women’s rights, and his opposition to Reagan’s Supreme Court candidate Robert Bork, a constitutional originalist who hoped to overturn Roe v. Wade, is credited with preventing Bork’s nomination. On the Senate floor, Kennedy furiously alleged that “Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, and schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of Americans.”

Kennedy’s voting record also shows general support for limiting executive power, smoking prevention, and alternative energy, though he was accused of NIMBY-ism in his opposition to Cape Wind, a proposal for an offshore wind farm near Cape Cod. In the last decade, Kennedy has pushed for accountability and greater humanitarian aid in Iraq.

But Kennedy was hardly just a liberal bomb thrower. He reached across the aisle to secure passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, which helped protect women against sexual harassment in the workplace. More recently, Kennedy partnered with President George W. Bush and other conservatives to pass the landmark No Child Left Behind reform to education.In his final year in the Senate, Kennedy aimed to broker a compromise on health care reform, something he called the cause of his life. His death dims the hope for a breakthrough on healthcare this year, although Kennedy’s brain cancer had kept him out of the fray for months.

Kennedy was not always the beacon of courage and determination his eulogizers have made him out to be. As a freshman at Harvard, he worried his grades would jeopardize his eligibility to play football, so he had a friend take a Spanish exam in his place. Both were thrown out for two years but returned on good behavior, and Kennedy graduated in 1956.

Five years into his Senate career, Kennedy had another, greater brush with disaster. At just 37 years old, but on the cusp of a potential Democratic presidential nomination, Kennedy visited Martha’s Vineyard in July, 1969. He attended a party thrown for Robert Kennedy’s former staffers. The guests had been drinking moderately, but Ted Kennedy, hoping to catch the last ferry home, left the party with Mary Jo Kopechne, a young aide to Robert Kennedy.

The pair never reached the ferry. Kennedy accidentally drove the Oldsmobile off a bridge into a tidal channel on Chappaquiddick Island, and while Kennedy survived, Kopechne’s body was found by authorities the next day. Rumors swirled around the incident. Kennedy later pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was given a two-month suspended sentence, but his presidential aspirations were over.

But while Kennedy’s personal life was not perfect, we are grateful as a nation that he retained his Senate seat and went on to contribute greatly to his country. In a summer when personal transgressions of politicians have dominated the headlines, his story suggests that for many, second chances are warranted.

Kennedy’s death has been called an “end of an era” by many commentators. It’s true that as the last surviving brother of a remarkable family, his passing has pushed many Americans to sadly remember the long-gone days of touch football on the White House lawn or the youthful idealism that helped put a man on the moon. But the influence of the Kennedy brothers on Washington continues to be felt, and their brand of politics, focusing on hope for a better world and a strong commitment to public service and bipartisanship, has inspired modern-day politicians, including Obama.

Kennedy’s leadership qualities and ability to garner support from other politicians, even those who disagreed with him, was exemplary. However, the next generation of public servants need not have a famous last name to be equally effective. We hope that present and future legislative leaders study Kennedy’s successes and step up to fill the void he left behind.