Ted Kennedy Dies from Brain Cancer, Remembered as ‘Lion of the Senate’

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27 August 2009 :: J.E. Robertson

Edward Moore Kennedy, United States senator for 46 years, has died from the effects of brain cancer, aged 77. Only two senators served longer, Robert Byrd and Strom Thurmond. The fourth of Joseph Kennedy’s sons, Sen. Kennedy entered the nation’s upper house of Congress in 1962, after a special election to replace his brother John, who had become president two years earlier. He devoted his career in the Senate to voting rights, civil rights, education and to the cause of achieving universal healthcare in the United States.

Sen. Kennedy’s last year was one of severe difficulty. After suffering a seizure in 2008, with symptoms of what appeared to be a stroke, he was diagnosed with malignant glioma, an aggressive brain tumor that is nearly always fatal (only 25% of patients survive 2 years after diagnosis). He underwent treatment and was seen little in public, though he did contribute to the 2008 Democratic presidential campaign and cast a few important votes before withdrawing from Senate business.

Just last week, the senior senator from Massachusetts requested that the state amend electoral laws to permit the governor to appoint his replacement, so that Massachusetts would have two votes on comprehensive healthcare reform. Kennedy’s weight in the Senate is unrivaled, and his urging that his constituents have continuity of representation is seen by many as the last act of civic responsibility by a man whose public life was devoted to serving the interests of the people of Massachusetts.

In the 2008 Democratic primary, Sen. Kennedy threw his weight behind the underdog junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, saying he was the leader the nation needed in a time of crisis, a transformative figure that comes along once in a generation. There was talk of a party split, between the Kennedy and Clinton power blocs, but Kennedy’s voice elevated Sen. Obama and lent him the gravitas of one of the most revered political leaders in the nation, famously called the ‘Lion of the Senate’.

Ted Kennedy has said “The fundamental test of our society is how it treats the least powerful among us”, and he devoted his life of public service to that principle. He was infused with the belief that those privileged enough to serve at so high a level as he are not the ones that need the defenses of government, but rather that the average citizen, the defenseless and the marginalized do need a government that works for social justice and the common good.

Newsweek’s Howard Fineman said on the night after Kennedy’s passing that “If you could quantify humanness, there was nobody more fully, more exuberantly but also tragically, human than Ted Kennedy.” He was a man who suffered human loss in a repeated and severe way, and who endured, who learned what it was to endure, to grow and to overcome his own errors in judgment. He was a man of the Senate who was also a man of devotion to the rights and the plight of the average citizen.

Nancy Reagan told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews that she and her husband were close friends with Ted Kennedy, a fact she said would likely surprise many people who think party comes before humanity. She said she became close to him personally due to their work in favor of stem cell research. “I’ll miss him, very much, and I’m sure we’ll all miss him. We would have gotten farther in the whole health issue, if Ted had been in there fighting”, adding that “I hope we get something”.

Sen. Kennedy’s work to improve the level of healthcare and the range of treatments available to patients around the world, by driving initiatives to fund advanced medical research, including not only stem cell research, but HIV/AIDS research, cancer research, experimental treatments and coverage under Medicare, Medicaid and SCHIP for such treatment programs, has been instrumental to improving the quality and the length of millions of lives.

In a life of flawed and uniquely impassioned choices and commitments, the senator was a Kennedy to the core: his commitment to public service gave the people of Massachusetts a resounding voice at the forefront of national discussions on issues ranging from civil rights to voting rights to health rights to privacy and international law. He was a crusader for social justice who would not countenance the deliberate marginalization of any group, and so he was willing to work with political rivals to ensure the most needed legislative work got done.

Pres. Obama is reported to be scheduled to deliver Sen. Kennedy’s eulogy at a service near his home in Massachusetts. The president had become close to Sen. Kennedy while seeking his counsel in the Senate. And Kennedy’s endorsement, his passionate campaigning for the young senator, and their shared commitment to healthcare reform, have left the impression that Obama was, in many respects, the leader to whom Ted Kennedy wanted to pass the mantle of progressive leadership in American politics.

Obama yesterday echoed the opinions of countless other commentators, colleagues and historians, saying “he became not only one of the greatest senators of our time, but one of the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy.” Obama praised Kennedy for both his determined fight for liberal Democratic values and for his talent for working “across party lines”, winning Republican support for needed legislation.

Ted Kennedy brought a sense of purpose and deep human devotion to the work of legislating, and his determination to find allies to reason and justice in both parties and to get the work of reason and justice done in the august body of the Senate, will be greatly missed. No senator at present, with former senators Barack Obama and Joe Biden in the White House, has exhibited such a talent for reaching out and building sound coalitions on the thorniest issues.

Kennedy himself made a bid for the presidency in 1980, challenging the incumbent from his own party, Jimmy Carter, whom he thought too soft a liberal to do the work he believed the nation most needed. Kennedy seemed at times genuinely reluctant and stumbled as a candidate. Some attribute his poor performance to fears related to the assassinations of his older brothers, while other say Teddy was reluctant to depart the Senate, where he was not only one of the great students of the Senate, its history and procedures, but also one of its most able and effective organizers and a potent leader on issues of historic importance.

Still others say he might have defeated Carter and even Reagan in 1980 if not for the tragedy of 10 years earlier on Chappaquiddick Island, off Martha’s Vineyard. The senator had left a party held in honor of the “Boiler-room Girls” —a group of young aides who had helped his brother Robert in the 1968 campaign that was cut short by his assassination— to drive one of the aides, Mary Jo Kopechne, to a ferry. After losing his way on dark island roads, Kennedy drive his car onto a small wooden bridge, and it slipped over the edge.

The senator escaped, but Miss Kopechne, 28 years of age, did not. Kennedy later testified that he repeatedly swam to reach her but was unable to free her from the vehicle. Reportedly suffering a concussion, he swam to shore and sought help on foot but was unsuccessful in rescuing Miss Kopechne.

He reportedly returned to his hotel to recuperate and did not visit the police station until 10 hours after the crash, the following morning. He was charged with leaving the scene of an accident. A judge later suggested that more immediate police intervention might have given Mary Jo Kopechne a chance at survival.

Kennedy was given a 2-month suspended sentence for leaving the scene of an accident and publicly apologized in a somber 13-minute statement, saying his leaving was “indefensible” and that he bore the weight and the sorrow of that responsibility every day of his life. Friends and family have since said that, indeed, he carried the tragedy always in his mind.

Kennedy’s personal struggles, including the tragic deaths of John and Robert, as well as the eldest brother Joe, Jr., in World War II, and of Mary Jo Kopechne, his own near-fatal plane crash in 1964 and his defeat in 1980, all contributed to steeling his resolve to work on behalf of the most defenseless.

After his loss in 1980, he pledged openly to devote his remaining years, though still not 50 years of age, to achieving as much as he could for his causes and for the least powerful in society, through total commitment to his work as senator. He died in his 47th consecutive year as a United States senator. His legacy is unparalleled and the programs he successfully enacted have helped to educate, heal and defend the rights of every American and of people beyond America’s borders.

Among his legislative achievements (of the more than 2,500 bills he wrote throughout his 46 years in the Senate, several hundred became law — one of history’s most significant contributions to the shaping of American law), he not only contributed to every major civil rights law since 1964 and helped lower the voting age to 18, he also won expanded medical coverage for children of the working poor.

He won passage for the Americans with Disabilities Act, Meals on Wheels (which delivers food to the elderly), family leave, women’s rights, labor rights, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). He was instrumental in shaping the student-centered elements of the No Child Left Behind act championed by Pres. George W. Bush, and ensuring it would steer money to poor districts lacking basic materials like textbooks.

After the attacks of 11 September 2001 on New York, Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania, Sen. Kennedy called Massachusetts families who had lost loved ones. He began placing the calls within 24 hours of the attacks, and his words and his expression of condolence and grief were important to many who received them. In all, he called 177 families, offering assistance, and delivering when it was requested. He wrote individual hand-signed letters to each of the families every year since the attacks.

One after another figure from both parties and a wide range of interests have come forward to assert that were Ted Kennedy leading the Senate’s work on producing comprehensive healthcare reform, a bill agreeable to both parties would have been passed by June and signed into law by now by Pres. Obama. Many are now suggesting consensus should be sought in Kennedy’s honor and the final bill named for him, due to his devoting his energies throughout all 46-plus years of his Senate career to the cause.

Vice President Joe Biden said of Kennedy, “Every day that I was with him, he restored my sense of idealism and my faith in the possibilities of what this country could do.” Larry Cohen, of the Communications Workers of America, said “Every major advance, every step forward for working families came about because of his efforts. Medicare and Medicaid, family and medical leave, workers’ rights, retirement security, equal rights and fair treatment for women, civil rights for people of color, the list goes on and on.”

George W. Bush praised him, saying “In a life filled with trials, Ted Kennedy never gave in to self-pity or despair.” And California Gov. Arnold Schwartzenegger, who is married to Kennedy’s niece Maria Shriver, said “He was the rock of our family: a loving husband, father, brother, and uncle.”

Sen. Robert Byrd, who wept openly when Kennedy was diagnosed with terminal cancer called Kennedy “my best friend in the Senate, my beloved friend” and urged colleagues to “stop the shouting and name-calling and have a civilized debate on healthcare reform” to honor his life of service.

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