Ted Kennedy

From the minute I started watching the memorial service to Senator Edward Kennedy last night, I knew I would have to shift around my plans for today, because I didn't want to miss a minute of any of the ceremonies. For some reason I'm a sucker for funerals of American leaders. Maybe it's because the sight of an honor guard carrying a flag-draped casket is incredibly moving, as is the sight of ex-presidents from both parties gathered for a common purpose. This fascination isn't partisan--I was equally transfixed by the funerals for Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon.

When I saw the news of his death on Wednesday morning I of course wasn't shocked, given his diagnosis of brain cancer. What I thought of first was my grandmother. She and her sister, and their parents before them, were Kennedy worshippers. Like many of their generation, those from the middle-class of small towns, who admired Franklin Roosevelt and were life-long Democrats, the Kennedys were dazzling, our de facto royal family, both extremely charismatic and dedicated to championing the causes of the underdog. I remember my grandmother telling me that she liked them because "they look out for the poor man."

Of course Ted Kennedy was a complicated figure in American life, and was hated as much as he was loved. His behavior forty years ago after the accident at Chappiquiddick was a significant stain on him. His appetites were large and at times excessively so. But in the final analysis, I can only come to the conclusion that he was a great man, and can not be defined by his mistakes, but rather his accomplishments. He did look out for the poor man, with a zeal that will resound through American history.

The memorial service was intriguing, with speakers from his family and colleagues in politics. I thought the best speakers were John Culver, a former senator and college buddy of Kennedy's, who hilariously recounted his baptism as Ted's sailing crew, and Vice-President Biden, who movingly recounted how Kennedy comforted him after the death of Biden's wife and daughter. He also frankly acknowledged that he wouldn't have been a senator, let alone Vice President, without Kennedy. Over and over we heard how Kennedy was in constant contact with colleagues who were undergoing ordeals. I was amazed to learn that after the attacks on 9/11, he personally called the families of all of those Massachusetts citizens who were killed, and he kept in contact with them over the years.

Then, at the funeral this morning in Boston, couched in the grand traditions of the Catholic church, I was most moved by Ted Kennedy, Jr. It would take an awfully hard heart not to be moved to tears by his sharing the memory of a winter day when he was 12, when he was adjusting to a prosthetic limb after losing a leg to cancer, of trying to climb a snowy hill to go sledding. He was ready to give up in tears, saying he couldn't do it. His father, exhibiting the ideal attributes of fatherhood, insisted that his son could do it, that he could do anything, and he would help him climb that hill if it took them all day.

President Obama's eulogy was respectful and not as personal--he didn't know the Senator all that long, so relied on the stories of others. But I liked the part where he mentioned that he keeps a painting of Kennedy's (how did he find time to paint?) in his study off the oval office. He had admired it on first seeing it in Kennedy's senate office, so the generous man gave it to him as a gift.

Eventually the ceremonies ended at Arlington National Cemetery, shrouded in darkness, an ironic end to a public life. He will be buried a few hundred feet from his brothers, one resting under an eternal flame, the other under a simple white cross, similar to the one that will mark Ted's grave. I've been to that place, many years ago when I was a kid. When you stand at John Kennedy's grave it lines up perfectly with the Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol. It's a breathtaking view.

Recalling Ted Kennedy's place in history is a bit awe-inspiring. When he took his senate seat he was thirty years old and clearly unqualified for the position. But oh, how he grew into it. He is certainly one of the greatest senators in American history (Obama recalled that when someone mentioned to Kennedy that the two greatest were he and Daniel Webster, Ted joked, "What did Webster do?"). Many mentioned that he was an even greater legislator when he gave up his pursuit for the presidency (he pointedly said, declining to run in 1984, that "pursuing the presidency is not my life; public service is"), a position that I think he never really wanted. I think it's very interesting that the one time he tried it was against an incumbent from his own party, the longest kind of odds. I should add, though, that I voted for him that year in the New Jersey primary. It was the first time I ever voted.

After an August full of thuggish libertarianism, with people carrying firearms to presidential events, a man identifies himself as a "right-wing terrorist" and is congratulated by his congressman, and a candidate for governor of Idaho jokes about a license for hunting Obama, it is heartening to see the public outpouring for this man. From media coverage, I had thought liberals had once again retreated into their shell. But the response to the death of a man, more than any other, who believed that government was an effective instrument to enact social justice gladdens my heart. As Kennedy said, "The dream will never die."