Copyright 2007 Ben S. Pollock
When I clicked on C-SPAN2 midday Tuesday I did not know Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., was giving a speech important enough to make the national news. He was criticizing George II’s veto of a big domestic spending bill. Big Ted, Old Ted, swatting at the Republican in the White House: What’s new?
He was reading from a printed text, with that practiced timing for emphasis. One wonders on those tight shots of the lectern how many senators actually were there — one hears the chamber often is almost empty at such times, but you’ll never know from the “pool” camera. The other wonderment was the occasional movement by a female aide to his right. Why, she was putting up successive posters on an easel, which gave his main points, with an occasional pie chart. It’s the Luddite PowerPoint — cardboard!
But watching that polished performance made me realize something that doesn’t seem to get mentioned: This is the Kennedy that made it, this is the Kennedy that matters. Repeat all his horrendous personal behavior in young middle age, but that was decades ago. Since his second marriage in 1992, one doesn’t really hear about any party boy antics. Of course he’s 75, but that’s nothing for a playboy, yet that seems to be over. His state keeps re-electing him. Sure, he must provide the pork (constituent services), and that family reputation, but consider not the famed liberalness but what he really has accomplished.
He’s served in Congress for 45 years, second to Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., that’s counting both parties. Kennedy makes compromises with his ideological opposites to move important legislation: He co-sponsored George II’s No Child Left Behind bill in 2001. More recently, he worked with Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., on immigration reform, which did not pass.
That’s not to say he could be elected in any state besides Massachusetts, although it’s the home of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. The point is, the guy actually has accomplished stuff.
Could his more-worshipped brothers have done as much had they lived? Sen. Robert Kennedy, D-N.Y., may not have been presidential material; we’ll never know of course, but he was untested, except by his service as attorney general for his brother President John F. Kennedy, and many find mistakes in his judgments. Would Bobby have fared better against Richard Nixon in 1968 much better than Hubert Humphrey?
It’s hard to see Jack Kennedy having been re-elected in 1964. Perennial candidate Nixon, if not some other Republican, would have ensured revelations came out about the president’s bedroom antics, if not Cuba. Nixon was just the kind of guy to do that — ahead of his time. It would have damaged a reputation faster then.*
Jack and Bobby even as they lived were more symbols than effective leaders. Ted moves major bills and he fortifies the formal opposition to the administration — neither are mean feats. Tuesday, he looked like he could go for another decade easily.
People don’t have to like Kennedy, they can hate him. They don’t have just to disagree with his views, they can believe he’s done irreparable harm. But how can anyone disagree that he’s been extraordinarily successful, a genius of a politician? This is just a prediction of how history books may be written in a few decades.
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*Later: Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona was the 1964 GOP nominee, not Nixon, but when rewriting history to say JFK lived — who knows?
