words:

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Godspeed, Senator Kennedy.

A stunning tribute.

I found this video from 1978 of Senator Kennedy speaking on health care bracing.

This comment over at Digby's blog put it into perspective:

If people want to honor Ted Kennedy they should pass a single-payer universal health care system -- and name it anything they want to name it.

He did some great things. He also did some horrible things (which so often seemed to involve women). I was going to try to write something on this complicated legacy, but fortunately Melissa McEwan already did and saves me the work:

Teddy's legacy, then, is complicated. A man of privilege, who used it cynically for his own benefit. A man of privilege, who used it generously to try to change the world. And maybe to salve his own conscience.

It seems to me that many modern 'progressives' have bought into the right-wing smear campaign of the word, but Ted Kennedy wore it as a badge of honor.

RIP, sir and thank you for your good works.

I'm also sorry that your first wife was so afraid of you when you were drunk that she would sleep in the car.

I'm sorry that a woman drowned because you were drunk and panicked.

I'm sorry that you protected your rapist relative.

I'm sorry you felt you had to say that Hillary wasn't respectable enough to be president.

And lastly, I'm sorry that when Nixon asked you to help him pass UHC, you said no.

Like Davidson said, the good doesn't cancel out the bad. With any of us.

...and the gushing encomiums pouring forth from the press are, frankly, making me queasy.

Today I went back and re-read Michael Kelly's terrific profile of Kennedy in GQ--I highly recommend it for anyone who wants a reality check on the Kennedy legacy. Yeah, Kelley documents the boozy, womanizing Kennedy in gross detail. But he also makes some really sharp observations about what was problematic about Kennedy's political life, too:

In a rare moment of irritation with the American Civil Liberties Union, the senator once said, “The ACLU thinks that it defines liberalism in the country. I define liberalism in this country.”
[...]
Kennedy is strong and unswerving in his beliefs because they are personal, rooted not in theory but in an emotional commitment to government activism—a continuation and expansion of the leftward direction in which his brother Robert had been heading before his murder. Milton Gwirtzman, who wrote speeches for both Bobby and Ted, says the latter does not have “an articulated set of principles” that rises to the level of an ideology. “There’s no such thing as ‘Kennedy’s thoughts,’ ” says Gwirtzman. “It’s reactions, gut instincts. ...

Now it just so happens that a lot of Kennedy's "gut instincts" coincided with our own progressive agenda. But a lot of times, they didn't. For instance, his "gut instinct" in the 1980 election was to try to take down Jimmy Carter, even if it meant a floor fight at the convention. (Hmmm...who do we know that was lambasted for merely wanting to have a symbolic roll call vote taken at her convention?). When Ted Kennedy, finally, failed to get the nomination, he didn't even shake Jimmy Carter's hand. And he didn't have the grace (as did a certain recently defeated primary candidate I know) to stand up and wholeheartedly campaign for the man who beat him.

The Democratic party was splintered. Reagan even used Kennedy's vicious criticisms of Carter against him in his campaign. And Reagan won.

And we all know what happened to America after Reagan won.

If Ted Kennedy had followed ideology, instead of "gut instincts", if he'd thought politically, instead of personally, maybe he wouldn't have been so acrimonious, and helped bring the Democrats down in 1980, a crucial pivotal election that reverberates even today.

And if he had had "ideology," rather than "gut instincts," if he had acted according to his policy beliefs, rather than according to his personal, ego-driven agenda, maybe we would have an actual President with a Democratic ideology in the White House today.

you sound, in that comment, like a pilot with aerobatics experience.

Often the far more persuasive fighter is the one whose belief in the issue shines through.

Can't remember where I first read the proverb, "You can't cheat an honest man."

But I'm beginning to really appreciate, during this healthcare fight, that Lyndon Johnson tried to get Medicare for everybody. Harry Truman, before him, tried it. Truman couldn't get anything; Johnson got it for Social Security recipients. Kennedy expanded it -- Clinton tried to get Congress to let people buy in, and ... no go.

Just a few years ago Senator Kennedy submitted a bill asking that Medicare enrollment expand, incrementally, so that the first year of the new rules let in everybody between 55 and 65, and everybody under 25, and that it be paid for by the same mechanism we all already pay into SS and Medicare. Every year the limits crept up by five years from 25 and down from 5 years by 55. No go.

Maybe the Senate will revisit that, now; I have some hope. We've got to start somewhere; any journey begins with a single step, and if we keep refusing, no matter what our reasons, not only to take a step but to let anybody else take a step forward, no matter how tentative, either, we'll never get anywhere, never mind where we need to be.