Ted Kennedy

I feel deep sadness about the death of Ted Kennedy.I have always admired Senator Kennedy. This news, though not unexpected, is a heavy blow.

I was not always a liberal. I grew up in a conservative Republican family. I rooted for Richard Nixon to be elected president in his campaign against John Kennedy. I was in Republican headquarters in Cincinnati on election night when Nixon won Ohio but lost the presidency.

When John Kennedy became president, the world changed.

It is hard to explain what John Kennedy meant to my generation. We suddenly had a feeling that there would be a new politics, a new type of government, a new America. Before John Kennedy, I had felt that the only party opposing racial segregation was the Republican Party. The Democrats in the South were all segregationists. Then John Kennedy and his brother Robert came along and declared that the government would fight against segregation. They changed the Democratic Party and they changed the direction of this country. I became a Democrat. The redneck Democrats of the South became Republicans.

The assassination of President Kennedy was one of the most stunningly terrible days in my life. I had invested all of my political hopes and dreams in this man, and now, through the forces of grim, meaningless misfortune, he was gone. I invested no hope in Lyndon Johnson. I was on the brink of surrendering to apathy and cynicism.

I soon found myself transferring my hopes to John’s younger brother, Robert Kennedy. Although Lyndon Johnson had pushed the Civil Rights Laws through Congress, he had also escalated the Vietnam insurgency into a full-blown war with thousands of American casualties. Robert Kennedy took up the mantel of his late brother and called for progressive politics and cessation of the war. He announced that he was running for president and I became one of his campaign managers for New York City. I organized meetings and canvassing on his behalf. One morning, as I got out of bed, I turned on the television and the announcer said that Robert Kennedy had been shot and killed. I sat on the bed in numb disbelief. For the second time I felt that a bullet had been shot through my heart.

There was still one brother left. I attended the funeral of Robert Kennedy in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, and was very moved by the eulogy delivered by Ted Kennedy. I thought that perhaps Ted could become president and accomplish the unfinished work of John and Robert. There was still a faint glimmer of hope that Camelot could be brought back, that we could return to the idealism and promise inaugurated by the first Kennedy.

But it did not take another assassin to shoot Ted Kennedy. He shot himself at Chappaquiddick, driving my hopes and the hopes of millions of Americans off a bridge in a car with an attractive young woman not his wife. He lost the luster of Kennedy brilliance, and when he did run for president he was still weighted down in the murky waters of a channel between Chappaquiddick Island and Martha's Vineyard. He lost to a mediocrity named Jimmy Carter.

In the 1980 Democratic convention, Senator Kennedy gave the finest speech I have ever heard at a political convention. He called for Democratic idealists to keep the faith, to stand up for liberal values, to fight against the reactionary tide that was sweeping across the nation. He concluded his speech in a thundering voice: “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

For 29 more years the work went on for Ted Kennedy. With all of his wealth, he could have retired to Hyannisport and lived a life of pure luxury. Instead he fought indefatigably for the ideals of his brothers and for all that is best in America. He pushed through legislation that embodied the great liberal causes dear to the Kennedys. He overcame all of the things in his life that had held him back and had caused questioning and scandal. He became the "Lion of the Senate," and in that role he stood for everything that I admire. Because of his work, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream has never died.