Obituary:SENATOR EDWARD Kennedy, who has died aged 77 after a battle with cancer, was the senior US senator from Massachusetts and a leading member of the Democratic Party.
The second most senior member of the Senate, he was the youngest brother of the late president John Fitzgerald Kennedy and the late senator Robert F Kennedy and the father of congressman Patrick J Kennedy.
Following the assassinations of his brothers, he was widely seen as a future US president. But his involvement in 1969 in a car accident at Chappaquidick in which a companion, Mary Jo Kopechne, was drowned, dogged his subsequent political career, and contributed to his withdrawal as a presidential candidate in 1979.
Notwithstanding this tragic episode, and a reputation for heavy drinking and womanising, in due course he became a respected legislator and liberal icon. In April 2006, Timeselected him as one of the 10 best US senators, noting that he had "amassed a titanic record of legislation affecting the lives of virtually every man, woman and child in the country".
He took an active interest in a wide range of issues, which included gun control, the environment, healthcare, the minimum wage and student financial aid. Despite his lifelong liberalism, he initially opposed abortion but later reversed his position. And while he was a champion of blue-collar workers, he nevertheless in the 1970s clashed with Irish-American supporters in Boston over bussing, which he supported as a means of desegregation.
His role in foreign affairs stretched from Bangladesh to Chile, from Biafra to China, from South Africa to Chile, from the Soviet Union to Vietnam.
While he initially supported US aims in Vietnam, a visit there in 1965 led him to question the wisdom of America’s involvement. A second visit in 1968 troubled him further, and on his return he forcefully expressed his misgivings to president Lyndon Johnson. By the end of the year, he opposed the war.
Asked in 1994 what the greatest regret in his career was, he said: “I wish I had been more aggressive and active in ending the war sooner.” A supporter of the US-led overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan in 2001, he was a forthright critic of the US-led invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. He criticised the Bush administration’s planning and conduct of the invasion, and in 2007 proposed legislation opposing president George W Bush’s troop surge.
A founder member of the Congressional Friends of Ireland, at the outset he adopted a traditional Irish nationalist view of the Northern Ireland Troubles, although his attitude changed with the rise of IRA violence.
In a Senate speech in October 1971, he depicted the conflict as a colonial war and called for British withdrawal, a call he repeated in a resolution with senator Abe Ribicoff of Connecticut and representative Hugh Carey of New York.
Following the killing of 13 unarmed civilians by British troops in Derry in January 1972, he referred to Bloody Sunday as Britain’s My Lai, a reference to the massacre by US troops of villagers during the Vietnam War.
In 1972, at the suggestion of Irish diplomats, he met John Hume and thereafter never pronounced on Anglo-Irish affairs without consulting Hume, who stressed the importance of reconciliation in relation to Ireland.
In a St Patrick’s Day statement in 1976 he, together with Tip O’Neill, speaker of the House of Representatives, senator Daniel Moynihan and New York governor Hugh Carey (collectively known as the “Four Horseman“), sought to reduce support for the IRA solidarity group Noraid. The statement, drafted by John Hume, called on Americans to embrace the goal of peace in Ireland and renounce violence.
He pushed for president Jimmy Carter to promise US economic aid for Northern Ireland in the event of a settlement, and the promise was duly made.
In 1981, he urged president Ronald Reagan to use his influence with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher to moderate her stance on the H-Blocks’ hunger strikes. In 1984, he convinced Reagan to act as persuader for what became the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985.
Following Bill Clinton’s victory in the presidential election, in 1993 he lobbied the incoming president to appoint his sister, Jean Kennedy Smith, as US ambassador to Ireland.In 1994, he supported the granting of a US visa to Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams. Later that year, he welcomed the IRA ceasefire. When Adams visited the US for the second time, Kennedy was on hand to greet him at Boston airport. But the IRA’s return to violence in 1996 angered him, and he vowed not to meet Adams again until the ceasefire was restored. He welcomed the reinstatement of the ceasefire in 1997 and the Belfast Agreement in 1998.
Born in Boston in 1932, he was the youngest of the nine children of Joseph P Kennedy and his wife Rose (née Fitzgerald). His father, who made his money in stock investments, Hollywood and the liquor industry, stressed the value of competition: “We don’t want any losers around here. In this family, we want winners.”
He attended the Fessenden School, and later Milton Academy, and entered Harvard University in
1950. He was expelled for cheating during a Spanish examination and in 1951, enlisted in the US army. Assigned to guard duty at Nato headquarters in Paris, he was later discharged in 1953. Readmitted to Harvard, he graduated in 1956.
He next studied at the University of Virginia Law School, graduating in 1959. He worked for a time as an assistant district attorney in Suffolk County.
He was elected to the Senate in 1962, defeating the Republican George Cabot Lodge in the general election. A year later his brother Jack was assassinated.
Further tragedy lay ahead. In 1964 he was in a plane crash in which the pilot and one of his aides was killed; he suffered a severe back injury, a punctured lung, broken ribs and internal bleeding. In 1968 he was badly shaken by the assassination of his brother Bobby while campaigning for the Democratic nomination for the presidency. He delivered an emotional eulogy at the funeral.
At Chappaquiddick on Martha’s Vineyard in 1969, he escaped death after he drove a car off a bridge into a channel, but his passenger Mary Jo Kopechne drowned in the submerged car. He left the scene and did not call the authorities until the following day. He pleaded guilty in court to leaving the scene of an accident and received a two-month suspended jail sentence.
He stood aside from the presidential elections in 1972 and 1976, citing family concerns in light of his brothers’ assassinations. But he sought the Democratic nomination in 1980, challenging party colleague President Jimmy Carter.
The campaign got off to a bad start when in a major television interview to launch his candidacy, he had no convincing answer to the question, “Why do you want to be president?” Chappaquiddick was almost immediately raised and the “character issue” hung in the air throughout the primaries.
Carter established an early lead and, although his popularity slumped, was ahead of Kennedy when the Democratic convention got under way in New York in August 1980. Kennedy announced his withdrawal from the race in a rousing speech: “For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. 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.”
Among his peers he stood out for perseverance. Twice in his career the Democrats lost control of the Senate. Other party colleagues quit once they lost committee chairmanships to Republicans. However, he seemed to thrive as much on the complexities of getting things done in the minority as on the delights of thwarting the majority.
But it was not just persistence, as his biographer Adam Clymer wrote. “[He had] an instinct for the rhythms of the Senate, a special knack for finding a critical Republican ally . . . and an optimist’s willingness to settle for half a loaf, or even a slice, today and work on getting the rest in the next Congress.”
A long-time supporter of immigration policy reform, in 2005 with John McCain he tabled the Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act; this proposed allowing “undocumented immigrants in the US to come out of the shadows, submit to background checks and register for a legal status.”
A subsequent bipartisan measure worked out in 2007 with President George W Bush ultimately failed on the floor of the Senate.
He faced criticism from his own party when he teamed up with Bush to pass the No Child Left Behind Act, the criticism compounded when the president failed to deliver the promised funding. He was again criticised when a Medicare prescription drug bill, on which he co-operated with Republicans, also fell by the wayside.
A member of the judiciary committee, his was an important voice during hearings and confirmation votes on Supreme Court nominees. In 1987 he made an important speech on the floor of the Senate against the nomination of Judge Robert Bork.
“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government.” Kennedy was credited with the rejection of Bork’s nomination.
Four years later, however, he was deemed to have been ineffectual at the hearings into the nomination of Judge Clarence Thomas, who, although accused of sexual harassment, was successful. Kennedy came in for strong criticism.
Anna Quindlen, a syndicated feminist columnist, wrote: "He let us down because he had to; he was muzzled by the facts of his life." The Boston Globesaid his "reputation as a womaniser made him an inappropriate and non-credible critic" of Thomas, his moral authority diminished by "periodic reports of reckless behaviour".
He responded by publicly acknowledging “faults in the conduct of [his] private life”, saying: “Each of us as individuals must not only struggle to make a better world, but to make ourselves better too, and in this life those endeavours are never finished”.
While the press complained that the statement stopped short of making a specific apology, for supporters it sufficed.
Kennedy could identify with and offer support to President Bill Clinton in his travails. He stood by him when he faced impeachment in 1999 over the Monica Lewinsky affair, telling him to “remember why he wanted the job in the first place”. Clinton appreciated his loyalty.
Nine years later, Kennedy made a crucial intervention in the 2008 presidential race when he endorsed Hillary Clinton’s Democratic rival Barack Obama.
Immediately after receiving treatment for a malignant brain tumour, he repeated his endorsement – but he will not be remembered as a kingmaker.
Described by the Washington Postas a "dogged, pragmatic practitioner of the legislative arts", perhaps his greatest achievement was to tenaciously pursue the civil rights agenda, even when it seemed a lost cause. He was chairman of the Senate health, education, labour and pensions committee, serving also on the judiciary committee, the armed services committee and the congressional joint economic committee.
His publications include Decisions for a Decade(1968), In Critical Condition(1972), Our Day and Generation(1979) and with Senator Mark Hatfield, Freeze: how you can prevent nuclear war(1982). His most recent book America Back on Trackwas published in 2006.
The recipient of numerous awards and distinctions, he was in 2002 honoured by the Government here which funded in his name a new chair in health service management at Trinity College Dublin. Only days before his death, he was awarded the presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama.
He married Virginia Joan Bennett in 1958; they divorced in 1982. He married in 1992 Victoria Anne Reggie, who, with his children and step-children, survives him.
Edward Moore Kennedy: born February 22nd, 1932; died August 25th, 2009.