‘SOME MEN see things as they are and say ‘why?’. I dream things that never were and say ‘why not?’ ”
Edward Kennedy quoted his brother’s favourite line from George Bernard Shaw in a moving eulogy at Robert Kennedy’s Washington funeral. It deserves to be quoted now about the man himself, the great legislator of his generation, like his brother a tough-minded idealist for whom politics and the struggle against injustice and inequality was a genuine vocation, and a true friend of Ireland. In August last year at the Democratic National Convention in Denver, speaking of candidate Barack Obama, whose victory he so helped with his endorsement, Kennedy predicted “this November, the torch will be passed to a new generation of Americans”. On Tuesday night, after a battle against a malignant brain tumour, the foremost of that older generation finally gave up the struggle.
"People measure me against my brothers' 'performance'," Kennedy told the New York Timesin a 2003 interview, adding, in an understatement that has an eerie familiarity: "It's always been with me. But I like to believe that during the time I've been in the Senate that I've made some contribution. I take some satisfaction in that." In truth, his contribution was more than modest. He probably left his mark on more legislation than any other in the history of the Senate, championing social causes like universal health insurance, improvements in the minimum wage, disability rights, meals on wheels for the aged, care for Aids victims, which marked him out for vilification as a dyed-in-the-wool liberal.
Every major education law passed since the 1960s bears Kennedy’s imprint, according to the National Education Association. Over the years, he was an early opponent of the Vietnam War, was central to the defeat of Reagan’s nomination of conservative Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, and stood apart from wary Democrats, fearful of voter anger, in opposing the Iraq war. Recalling many meetings, the journalist Robert Scheer wrote yesterday that “Not once ... did I find Kennedy to equivocate or slide into the amoral triangulation that defines almost all successful politicians. They position themselves, but he took positions, and as in the case of healthcare reform, he would end his life fighting for those causes with his last breath.” It was a clarity and honesty that won him respect, friends, and, surprisingly, more often than any other senator, bipartisan support across the Senate floor on individual issues.
Ireland has particular reasons to remember him with gratitude. Kennedy’s willingness to oppose the IRA’s fellow-travellers was critical to shifting US attitudes against the military campaign – it was not the easy path for an Irish-American politician. And then, once convinced that Sinn Féin was on the path to peace, he helped open crucial doors at a key time. In recent times he had fought important battles for immigration reform.
Whatever happened at Chappaquiddick in 1969, and though more than once he manifested, and acknowledged, some of the other Kennedy flaws, Ted Kennedy more than redeemed his name with honour, and he left America a better place.