The Lion Rests His Head (1932-2009)
My mornings generally begin with rolling out of bed to Willie Geist (of Morning Joe fame) and his new show Way Too Early.? He was being assisted by the regulars of Morning Joe in breaking the news of the passing of Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy; a burden that no one man could carry on his own.? Even as staunch a Conservative as I am, I cannot help be feel the full weight of this somber moment.? Ted Kennedy was an icon; the personification of liberalism as understood today.? To myself, and many other younger Conservatives, he was the opponent.? We would argue in class, not against teachers and later professors and their beliefs; but against Ted Kennedy and the movement of which he was the avant-garde as if we were engaged in some form of transcontinental dialogue.? No matter how much one disagreed with the man?s views, politics, or personal life, you cannot take away his importance from the left and ultimately from America.
I was reminded of a story I heard while on Capitol Hill.? An older gentleman reminisced about a time when he was a mere intern working for then-Senator Paul Sarbanes of Maryland.? Underneath the House offices and Senate offices are a number of tunnels and a little train system that ferries people between their respective office buildings and the Capitol.? When you are travelling these halls you always run the chance of brushing elbows or exchanging glances with statesmen you see all-too-often on the news.? The makers of history.? This gentleman sat down in one of the carts for the train to head toward the Capitol, and as many people do, stared straight forward in an effort to maintain his invisibility amongst other passerbyers.? His cart quickly filled up with the larger than life Ted Kennedy and his Chief of Staff, which caused the young intern?s heart to jump into his throat.? Senator Kennedy looked at him, smiled and asked who the young intern was, who he was working for, whether he was enjoying DC, et cetera.? The short train ride concluded and both man and young man exchanged farewells, I imagine the Senator?s was more boisterous than the intern being left frozen like a deer in headlights.
Around a month later, the intern was back on the underground train again.? This time only Senator Kennedy sat with him in the cart which rendered the young intern silent again (this gentleman did not go into politics, understandably so).? Senator Kennedy smiled at him, and said, ?I hope you?ll forgive me but I can?t remember your name.? But I would like to know how your internship with Paul [Sarbanes] is going; are you still enjoying it??? You thought the intern was blown away before, now he had a whole new level of admiration for the Massachusetts Senator.
Senator Kennedy was best at that sort of interaction, from what I hear.? He may have met and dined with and drank with over a thousand people between his and the young intern?s two meetings, but he remembered people and their stories.? He was a statesman.? That is all that I have the authority to judge him on.? There will be reminders of his vitriol on the judiciary committee towards Republican Court appointees, his politics and practices, and most of all reminders of that July night in 1969.? I will refrain from speaking ill of the dead for this particular piece, but my hopes are that the man?s death does not become politicized. Ted Kennedy was a symbol after all, so his name and memory will be invoked for years to come.? In the end, he was a statesman and will live in politics long after he lived in our world.
-rj
The way I see it, he was drunk that July night with that five-year back injury from the plane crash which both served to disable him from continuing to swim to save her, then before he even rested, it was too late for her, and the delay to sober up before handling it properly, and all those preliminary actions and consultations with colleagues and friends were done in the knowledge that his duty without his brothers was to the children, and with a famously alcoholic wife, it was up to him to give the children a reason to keep faith in their names.
The subsequent televised explanation and ill-advised dropping of his hat into the ring for the Presidency thus set him on the head-down, doggedly determined course of doing whatever he could, that his brothers were stopped from doing.
The way I see it, he was drunk that July night with that five-year back injury from the plane crash which both served to disable him from continuing to swim to save her, then before he even rested, it was too late for her, and the delay to sober up before handling it properly, and all those preliminary actions and consultations with colleagues and friends were done in the knowledge that his duty without his brothers was to the children, and with a famously alcoholic wife, it was up to him to give the children a reason to keep faith in their names.
The subsequent televised explanation and ill-advised dropping of his hat into the ring for the Presidency thus set him on the head-down, doggedly determined course of doing whatever he could, that his brothers were stopped from doing.
Ted Kennedy was a radical left-wing socialist that was detrimental to the well being of this country.