Last Man Out

Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy (D-MA) has died of brain cancer at age 77 and with him goes the last of the famed, ill-fated, targeted Kennedy brothers: Joe in WWII, John in Dallas, Bobby here in Los Angeles. Teddy hadn't grown up as the smartest and he certainly had his personal failings, but as one of only two Senators in U.S. history to be elected nine (9) times -- the other being Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) -- and arguably the most successful legislator in U.S. history, this loss feels unexpectedly as large as that of his brothers.

Whereas their Presidencies, if completed and won, might have better rode the changing world of their times than those who took their place and had a more powerful immediate impact than that of a Senator, Teddy's record for sponsored legislation has profoundly modernized and humanized this country.

I like this line from the NY Times piece:

As James Sterling Young, the director of a Kennedy Oral History Project at the University of Virginia, put it: “Most people grow up and go into politics. The Kennedys go into politics and then they grow up.”

Key legislation:

He led the fight for the 18-year-old vote, the abolition of the draft, deregulation of the airline and trucking industries, and the post-Watergate campaign finance legislation. He was deeply involved in renewals of the Voting Rights Act and the Fair Housing law of 1968. He helped establish the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He built federal support for community health care centers, increased cancer research financing and helped create the Meals on Wheels program. He was a major proponent of a health and nutrition program for pregnant women and infants.

When Republicans took over the Senate in 1981, Mr. Kennedy requested the ranking minority position on the Labor and Public Welfare Committee, asserting that the issues before the labor and welfare panel would be more important during the Reagan years...

...His most notable focus was civil rights, “still the unfinished business of America,” he often said. In 1982, he led a successful fight to defeat the Reagan administration’s effort to weaken the Voting Rights Act.

In one of those bipartisan alliances that were hallmarks of his legislative successes, Mr. Kennedy worked with Senator Bob Dole, Republican of Kansas, to secure passage of the voting rights measure, and Mr. Dole got most of the credit.

Perhaps his greatest success on civil rights came in 1990 with passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which required employers and public facilities to make “reasonable accommodation” for the disabled. When the law was finally passed, Mr. Kennedy and others told how their views on the bill had been shaped by having relatives with disabilities. Mr. Kennedy cited his mentally disabled sister, Rosemary, and his son who had lost a leg to cancer.

Mr. Kennedy was one of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s strongest allies in their failed 1994 effort to enact national health insurance, a measure the senator had been pushing, in one form or another, since 1969.

But he kept pushing incremental reforms, and in 1997, teaming with Senator Hatch, Mr. Kennedy helped enact a landmark health care program for children in low-income families, a program now known as the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or S-Chip.

He led efforts to increase aid for higher education and win passage of Mr. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act. He pushed for increases in the federal minimum wage. He helped win enactment of the Medicare prescription drug benefit, one of the largest expansions of government health aid ever.

Yep, he even worked with President George W. Bush. Dedicated to doing his job, even with political opponents, if he thought it was for the better of the American people. And Kennedy was known for his friendships across the aisle, most notably with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), with whom he shared what appears to be his final piece of legislation, should it become law.

A fitting epitaph, from Norm Ornstein, of the American Enterprise Institute conservative think tank:

“If his father, Joe, had surveyed, from an early age up to the time of his death, all of his children, his sons in particular, and asked to rank them on talents, effectiveness, likelihood to have an impact on the world, Ted would have been a very poor fourth. Joe, John, Bobby ... Ted.

“He was the survivor,” Mr. Ornstein continued. “He was not a shining star that burned brightly and faded away. He had a long, steady glow. When you survey the impact of the Kennedys on American life and politics and policy, he will end up by far being the most significant.”

It's been 41 years since the last brother died. Tonight the final star went out.