Edward “Teddy” Kennedy, February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009.
(The whole speech above: 1, 2, 3, 4. And Teddy’s eulogy for his brother, Bobby.)
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The Edge of the American West 
7 comments
August 25, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Vance
Damn, RIP indeed.
If he’s sending himself off like Tennyson’s Ulysses, who’s going to stay behind to get the practical things done, as Ulysses says of his son:
August 25, 2009 at 11:17 pm
ari
The Times‘s coverage. Oddly, the Globe remains silent.
August 25, 2009 at 11:57 pm
Vance
The Globe.
August 26, 2009 at 3:26 am
dia
Learning of his death via Radio 4 this morning (and through my sleepy haze), I was surprised at the emphasis the obit piece placed on his support for Irish republicanism. I know a couple of years ago there was a bit of a shitstorm about him being offered a British knighthood (dishonouring victims, etc.) but I guess I hadn’t realised how much of a controversy it really was.
I don’t know that much about his career beyond the textbook stuff and his present work on healthcare reform – I’m a c19th-er struggling to cope in a world of Nixonians… How seriously did American commentators and the American public take his pronouncements on the IRA, Unionism, Northern Irish politics? Was he seen as authoritative? An eccentric? An ideologue?
August 26, 2009 at 6:29 am
PorJ
I agreed with many (perhaps most) of Kennedy’s positions, but honesty compels me to say I didn’t particularly care for the Kennedy mystique or Kennedy himself. I was very happy he supported Obama, despite the Clinton pressure. But I’m most curious, today, on how the obituararies will handle Chappaquiddick – the historian/journalist in me sees this as most sensitive on THIS day. Here is a specific example from ABC News
Charles Pierce wrote an excellent Kennedy piece in The Boston Globe Sunday Magazine a few years ago that tried to workaround with the following breathtaking quote:
As Dan Kennedy noted at the time, this passage was completely misconstrued by both the right and the left. Which is as it should be, because the legacy is remarkably complex.
But can it be boiled down to: “But for Chappaquiddick he would have been President”?
August 26, 2009 at 7:09 am
Ben Alpers
But can it be boiled down to: “But for Chappaquiddick he would have been President”?
I wouldn’t boil it down to this.
Chappaquiddick certainly kept Kennedy out of the ’76 presidential race, a race he probably could have won. But it didn’t end his presidential chances.
Remember that in early 1979, before he announced his candidacy, Kennedy held a 2-1 lead over Carter among Democratic primary voters. Even when he announced, immediately after the disastrous Roger Mudd interview, he still held a ten-point lead in national polls.
Many people, including myself, feel that the performance of his 1980 presidential campaign–which was truly terrible other than that great convention speech–reflected the fact that Teddy never really wanted the presidential mantel that his brothers’ deaths had essentially thrust upon him.
I agree entirely, PorJ, that Kennedy’s legacy is remarkably complicated and that Chappaquiddick plays a role in the story. But I really don’t think it’s the headline.
Kennedy’s great political success was in the Senate. And that success was itself ambivalent. On the one hand, in one of the great second (or third?) acts in US political history, he became among the most powerful and effective Senators of all time, an unabashed liberal who was able to get things done in an era in which unabashed liberals were steadily losing ground even within his own party. On the other hand, the fact that unabashed liberals were steadily losing ground within his own party indicated the extent to which he was losing the larger cause for which he fought: a rededication of his party and the nation to social and economic justice.
August 26, 2009 at 9:39 am
kid bitzer
excellent points, ben a., esp. the last paragraph.