End of an era

By Bella English

Thursday, August 27, 2009

ON a spring day nearly two years ago, Senator Edward Kennedy sat on the porch of his sprawling Hyannis Port home with a friend of five decades, Edmund Reggie, father of Kennedy’s wife, Vicki. The two men gazed out at the ocean that has been such an anchor in Kennedy’s life and talked about the future.

"You’re nuts to beat yourself to death like this on the Senate floor," Reggie said. "Passing a new law won’t be any more glorious for you than the reputation you’ve made. Some people say you and Daniel Webster are the greatest senators of all time."

Kennedy looked at the older man and deadpanned: "What did Webster do?"

It was a telling line, typical of the competitive Kennedys. But Reggie persisted. Waving an arm toward Nantucket Sound, he said: "You have all this. You and Vicki love to travel. Why are you beating your brains out? You’ve got all the money you need. Your kids are all raised."

But Kennedy wasn’t buying it. "No," he said. "I don’t think so. I’ll stay in the Senate."

For the past 46 years, the US Senate has been as much a home to Edward Moore Kennedy as his beloved Hyannis Port. Still, that Kennedy could go down in history with the likes of Daniel Webster – the giant of the Senate in the first half of the 19th century – would have been inconceivable at many points in his career, as he weathered crises both personal and professional, tragic and scandalous.

There were gargantuan shoes to fill, and for so long Kennedy seemed unable to fill them. His father’s outsize expectations passed from son to son, until, through the shattering deaths of the three older boys, they came to rest upon Teddy’s shoulders.

The youngest of nine, the fourth of four boys, he spent his life trying both to escape and to embrace the burdens placed upon him by ambitious parents, the long shadows cast by his brothers and a public hungry for a return to Camelot.

At his worst, he was considered a shallow playboy relying on the Kennedy name, a green understudy for his brothers. His legendary personal problems were so public that they were reduced to shorthand: Chappaquiddick, Georgetown, Palm Beach. Each episode revealed a reckless and arrogant streak that would have sunk many careers. Politically, opponents painted him as no more than a poster boy for outdated leftist causes, the last of the liberal lions in a conservative age.

But over time, Kennedy’s energy and endurance emerged. The youngest son who had faced so much pain became, in his later years, a symbol of patriarchal strength in the Kennedy family and to others who suffered losses.

Senate colleagues who had long admired his work ethic began to see in the bipartisan coalitions he built to advance his health and education agenda the skill of a true master of legislative politics.

No senator in history, many now say, was able to be both his party’s most forceful spokesman for its causes and the leader who cajoled colleagues of both parties into agreement.

In what once seemed like a premonition, President John F Kennedy at his inauguration had given his youngest brother a silver cigarette box engraved with the biblical words from Matthew: "And the last shall be first."

Ted Kennedy did not succeed in following his brother’s path in wielding the powers of the presidency. But by the early 21st century, the achievements of the younger brother could rival those of many presidents.

That day on the Hyannis Port porch, his father-in-law’s advice to relax and bask in his hard-won glory was also prescient. A year later, Kennedy would be diagnosed with a malignant brain tumour. But then, as always in his turbulent life, Kennedy looked to his moorings: the Senate and the sea. He would meet cancer the way he met so many challenges.

He would keep working, and he would keep sailing.

lA book of condolence for Senator Edward Kennedy will open this morning for two days at the US Embassy in Ballsbridge, Dublin, from 9am to 12pm and 1pm to 5pm.

This story appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Thursday, August 27, 2009