The adjective most often used to describe the late Senator Edward Kennedy is “liberal.” He certainly deserved that epithet, based on his record since he was first elected to the United States Senate close to fifty years ago.
He supported every economic change that helped poor and working-class people. Any bill that increased funding for education, or that expanded government healthcare for the uninsured, or that increased the minimum wage was assured of his imprimatur and his active and whole-hearted support.
The Senator was equally predictable on all the big social issues of the last fifty years. He was inevitably on the side of all civil rights legislation; he favoured full legal entitlements for homosexuals, including approving legislation to allow gay marriage; and on the crucial and very controversial issue of abortion rights for women, he always voted to affirm the Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision.
On the big foreign policy issues, the Senator also spoke against the hawkish agenda which is part of the Reagan and second Bush legacy. Eventually, he became a loud opponent of the Vietnam War, even though his brother, President Kennedy, had disastrously increased the number of American combat troops there. In recent years, he was one of only twenty eight senators who voted against the Iraq invasion.
Republicans identified him as the quintessential liberal, and they often identified, by name, the Kennedy brand of left-wing politics as the enemy of real progress in America. They were feeding the popular perception that liberals favour high taxes and excessive government control over people’s lives. In the United States, conservatives are seen by many as supporters of God and strong defenders of traditional values while liberals are often perceived as advocating for minority rights and unnecessary social change.
Ted Kennedy was also the leading Catholic political leader in America. His mother, Rose, the beloved matriarch of the family, was openly devoted to her faith, and the children were all raised in a Catholic milieu. In eulogizing his mother at her funeral, the Senator said that this love of the Catholic faith was his mother’s most important legacy for her family.
The Kennedy brothers’ commitment to liberal policies that helped the poor and promoted civil rights for Blacks was very much in line with the social justice teaching in many papal encyclicals going back to Pope Leo X111. However, on the crucial issue of a woman’s right to an abortion, the most divisive social issue in America during the last fifty years, while Teddy began by asserting the importance of “the right to life, the right to poetry,” he soon changed and became a strong supporter of a woman’s right to choose.
This position brought him into direct and deep conflict with his church. In addition, his support for the progressive gay rights agenda alienated him further from his Catholic roots, especially from the hierarchy.
His personal life also did not conform to his church’s expectations. He was divorced from his first wife, Joan, the mother of his children, and he was known as a womanizer, into his fifties. The tragic accident in Chappaquiddick in 1969, which resulted in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, was attributed to exuberant partying and excessive alcohol consumption. Surely, this was not appropriate behaviour for a family man.
However, his second marriage to Vicki Reggi, seventeen years ago, was a major success story. Somehow, he got a Church annulment from his marriage to Joan, who became a serious alcoholic. Ted and Vicki had a very close – almost idyllic – relationship, and she is being spoken of as the one who would best represent his ideals as his replacement in the Senate.
Also, the people of Massachusetts, which has a strong Catholic population, re-elected him every six years, despite his rakish lifestyle and condemnation from the pulpit. It is important to remember that a central theme of Catholic theology is that we are all sinners, that our aberrations only highlight the mercy and benevolence of God. Catholics tend to understand human weakness, and, whether it is Bill Clinton or Ted Kennedy, they don’t abandon their leaders because of sexual immaturity.
The Senator was well-liked and respected as an accomplished legislator by his colleagues, Republican and Democrat. He had the unusual ability to argue strongly and agitate forcefully for his political beliefs, without demonizing his opponents. Indeed, it seems that he enjoyed a close personal relationship with such Republican stalwarts as Orrin Hatch and John McCain.
In the recent presidential election, his support for Barack Obama over Hilary Clinton in the Democratic primaries was crucial to his victory. He saw Mr. Obama as a very capable Black man, breaking the mould of American politics, just as his brother, a young Catholic senator, did when he was elected in 1960.
The era of the Kennedy brothers is now over – John, the urbane leader of Camelot, Robert, the ambitious idealist, and Teddy, the accomplished legislator. All three will be remembered, less for their serious character flaws, than their major contributions to the progressive agenda in America.
