If you aren't quite ready to let go of Senator Kennedy. Another retrospective.

[pscot]

Charles Pierce wrote this warm and moving profile of Senator Kennedy for the Boston Globe Magazine back in 2003. This is Pierce at his best, which is very good indeed. It's a bit long, but I found myself wishing it were longer.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/magazine/articles/2003/01/05/kennedy_unbound/

"His voice changes on those five words: I met the parents today. His identification with them is nearly a physical thing. You can see their images in his eyes. You can hear their voices in the way that his changes. It's free of all the verbal confetti, and suddenly it's full of echoes in both its sudden precision ("Let the word go forth . . .") and its controlled passion (". . . and say, `Why not?' "). He's rounded out of his chair, and there's a flash to his eyes, and he's still a big man when he straightens up. "The point is to have some positive impact on people's lives," he continues. "The danger as a legislator is that you get involved with just passing the bill. You can lose the context of what passing the bill means, and then you're just shuffling papers, and you lose that emotional contact. Maybe some people could do it. I think I'd run dry pretty quick." Continued...

[kayakjohnny]

1. Man, that's a long-winded piece.

Got through 5 or 6 pages and had to retreat. Saved it though for later. The writing style seems a bit disjointed but lots of thought went into it. Ultimately though, not sure where the writer stands on the life of Ted. He goes back and forth praising, then bashing... it's hard to see the point.

Again, I'm only 6 pages in, out of thirteen. Maybe I can share a definitive view by tomorrow or so.

[sonias]

2. I liked the piece

It is long and it is a bit biting in parts. But overall I think it gives the measure of the man. That he was indeed the best Senator of all time. He was human and he had faults. But he had the fortitude and the personality to learn how to manage legislation in the Senate. He had heart and he really liked to give a voice to the problems the legislation was intended to address. He had a long memory.

(page 12)
In 1962, Merrill Peterson was in his first job, teaching at Brandeis University, and Edward Kennedy went there, campaigning for the Senate. "He came out and made a talk and looked, frankly, like a lightweight," Peterson says. "He didn't look to measure up to his brother. He didn't seem to have much under him at all." Now a professor emeritus at the University of Virginia, Peterson is the author of The Great Triumvirate, a magisterial study of the senatorial careers of Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, and John C. Calhoun in the years before the Civil War.

"I said to a colleague recently that he might be the greatest senator of them all," Peterson says. "Not just because of the time served but because of his excellence, and not just because I agree with him on most issues. I can't help with him but recall what a Philadelphia man once told Daniel Webster, when Webster was thinking of a presidential bid. This man advised him against it. He told Webster that he could be a senator until he died and still have a great career. And that's what happened.

Mary Jo is in the piece through out the entire article. And maybe that's fair. I'm sure the Senator never forgot her either. I think everything he did in his life for the good of the people was his part of trying to make up for that mistake.

One thing I read in that piece that I didn't know before is something Orrin Hatch said during Clarence Thomas' confirmation hearings. I want to forgive Hatch his "assery" because of his wonderful Teddy tributes of late. Hatch could really cement being a decent guy if he would vote for Teddy's public health care option. I'm not holding my breath on that one.

(page 6)
He developed a thick skin and learned to leave the heat of the argument on the Senate floor. That's how Kennedy learned to move past that day in 1991 when, during the debate over the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court, his good friend Orrin Hatch appeared to summon up the Great Unmentionable. "Anybody who believes that," said Hatch, "I know a bridge up in Massachusetts that I'll be happy to sell to them."

To this day, Hatch maintains that any connection between his wisecrack and Chappaquiddick was unintentional. "I was really mortified," says Hatch. "A lot of my supporters loved it, and when I said I hadn't meant it, it drained some of the charm, some of the glory, out of it."

Thanks for the link pscot!

Sonia