E-mail a friendSen. Edward Kennedy Tribute
airdate August 26, 2009
Sen. Edward "Ted" Kennedy was one of the Democratic Party's most influential members. Named in '06 on Time's list of "America's 10 Best Senators," he authored more than 2,500 bills on a wide range of issues, including voting and civil rights, healthcare, labor and education. He chaired the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in the 110th Congress. Kennedy also wrote a children's book, My Senator and Me, a political history, America Back on Track, and, before his passing, a soon-to-be-released memoir, True Compass.
Sen. Edward Kennedy Tribute
Tavis: Now, for more historical perspective on the life and career of Ted Kennedy, I spoke earlier with noted historian and best-selling author, Douglas Brinkley.
[Begin prerecorded interview.]
Tavis: Your thoughts on the life and legacy of Ted Kennedy?
Douglas Brinkley: Well, this past year he has done an oral history project at University of Virginia which will be helpful to scholars, and he's been working on his own memoir, which is supposed to come out in October and so there'll be a lot of new information there.
This is our giant. This is the legislative giant. People talk a lot about John Kennedy, his eclipsed life, and Bobby Kennedy and his eclipsed life. Ted Kennedy fought for the disenfranchised, for the poor, for the elderly. He's been pushing for universal healthcare since almost day one in the Senate in 1962.
He had his full wind at his back, pushing for voting rights, civil rights. He's an unambiguous liberal icon and an American icon and an international icon, who even went to South Africa and spent time with Bishop Tutu in the really heated days of apartheid and came back and denounced the apartheid regime there.
Everything Ted Kennedy had the stamp of caring about people, and he's really, truly one of our great, great political figures.
Tavis: As a historian you well know that we have had these ebb-and-flow conversations about liberalism, about the "L word." It seems to me, though, to my read, for the balance of his career he never shied away from the L word where others have. What do you make of that?
Brinkley: That's exactly right, and he really, for the Democratic Party, was very important because remember, Bill Clinton was trying to say, “I'm a new Democrat,” and people started playing with the word progressive. They didn't want to be called a liberal.
He was a proud liberal. He thought being liberal was part of the tradition of Theodore Roosevelt's new nationalism and FDR's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson and the Great Society. His own brothers' new frontier. He was a proud liberal, and now liberal's back in vogue.
Barack Obama has really learned a lot from Ted Kennedy. Remember, President Obama's sort of my age, and when John F. Kennedy, we were children during the Cuban missile crisis, little two, three-year-olds. But Ted Kennedy, he was out there fighting my whole teenage years and into my twenties and thirties and forties.
And the great act of heroism when he endorsed, I thought, Barack Obama made such a big difference, basically taking the baton of Camelot and handing it to Barack Obama, and doing it in conjunction with Caroline Kennedy, dramatic moment in the 2008 election. And I know that President Obama is sorely going to miss Ted Kennedy, not because he was a healthcare warrior, but he always gave senator and now President Obama unvarnished advice.
Since Chappaquiddick he was not trying to run for president, he was trying to help the American people in many ways as acts of redemption for perhaps some of his ethical lapses in his life. He worked triple hard to try to make up for it and the net effect of his life is just really stunning. Bill after bill, law after law, Ted Kennedy's stamp is on it.
[End prerecorded interview.]
Tavis: My full conversation with Doug Brinkley, including our look at New Orleans four years after Katrina will air this Friday night.
Tavis: Ted Kennedy's most recent appearance on this program came just last year on the day he endorsed Barack Obama for president. I not only spoke with Senator Kennedy about that decision but also about the Kennedy family's unyielding commitment to public service.
[Begin archived Ted Kennedy interview clip.]
Sen. Edward Kennedy: We have been blessed as a family to believe in public service and also believe in a political party. I believe and share the idea that Woodrow Wilson had that a political party has to stand for something. And I believe that a political party could be an instrument to make change, and that's why I'm a Democrat.
But my parents and my brothers and sisters brought their children up to be involved, to be engaged, to be a part of the process, to share what Oliver Wendell Holmes said, "The actions and passions of our time are a risk not to have lived."
[End archived Ted Kennedy interview clip.]
Tavis: There are few people in American history who have suffered the kind of public sorrow that Ted Kennedy saw in his lifetime, but despite his family tragedies, Senator Kennedy never became bitter or jaded and remained a beacon of hope for so many people, including the least among us.
In an age where political partisanship rules the day, he'll be remembered for reaching across party lines to enact some of the most important and lasting legislation in all of U.S. history. Ted Kennedy will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery alongside his brothers, John and Robert.
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