ALtho our politics differ greatly, I respected him.
quote:Kennedy, who became known as the "Lion of the Senate," played major roles in passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act and the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act, and was an outspoken liberal standard-bearer during a conservative-dominated era from the 1980s to the early 2000s.
posted
Eep. My boss has brain cancer, has been treated at one of the same hospitals as Kennedy and was diagnosed a few weeks earlier. Granted there are different types of brain cancers (and my boss's is quite rare), but it's quite unsettling.
Posts: 1757 | Registered: Oct 2004
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The question for a lot of the pundits seems to be swirling around the idea that his death will be some sort of catalyst for agreement over the health care issue, but I think his death is really the exact opposite. He wasn't the ONLY person in the Senate who could put a deal together, but he was the best, and with him gone, and with him having been missing through so much of the debate, the issue itself has been dealt serious setbacks.
Kennedy has been grooming John Kerry as a sort of back room deal maker to succeed him in that role as compromiser. A lot of it has been behind the scenes and without fanfare, but Kerry has emerged as a bridge between Republicans and Democrats behind the scenes on all sorts of issues, especially foreign policy, but many are crediting him in advance with bridging key divides in the climate change debate, and if/when a bill passes in the Fall, Kerry will get a big chunk of the credit. Perhaps with Kennedy gone, Kerry will step up to the plate in the Senate and take the reins in the cloakroom, but part of me doubts it, given their style differences.
Someone will have to take Kennedy's role in the Senate, if there's any real hope for the future of bi-partisanship over main issues. That, more than anything else, will be his legacy from the late 20th century.
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I'm sorry to say it, but if Kerry assuming Kennedy's mantle is the best hope for health care, we're in a lot of trouble. Kerry just doesn't seem to have either the charm or the backbone.
I was sorry to hear of Kennedy's passing. Whatever controversies may have been in his past, it felt like he was the bridge to a more respectable era of statesmanship. He will be missed.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
[Eh, Just editing the whole bloody thing away.]
And thank you for editing your comment pix. I know you did it for PJ and not me, but I still greatly appreciate it. I apologize for my reaction to it, as people have said it was way out of proportion. I was already angry that day when I read that and it put me over the top. It's no excuse, but there it is. You have my deepest apologies.
quote:If you had, I'd be calling you an ambulance right now...
That's hardly a proportionate response, Alcon. Really? You'd hospitalize someone for a snarky comment about a dead guy?
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posted
[Calmed enough to edit it finally. I would deeply appreciate it if anyone who quoted it would edit as well. Though I'll understand if you do not which to for whatever reason. I've very sorry to anyone my outburst offended or stunned or appalled. I can have a very powerful temper sometimes - which really isn't an excuse, but there it is.]
quote:Originally posted by Sterling: I'm sorry to say it, but if Kerry assuming Kennedy's mantle is the best hope for health care, we're in a lot of trouble. Kerry just doesn't seem to have either the charm or the backbone.
I was sorry to hear of Kennedy's passing. Whatever controversies may have been in his past, it felt like he was the bridge to a more respectable era of statesmanship. He will be missed.
You know, I would have said the same thing, but I've read more than one article, the most recent being in TIME, about Kerry's transformation from cardboard cutout presidential loser to backroom dealmaker. He's been shmoozing people left and right all over the Hill, pulling in people of both parties to be players in their pet issues, and it's earning him a lot of goodwill.
He still doesn't have the natural charisma that others have, Kennedy included, to a degree, but he's starting to master another art of politics that is just as important.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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Kerry actually has a great deal of Charisma at the individual level. I've talked to him twice, and he can be very winning. I'm not sure why his charisma doesn't translate to larger scale audiences, but it doesn't. For shmoozing, he has the qualities he needs.
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I'm too ignorant of the Kennedys to even have known that Pix's comment was very snarky (I don't know who Mary Jo even is), though I could probably have guessed that it might be. Pix, to choose a comment from the recent past, "too soon." Alcon, I can't help but think your comment is out of proportion as well. I'd consider it a kindness if each of you would edit your own post.
posted
I think there was ultimately a lot to admire about Ted Kennedy. He was very definitely in his brothers' shadows, especially John, but Bobby too. Early on he was painted as riding coattails and really not having much in the way of talent or intellect to really make much of himself. He was kind of a joke, and the butt of some terrible humor (I recall the VW Beetle fake ad implying that if he'd been driving one -- they tended to float -- he would've become President). That, his rocky marriage and the alcohol troubles really made him look like a screw up.
To his credit, he persevered and became a powerful voice in the Senate for decades. The people of Massachusetts sent him back time after time, so whether others liked him or not, his constituents kept him in place and he thrived.
In a way, by surviving so long, he actually leaves a legacy that can be judged and he'll no doubt come out looking good in some areas and poorly in others. He'll never get the level of hero worship his brother John enjoyed, or the feelings of unfulfilled hope that his brother Bobby inspired. But, truth be told, neither of them was in the public arena long enough leave a complete career history behind for judgment.
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I was actually really surprised with the commentary surrounding Kennedy's death.
I expected a classless, worthless Chappaquiddick response in every thread, seeing as they have been a tired shtick for decades. They have been nonexistent elsewhere and people have generally had only respectful commentary!
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I've finally calmed down enough to edit. I'm sorry to everyone who had to deal with that. My temper sometimes gets away from me, and I'm was already having a very bad day yesterday before that encounter. My deepest apologies.
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quote: If by liberal they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind; someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions; someone who cares about the welfare of the people, their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, their civil liberties; someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicion that grips us; if that is what they mean by liberal, I am proud to be a LIBERAL.
Senator Edward M. Kennedy
Posts: 1941 | Registered: Feb 2003
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" expected a classless, worthless Chappaquiddick response in every thread, seeing as they have been a tired shtick for decades."
I don't think that Mary Jo and Cahppaquiddick discussion should be banned. If it had happened today, Teddy would NEVER have survived politically. It was a cowardly act and he should have gone to jail for it.
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quote:Originally posted by lobo: I don't think that Mary Jo and Cahppaquiddick discussion should be banned.
Great, neither do I. I'm discussing it in a lot of places. But there's a significant difference between discussion and barbs.
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I'm still unsure why it is that Pixiest comment was immediately assumed to be negative. Maybe she was saying that Ted was genuinely was saddened by her death all those years ago and now he gets to see an old friend again.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Pix admitted it was an attempt at a joke. I knew right away it was mean spirited, because Pix is smart enough to know how it was going to be received. She could have just as easily said what you just said, but didn't.
quote: I don't think that Mary Jo and Cahppaquiddick discussion should be banned. If it had happened today, Teddy would NEVER have survived politically. It was a cowardly act and he should have gone to jail for it.
Why do people insist on using such loaded vocabulary when talking politics and personality? Nobody said the subject was banned- it clearly isn't banned since we're talking about it. It just happened to be an inappropriate and hostile thing to say in this particular thread.
He didn't exactly survive the incident politically in the first place. His entire career, especially his very long service in the Senate turned out the way it did because of that event. Now, it didn't exactly *kill* him politically, but it destroyed the public figure he could have been, and replaced it with something different. I don't think it's entirely helpful to consider his or really any politicians career in the terms of life and death, ie: whether someone "survives," or "dies," their actual careers are dynamic, and the effects of any event range from subtle to profound.
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Orincoro: I didn't see the edit comment until after I made my post, and I felt a bit self conscious about deleting it when it had probably been read.
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The suspicion is that a political deal was struck after Chappaquidick. Ted Kennedy's popularity in Massachesetts was conceded, so he could continue as senator. He would be allowed to skate by the scandal, but only if he did not try to bank on the Kennedy mystique and run for president. If he had, then all the gloves would have come off, and the national investigation would have swept away all local attempts at coverup. No presidential candidate could survive a Chappaquidick. Not just Republicans, but rival candidates in his own party would have done him in.
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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Ron, he did run for President in 1980. He lost the nomination to Carter. Did that backroom deal of which you speak somehow not kick in until after the convention?
Let's try this: take the tradecraft and the cloaks and daggers part out of your imagination for a second: he was aware that any run for the Presidency would be tarnished by the incident, so he chose to run (in a slightly odd primary challenge) against a particularly politically weak incumbent. It actually makes a measure of sense to me, as if he'd won, it would have spared him the spotlight of a head-to-head race with a smaller primary campaign.
I do wonder about this insistence on the elaborately consensual course of politics and world events in your mind. It's like if Quentin Tarantino was convicted of a crime, when his next movie came out, and tanked at the box office, you would conclude that the film industry had convened a secret panel and decided that QT would be allowed to keep making movies, but that he could no longer cash in on the Pulp Fiction legacy, and from here on should never attempt to make a popular movie again. Why go through all that imagery when the whole equation works without paranoia?
I mean, to poke on fairly *massive* hole in your theory, exactly which parties to such an agreement would have outlasted Kennedy in the Senate until now? We're talking about something that happened 40 years ago.
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Ted Kennedy was involved in the citizenship of my Mother, a refuge from Russia. For that, I wish him the best.
But I am deeply troubled by the many allegations against his character, including complicity in a woman's death as well as cheating at Harvard.
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I wouldn't want my daughter involved with him, but I am sure as hell glad that he was in the Senate for 47 years. The world and this country are much better off because he served in that capacity.
Posts: 4112 | Registered: May 2001
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I would hope that we are not remembered solely for the worst thing that we ever do. Senator Kennedy, in addition to his failings, did a great deal of good for those less fortunate than he was.
Many people we regard as heroes also did some pretty terrible things.
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posted
I was thinking more biblically. King David for example.
ETA: Kat, I don't think that it would be productive for me to try to convince you of the merits of judging someone with mercy. Feel free to write whatever you wish, but I don't see the point of you and I discussing this.
posted
Orincoro, you are right, I did forget Ted Kennedy ran for president in 1980. He did not win the nomination, losing out to Jimmy Carter. Chappaquidick was in 1969. Perhaps by 1980 he thought he had lived it down enough he could chance running for president.
But the spectre of Chappaquidick was apparently enough to overcome the "Kennedy Mystique." If he had won the nomination, it is certain that Chappaquidick would have gotten a much closer scrutiny. This knowledge is probably what kept many Democrats from giving him the nomination.
I mean, can you imagine a presidential candidate trying to live down something like that in today's environment?
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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"Few of those terrible things, of course, involved someone's death. "
Kennedy did not, for example, vote for GWB... who prematurely ended many hundreds of thousands of lives, if not millions. If I recall correctly, you did vote for Bush, so I'm going to hold you responsible for your portion of those lives, and hold that more important than anything else you ever do with your life, even if, on balance, what you do with your life prolongs many hundreds of thousands or many millions of lives, as Ted Kennedy did during his life.
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Paul, you say GWB was possibly responsible for prematurely ending millions of lives. Whom do you mean--Al Qaeda and Taliban and Saddam Hussein's core loyalist thugs? That doesn't add up to millions, but the world is surely better off without them.
Have you considered subtracting from your number all the American lives that were saved because further major terrorist attacks in America were headed off? Have you considered also the benefits to people living in America who were spared because most of the efforts and resources of Al Qaeda and the like were concentrated on dealing with U.S. soldiers in Iraq, who were armed and more than equal to the task?
You seem to be one of those people who believe it is evil to oppose evil. I believe it is because of people like you that wars eventually have to be fought, and too often much later than should have been done to forestall greater evil.
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quote:You seem to be one of those people who believe it is evil to oppose evil.
Paul seems like one of those people? Really? I see him opposing evil all the time.
From where I'm standing, it seems more likely that Paul is one of those people who believes it is evil to do evil, even to evil people.
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: Paul, you say GWB was possibly responsible for prematurely ending millions of lives. Whom do you mean--Al Qaeda and Taliban and Saddam Hussein's core loyalist thugs? That doesn't add up to millions, but the world is surely better off without them.
Amazing that we managed to kill only "thugs" even thoughit is estimated that some 40% of the casualities have been children. I have seen pictures of children killed by us* and they didn't look like thugs.
quote:Originally posted by katharina: Few of those terrible things, of course, involved someone's death.
Really? Cause for a lot of people, the worst thing they ever did, *did* involve someone's death. People have accidents. People get drunk and drive their cars off bridges and kill other people, and this does not make them evil, it could mean they are sick themselves. People see someone fall into the street and don't have the wits to jump out and save them. People's loved ones commit suicide, and then they torture themselves for the wrongs they committed in the belief that this was the cause of the death. People die all the time, and others are often partly or wholly responsible for those deaths in some way they could have helped.
You're really quite cruel, I think.
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quote:Originally posted by Ron Lambert: I mean, can you imagine a presidential candidate trying to live down something like that in today's environment?
I think it'd be about the same. Same people, same morals, same events. Yeah, I'm going with the same.
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: Few of those terrible things, of course, involved someone's death.
Unless there's something about MLK that I don't know.
I suspect that's not true at all, in general. Off the top of my head, every major American hero I can think of was involved in SOMEONE's death. A lot of major legislation passed by Congress leads to deaths. A lot of votes that make legislation NOT pass leads to deaths. Kennedy had an accident, he didn't murder someone. And while he showed poor judgment in the aftermath of the accident, he still didn't kill her. Perhaps we expect better of our heroes, that's probably true, but we've had heroes that have done far, far worse than drive a car off a bridge and then spend the next day agonizing over what to do when yes, he should have gone right to the police.
We're often willing to forgive errors in judgment from larger than life figures who work behind the scenes signing papers and giving orders, but apparently not so much for people who make one on one mistakes. That amazes me.
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quote:But the spectre of Chappaquidick was apparently enough to overcome the "Kennedy Mystique." If he had won the nomination, it is certain that Chappaquidick would have gotten a much closer scrutiny. This knowledge is probably what kept many Democrats from giving him the nomination.
I mean, can you imagine a presidential candidate trying to live down something like that in today's environment?
I think that is more a testament to the American people having "itching ears" rather than a thirst for the truth.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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"Kennedy did not, for example, vote for GWB... who prematurely ended many hundreds of thousands of lives, if not millions."
I hope, then, that you hold: President Lincoln responsible for 500,000 lives, President Wilson responsible for 15+ million lives, President Roosevelt responsible for 60+ million lives, etc...
Posts: 571 | Registered: Mar 2001
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posted
For Roosevelt and Wilson that's complete non-sense, as they entered late into wars that were already taking place in other parts of the world. If you were going to apply the same metric as was applied to Bush you would have to hold them responsible only for the deaths that occurred as a result of US military action - notice that I did not say "direct" result.
For Lincoln you could hold him responsible, Yes.
But the point you are missing is that one must considered the deaths someone's actions have caused with the circumstances surrounding and leading up to those actions - including their motivations.
The simple fact that a person's actions have caused the death of a person or people is not adequate to condemn them. And in fact, we idolize many people who's actions have caused thousands, or millions of deaths - and rightly so.
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