The news about Senator Kennedy is indeed a shock, and it is hard to overstate how much it has shaken the capital. If a lawmaker is to be measured by the sheer volume of his legislative accomplishments, then Senator Kennedy has been, hands down, the most important Senator of the past half-century–a case that Adam Clymer made forcefully in his masterful biography of Kennedy. Paradoxically, his greatest achievements came only after he gave up any ambition to be President, and his impact may have been greater for having been denied that dream. Though his public image is that of an unreconstructed liberal, he was extraordinarily skilled at working across party and ideological lines.
The last time I got a chance to spend a significant amount of time around him was when I was invited backstage to cover his endorsement of Barack Obama. It was an event that turned out to be something of a Kennedy family reunion. His pride in that family, and in the unique role that it has played in our country was evident–especially as he talked about his niece Caroline, her children and their influence in his own decision to bestow the family’s benediction on a man who had been born the same year that John F. Kennedy declared a torch had been passed to a new generation. (You can hear a podcast of my interviews that day with the Senator, Caroline and Obama here.)
Toward the end of that announcement, as he was working the rope line, Senator Kennedy grabbed my arm and pulled me out to join him there. He wanted to introduce me to a ninetysomething man he had encountered in the crowd. It turned out to be Mort Caplin, who had been something of a legend as IRS commissioner under JFK. And how had he gotten the job? “He taught Bobby and me tax law at the University of Virginia law school!” Kennedy exclaimed.
Before he was stricken by seizures last weekend, Kennedy was hard at work on a memoir, a book that I hope and trust he still will publish. In the battles he has won and the ones he has lost, there are few political stories that have touched our lives in so many ways.
