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John F. Kennedy was reportedly fond of the verse, in the Gospel of Luke, “For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.” For generations of Kennedy men, this remained the guiding family ethos—a call to public service and larger sense of noblesse oblige, a sentiment now wanting in many first families.
I’ve always argued that progressives are at their best when fighting for a lost cause—something about success ruins us, makes us lose our way. And over the decades, we have known many lost causes. Some loom larger than others, and maybe—for my political education—none larger than the 1980 Democratic primary. Faced with a vulnerable incumbent, Edward Kennedy decided to take up the challenge left him by his martyred brothers, and maybe to redeem a youth marred by waste, dissolution and a playboy’s lifestyle. And he ultimately lost, like so many accomplished presidential also-rans before him, his last realistic chance at the presidency.
Teddy Kennedy’s concession speech at the 1980 Democratic National Convention is one of those rare events that still has the power to inspire and to motivate—to cut through most of my adult disillusionment and cynicism and appeal to something better. It is the essence of liberal Democratic belief: working-class boilerplate, stubbornly optimistic, when everything in the contemporary culture argued against optimism.
Joe Kennedy’s youngest son was again at his best in January of 2007, arguing to bring legislation raising the minimum wage, long-delayed, to a floor vote (see video).
Much has been made of Teddy’s strong endorsement of the current president, going so far as to call Barack Obama the “last brother” in the long Kennedy tradition. The Kennedy’s have long been known for party crashing—not content to wait in line for open congressional seats, flouting clubbish attitudes that barred Irish-American Catholics from the inner circles, never timid about the appearance of nepotism. In the toughest fights, who better at your side than your family?
Obama faces challenges and, if the current mood is to be gauged, dangers that were familiar to the Kennedy clan. Time will tell if he is equal to them. But today, as progressives everywhere mourn Ted Kennedy’s death, he shoulders a staggering legacy.