Kennedy: Liberal lamb of the senate

Kennedy: Liberal lamb of the senate
United States Senator Ted Kennedy, who died this week, was a congressional lamb, not a lion. In an era when liberal Democrats lost every battle that mattered, Kennedy was the movement's poster boy. - Muhammad Cohen (Aug 28, '09)

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HONG KONG - Senator Ted Kennedy, who died this week aged 77, was the champion of the left during the greatest surge to the right in United States political history. Rather than the liberal lion of the senate fiercely defending his turf, he was a lamb who failed to stop and even abetted the country's seismic shift away from his principals and ideals. The very word liberal transformed from an adjective to an accusation while Kennedy was the keeper of its flame.

I don't make these charges as one of the legion of Kennedy haters. Quite the contrary: I'm a proud, card-carrying liberal.

COMMENT
Kennedy: Liberal loser of the senate
By Muhammad Cohen

HONG KONG - Senator Ted Kennedy, who died this week aged 77, was the champion of the left during the greatest surge to the right in United States political history. Rather than the liberal lion of the senate fiercely defending his turf, he was a lamb who failed to stop and even abetted the country's seismic shift away from his principals and ideals. The very word liberal transformed from an adjective to an accusation while Kennedy was the keeper of its flame.

I don't make these charges as one of the legion of Kennedy haters. Quite the contrary: I'm a proud, card-carrying liberal.

"To Sail Against the Wind" poster, a campaign contribution keepsake from Kennedy's one and only presidential run in 1980, showing the senator stoutly striding to his left, has graced my wall on three continents. I would have voted for Kennedy instead of any presidential candidate of the past 40 years, so count me as a true believer.

I don't blame Kennedy for that 1980 run against Jimmy Carter, a sitting president of his own party. I don't even blame Kennedy, though many do, for Carter's subsequent defeat at the hands of Ronald Reagan. In 1979, Carter threatened, "If Kennedy runs, I'll whip his ass." Kennedy let him, and that's unforgivable. Though friends and foes alike salute Kennedy's legislative record, those bills are mere footnotes to the dominant trend of the past 40 years. The Americans With Disabilities Act, No Children Left Behind and the Occupational Safety and Health Act don't stack up to a single Clarence Thomas or Rush Limbaugh that Kennedy helped create. In an era when liberals lost every battle that mattered, Kennedy was the movement's poster boy.

Kennedy didn't just fail to stem the rightward tide, he helped power it. Through his own personal misconduct, from cheating at Harvard to Chappaquiddick to his binge with William Kennedy Smith of the blue-dot rape trial, Kennedy exemplified the privileged, irresponsibility that fueled the rightwing revolution.

Magical name
The Kennedy name was said to be magical among liberals, but it became even more effective for conservatives. The mere mention of Ted Kennedy on any issue was enough to open rightwing wallets. For every dollar Kennedy raised for causes he supported, his name probably raised 10 times as much for causes he opposed. Portraying himself as a champion of the working class, Kennedy simultaneously financed the movement that convinced millions of Joe the Plumbers to vote against their own interests.

While he became a powerful symbol for the right of everything that was wrong with government, liberals, Democrats and Washington, Kennedy failed to use his iconic position to inspire and move his allies. He was the one liberal politician of his time guaranteed a national audience whenever he spoke out. But Kennedy rarely chose to take that big stage to galvanize his side and move public opinion on key issues that defined the US over the past four decades.

Where was he on George Bush I's Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas, the rightwing extremist whose lifetime appointment to the court will have a far greater impact than Kennedy and his brothers combined? When Thomas' 1991 confirmation hearings deteriorated into a circus with pubic hair on soda cans in the center ring, where was Kennedy to tell the president and the country that it had to demand someone better? Actually, Kennedy was right there on the Senate Judiciary Committee, gagged by his own string of peccadilloes.

Bushwhacked
When Thomas cast the vote that made George W Bush president, where was Kennedy to say it was wrong in a democracy for nine judges to order vote-counting stopped? Where was Kennedy to express liberal outrage at this sham and to lead a movement to refuse to recognize Bush as president until the votes were counted? Why wasn't he calling on fellow lawmakers to stand and turn their backs whenever they were confronted with this immorally appointed president?

Well, Kennedy was too busy then crafting the flawed and under-funded No Children Left Behind Act that not only made public education less effective but gave the sham president legitimacy. After asserting Bush betrayed him, Kennedy went back to work again with that same administration on prescription drug coverage for seniors, only to see his support used to create government handouts for drug companies. The guy just didn't learn.

Where was Kennedy's call for liberals to march to protest the invasion of Iraq? Where was he on the erosion of civil liberties under George W Bush? Where was he over the past 40 years on taking meaningful steps to end America's dependence on imported oil and stop fouling the planet?

Most important, where was Kennedy on the decades-long slide starting with Reagan that transformed the government's mandate and public opinion about the very mission of America. Kennedy's silence was deafening as Republicans and Democrats alike pandered to business and cut taxes on the wealthy, mocking his brother John's clarion call in his inaugural speech, "Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

Go ask Al
It's deeply ironic that Kennedy dies in the midst of a national firestorm over healthcare reform, the issue that he hoped to make his crowning achievement. He leaves the issues mired in the lies and muddle that he allowed to spread and poison the national debate. Senior citizens with their social security benefits and Medicare cards stand up at town hall meetings today demanding, "Keep government's hands off me and my healthcare," not only because of Fox News and rightwing radio, but because Ted Kennedy refused his mantle to refute the noise and nonsense on the right, leaving it instead to the likes of Al Franken.

Kennedy eschewed that national spotlight to become the consummate Capitol Hill insider. His accomplishments, while noteworthy and substantial, did nothing to counteract the nation's lurch to the right. He chose to work in the comfortable, clubby confines of senate while his team desperately needed a public leader. Perhaps, given the times and trends (though with Watergate, Reagan and his hoodlums, Iraq and Katrina, the Democrats certainly have had some cards to play), Kennedy drew a Mission Impossible; but unlike the TV and movie versions, Kennedy chose not to accept it.

Renowned as an orator, it's fitting that Kennedy's best known words have come in tragedy and defeat. There's this beautiful tribute in the eulogy for Robert Kennedy: "As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: 'Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say, why not'?"

After Carter whipped his ass, Kennedy told the 1980 Democratic National Convention, "The work goes on, the cause endures, the dream will never die." In his electrifying appearance at last year's Democratic Party convention, the stricken Kennedy, whose early support helped Barack Obama secure the presidential nomination, said, "The work begins anew, the hope rises anew, the dream lives on."

Because of Kennedy's own failures and flaws, so much of what he stood for remains nothing more than a dream.

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