Vice President Joe Biden touchingly described the loss of Sen. Edward Kennedy in a very personal statement, saying "He's left a great void in our public life, and a hole in the hearts of millions of Americans and hundreds of us who were affected by his personal touch throughout our lives." I'm among those lucky enough to have had the briefest brushes with the man in his element, in a committee room in the Capitol where I was staffing my then boss in a conference committee. The Senator's appearance was brief, but decisive. Once he walked into the room, there was little doubt that his amendment would be included in the final bill, though it wasn't in the House version. And after he spoke any doubt that might have existed vanished. He ruled the day. He elevated the otherwise mundane proceedings, at least for me, giving me a sense of the import and the great gift I had been given to be seated at a table in the nation's Capitol, having a hand in the people's business.
He never spoke a word directly to me, but that meeting remains as one of the most fixed and cherished memories from my days on the Hill, and I'm grateful for it. Grateful for it, and for another amazing learning experience I gained through working with his well-regarded, and deservedly so, staff on one of my first major legislative efforts as a young legislative aide to then-Rep. Ron Wyden. It was a comprehensive wellness program for infants and pre-school children, Ready-to-Learn and now seems ridiculously ambitious, looking back. We wanted to set up one-stop centers in local communities where children could receive well-baby care, immunizations, preschool learning centers, educational television programming, and expanded Head Start. Our primary ally in this effort in the Senate was, of course, Sen. Kennedy, who graciously lent his support, and his staff, who were incredibly helpful, patient, encouraging staff that were willing to help a newbie find her way around the sausage-making process. What I learned in the effort was invaluable. Our legislative effort didn't succeed as a whole, but with the juice it got from Sen. Kennedy's support, did result in some expanded funding and airtime for children's programming on PBS, an initiative that still exists today.
Senator Kennedy had another, more pressing priority at the time, so that our initiative didn't become a signature effort for him was understandable. It was 1993, after all, and his efforts were more consumed by trying to help yet another administration achieve the goal of his life--universal health coverage. And it was the cause of a lifetime, as he described it himself. Here he was in 1971:
And again in 2008:
Even just this summer, as his life was winding down, he penned a column for Newsweek, forcefully arguing for finally seeing the goal Teddy Roosevelt had in 1912 realized.
My family, like every other, has faced many—at every stage of life. I think of my parents and the medical care they needed after their strokes. I think of my son Patrick, who suffered serious asthma as a child and sometimes had to be rushed to the hospital for treatment. (For this reason, we had no dogs in the house when Patrick was young.) I think of my daughter, Kara, diagnosed with lung cancer in 2002. Few doctors were willing to try an operation. One did—and after that surgery and arduous rounds of chemotherapy and radiation, she's alive and healthy today. My family has had the care it needed. Other families have not, simply because they could not afford it.
I have seen letters and e-mails from many of these less fortunate Americans. In their pleas, there's always dignity, but too often desperation. "Our school is closing in June of 2010, which means that I will be losing my job and my health insurance," writes Mary Dunn, a 58-year-old schoolteacher in Eden, S.D. "I am a Type I diabetic, and I had heart bypass surgery in 2005. My husband is also a teacher [here], so we will both be losing insurance. I am exploring options and have been told that I cannot stay on our group policy or transfer to another policy after our jobs cease because of my medical condition. What am I to do after 39 years of teaching to acquire adequate health coverage?" Dunn also serves as mayor of Eden, for which she is paid $45 a month with no health benefits.
How will we, as a nation, answer her? I've heard countless such stories, including one from the family of Cassandra Wilson, a 14-year-old who once was a competitive ice skater. She's uninsured because she has petit mal seizures, often 200 times a day. Her parents have run up $30,000 on their credit cards. They've sold her skating equipment on eBay to pay for her care.
These two cases represent only those patients who lack coverage. We also need to find answers for the increasing number of Americans whose insurance costs too much, covers too little, and can be too easily revoked when they face the most serious illnesses.
This passage illustrates the remarkable, and increasingly all-too rare, ethos of Ted Kennedy. He recognized that by a twist of fate by being born a Kennedy, he was born into a life of wealth, power, and privilege. But unlike so many of the wealthy, the powerful, he lived daily with the conviction of the inequity of life in America. It was the lesson of the remarkable medical travails that he experienced in life through his family, his children--they could have the best medical care because they could afford it. So many family could not, simply because they could not afford it. Like his brothers before him, the goal of his life was to redress that inequity, to use his power to lift up the powerless.
It's a Democratic, and democratic, principle that we liberals have allowed to go out of vogue--the idea that in the common good lies the nation's future. The backlash in the country against the social upheaval of the late 60s and early 70s unfortunately brought with it a backlash against the better ideals of the social contract, the glue that holds the country together, in the primary commitment of public life being the public good. The Reagan Revolution, premised on pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps replaced it. The problem was, too many people were still left without even boots, much less bootstraps.
The days of celebration of Ted Kennedy's life have highlighted his lifelong commitment to being the voice for the disenfranchised, embodied in the hymn sung at his service:
Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers;
That you do unto me.
That is the inheritance and the charge that we all have as Americans (whether religious or not). It is the basic principle upon which the Democratic Party evolved. It is the inheritance that was reinforced for me personally in that committee room a decade and a half ago, and an inheritance all Democrats, all progressive activists must accept, must heed. Let the remarkable celebration of Ted Kennedy's life that we've witnessed in the last several days renew in us that commitment, and let that also renew in us the demands we make of our public officials, particularly the Democrats.
Let Ted Kennedy's words from his 1980 Democratic convention address drive us not just in the debate for the cause of his lifetime, universal healthcare, but in all the policy debates moving forward. Let's not allow the void in our public life Ted Kennedy's passing leaves unfilled.
It is the glory and the greatness of our tradition to speak for those who have no voice, to remember those who are forgotten, to respond to the frustrations and fulfill the aspirations of all Americans seeking a better life in a better land.
We dare not forsake that tradition.
We cannot let the great purposes of the Democratic Party become the bygone passages of history.