The pundits on Ted Kennedy.
The Boston Globe:
He staked his career to the highest goals of liberalism, and defended those goals through decades when his views were not shared by most, or even that many, of his fellow citizens. While he could have simply chosen to be the liberal movement’s spiritual leader, he opted instead to spend most of his life in the legislative trenches, fighting, bill by bill, to provide government aid to people in need of health care, education, and a road out of poverty. The programs he championed may not have solved those problems, but they brought tangible assistance to millions whose lives would have been far more difficult if not for Kennedy’s exertions on their behalf.
Now is a time to think, too, of the millions of people with cancer whose treatments were developed with billions of research dollars for which Kennedy was the leading - and most relentless - advocate. Of the people with the AIDS virus for whom Kennedy was instrumental in securing government funding that now covers half of all Americans living with HIV. Of the millions of people with disabilities whose lives were transformed by his advocacy for the Americans with Disabilities Act. And of the tens of millions of Americans whose immigration to the United States from continents other than Europe would not have been possible without the Immigration Act of 1965 that Kennedy sponsored.
E.J. Dionne:
Ted Kennedy managed to be esteemed by almost everyone without ever becoming all things to all people. He stood for large purposes, unequivocally and unapologetically, and took hard stands. Yet he made it his business to get work done with anyone who would toil along with him. He was a friend, colleague and human being before he was an ideologue or partisan, even though he was a joyful liberal and an implacable Democrat.
He suffered profoundly, made large mistakes and was, to say the least, imperfect. But the suffering and the failures fed a humane humility that led him to reach out to others who fell, to empathize with those burdened by pain, to understand human folly and to appreciate the quest for redemption.
Derrick Z. Jackson:
As one African-American woman, a former educator, said to me yesterday , “I’m not so sure that the other Kennedy brothers ‘got it’ right here’’ - she pointed to her heart - “about civil rights. Ted Kennedy did. I cannot think of a single vote on a single issue that I disagreed with.’’
Nor can I, come to think of it. Like no other senator, Kennedy sought to weave the legal gains of the 1960s into the working fabric of American life. He helped make a reality not just of civil rights and voting rights for African-Americans, but also of rights for women, the poor, people with disabilities, and people who need health care.
He was an overdog for the underdog. Without him, how much more would the Democrats have teetered in the face of Ronald Reagan’s anti-welfare campaign of the 1980s? Without him, how much more of an identity crisis would the party have had when President Clinton steered the Democrats to the center, finishing off Reagan’s anti-welfare work?
His work could not close the still-growing chasm between rich and poor, between CEOs and grunt workers. But he was a leader in recognizing the gaps. In law after law, he converted the heat from the torch of the 1960s into a warmer embrace by America of all its people.
David Broder:
When writing about Kennedy earlier, at the onset of his fatal illness, I talked about the many personal kindnesses that endeared him to people. In response to that column, I heard so many more examples from colleagues and residents of Massachusetts.
I retell one of them. A man in Malden said that he wrote Kennedy's office saying that he had been trying to buy two Red Sox tickets so he could take his father, who had lost his legs to diabetes and now was dying, to a game. Because of the illness, he needed seats down low, close to the field, and had not been able to get them. The next week, he had the tickets.
New York Times:
The record Mr. Kennedy leaves after 46 years can only be envied by his peers as they join the nation in mourning his passing after a 15-month fight against brain cancer — a record firmly anchored in Mr. Kennedy’s insistence that politics be grasped and administered through the prism of human needs.
Together with a hard-won mastery of parliamentary intricacies, and a willingness to reach across party lines to win crucial votes, Mr. Kennedy’s unwavering taproot liberalism left a robust legacy: signature laws and reforms on civil rights, the judiciary, refugees, social welfare, foreign policy (he was one of 23 senators to vote against authorizing the Iraq invasion), voting rights, job training, public education and the minimum wage.
Michael Barone:
Ted Kennedy's death yesterday comes when the health-care legislation he long sought and the president he heartily endorsed are both in some political trouble. His dream of an ever more expansive federal government seems not to have inspired as many Americans as he hoped. While he leaves the contemporary political stage, the man who served longer in the U.S. Senate than all but two others is now an indelible part of our political history.
Cal Thomas:
Over the years, I came to see Mr. Kennedy not as a symbol, but as a fellow human being who did not get up each morning seeking ways to harm the country. I know of things he did for the poor and homeless on his own time and in his own way without a press release or a desire for public approval. I know of other hurts and concerns he shared with the very few he could trust about which I would never speak.
Because he came from wealth, he felt a responsibility to give back. We can argue whether government or individuals do that best, but we can't say Ted Kennedy was inconsistent. He would compromise to advance his beliefs, not dilute them.