I was driving home from work last night and caught the tail end of an interesting discussion on the Dom Giordano Show on WPHT. They were talking about Michael Vick...and Sen. Ted Kennedy. On one level, that seems absurd -- Vick is a scandal-scarred football player; Kennedy, the so-called "lion" of the United States Senate. But Kennedy was dogged for 40 long years by the same essential issue that the Eagles' new backup QB faces today: Can we ever redeem ourselves from one terrible and irreversible act?
About 90 minutes later, the world learned that Kennedy had finally succumbed to brain cancer at age 77.
But the questions raised by his too-unbelievable-for-Hollywood life in the public arena still linger behind, so difficult to answer.
There's no argument -- at least in my liberal-leaning mind -- that Kennedy accomplished great things during nearly 47 years in the U.S. Senate. For every time that the media invoked the name of Mary Jo Kopechne, the young woman whose life was tragically cut short during the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident in which the then-young senator's actions were inexcusable from start to finish, there is undoubtedly an American somewhere who is leading a better life because of legislation that Ted Kennedy spearheaded and sometimes passed against long odds.
This morning the Inquirer editorial board has "the list" -- you'll be hearing this a lot between now and Kennedy's burial:
In 47 years in the Senate, Kennedy passed more than 300 laws. Among them are the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which made public places more accessible to the disabled, and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program of 1997, which funded the largest expansion of health insurance coverage for children since the 1960s. The COBRA Act of 1985, signed into law by President Reagan, gave workers the ability to continue health insurance after leaving employment. And Title IX opened up college sports to young women.
He was a lifelong ally of organized labor and a relentless advocate for increasing the minimum wage. Kennedy also was a champion of education; in 2002 he worked with President George W. Bush to enact the No Child Left Behind law. Earlier this year, he teamed with President Obama to enact a law to encourage more national service. When he died, he was still pushing for his longtime goal of universal health care.
It was another lion of the Senate who overlapped with Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey, who said famously that "[a] society will be judged on how it treats those in the dawn of life, those in the twilight of life, and those in the shadow of life." But it was Ted Kennedy who did more than anyone to push American society in that right direction. It is for this achievement that people are praising him this morning...and rightfully so.
But for all the lives he helped indirectly, let's be honest: he arguably played a critical role in ending one directly in 1969. We'll never know if Kopechne could have been saved if Kennedy and his aides had called police in the minutes after he drove with his young passenger off that bridge on Martha's Vineyard. But we do know that the way that the Massachusetts senator acted was unforgivable.
Frankly, I think that an incident like Chappaquiddick would have ended the career of Kennedy -- or any politician -- had it happened in 2009 instead of 1969. (Example: Do you honestly think Eliot Spitzer's career-ending move last year was worse than what Kennedy did?) And certainly Kennedy paid something of a price: Chappaquiddick was the biggest reason, although not the only one, that Teddy never followed his brother Jack into the Oval Office.
But Kennedy ultimately faced a problem that millions of people -- and not just Michael Vick -- face over the course of a lifetime. What do we do with the rest of our lives after we've done the unpardonable. For as long as two decades, frankly, Kennedy veered between the two polar extremes of self-destruction (if you need an example, Google "Kennedy" and "Eskimo power") and redemption. Since Kennedy's second marriage in the early 1990s, his emphasis seemed totally on the redemptive side, and so we are all better off for it.
But was it enough?
I honestly can't answer that -- honestly, it would take a much Higher Authority than me to decide. I think we should be glad, in the end, that Kennedy ultimately chose the path that he took in the 40 years since that awful night, but I can't feel comfortable saying that he fully redeemed himself, either. And so when I think about Ted Kennedy, both on this day of his passing and in the years to come, it won't be the accomplishments that come to mind first.
It will be the questions.
If you can't be redeemed, what's the point of living? I think all it takes is to forgive yourself, and work to make everyone else's lives better.— HandNik- Will-your "hero" Senator killed Mary Jo Kopechne. Also, there is the two "small" matters of cheating at Harvard and committing treason with the Soviet Union during the Cold War behind the state dept's back.— Dr. Michael
All I can think of is his support of terrorism that killed thousands of my countrymen , I hope the fires in hell burn hotter today to greet him .— PAEnglish- PAEnglish: can you provide me with a link to the press release he issued "supporting" the 9/11 attacks? Or maybe a picture of him at an Al Qaeda rally?— Captain Awesome
Comment removed.- Comment removed.
- Captain awesome , are you really that stupid , or are you just practising ? . Oh wait terrist attacks only began on 9/11 didnt it dope .— PAEnglish
Let's cut the baloney, okay? Kennedy and Vick only needed to apologize to gain a second chance at redemption. Why? Because our culture needs them to be redeemed. For Kennedy, it was to fulfill the media-hyped romantic dream of an American Camelot; for Vick it's our constant need for hero worship, reduced as it is these days to athletes and celebrities. Forgiveness is simply a bargaining chip in the marketplace of fame.- Comment removed.
I know Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman are dead, but man, all the great on-field moments OJ Simpson gave to Bills fans make it all worthwhile.— jmc- Comment removed.
- Comment removed.
- I never got past the fact that we had a murderer as a senator..and the previous poster is right. He died trying to still dictate who would take his seat..He used his seat for power and control. I hate to see anyone pass but we all must. Now he answers to a much higher power than our president and his cronies that protected him and covered for him..— nanapete
- Comment removed.
- Amzing than, that you're all so willing to forgive and deify the guy who just left the Oval Office. I guess his shortcomings don;t matter because he cut taxes. The daddy issues, the forgiveness for ineptitude and failure, getting away wiht it because his daddy was rich, the supposed military service, The coke, the booze, the manipulation of information for personal gain to the cost of TRILLIONS. The deaths of thousands. I mean, I really am tired of harping on Bush, but the hipocracy is ridiculous. Yes a girl died, yes he left the scene. Unforgivable. However, all this other issues generating outrage from you morons are no different than those perpitrated by the guy you defended for a decade.— gee1971
Will Bunch, a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, blogs about his obsessions, including national and local politics and world affairs, the media, pop music, the Philadelphia Phillies, soccer and other sports, not necessarily in that order.
E-mail Will by clicking here.
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