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The Can-Do Kennedy
Unlike his brothers, Ted Kennedy won’t leave behind any soaring rhetoric for the history books, but colleagues in both parties this week are recalling his four decades as the Senate’s most practical politician who “routinely reached across party lines on a wide number of issues to cut landmark deals.”
In contrast to their public use of his name to signify woolly-headed liberalism, Republicans are talking about the “go-to guy” in getting laws on the books, practitioner of a lost bipartisan art in the era of Bush-Rove scorched-earth polarization.
“He’s a legislator’s legislator,” says Sen. Jon Kyl. “At the end of the day, he wants to legislate, he understands how, and he understands compromise.”
“I’ve known and worked with him for 40 years,” recalls GOP Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander. “He’s results-oriented. He takes his positions, but he sits down and gets results,” Alexander said.
Jack and Bobby Kennedy were tough acts to follow, and their younger brother turned out not to have their talent for words to inspire voters. In 1980…
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2 Responses to “The Can-Do Kennedy”
“soaring rhetoric”
That's how left-libs who consider him the Lion view his rhetoric.
Sounds like he was willing to be the posturer sometimes to keep the Dems' left wnig happy (bashing Bork with lies was beneath contempt but no doubt pleased those at the low tail of society's bell curve) while being a dealmaker largely behind the scenes.
“woolly-headed liberalism”
He certainly has professed a good deal of this as well as dinosaur-throwback ambitious-Sixties stuff. However, the phrase just doesn't seem to fit the man. He is too chunky and is too clean-shaven to be a pinhead academic-activist kind of stereotype. He wouldn't quite be at home in Boulder (nowhere to go sailing, anyway).