Which one will show up, the starry-eyed boy in the photograph reaching out to shake JFK’s hand or the LBJ lookalike of later years, all guile, ego and appetite?
Tonight will punctuate the quarter of a century we have lived with the many Bill Clintons–the centrist with ideals, the “it’s the economy, stupid” realist, the target of right-wing hatred, the self-destructive skirt chaser who tarnished his presidency, humiliated his wife and would do anything to give her the Oval Office as a consolation prize.
The advance word is unsettling–jockeying over what the topic of his speech should be and reports that he will leave town before tomorrow night’s stadium acceptance speech.
But of all today’s political figures, Bill Clinton of Hope, Arkansas who grew up without a father and created himself out of brains, charm and ambition should understand Barack Obama of Hawaii who did the same a generation later.
The expectation is that Bill Clinton’s bruised ego will be more on display tonight than his gift for empathy. Is it too much to hope that the JFK-inspired boy in him will emerge to join today’s Kennedys, young and old, to pass the torch without burning down the building?
It would bring him full circle to where he started and hoped to end.
Cross-posted from my blog, along with reaction to Hillary’ speech here.
August 25th, 2008 By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief
Massachusetts Sen. Ted Kennedy, the last of the legendary Kennedy brothers and keeper of the torch of legacy who is battling a brain tumor, surprised ‘em and wowed ‘em at the Democratic convention — appearing after a day of speculative reports in what could be his last hurrah in front of a huge national convention crowd.
I just finished watching the short speech by Senator Edward Kennedy to the Democratic convention. It was noteworthy not because of the content but because he was there to give it live. Doctors and family members urged him not to make the trip to Denver as it was literally a life-threatening decision.
Now any of the four or five people who read my musings know that I probably would disagree with the man on many issues. But I have always respected the fact that he stood up for what he believed in. It didn’t matter if it was the high water mark of liberalism under LBJ in 1965 or the nadir of the movement thirty years later. Ted Kennedy was a liberal and he never tried to hide it, never tried to compromise.
His dramatic return this week to cast the deciding vote for a crucial Medicare bill brought tears and cheers in the US Senate, even as some medical ethicists question Ted Kennedy’s decision to undergo life-prolonging (and expensive) surgery, chemotherapy and radiation.
On the New York Times Freakonomics blog, an internist involved in public health issues suggests Sen. Kennedy might have issued this statement instead:
“Because I am not a young man, the cancer in my brain will progress rapidly and is likely to incapacitate me in the near future. I trust that my doctors will do everything they can to prevent further seizures and to keep me in comfort. I will not endure extraordinary excess pain and suffering, while hundreds of thousand of dollars will not be spent on surgical debulking, radiation, and chemotherapeutic regimens which do not work.
“Modern medicine cannot cure my cancer, but it can keep me comfortable and free of pain. I have already contacted the Massachusetts General Hospital Hospice program.”
If such a suggestion seems heartless, it nonetheless reflects a crucial debate that has started about end-of-life care, which accounts for a significant percentage of Medicare expenditures.
Pressured by countless telephone calls, tens of thousands petition signatures and letters to Capitol Hill, thousands of letters to the editor, and hundreds of columns and opinion pieces (hopefully one or two of mine included therein) a sufficient number of Republican Senators have joined their Democratic colleagues to overwhelmingly–I.e. “veto proof”–pass Senator Webb’s version of the 21st Century GI Bill.
In a strong show of true support for our troops, last night, 77 U.S. Senators voted in favor of the GI bill, including my home state Senator Cornyn, who finally saw the light and did the right thing. Twenty-one other Senators–all Republicans–voted “Nay,” including the “wide stance” Senator from Idaho.
There were only two Senators absent for this important vote. One was Ted Kennedy who is recovering from brain surgery. The other, Sen. John McCain, who has fought the Webb bill tooth and nail. McCain, President Bush and a few others at first claimed, in an unbelievably misplaced penny pinching mode, that the bill “would cost too much.“ When that didn’t fly, they postulated that the bill would hurt retention–a claim that was quickly countered by a Congressional Budget Office analysis that found any possible losses in retention caused by this bill would be balanced by the increases in recruitment it would generate.
As far as the president goes–the other opponent of the more fair and generous Webb bill–according to the Washington Post:
In a 92 to 6 vote, the Senate yesterday approved unrestricted funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that allows continuation of the current military course of action through the end of President Bush’s term and beyond. In exchange for that unencumbered freedom to operate in Iraq, Bush agreed to demands by congressional Democrats to create a new higher-education benefit for veterans and their families, and to extend unemployment benefits (Emphasis mine)
After initially fighting the education provisions of the GI Bill, because they would “cost too much,“ Bush (and McCain) demanded that the education benefit be transferable to spouses and children of veterans. Democrats complied and pushed the cost of the Webb bill to $62.8 billion over 11 years.
The improved Webb GI Bill now goes to the President, attached to the 2008 war supplemental. Let’s hope that, this time, the President will truly support our troops and promptly and unequivocally (no signing statements) will sign the bill.
Forty years ago tonight, hours before Robert Kennedy was killed, I was campaigning as a Eugene McCarthy delegate to the 1968 Democratic convention. When a man rose to spew out Kennedy hatred, I cut him off and said, “I’m running to stop the war. If McCarthy drops out, I’ll vote for Kennedy.”
Two days later, from an office window, I was looking down at a line of people more than a mile long inching toward St. Patrick’s Cathedral on a brutally hot day to view RFK’s body lying there.
Watching became unbearable, and I went down with others to wheel a plastic barrel on a dolly and hand out paper cups of water. The air was heavy with heat and tears. Without words, there was an occasional meeting of eyes in shared sadness. In that year of political murder and chaos, we were mourning the loss of more than one man.
Robert Kennedy had been his brother’s fierce protector, enforcer, campaign manager, Attorney General and, after the assassination, keeper of the flame. But like JFK before him, in the last days of his life, he became something more.
Brain surgery on Senator Edward Kennedy has been completed successfully according to news reports. Kennedy travelled to Duke University in North Carolina for a procedure to reduce the tumor and will next undergo radiation therapy in Massachusetts.
Interestingly Kennedy was awake during the entire procedure and doctors predict he will suffer no lasting effects.
I do not often agree with Senator Kennedy on the issues but by all accounts he is a very good person and I wish him the best in his recovery
When Hillary the other day unfortunately–and unintentionally, she says–intimated that she is staying in the presidential race at least until June because, you never know, “something” could happen, I am sure she never counted on Conservative Fox contributor William Kristol to be the one that would “drop the other shoe” on Obama.
While the “shoe” was not exactly as big as Hillary may have been hoping for, the once-a-week New York Times Op-Ed contributor, William Kristol, did drop the other shoe on Obama this morning.
You see, Obama–standing in for Ted Kennedy–gave a terrific commencement speech at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., a week ago Sunday of Memorial Day weekend. Apparently, Kristol could not get to his computer fast enough last Sunday to get his critique of Obama’s speech in his once-a-week column in the Times a week ago Monday.
But don’t worry, in his much awaited column that appeared this morning, he made up for the delay and really let Obama have it, and in doing so dropped the much awaited “other shoe“ for Hillary.
In his column, titled “What Obama Left Out,” Kristol drops the bomb shell–the other shoe. This is the low-down: Although in his stirring commencement speech Obama exhorted the Wesleyan undergraduates to change the country and the world through public service, apparently Obama did not specifically mention military service.
It doesn’t matter that Obama said, in part, “Because it’s only when you hitch your wagon to something larger than yourself that you realize your true potential and discover the role you’ll play in writing the next great chapter in America’s story.” It doesn’t matter that “something larger than yourself” could be serving your country in the military; Obama did not specifically mention “military service.”
It doesn’t matter that military service is probably the highest and most honorable form of public service; Obama did not specifically mention “military service.”
According to Kristol, not mentioning military service specifically, is “Obama‘s sin of omission,” and thus “Obama failed to challenge–even gently–what he must have assumed would be the prejudices of much of his audience and indulged in a soft patriotism of low expectations. “
Wow! These are powerful words about what “Obama Left Out.” This has to be the other shoe, and I am sure that “What Obama Left Out” will end up on Fox’s endless loop. But wait, how can something Obama didn’t say end up on the “endless loop?” I am sure Fox will figure a way.
But speaking about what Obama failed to mention, I wonder if Mr. Kristol will write in his much awaited once-a-week column about some of the things president Bush has failed to mention, has “left out.“
One or two things come to mind right away. The truth about why we went to war in Iraq. The truth about torture. The truth about warrantless eavesdropping on Americans. The truth about outed CIA operative Valerie Plame. The truth about the fired U.S. Attorneys.
I am sure there are more, many more. But I won’t hold my breath.
By the way, Mr. Kristol, I did twenty years of public service for my country. It just happened to be in the military.
As we near the fortieth anniversary of Robert Kennedy’s assassination this week, Ted Kennedy will be fighting for his life today in six hours of “extremely risky” surgery for a brain tumor at Duke University Medical Center.
He has always been a survivor, outliving a plane crash, the plunge of a car into deep waters and the violent death of two brothers to fill out a long and honorable life.
Barack Obama said last week that he “would not be sitting here as a presidential candidate had it not been for some of the battles that Ted Kennedy has fought. He is somebody who battled for voting rights and civil rights when I was a child. I stand on his shoulders.”
Others will be on their knees today, praying that Ted Kennedy will be granted more years to give us all.
Mark Madden, who made his reputation with bold, outlandish attacks on famous people, has been permanently removed from the air by ESPN.
His dismissal, which came down from ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Conn., came five days after he made a scurrilous remark about U.S. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy on his 1250 ESPN talk show, which ran from 3 to 7 p.m. weekdays.
The comment?
At the opening of his show last Wednesday, Madden said this about Sen. Kennedy, who days earlier had been diagnosed with brain cancer:
“I’m very disappointed to hear that Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts is near death because of a brain tumor. I always hoped Senator Kennedy would live long enough to be assassinated.
“I wonder if he got a card from the Kopechnes.”
At the urging of station general manager Mike Thompson, Madden apologized over the air for his remarks about two hours later.
After initially reviewing the situation on a local level, Madden was neither reprimanded nor suspended. When asked if there would be some form of punishment, Thompson said, `No. The fact is we took action right away. Frankly, it was a comment that was stupid. He admitted that. I don’t think it requires any such thing as [discipline].”
ESPN had a change of heart, and it came from the corporate level in Bristol. Krulewitz explained the change of course
“We had a chance to regroup and review the situation and consider it more thoroughly from all perspectives,” he said. “This is the decision we have made, and we feel it is the right one.”
In other words: they probably got a ton of complaints, perhaps even from outraged advertisers. OR, they sincerely looked at it and decided the remarks were not just in bad taste due to the timing, but crossed the line and didn’t want the corporation to be associated with that kind of comment.
What crossed the line was most likely not the comment about the Kopechnes. Quite a few A.M. conservative talk show hosts have done riffs on that for years.
But saying even in jest that he wants to see Kennedy assassinated?
Barack Obama, standing in for Senator Edward M. Kennedy as commencement speaker at Wesleyan University, invoked the Kennedy family’s legacy of public service and challenged students to look beyond material gains and work for our “collective salvation.”
“No one is forcing you to care,” Obama said. “You can take your diploma, walk off this stage and chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy. But I hope you don’t.”
With a commanding lead in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Obama said that if he is elected he will call upon the students and the nation to “be unified in service to a greater good. I intend to make it a cause of my presidency.”
Analysts are writing about a demographic split in the Democratic party but it’s now clear there seems to be yet another split. This speech more than ever signals Obama picking up the Kennedy family torch.
There’s now a dividing line between the Kennedy family branch and the Clinton family branch. (See our earlier post HERE.)
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…
If this New York Daily News report is to be believed, it seems that Senator Ted Kennedy has told friends that he would like to keep his Senate seat inside the Kennedy clan if and when he can no longer occupy it.
Ted Kennedy has made clear to confidants that when his time is up, he wants his Senate seat to stay in the family - with his wife, Vicki.
Multiple sources in Massachusetts with close ties to the liberal lion say his wife of 16 years has long been his choice to continue carrying the family flame in the Senate. Kennedy won the seat in 1962; his brother John held it from 1953 to 1960.
“There’s no question that he’d like Vicki to continue in his seat,” said one Massachusetts Democrat with ties to the Camelot clan who spoke to Kennedy recently, before his health crisis.
“She’s smart, and smart politically.”
Not being a resident of Massechusetts I really don’t have a dog in this fight, but such a concept (in some ways resembling a royal succession all too closely) has never sat well with me. While the people of the state can certainly select who they will, the handing off of a Senate seat to a family member just strikes me as unamerican in some fashion.
I still have full sympathy for the Senator and hope for his full and speedy recovery, but it is at times like this when devotion and attachment can sometimes run roughshod over the normal political process. I would like to see less of this in the future and more of an open chance for the best qualified candidates to step forward and be vetted.
May 21st, 2008 By DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, Assistant Editor, TMV Columnist
From my Magyar family, there is a story from my father’s brother,* a man who had the tribal title of ‘keeper of trees.’ The family story goes like this:
“Once in times older than the fog and younger than the sun, there were old guardian trees. These venerable trees had lived so long they’d seen everything that passed by on the road before them… and often more than once.
Thus, these trees, so situated, had become shrewd observers of human nature. They knew the language of creatures too. They knew the odd, wondrous, and treacherous ways of men as well.
Humans found being near such trees often calmed their minds, quieted the spinning-jinn within. Often enough, answers to long held questions seemed to flow from the magnitude of the old trees, right into the human heart.
Therefore, those who’d come to the groves in mourning, or having lost their ways, or simply being perplexed, often enough went away feeling deeply comforted, better directed, or with more clarity of mind.
Long ago, before legends ever existed, guardian trees were not just trees, but healing spirits who gave of their leaves and bark and roots so that human beings could be made well again… and for that reason too, the people loved them. And, the leafy giants loved the people right back.
But as the guardian trees grew older yet, their limbs and reaches also grew longer– and much heavier– causing the trees to cry out sometimes. The weight of their limbs put unbearable pressures upon their delicate junctures. The village people were alarmed to hear the trees crying…
They feared the trees’ arms might break and bring down the entire tree, and so, they carefully whittled crutches made of ground-wood, and gently pressed these under the trees’ great arms, helping the giant trees to remain strong despite whatever storms might rear up.
And, the trees grew even older… and older yet. More challenges came from bitter winds and wild weather, til the oldest trees carried far more scars than bark… some scars from deep woundings, some from horrible severances, and many scars from loving so hard the tree’s skin had come apart time and again, each time allowing more tree, more love, to be carried within.
No matter how old a tree became, no matter how fatefully struck or crowned… the great trees were still consulted for their wisdom, their ability to see far. And those who knew the old trees best, remained ever near them, protecting the guardian trees now, those giants who had spent long and long, reaching out their heavy limbs to shelter and protect others.”
So may it be for the Senator and those who love him so.
____________
* “The Faithful Gardener, A Wise Tale About That Which Can Never Die,” C.P. Estés, HarperSanfrancisco
