And they, since they Were not the one dead, turned to their affairs.
I was looking, yesterday, for news articles that would tell me what would happen with the Kennedy seat. One blog post about possible contenders had an indignant commenter. His body’s not even cold yet, this person said, and already people are thinking about who will take his place. He can be followed, but never replaced.
I couldn’t help being amused, as I read the comment. Teddy Kennedy, I thought, would be the first to compete for the seat of the dead lion, if the shoe were on the other foot. He’d eulogize the man, speak eloquently of what was lost, but he’d be planning already about how, in the man’s absence, to advance his political goals.
He’d mean the eulogy, too; I’m not suggesting callousness here. Despite what happened to Mary Jo Kopechne, I think Teddy Kennedy, of all politicians, is on my list of people least likely to have been a sociopath. Stories stream out about him now, of the ways he responded to people both powerful and not, who were grieving or ill: Biden’s account of how faithfully Teddy Kennedy kept in touch while Biden’s sons fought for life in the hospital, and the specialists he sent their way, the story on TalkingPointsMemo about Teddy Kennedy bringing handfuls of earth from his murdered brothers’ graves for Yitzhak Rabin’s funeral, after Rabin was assassinated, conservative columnist David Frum’s story about how his opinion of Teddy Kennedy was changed by the grace Kennedy showed toward his political foe Theodore Olson, in the wake of Olson’s wife’s death in 9/11, the personal touch he showed, persistently for years, toward the families of 9/11 victims, the Anchoress’ account at First Things (of a man whose politics she opposed), that
Thankfully, God knows more, and sees more, than the rest of us, because eventually we’ll all need to count on his mercy, as we face his justice. For all that we know of Kennedy, there is much we do not know. A family member who works with the very poor once told me that when he was in a real fix and unable to find help for, for instance, a sick child in need of surgery, a phone call to Kennedy’s office would set the “Irish Mafia” of professional people -doctors, lawyers, pilots and such- into brisk motion. I think an examination of the life of every “great” person (and I mean “great” in terms of power and influence) will expose deep flaws and surprising episodes of generosity.
In these stories, I see something beyond the glad-handing charm of a politician (though Teddy Kennedy had that, as well). I see a man whose empathy was as large as his appetites.
But the Lion of the Senate was also a shrewd politician, who racked up his long list of legislative achievements – Head Start, Meals on Wheels, Title IX, Family and Medical Leave Act, and more – by being relentless in pursuit of his goals. He himself, on his deathbed, was maneuvering to get himself replaced as quickly as possible; one of his last requests was that Massachusetts law be changed to allow the Governor to appoint a temporary replacement to hold his Senate seat while the state waited for the special election to fill the seat. Partisan? You could say that; Governor Deval Patrick, a Democrat, would likely appoint someone who would deliver one more vote for health care reform, and Teddy Kennedy, that most unabashedly partisan of liberal Democrats (but also, perhaps paradoxically, one of the best at reaching across partisan lines), surely wanted to ensure the success of that one cause to which he’d devoted his life, even if he couldn’t live himself to see the day. Play politics with his death? I think nothing would gratify the man more.
Still, if I doubt Kennedy would be dismayed in the least to see speculation about his seat practically before his body was cold, that commenter was right about one thing: he’ll be followed, but not likely replaced. It would be hard indeed to find the legislative equal of the Kennedy who most changed America.
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“And what about Mary Jo Kopechne?” some of you may be thinking. It’s the name on everyone’s lips and on the top of everyone’s Google search now, the one great wrong of Teddy Kennedy’s life that cost him the Presidency, and all these decades later is bound to dominate his obituaries.
What does it mean, not to speak ill of the dead? Beyond, of course, not insulting them to the faces of their close friends and family who are freshly mourning them? Hanna Rosin, in a reflection at Double X on Kennedy and Mary Jo Kopechne, notes that she prefers British obituaries, “which tell it like it is,” to American ones. So do I, and so, I think, do many of us.
In fact, as I look back on the famous people who have died most recently, there is scarcely anyone whose life doesn’t contain some obvious grave flaw, whether personal (Michael Jackson), or related to public policy (Robert McNamara). Walter Cronkite is one of the very few exceptions. At the same time, when great-but-flawed, or flawed-but-great people die, it’s only fitting and natural that we remember the greatness as well as the flaws. So too with Hanna Rosin, who, after remembering Mary Jo Kopechne’s death, turns it around:
Finally, there is the issue of the obvious narrative the papers are not stringing together. In my mind, I’ve always equated Ted Kennedy with Chuck Colson, the disgraced Nixon aide who went on to found an admirable Christian organization called “Prison Fellowship.” Public officials who do terrible things and then say they’re sorry (often in a press conference or book) are a dime a dozen. But the ones who do something terrible and then repent indirectly in the form of a lifetime of dedicated public service are rare. Colson and Kennedy are just about the only two I can think of.
Mary Jo Kopechne is on our minds because this narrative about Ted Kennedy makes sense, in some intuitive, appealing way. Kennedy killed a girl. That’s his Rosebud. He made up for it partly by declining the ultimate glory of running for president, and choosing the more humble path—helping the underclass using the slow, steady machinery of the Senate.
I think, if there’s anything to that admonition against speaking ill of the dead, beyond the part about not giving offense to the freshly grieving, it’s this one: not to reduce any man to his worst deed, but to remember the good, whatever it may be, along with the ill. In Teddy Kennedy’s case, both that worst deed and the good he went on to accomplish are written large; he was both a highly visible sinner and a great man.