We will, obviously, see countless analyses of Ted Kennedy's legacy in the coming days. We may see almost as many for him as we saw for Michael Jackson, which is a good thing in and of itself. One of the better ones we are likely to see has already been written by Michael Tomasky.
Tomasky points out the tragic timing of Kennedy's death:
One would be hard pressed to argue that Ted Kennedy's death was a more bitter pill for the country than the deaths of his brothers before him – John, the young president whose assassination gave Americans a hard warning about the violent age they were about to enter, or Robert, the presidential aspirant who was thought at the time to be the last leader in America who might have been able to help the nation transcend that violence.
Nevertheless, the heavens have somehow conspired to make this Kennedy death, however expected it might have been, nearly as heartbreaking as those of his vigorous younger brothers. It's not just that the great cause of the last 40 years of his life, reforming America's healthcare system, sits at a perilous juncture, although it certainly is that, in part. But the tragic irony of the timing is even greater, because we see in the very healthcare debate that so needed his input the precarious state of the institution to which he devoted his life, and which he shaped and influenced more than probably any other senator in history.
The fact that HCR, his pet legislative cause, is at a critical juncture has been obvious for weeks now. The fact that Kennedy's beloved Senate is at an equally critical juncture as an institution, however, is occasionally lost in the shuffle. As much as we all care about HCR, in many ways, it's a symptom of our political malaise. The inherent weakness of the current Senate is the real disease here.
There's little question that a decent HCR bill could emerge from the House. Obama, in fact, might've already had a signing ceremony if House approval was all that was required. The problem w/ HCR is, clearly, in the Senate, which is the same place where we've had problems w/ EFCA, w/ the Stim, and w/ plenty of other necessary pieces of legislation.
Tomasky argues that the Senate has always been an inherently conservative institution that saw some new blood after WW II:
The United States Senate was rarely a force for progress through much of its history. Originally, senators weren't even directly elected. They tended to be men who at the very least would look after the interests of the railroad and mining and sugar industries, and preferably were members of families with those interests.
Then, in the mid-20th century, something different started to happen. As access to higher education became more widespread – and with the idea of public service not yet thought of in terms of the opportunity cost of not being a lobbyist or corporate lawyer instead – a different breed of person started entering the Senate. These people were not old-money Wasps, but middle-class men from different walks of life: frontiersmen who taught themselves Mandarin Chinese, like Montana's Mike Mansfield, or war veterans who wanted only to continue to serve their country, like Phil Hart of Michigan.
There were many others besides Mansfield and Hart to fit that bill--Kefauver, Al Gore Sr, Paul Douglas, and most of all, a small town druggist's son by the name of Humphrey. One could also add the likes of Proxmire, McGovern, and Church. As Tomaky notes, they were men of courage, decency, and vision who made us all proud to be Dems:
In 1958 and 1960, more men in the Mansfield-Hart mould were elected to the Senate. The trend culminated in Teddy's own class, of 1962. Now, suddenly, the Senate wasn't dominated by millionaires and racists. And now, the Senate could help remake America – and itself. It joined the side of progress and passed piles of legislation, starting of course with civil rights but hardly ending there, that changed the country.
No one was more central to this historic change than Kennedy. He left his imprint on more legislation than any senator in the history of the chamber. He forged the famous alliances with dyed-in-the-wool conservatives. I doubt that any senator passed more pieces of bipartisan legislation than Kennedy. He was just damn good at his job.
That's what we're mourning today. Yes, we're mourning the man who brought so many of us to tears w/ his 1980 speech. We're mourning even more, however, the passing of a pride of lions who did so many great things for our country and for our party. Whether it was McGovern battling the Vietnam hawks, Church battling the CIA, or Kennedy quietly helping battle Nixon (Archibald Cox was a long-time family friend), they could be counted on when the chips were down. The same clearly can't be said about the likes of Reid, Baucus, Conrad, Specter, JoeMentum, DiFi, Bayh, Landrieu, the Nelsons, and too many others today.
I greatly admire Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders. Today reminds me how much I still miss Paul Wellstone. There are other senators like Sherrod Brown and Jim Webb who seem to have considerable promise.
There is nothing, however, close to the pride of Dem Senate lions that Kennedy joined in 1963. In an era when incumbents build warchests of $10mm if they're from MT and warchests of $20mm if they're from a state that actually has some major media markets, I'm not sure if we'll see another pride for the forseeable future. That sad fact is the real reason to mourn Sen. Kennedy's passing.