Ted Kennedy

Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy (born February 22, 1932) is the senior U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, having served since 1962. The most prominent living member of the Kennedy family, he is the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, both of whom were assassinated.

Because of Kennedy's personal prominence and his longtime advocacy of liberal principles, he is often regarded as a "lion" of the Democratic Party. Supporters admire him as a forceful and reliable advocate for liberalism, whose personal and political skills enable him to achieve some gains even in an era of conservative ascendancy. His critics on the right charge that he is stuck in a "big-government" ideology from the 1960s and that his consistent opposition to Republican initiatives has caused him to lose credibility. Republicans seeking to rally their supporters often have used Kennedy's name as the personification of the sort of politician who must be opposed, citing his liberal politics and what they see as failings in his personal conduct.

Family and youth

Kennedy is the youngest of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, a prominent Irish-American family. He attended the Fessenden School, and later Milton Academy and entered Harvard College in 1950. He was forced to withdraw for two years from Harvard in May 1951 after he was caught cheating on his final examination in a Spanish class. Kennedy then entered the U.S. Army for two years and was assigned to the SHAPE headquarters in Paris. He eventually re-entered Harvard, graduating in June 1956. In the 1955 Harvard/Yale football game (won by Yale 21 to 7) Kennedy caught Harvard's only touchdown pass. In 1958, he attended the Hague Academy of International Law. He earned his law degree from the University of Virginia and was admitted to the Massachusetts bar in 1959. While he was in law school, he managed his brother John's 1958 Senate re-election campaign.

His home is in Hyannisport, Mass., where he lives with his wife Victoria Reggie Kennedy, a Washington lawyer and daughter of a Louisiana judge, and her children, Curran and Caroline. He has three grown children from his first marriage with Virginia Joan Bennett whom he met while delivering a speech at Manhattanville College: Kara (b.1960), Edward Jr. (b.1961), Patrick (b.1967) and five grandchildren. After his brothers John and Robert were assassinated (in 1963 and 1968), he took on the role of surrogate father for his brothers' 13 children.http://www.cnn.com/US/9907/24/kennedy.plane.01/

In 1962, Kennedy was elected to the Senate from Massachusetts in a special election to fill the seat left vacant by his oldest surviving brother, John, upon the latter's election as President of the United States. He was elected to a full six-year term in 1964 and was reelected in 1970, 1976, 1982, 1988, 1994, and 2000.

As of 2006, Kennedy is the second-longest serving current senator, behind only Robert Byrd. According to NPR, Kennedy plans to run for an eighth full term (and ninth overall term) in 2006. If he wins and serves out his full six-year term, he will have served in the U.S. Senate for fifty years.

In May of 2006, Kennedy plans to release his children's book A Dog's-Eye View of Washington, D.C. http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2006/01/09/kennedy-book.html In the tone of Barbara Bush's tome Millie's Book, the narrator is Kennedy's Portuguese Water Spaniel, Splash.

Early career

Kennedy is the senior Democratic Party member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. He also serves on the Judiciary Committee, where he is the senior Democrat on the Immigration Subcommittee, and the Armed Services Committee, where he is the senior Democratic representative on the Seapower Subcommittee. He is also a member of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, a founder of the Congressional Friends of Ireland, and a trustee of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C..

Kennedy's career in the Senate has frequently attracted national attention. During his 1962 campaign, he was accused by his opponents of riding on his family's name and fortune, and (having no previous experience in elected office) of not being sufficiently qualified to hold so high an office. Soon after entering office, his brother President John F Kennedy was assassinated.

In 1964, Kennedy was in a plane crash in which the pilot and one of Kennedy's aides were killed. He was pulled from the wreckage by fellow senator Birch E. Bayh II (D-Ind.) and spent weeks in a hospital recovering from a severe back injury, a punctured lung, broken ribs, and internal bleeding.

In 1968, his last surviving brother, Robert, was assassinated during his bid to be nominated as Democratic candidate for the presidency. Kennedy delivered a very emotional eulogy at Robert's funeral. The eulogy made one thing clear: since his father suffered a stroke, which left him invalid, Ted has been the family patriarch and has delivered such tributes in times of crisis for the family. After the shock from this event wore off, Kennedy was looked upon as a likely future presidential candidate. For about a year, the Democratic establishment began to focus attention on him as the new "carrier of the torch" for the Kennedys and the party. The 1993 book The Last Brother by Joe McGinniss portrayed Kennedy as particularly devastated by the death of Robert, in that Ted was closer to Robert than any other member of the Kennedy family.

In January 1969, Kennedy defeated Louisiana Senator Russell B. Long to become Senate Majority Whip. He would serve as Whip until January 1971, when he was defeated by Senator Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia.

In October 1971, Kennedy called for the withdrawal of British troops from Northern Ireland, and for all political participants there to begin talks on creating a United Ireland.

Chappaquiddick

On July 18, 1969, Kennedy attended a party on Chappaquiddick Island near the island of Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, which was intended to be a reunion of those who had worked on his brother Robert's 1968 presidential campaign. All but one of the male guests were married and attending without their wives, and all of the female guests were single. Kennedy drove away with party guest Mary Jo Kopechne as a passenger in his 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88. According to Kennedy, he made a wrong turn onto an unlit road that led to Dike Bridge (also spelled Dyke Bridge), a wooden bridge angled obliquely to the road with no guardrail, and drove over its side. The car plunged into tide-swept Poucha Pond (at that location a channel) and came to rest upside down underwater. Kennedy was able to swim free of the vehicle, but Kopechne was not. Kennedy claims he tried several times to swim down to reach her, then rested on the bank for several minutes before returning on foot to the Lawrence Cottage, where the party attended by Kopechne and other "Boiler Room Girls" had occurred.

Joseph Gargan (Kennedy's cousin) and party co-host Paul Markham then returned to the pond with Kennedy to try to rescue Kopechne. Although there was a telephone at the Lawrence Cottage, nobody called for help. When their efforts to rescue Kopechne failed, Kennedy decided to return to his hotel on the mainland. As the Edgartown-Chappaquiddick ferry had shut down for the night, Kennedy swam across the 500-foot channel, back to Edgartown.

Kennedy discussed the accident with several people, including his lawyer and Kopechne's parents, before he contacted the police more than 10 hours after the accident.

The next morning, the police recovered Kennedy's car. Kopechne's body was discovered by diver John Farrar, who observed that a large amount of air was released from the car when it was righted in the water, and that the trunk, when opened, was remarkably dry. These observations coupled with the position that the diver found her body (with her head toward the floor of the car where any trapped air would be because the car was lying on its roof) have led some to believe that Kopechne had not drowned, but suffocated in an air pocket within the car. No autopsy was performed and the precise cause of death is unknown.

The incident quickly became a scandal. Kennedy was criticized for allegedly driving drunk, for failing to save Kopechne, for failing to summon help immediately, and for contacting not the police but rather his lawyer first.

Kennedy entered a plea of guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident after causing injury. He received a sentence of two months in jail, which was suspended. An Edgartown grand jury later reopened the investigation but did not return an indictment.

The case resulted in much satire directed against Kennedy, including a National Lampoon page showing a floating Volkswagen Beetle with the remark that Kennedy would have been elected President had he been driving a Beetle that night; this satire allegedly resulted in legal action by Volkswagen complaining of unauthorized use of its trademark.

Presidential bid

Kennedy deflected supporters who urged him to run for President in 1972 and 1976 by citing family concerns, in light of the fact of his brothers' assassinations. He finally threw his hat into the ring for the Democratic nomination in the 1980 presidential election by launching an unusual, insurgent campaign against the sitting president, Jimmy Carter, a member of his own party. Despite much early support, his bid was ultimately unsuccessful. The candidate was still dogged by the spectre of the Chappaquiddick incident which had taken place 11 years earlier, and his opponents often invoked the highly recognizable melody of Simon & Garfunkel's 1960s hit song, Bridge Over Troubled Water to remind voters of the tragedy and scandal. Kennedy's campaign received substantial negative press from what pundits criticized as a rambling response to the question "Why do you want to be President?" Kennedy won 10 presidential primaries against Carter who won 24. Eventually he bowed out of the race, but delivered a rousing speech before the 1980 Democratic National Convention in New York City that many consider to be one of his finest moments.http://americanrhetoric.com/speeches/tedkennedy1980dnc.htm

Democratic Party icon

Since his presidential bid, Kennedy has become one of the most recognizable and influential members of the party. In 2004, Kennedy supported the failed presidential bid of his fellow Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, speaking for Kerry multiple times and lending his chief of staff, Mary Beth Cahill, to the Kerry campaign. Kennedy has already stated that he will support Kerry should he choose to run for president in 2008.

In April 2006, Kennedy was selected by TIME as one of "America's 10 Best Senators"; the magazine noted that he had "amassed a titanic record of legislation affecting the lives of virtually every man, woman and child in the country" and that "by the late '90s, the liberal icon had become such a prodigious cross-aisle dealer that Republican leaders began pressuring party colleagues not to sponsor bills with him:Ted Kennedy: The Dogged Achiever, an April 2006 TIME magazine article.

Grounded by terror watch list

During a congressional hearing on homeland security in August 2004, Kennedy revealed that he had been stopped from boarding airlines on multiple occasions because his name or a similar name had appeared on a terror watch list. Officials from the Department of Homeland Security later apologized and corrected the mistake.

Political views

No Child Left Behind

Kennedy was a major player in the bipartisan team that wrote the controversial No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which according to both Kennedy and President Bush, was a compromise. He then worked to get it passed in a Republican-controlled Congress, despite the opposition of members from both parties.

Kennedy has since argued that the No Child Left Behind is an unfunded mandate because the President and Congress have mandated obligations upon the states without providing equivalent funds, forcing the states to spend money to comply with the federal law. Libertarians and Conservatives have had mixed reactions to the bill, on the one hand disliking the expansion of the federal government, but on the other hand favoring the school choice provisions that it sets forth. Progressive educators and others have argued that the mandate relies too heavily on standardized tests, the scores from which are used to put a "failing" label on public schools, undermining public support rather than investing in the resources they need.

Right to abortion

Although he has been a staunch advocate of abortion rights for the past 30 years, Kennedy only adopted this position after Roe v. Wade became the law of the land. Prior to that, he held a pro-life position. A letter to a constituent, dated August 3, 1971 opposes "the legalization of abortion on demand" saying that it "is not in accordance with the value which our civilization places on human life" http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45591. Kennedy's reversal on this issue after Roe v. Wade became a source of continuing dispute between him and the Roman Catholic Church to which he belongs. In 1987, Kennedy delivered an impassioned speech condemning Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork as a "right-wing extremist" and warning that "Robert Bork's America" would be one marked by back alley abortions and other backward practices. Kennedy's strong opposition to Bork's nomination is commonly seen as a prominent factor in the Senate's rejection of Bork's candidacy. Similar concerns have been raised in more recent Supreme Court nominations, as well; it is possible that Kennedy's opposition to Bork set a precedent. In recent years, he has argued that much of the debate over abortion is a false dichotomy. Speaking at the National Press Club in 2005, he remarked, "Surely, we can all agree that abortion should be rare, and that we should do all we can to help women avoid the need to face that decision." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8098-2005Jan13.html

Immigration policy

Ted Kennedy was a strong supporter of the 1965 Hart-Celler Act--signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson--which dramatically changed US immigration policy. http://www.cis.org/articles/1995/back395.html "The bill will not flood our cities with immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs." (U.S. Senate, Subcommittee on Immigration and Naturalization of the Committee on the Judiciary, Washington, D.C., Feb. 10, 1965. pp. 1-3.). Kennedy is now the ranking Democrat on the Senate Committee on Immigration, and remains a strong advocate for immigrants, both documented and undocumented.

Many people feel that this legislation--which substituted the National Origins Quota Act (1924)--dramatically changed the face of American society. Asians and Latin Americans flocked to American shores as never before, altering the ethnic composition of the United States forever. The Quota Act was very selective and favored immigrants from northern and western Europe. Proponents of the 1965 bill argued that immigration laws and quotas were discriminatory, and that American immigration policy should accept people not on the basis of their nationality. This also abolished the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.

Alternative energy

Ted Kennedy once maintained a record in favor of alternative energy sources as seen in his voting record as a senatorhttp://www.issues2000.org/International/Ted_Kennedy_Energy_+_Oil.htm.

Some people see Kennedy's opposition to a proposed wind farm, Cape Wind, within sight of his homehttp://www.capecodonline.com/special/windfarm/kennedystands8.htm as hypocritical or as an example of NIMBY behaviour.

War On Terrorism

Though a supporter of the American-led 2001 overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan, Senator Kennedy is a vocal critic of the American-led 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. He has also been a harsh critic of the way the war was planned and conducted by the Bush Administration. Kennedy would later go on to say that the best vote he had ever cast in the Senate was his vote against giving President Bush the authority to use force against Iraq.

Of particular concern to Sen. Kennedy is the United States' treatment of the prisoners taken in the War on Terrorism. Applying standards of human rights that are available to all Americans, he believes there should be no difference between the treatment of accused terrorists and the treatment of accused criminals in the USA, such as the right to a speedy trial (or the suspect should be released), and the right to legal representation.

On September 27, 2004, Sen. Kennedy made a speech on the Senate floor regarding the war in Iraq, just prior to the 2004 U.S. Presidential electionhttp://web.archive.org/web/20041017024332/kennedy.senate.gov/index_low.html.

Same-sex Marriage

Kennedy is one of only five Senators who have publicly announced support for Same-sex marriage. Kennedy's home state of Massachusetts is the only state in the United States within which same-sex marriage is legal.

References

External links

Robert Kennedy's eulogy read by Ted Kennedy
Webcast of Kennedy at a Jan. 21, 2003 National Press Club event, via NPR Provides corroboration for 2006 re-election run.
Ted Kennedy's 1980 Democratic National Convention Address

Committee for a Democratic Majority

Terror List Snag Nearly Grounded Ted Kennedy (USA Today article)
Both sides fault lack of funding for No Child Left Behind
Biography, via George Bush Foundation
Biography of Ted Kennedy at nndb.com

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