The Harder Job

It seems impossible to not comment on the passing of Edward Kennedy, though I have little to add to what everyone else has said. However, I do remember two things my father said.

In the run-up to the 1980 election, my father was undergoing an amazing transformation. About five years earlier, when I entered high school, he had somehow visibly lost intelligence--about 50 IQ points' worth, I decided. Maybe more.

But as the end of the 70s drew near, so did the end of my teenage years, and so did the years of my father's intelligence vacuum. In fact, as I discovered on visits home from university, he had become incredibly learned. Things like American history, Presidential elections, politics--this "Dad" guy knew quite a bit. He had opinions about stuff and he could back them up.

Geez. Maybe that Harvard Ph.D. in history, lifelong interest in presidents and social history, and an encyclopedic memory all meant something after all.

In any case, my father had lots to say when Edward Kennedy mounted a serious challenge to then-President Carter in 1980, and not much of it was complimentary. It wasn't because of Kennedy's politics, but because challenging Carter was "dirty pool," not that my father knew from pool. It was bad form to foment divisions in the party, and my father also preferred Carter's principled (if sometimes less effective) leadership style.

During that time, my father and I talked about the Kennedys quite a bit, and two of his points have stuck with me since.

First, imagine living with the knowledge that two of your siblings were shot--not randomly, not accidentally. They were assassinated. Targeted specifically, for their work as public servants.

And yet Edward Kennedy had the courage to stay in politics. He could have invented other ways to "do good." He could have looked for a role in the media, as JFK Jr. and others in that generation have. Edward Kennedy could have contented himself with serving on boards of charities and foundations. But he continued to run for public office and serve the country in a way that made him vulnerable. Physically. Imagine his nightmares.

Second, imagine the pressure of being the one who survived. The one left to not only dream grand dreams and fight for ideals, but to live in the real world. The world where compromise is the necessary tool that translates grand dreams into imperfect programs that accomplish only some small part of the dream.

His brothers were cut down too early--"everyone" says so. Robert Kennedy's unrealized potential is either sad or tantalizing to contemplate; President Kennedy's maturation as a leader might have made the 1960s a completely different era.

But their legacies are the "what-if" dreams of hopes and inspiring words.

Edward Kennedy's legacy is one of action in the service of those same hopes, dreams, and inspirations. He was left to live down his own public mistakes in a world that was suddenly hungry for gossip about the wealthy and powerful, where his brothers enjoyed a different relationship with the press. He was left to sweat the details: the legislation and programs to give life to those dreams, in decades where the country's culture was actively hostile to caring for those less fortunate.

As my father pointed out, being the survivor was in many ways the much harder job. Edward Kennedy took on that job with gusto, and he did it well.

And he will be missed.