Posted 8/27/2009 07:27:00 PM by Douglas

I certainly can't say anything about Teddy that hasn't already been said, so I'll let those better at it than me eulogize the man. Let's start with The Agitator:

But I feel no compulsion to praise Kennedy’s life in politics. Kennedy was an elite, and not by virtue of any actual accomplishment (sorry, but we have 100 senators no matter who comes out on top on election night. Getting elected to political office in itself adds no value to society as a whole). Instead, Kennedy was an elite by birthright, by being born into the closest thing America has to royalty. He used his status and political power to procure advantages the rest of us don’t have, whether it was evading responsibility for his role in a young woman’s death, or hypocritically killing off a planned wind farm in Nantucket Sound because the renewable energy project would have sullied the view from the Kennedys’ Hyannis Port compound–to pick two examples that bookend his life in politics.

Newspaper editorialists like to eulogize politicians by exalting the sacrifice that comes with public service. I’ve never really believed that. A U.S. Senator’s life is hardly one of hardship. It’s hard for me to find anything particularly praiseworthy or sacrificial about an already-wealthy man adding to his wealth the enormous power that comes with spending 40+ years in the halls of the U.S. Senate. Kennedy played no small role in vastly growing the size, scope, and power of the federal government. In my book, that makes his career contribution to human freedom a net loss.

That pretty much sums it up. I don't feel much veneration for rich, privileged people that work their whole lives to help the down-trodden when they do it with other people's money. That's not compassion coming from a multi-millionaire. But you've got to go to the Telegraph for the real obit:

As senator for Massachusetts from 1962, Kennedy proved both hard-working and effective, with a consistent devotion to liberal causes. The old, the young, the unemployed, the disabled, ethnic minorities, homosexuals, women — all found in him an eager advocate. But not unborn children: unexpectedly for a Roman Catholic, Kennedy approved federal payments for abortions.

Wow! What an opening salvo! But it continues:

“Senator,” began one interviewer, “you were expelled from Harvard for cheating, then you left a woman to drown in your car at Chappaquiddick. What makes you think you have what it takes to be President?” On the streets bumper stickers proclaimed: "No one drowned at Watergate”.

I'm more fond of the bumper stickers in Texas: "Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than my gun!"

So Massachusetts has the task of finding the first non-Kennedy senator since the Eisenhower administration in 1953. In a country that defeated the world's strongest monarchy to establish a meritocracy, this alone can't be all bad.