Redemption

Excerpts of Ted Kennedy's memoir are being leaked by the New York Times. In his book, completed apparently, several months before his death, Kennedy discusses the despair and depression he endured subsequent to the series of family tragedies beginning with older brother Joe's disappearance during World War II to Bobby Kennedy's assassination in 1968.

But it's the revelation of his own mistakes and troubles that is far more interesting. Why? Because Kennedy demonstrates a rather wise, sage, and vastly different understanding of human character than what most people express. In essence, he accepts that no person is defined by any single act or even acts. We are far more complicated beings than that. In other words, Kennedy is not some boozy, womanizing, galavanting politician, but rather, as we have heard over the past week, he is a loving husband, devoted father and uncle, avid historian, jovial singer, passionate outdoorsman and sailor, accepting friend, compassionate statesman. I would suspect that he could look at anyone and find the good in them.

And that is a redeeming character.

The End of An Era

I grew up in a Republican family. Some of my earliest memories are my parents watching the Kennedy/Nixon debates in 1960. I remember each and every Kennedy drama and tragedy: The President's assassination, Bobby Kennedy's campaign (the iconic picture of him walking an Oregon beach with his English Springer spaniel), his murder, Ted Kennedy's horrific accident at Chappaquiddick, Ted's failed presidential bid in 1980, the various divorces, drug issues, crimes, and mishaps that followed the clan. For all their tabloid foibles, the Kennedys have been a part of America's destiny and purpose. They have managed to rise above their troubles and serve this country in ways other people only talk about. They have walked their talk.

It was the electrifying brothers, John, Bobby, and Ted who defined American politics for my generation. Their idealism, sense of hope, and noblesse oblige defined the parameters of how I think about public service. They, more than any other politician or national leader, defined the passion our generation has for this amazing land we call America.

No one in politics today, even Barack Obama, is able to fill those shoes, to provide Americans a sense of the possible, to advocate for people who have no one speaking for them. The Kennedys, all of them, saw things as they could be, not as they were.

Ted Kennedy, more than another member of that clan, has risen above his stuggles and found a path, a road, through the hearts and minds of Americans, a way to help each and every one of us: Medicare, Americans with Disabilities Act, Leave No Child Behind, and, in my world, more wilderness designations than I can count.

And so with Ted Kennedy's death, it is an end of an era. We have lost a man who had a compass, a sense of direction, of what is best about America. It is a loss.