Better to burn out than to fade away...?
JFK's and RFK's ghosts always loomed over Ted Kennedy. From purely the perspective of being an icon, Teddy had the peculiar misfortune to live a full life. JFK once supposedly remarked that Lincoln's assassination is what made our civil war leader larger than life. And so it would be with him and Bobby.
As a Capitol Hill intern in 1987, I walked past Teddy in a hallway and nearly passed out from the excitement that rose up in me, who'd spent the summer reading about the Kennedys. For the next 22 years, the word "liberal" would be such a negative term, and Teddy would be so much the dictionary illustration for it, that much of his mystique wore off in my mind, especially given some of his foibles and disappointments.
Yet he accomplished much in line with liberal ideals, more than his beloved ghost brothers. It may be his final victory that the word liberal is no longer the dangerous pejorative that it's been for so many years.
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