President Barack Obama was among many dignitaries gathered this week in Boston to honor the opening of an institute that tells the story of the U.S. Senate.
The Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate honors a place that the late Massachusetts Democrat served for more than three decades. The Senate that Kennedy served no longer exists, according to the president.
What a shame.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/03/letter-from-boston-obama-says-kennedys-senate-is-dead-116516.html?hp=b1_r3
Ted Kennedy was admired and reviled. His friends cherished his loyalty. His foes loathed his ferocity.
Kennedy, though, had this amazing ability to make friends across the political aisle. Many of his former political foes came to Boston to remember him for his wit and for the good cheer he spread among those he met.
Where is that collegiality now? Barack Obama wondered how the Senate functions today.
“What if we carried ourselves more like Ted Kennedy? What if we worked to follow his example a little bit harder?” Obama said. “People fight to get in the Senate, and then they’re afraid. We fight to get these positions and then don’t want to do anything with them. Ted understood the only reason to get these positions is to get something done.”
No, the late Liberal Lion was far from perfect. He had his faults and demons. He behaved badly off the clock at times in his life. Despite his occasional missteps, Kennedy knew how to legislate. He worked well with others, which in a legislative body comprising 100 occasionally monstrous egos is an essential element of good government.
Kennedy also knew about tradition and believed it meant something important. As Politico reported: “Kennedy waited a year to deliver his first speech on the Senate floor, Obama recalled at the institute, noting dryly that ‘that’s no longer the custom.’ (Freshman Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton had barely been sworn in before he riled up the White House over his own maiden speech and his open letter attacking the Iran talks.) The president looked over to former Senate majority leaders Trent Lott and Tom Daschle, joking that they could talk about the time when traditions meant something, though he left out his own impatient ambition that led him to announce a presidential campaign two years into his first term.”
There’s a glimmer of hope, though, for the Senate.
Edward M. Kennedy can’t come back. A constructive U.S. Senate is able to rebuild itself, however, into an institution that relearns how to build consensus across the aisle and avoid demonizing the other side as being an “enemy” of the common good.