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Last Updated June 22, 2005
Edward Kennedy has served more than 42 years in the Senate--longer than all but two other senators in American history--and he is still going strong. He has served with nine presidents of the United States and nine governors of Massachusetts, most of them Republicans; the only senators who have served longer are Strom Thurmond of South Carolina and Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Kennedy has had the highs and lows of his personal life followed by millions and criticized vitriolically by many. "I've made mistakes. Certainly there are things I'm not proud of," he admits. He has been a presidential candidate and, while still in his 30s, was widely assumed to be the next president. He is second in seniority in the Senate, behind Byrd. His reputation as an idealistic champion of the poor has been burnished by the praise of first-rate celebrators that no American political family has attracted before, and the nation has watched him cope impressively time and again with family tragedy, most recently when his nephew John Kennedy Jr. died in July 1999. To others, he is a symbol of personal immorality and unpunished criminal behavior, a man who has gotten away with things that would have ended the public career of almost anyone else. There is some basis for both views, but neither is an entirely fair picture of this politician, who was re-elected without much fuss in 2000 and seems likely to be again in 2006, and who, even after nearly a decade of Republican Senate majorities, has done much to set national policy. In most of America and even in much of Massachusetts the luster of the Kennedys has worn off, and most Americans have no memory of the years when John Kennedy was president. But Edward Kennedy has remained a major political force. There was little in the early life of this youngest of the Kennedy siblings to suggest he would be a major politician, much less for so long. He grew up in Bronxville, New York, a rich suburb with many other rich Catholics, was thrown out of Harvard for cheating on a Spanish exam and served in the Army, returned to earn degrees at Harvard and Virginia Law School, and married a Bronxville girl who never developed a taste for politics. Then his brother was elected president of the United States at 43, and the 28-year-old Edward Kennedy was a national celebrity. His father insisted that he run for the Senate; a JFK college roommate was found to hold the seat until Kennedy reached the constitutional age of 30, in 1962. His family money and the enthusiasm among Massachusetts Catholics for this seeming royalty enabled him to beat strong candidates with good political names: Attorney General Edward McCormack, nephew of Speaker John McCormack, in the Democratic primary; George Cabot Lodge, son and great-grandson of senators, in the general. ''He can do more for Massachusetts'' was his slogan, as it had been John F. Kennedy's in his first Senate race 10 years before. After his brothers' assassinations, Edward Kennedy was seen by many as their natural heir, and he could have been nominated for president in 1968, at 36, or in 1972, had he chosen to run. Instead, in the latter year, he gave the first of many stirring convention speeches promoting his trademark liberalism. In 1979, he did run for president, and began the race against incumbent Jimmy Carter far ahead in the polls. But he was unable to articulate his reasons for running, and his candidacy was greeted with adverse reaction to him personally as well as to his policies. It ended in a crushing defeat, relieved only by another stirring convention speech, after which he pointedly refused to raise Carter's hand on the podium. In retrospect, it is plain that Edward Kennedy's presidential chances were ended in July 1969, with the accident at Chappaquiddick. But he has been re-elected with solid margins in Massachusetts, though he received spirited competition in 1994 from Mitt Romney, then a venture capitalist and now governor. Kennedy has been a hardworking and practical politician who, after his brothers' deaths, took up liberal causes and attention to the poor, which had been the focus of Robert Kennedy in the last years of his life. He was elected Senate majority whip in 1967, but lost the post to Robert Byrd in 1971. He has worked hard for a quarter century without friendly support from a Democratic administration, until the election of Bill Clinton. As chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee from 1987-94, Kennedy supported teachers' unions; on the Judiciary Committee, which he chaired back in 1979-80 (his chief aide was a young lawyer named Stephen Breyer, now on the U.S. Supreme Court), he supported abortion rights and feminist groups with energy and enthusiasm. He immediately pounced on Judge Robert Bork's nomination in 1987, but played a lesser role in the Clarence Thomas hearings, which came shortly after an incident in which his nephew William Kennedy Smith was arrested and charged with rape in Palm Beach, Florida. In 1992, Kennedy supported Bill Clinton happily and basked as Clinton gave repeated homage to the Kennedy family. Legislatively, Kennedy was productive, though not as much as he wished. He worked to pass direct student loans, AmeriCorps, Goals 2000 and the School-to-Work Opportunity Act. He again sponsored the Family and Medical Leave Act which George H. W. Bush had vetoed; it was the first law Clinton signed. After Republicans won a Senate majority in 1994, Kennedy shifted his focus from expanding government to protecting it from downsizing. In 1996, he went on the offensive. He pushed the Kassebaum-Kennedy health care bill, an incremental measure to provide portability of health insurance and to limit exclusions for pre-existing conditions; he worked to keep Medical Savings Accounts out, and the bill passed. Kennedy has continued to press for increases in the minimum wage and in Pell grants. Kennedy did not quit legislating even when George W. Bush took office in 2001. Kennedy goes back a long time with the family; sworn in in November 1962, he was technically a colleague of George W. Bush's grandfather Prescott Bush, whose last term ended in January 1963. He got on well with George H. W. Bush in 1989-93. George W. Bush started off his term by inviting Kennedy to the White House frequently and to view Thirteen Days, the film about the Cuban missile crisis. Kennedy played a major role in producing Bush's first major bipartisan achievement, the education bill passed by the Senate in June 2001 and signed in January 2002. Kennedy also broke with Bush, after initial cooperation, on the Medicare/prescription drug bill passed in November 2003. Kennedy succeeded in getting a version to his liking through the Senate, but the House produced quite a different version that largely prevailed in the conference committee. But he pursued other bipartisan causes--automated exit and entry customs systems with biometric identifiers with Sam Brownback and Saxby Chambliss, strengthening defenses against biological warfare with Bill Frist, HMO regulation with John Edwards and John McCain, colon cancer screening with Jesse Helms, hate crimes legislation with Gordon Smith, FDA regulation of tobacco with Mike DeWine. Most of these bills did not become law, but no one doubts that Kennedy will persist. Even his partisan opponents admit that he has become a superb legislator. And he remains deeply involved in local issues. "Senator Kennedy is a workhorse," says Governor Mitt Romney, who ran against him in 1994. "Senator Kennedy works on any issue that's important to Massachusetts. He is on the phone with me or he's come to my office. I've gone to his office. He is a hard worker, and he cares about his state, and he cares about doing what's right for Massachusetts." One issue on which Kennedy has taken a strong stand--and has strongly criticized George W. Bush--is Iraq. He voted against the Iraq war resolution, while his colleague John Kerry voted for it, and later called the case for the war "a fraud … cooked up in Texas." "Iraq is George Bush's Vietnam," he said in April 2004 at the sober Brookings Institution. "This is the pattern and the record of the Bush administration [on] Iraq, jobs, Medicare, schools, issue after issue---mislead, deceive, make up the needed facts, smear the character of any critics. Again and again we see this cynical, despicable strategy playing out." Kennedy played a key role in securing the 2004 Democratic National Convention for Boston--its first national convention ever--and campaigned heavily for Kerry in the Democratic primaries. When Kerry's campaign was foundering in fall 2003, Kennedy stepped in with advice and a key staffer--Kennedy has been known for his excellent staff since his first days in the Senate--Mary Beth Cahill was installed as Kerry's campaign manager. At the convention he conducted the Boston Pops playing "Stars and Stripes Forever" and delivered a rousing speech in the hall. Kennedy was reelected with 73% of the vote in 2000. He indicated soon afterward that he intended to run for reelection in 2006, when he turns 74. There is little doubt that he will be reelected and if he serves out that term, he will have served 50 years in the Senate, more than anyone else in history, unless Robert Byrd reaches that milepost before him.
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