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I for one will mourn Ted Kennedy. The Chappaquidic thing was a long time ago, and it was a different time, and he was a different man.
Ted Kennedy was a great senator. He fought for civil rights, for people's right to education, for their right to vote, for their right to have affordable health care, and many other rights. He was a supporter of art, culture, and tolerance, and was a lifelong Catholic who nonetheless stood for a firm separation between church and state.
His strengths were professional and very public, and his flaws were personal, and mostly private.
He worked his entire career with professional integrity, a willingness to cross party lines and compromise, and a willingness to forego political glory in order to achieve necessary results. What is more, he always stood up for what he believed in, even when it was not popular. More than his party, more than his career, more than the dollar value of his campaign war chest, Ted Kennedy loved and tried to serve the People of the United States of America.
I wouldn't wager even one dollar that there is a senator left seated right now of whom the same could be said.
May his memory be a blessing.
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Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.
(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)
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