It's All About Ted

My ears perk up when Ted Kennedy is in the news. Maybe it's because he's staring at me from my wall. As a writer, you spend a lot of time staring at walls, and mine has an enormous Warhol of Ted's glitter-encrusted head staring back at me.

Ted gave the piece to my mom because we helped with his 1980 campaign for the presidency. She had been his press secretary about a hundred years prior, and they remained good friends. For my part, I cold-called auto workers from a phone bank in Lansing Michigan. I was 11. The Boston Globe ran a story on me as the youngest presidential campaign worker of 1980. So now Ted's on my wall. And today, he is the news.

Today, this septuagenarian introduced what could be the most important bill of the whole Iraq fiasco, demanding accountability from the president himself. He delivered a galvanizing speech at the National Press Club. He reminded us why we have a Congress. And, like a lot of contributors to this site, he showed us there is nothing more patriotic than questioning authority. In fact, it is the mark of the liberal, and in Ted's case, the mark of the man.

For a long time, it wasn't cool to like Ted Kennedy. And not just because his driving record was as bad as Laura Bush's. He was seen as a throwback. Outdated. A dusty lion. And yet, today, it is his experience, his remembrance of things past-- things like Vietnam and a president who kept doubling down when he should fold-- that makes him so valuable. And it is his stark candor that sets him apart from his mealy mouthed colleagues. So before the Joe Liebermans start sneaking back into photo ops with the guy, and Margaret Carlson posts some lame blog with her usual revisionist history, let's just say Ted has balls... at a time when they are in scant supply under the dome in D.C.

The new generation of voters don't really know Ted as more than a guy related to someone in the new Emilio Estevez movie. But today, he stood once again as a man of principle. Unlike Joe Biden and John Kerry, he never voted for this lie of a war. And unlike most of his colleagues in the Senate, he is clearly, and simply, declaring that reason must prevail. For an excellent overview of his legislation, see Bob Cesca's piece on here.

Why has no one else done this? I realize Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are busy hosting their coming out party at the Mayflower, and Obama is dodging paparazzi in Maui, and everyone else is too busy running for president, but the true genius of what Ted has done is that he has thrown down the gauntlet. The guy knows his party just got a mandate to stop this absurd, obscene war, and he intends to use it. His legislation should pull the rest of the politically timid dems out of the corner, and force them to do something, even if it's short of what he proposed. And that may have been the whole point.

A few days ago, Joe Biden said top administration officials had privately concluded that the Iraq War was lost. He said they simply wished to postpone exiting the country so the next president would "be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof." He continued, "They have no answer to deal with how badly they have screwed it up. I am not being facetious now. Therefore, the best thing to do is keep it from totally collapsing on your watch and hand it off to the next guy -- literally, not figuratively."

How can you know this, and not do something to stop such a disgrace? Not to demand accountability at this crucial juncture is unconscionable. After all, this is it. This is the moment. Maybe Ted knows too much about losing relatives to let more American families lose theirs... all so a president can try to save face.