Senator Robert Byrd (D-West Virginia) broke into tears when he told the Senate that he will miss his dear, dear friend Ted Kennedy, who is dying of brain cancer. So will I. And so will millions and millions of other Americans who will simply have to acknowledge that this great, decent, liberal man in his liberalism, is one of the greatest Senators that this great deliberating body has witnessed in 46 years, forgetting whether anyone there, or in the body politic, is a Democrat or Republican, or a liberal or conservative or black, brown, yellow or white, or a man or woman, or gay or straight, or young or old.
For Ted has fought tooth and nail for all of us. And he will until he takes his last breath. Because he is Irish, and Catholic, and loves the Lord, and his family, and is simply a good man. He has always known what was truly right for America, and has always acted on it and worked to get the job done.
And while he may have opponents, this good man has no enemies. But that was not what Senator Bobby Byrd, that lovely, vulnerable old and decent man, whom too many now disregard as somehow irrelevant and dottering, was really saying. What Bobby Byrd was saying, and what I said yesterday to my beloved wife, Veronika, is that Ted Kennedy's Liberalism, that awful, awful word to a lot of awful, reactionary Republicans, now tragically for this country numbering far too many of Ted's colleagues in the Senate, is the best American political philosophy that this country has.
For Ted Kennedy's liberalism is, at long last, very simple. It is formed in a question he asks every day: What can I do for the average American, the truck driver, the waitress, the destitute of Harlem or East Los Angeles, the homeless, the two million in jail, the ever back-broken Latino farm worker, the privileged Princeton graduate, the brilliant woman doctor, the not-so-brilliant custodian, the cigar store owner, the newspaper delivery boy, the gutsy Cuban American success story who fled Castro all those years ago -- what can I do for them, each and every one of them, so that they at least have a chance at the American dream, and a damn good chance to achieve it, for themselves, for their precious children, for their blessed infirm or aging parents.
I worked for all three Kennedys, and I was with Bobby when he died in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel, producing ABC News' coverage of that horrible June 5, 1968 day, when my dear friend, Frank Mankiewicz, announced Bobby's death. And I cried like millions of other Americans, for we instinctively knew one thing, if Bobby had won the presidency, and he had every good chance to do so, we would not have the extent of the Vietnam disaster in which 58,000 brave Americans, of all colors and creeds died, nor would we have the coming disaster of Richard Nixon. That is what was taken away from us when a Palestinian misfit, Sirhan Sirhan, took Bobby's life, on Sirhan's looney notion that Bobby favored Israel more than spat-upon Arabs. What a great, great waste, what a horrible tragedy for us all.
And so it is now with Ted, for he will not be with us much longer, and he represents the best that is in Americans, and the best that America stands for, and the world knows it.
Ted interviewed me once for being his press secretary, because his brilliant foreign policy advisor, Bob Hunter, told him he should, and we both enjoyed the interview. How could you not enjoy being with a Kennedy? But he eventually selected someone else, and that was fine by me, because Ted should have anything he wants, because he serves the entire human race.
I cried when Jack died as did millions of others throughout the world, once again a victim, like all of Teddy's three brothers, to senseless violence. Although in Joe's case, he died as a pilot during World War Two on a super secret bombing mission when someone forgot not to turn the radar on in his flight path. And that horrible mistake blew him to smithereens. He was Papa Joe Kennedy's favorite son, handsome, brilliant, dashing, and Papa wanted Joe to be President. So when he died, a somewhat hapless but obliging Jack was elected by Joe to be President, and Jack's unwillingness turned to willingness at his sometimes tyrannical father's tireless urging and support, and great wealth, or as Jack once said, "Don't buy me a landslide, Dad!"
Joe used his seemingly endless fortune to elect one of his sons to be President so they could serve the world, and serve it well. And so the whole world cried and knew what they had lost in Jack, for this splendid, handsome, courageous leader of Camelot gave vision and hope and the American spirit and daring and the best of America back to the world, and the world knew it.
I barked a bit once at Secretary of State Larry Eagleburger, a good and decent and gutsy man, when he once told me, "Michael, these days you don't necessarily want to tell the world you are a Kennedy Democrat," apparently because of Larry's perception about some of the excesses of the Kennedys in their exploits with women and some other shenanigans. And so I resolutely replied, "Larry, I will always be a Kennedy Democrat." That's the only thing to be, for the Kennedy men wore their PT-109 tie clasps proudly, and I cried when I lost mine.
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan had it right. When the great writer Mary McGrory told him upon Jack Kennedy's murder, "Dan, we will never be happy again," he replied, "Mary, we will be happy again, but we will never be young again."
Here's to you, Ted, for you have kept me young in body and mind and spirit and will until the end, and while I am 72 now, I will live with the Camelot spirit, your beloved brother Jack's spirit, and your beloved brother Bobby's spirit, until the end.
The writer, a Visiting Scholar at the Institute of Governmental Studies, University of California, Berkeley, served all three Kennedy brothers.
