Ted Kennedy quotes - page 5
Keeping out of the primaries puts Kennedy in situation the other candidates may well envy. One or another of them may well capture a useful number of first ballot delegate commitments by winning a string of victories in the 22 state primaries to be held next year, but it is also possible that no one candidate can dominate this extraordinary proliferation of quirky and minor‐issue‐oriented contests. And possible too that the primaries will generate such fierce rivalries that the party bosses will be forced to select a nominee from among those who remained aloof, on the theory that only such a candidate would have a chance of uniting the party in time to do battle with the Republicans. Kennedy, of course, would be an obvious choice in such a situation, especially since he alone among the Democrats does not need the primaries to prove his votegetting ability; his remarkable standing in the polls is proof of that.
Ted Kennedy
More than his brothers, he understood the legislative dance; the liberal lion would cut the best deal possible for his cause. To achieve this, he'd work with anyone: Republicans John McCain, Olympia Snowe, Orrin Hatch - all likely to be featured in Gabler's second volume; in the 60s and 70s with the Southern bulls like Jim Eastland and Richard Russell.
Ted Kennedy
This was not a blurted, off-the-cuff comment - Kennedy was reading from a prepared text. It was not a shocked first reaction to the abuses at Abu Ghraib - the story had broken more than a week earlier. Incredibly, the senior senator from Massachusetts really was equating the disgraceful mistreatment of a few Iraqi prisoners by a few American troops with the unspeakable sadism, rape, and mass murder that had been routine under Saddam Hussein. Kennedy's vile calumny should have triggered outrage. Here was the most prominent liberal politician in America accusing his own government of the very savagery it said it had gone to war to uproot. It was the worst kind of anti-American poison, and it was coming not from a crackpot with no following but from one of the most powerful Democrats in Congress. It should have unleashed an uproar. It unleashed nothing.
Ted Kennedy
If Kennedy is sincere - if his chief concern is that Massachusetts not be left for months without the services of a full-time senator - then he should do the right thing right now: He should resign. For well over a year, Massachusetts has not had the "two voices...and two votes in the Senate'' that Kennedy says its voters are entitled to. Sickness has kept him away from Capitol Hill for most of the last 15 months. He has missed all but a handful of the 270 roll-calls taken in the Senate so far this year. Through no fault of his own, he is unable to carry out the job he was reelected to in 2006. As a matter of integrity, he should bow out and allow his constituents to choose a replacement.
Ted Kennedy
People don't like to speak ill of the dead, especially those who are cut down in their prime. Both Jack and Bobby had their flaws, of course, but in the aftermath of the assassinations, their reputations were almost incandescent, to many, even saint-like. Some saw their deaths as fundamental turning points in American history. What would America have been like had Jack and Bobby lived? No Vietnam? No Watergate? That made for a heavy burden for Ted and it was in this context that he struggled and often failed. At times it was ugly. There was Chappaquiddick and the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, the boozing and escapades in Palm Beach, the broken marriage and the never-ending stories of infidelities and sexual philandering.
Ted Kennedy
They both recognized and loved each other's passion. For my father's part, everyone knew how passionate (Ted Kennedy) was and that was known for John McCain. He really loved the fight, but he never let that get in the way of respect. And that's what is missing in today's politics, that genuine respect for democracy.
Ted Kennedy
Six years ago, when John McCain, the Arizona senator, last worked on an immigration bill, his partner was Ted Kennedy, of Massachusetts. Kennedy, especially in his final decade in the Senate, was known for working closely with ideological opponents to pass major pieces of legislation. On a recent morning, McCain sat in his dimly lit office, across the street from the Senate, and said how much he missed Kennedy.
Ted Kennedy
Senator Kennedy began his career setting a high standard when it comes to birthdays. It was when he reached the minimum constitutional age, 30, that he first came to the Senate--1 of just 16 Senators elected at such a tender age from a total of over 1,895 Senators in all of American history. By his 70th birthday he was one of just 28 Senators to ever cast over 10,000 votes. But what we celebrate along with Ted at 75--Democrats and Republicans, all in awe of a lifetime of achievement--is the way in which literally every year since he has been marking the passage of time by passing landmark legislation. The Boston Globe put it best, writing not long ago that "in actual, measurable impact on the lives of tens of millions of working families, the elderly, and the needy, Ted belongs in the same sentence with Franklin Roosevelt."
Ted Kennedy
Since Biden circa 2022 is often compared to 1970s Jimmy Carter due to a combination of sluggish job approval ratings, unhappy progressive activists, and big-time economic problems (especially inflation), it is germane to observe that Carter managed to soundly defeat Ted Kennedy - the liberal lion of the 1970s and subsequent decades - in the 1980 nomination contest. Are there any Ted Kennedys around right now to mobilize progressive anti-administration grievances into a successful insurgent candidacy? Someday, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may have that stature - but not now. Indeed, the only potential rival from any wing of the party who is in that position is Bernie Sanders, who is older than Biden. And even if there were some Kennedy-like figure available, would the fight disable the Democratic Party (as it arguably did in 1980) more than slogging ahead with the incumbent?
Ted Kennedy
This is a quality that has appeared often enough in American history - and outside America as well. Senators like Ted Kennedy have been prominent before, bearing names like Henry Clay or Daniel Webster, John C. Calhoun, Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater and Hubert Humphrey. Governors like New York Republican Nelson Rockefeller or Alabama Democrat George Wallace. A Congressman like Jack Kemp. Non-office holders like Martin Luther King in the United States or Mohandas Gandhi in India or Nelson Mandela in South Africa (who later became president of his country) can, through sheer force of personality, come to dominate the political scene of the day without ever bearing a single official title.
Ted Kennedy
Kennedy made several missteps in his long career. His primary challenge to the centrist President Jimmy Carter probably contributed to Ronald Reagan's landslide general-election victory. His hyperbolic warning that confirming Robert H. Bork for the Supreme Court would usher in the return of segregated lunch counters and back-alley abortions sowed the seeds of today's petty partisanship over judicial selection. Taken all in all, however, Kennedy contributed enormously to the realization of the sort of society he championed, despite -- or perhaps because of -- his failure to win the White House.
Ted Kennedy
It's not that during Kennedy's lifetime there was total silence about his uglier habits; it's that they weren't seen as disqualifying. But with these facts on the public record for decades, and the evolution of our culture over those years, more critical portraits of Kennedy are thankfully emerging, if in fits and starts.
Ted Kennedy
I was very sorry to hear that Senator Kennedy has taken ill, and like millions of Americans, Cindy and I anxiously await word of his condition. Senator Kennedy's role in the U.S. Senate cannot be overstated. He is a legendary lawmaker, and I have the highest respect for him. When we have worked together, he has been a skillful, fair and generous partner. I consider it a great privilege to call him my friend. Cindy and I are praying for our friend, his wife, Vicki and the Kennedy family.
Ted Kennedy
Kennedy also made a point of phoning his colleagues and their family members at times of personal crisis, a gesture made even more powerful by the implicit reminder of the tragedies Kennedy himself had endured. He was among the first to call when the son of Oregon's Republican senator Gordon Smith committed suicide. He stood by West Virginia's fragile and elderly Democrat Robert Byrd when he lost his beloved wife of 68 years, Erma. Asked for advice on bone cancer treatment for the nephew of Ohio Republican George Voinovich, Kennedy delivered - along with a personal call and painting to the ailing nephew. But perhaps most important, Kennedy understood the art of compromise and the value of incremental progress.
Ted Kennedy
But their legacies are as alive as ever, together right here in Boston. The John F. Kennedy Library next door is a symbol of our American idealism; the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate as a living example of the hard, frustrating, never-ending, but critical work required to make that idealism real. What more fitting tribute, what better testament to the life of Ted Kennedy, than this place that he left for a new generation of Americans: a monument not to himself, but to what we, the people, have the power to do together.
Ted Kennedy
Ted Kennedy was the baby of the family who became its patriarch; the restless dreamer who became its rock. He lost two siblings by the age of sixteen. He saw two more taken violently from the country that loved them. He said goodbye to his beloved sister, Eunice, in the final days of his own life. He narrowly survived a plane crash, watched two children struggle with cancer, buried three nephews, and experienced personal failings and setbacks in the most public way possible. It is a string of events that would have broken a lesser man. And it would have been easy for Teddy to let himself become bitter and hardened; to surrender to self-pity and regret; to retreat from public life and live out his years in peaceful quiet. No one would have blamed him for that. But that was not Ted Kennedy.
Ted Kennedy
There was no way to work that night in the Colorado hotel into the biography that unspooled thereafter and came to such a sudden end on Sunday. In Massachusetts, for decades, political writers wrestled with where to place Chappaquiddick into the saga of Ted Kennedy, and too many of them gave up and erased the event and Mary Jo Kopechne. But it is 2020 now, and Jeffrey Epstein is dead and Harvey Weinstein is in a New York courtroom, and erasing a female victim is no longer a viable moral and ethical strategy.
Ted Kennedy
Kennedy's message [to Yuri Andropov] was simple. He proposed an unabashed quid pro quo. Kennedy would lend Andropov a hand in dealing with President Reagan. In return, the Soviet leader would lend the Democratic Party a hand in challenging Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. "The only real potential threats to Reagan are problems of war and peace and Soviet-American relations,” the memorandum stated. "These issues, according to the senator, will without a doubt become the most important of the election campaign.”.
Ted Kennedy
