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The Senator and the Symbol -- By: An NRO Symposium

By An NRO Symposium

We?ve been told that he was the ?Lion of the Senate? and the conscience of American liberalism. And now we?re told that we should surrender on nationalizing health care, which Democrats propose to do in tribute to him. But what is Sen. Edward M. Kennedy?s actual political legacy? Several longtime Kennedy-watchers weigh in.

KEN BLACKWELL 
We should pass Obamacare as a tribute to the Senate?s liberal lion, they tell us. And Ted Kennedy was the most liberal of the lions. He challenged President Carter from the far-left wing of a left-liberal party. He demanded taxpayer funding of abortion. He opposed low-income parents? choosing safe and effective schools for their kids. He fought welfare reform -- a reform that affirmed dignity, marriage, and work. He degraded the process of judicial confirmation, mauling Robert Bork and every constitutionalist nominee since. He fought to end true marriage -- and marriage, not welfare, is the greatest boon to the poor. If we do pass Obamacare, it will achieve Ted Kennedy?s cherished goal of a government of the liberals, by the liberals, and for the liberals. If it?s lions versus Christians, I?ll stand with the Christians. 
 
-- Ken Blackwell, a former Ohio secretary of state, is a senior fellow at the American Civil Rights Union.
 
PATRICK BASHAM 
The most important lesson to be learned from Ted Kennedy?s career -- his true political legacy -- is that, in partisan politics, ideas matter. What matter over the long haul are a consistently held set of beliefs and the ability to articulate those beliefs in an accessible, attractive manner. Short-term victories may be achieved by superiority in the mechanics of campaigning, political organization, and voter mobilization. But long-term shifts in the national political culture require the repetition of a plausible narrative that resonates with a critical mass of voters. Ted Kennedy?s liberal narrative never changed between his first Senate campaign in 1962 through his endorsement of Barack Obama for president 45 years later. Kennedy?s effectiveness as a spokesman for statist cures to the nation?s economic and social ills rested upon his credibility as a passionate apostle of Big Government. Opponents could pierce Kennedy?s intellectual armor but not his ideological commitment. Today?s spokesmen for a smaller federal government can learn little of value from Kennedy?s policy prescriptions. But they can learn a great deal from Kennedy?s skilled marketing of his beliefs, especially his unwillingness to water down his ideology to suit fluctuations in the nation?s political temperature. 
 
-- Patrick Basham directs the Democracy Institute and is an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute. 

JOHN J. MILLER 
Ted Kennedy possessed of one of the best brand names in American liberalism. At first, he benefited from the brand: He was elected to the Senate because of his last name. Later, he extended the brand through his own capabilities and commitments. He also tarnished the brand through his indiscretions. (Do any parents want their boys to grow up to be just like Teddy?) Liberals will inflate his accomplishments, which were by no means insignificant. Conservatives will have to admit, however grudgingly, that he was an effective promoter of the causes he believed in. The question of whether they were the right causes or the wrong causes will remain a bitter dispute. 
 
-- John J. Miller is NR?s national political correspondent. His personal website is Hey Miller.

MONA CHAREN
As I said in my column, the praise of Kennedy?s ?bipartisanship? and seeking ?common ground? is a lot of hooey. He was a scorched-earth partisan who was not above defamation and distortion when he thought it would advance his causes. Sure, he was charming, and I?m sure he was a delightful colleague, a fine father and uncle, and so forth. (And one wishes nothing but comfort to his mourners.) But the politics he practiced partook more of the bludgeon than the gavel. Not satisfied with opposing President Bush?s decision to go to war in Iraq, he trafficked in utterly baseless rumors, such as the suggestion that ?the president and his senior aides began the march to war in Iraq in the earliest days of the administration, long before the terrorists struck this nation on 9/11.? 

He blocked many a talented nominee. The most egregious example was Robert Bork. But one thinks also of Carol Iannone, whose nomination to the National Endowment for the Humanities he torpedoed. Why? Because she had written for Commentary. (She also appeared in National Review.) As the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan said at the time: ?To say of a professor of literature that his or her principal work has appeared in Commentary is, well, to say that this is a critic of the first rank. In the tradition, say, of Lionel Trilling.? But Kennedy?s clout was sufficient to sink her and many other superb nominees. 

Kennedy is today being praised as a ?conviction politician.? Clearly having principles and fighting for your goals is admirable. But at the risk of speaking ill of the dead, I must say that Senator Kennedy often fought dirty.

-- Mona Charen is a nationally syndicated columnist.

MICHAEL G. FRANC
Ted Kennedy leaves behind many legacies. But I can think of one that must not come to pass: ?robust? national health reform in the spirit of Obamacare.

?I think first and foremost, President Obama must announce that the health-care bill will be called Ted Kennedy?s Bill,? former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown mused on a cable show. Why honor the lion?s legacy in this way rather than, say, naming a bridge, or a Nantucket Sound wind turbine, after him? Brown explained: ?I think instantly members in both Houses will have a different attitude toward the troubled health-reform bill.#...#If [Obama] does that, he?d have a good shot using the death of Senator Kennedy as the vehicle to produce health-care reform in America.? 

But ?using? Kennedy?s demise as the ?vehicle? to nationalize our health-care system, transparent political ploy though it is, will backfire. The passion on display in town halls across the nation is substantive and comes from endless hours spent reading dense legislative text and absorbing detailed analyses of the provisions therein. Why would a citizen who has concluded that Obamacare poses a threat to his and his family?s health and freedom suddenly condone a vote for this legislative monstrosity solely to honor a fallen liberal icon? 

The short answer is that he won?t. In fact, following Brown?s advice would send a clear and unwelcome message that the effort to nationalize our health system is just another Washington power grab. 

It?s enough to make you sick -- literally. 
 
-- Michael G. Franc is vice president of government relations at the Heritage Foundation.

WILLIAM J. GRIBBIN
Ted Kennedy?s legacy is a Democratic party wedded to the culture of death. Originally pro-life, and strongly so, he switched sides after Roe, not only advocating abortion rights but even demanding that taxpayers fund abortions both at home and abroad. 

Imagine if he had remained true to himself. A large part of his party would have followed course, since the abortion lobby could never have expelled the Kennedy clan from Democratic ranks. Granted, he would probably have had to give up his presidential ambitions -- but a whole lot of good those did him, eh? What a pity: to sell one?s soul for the chance of a prize just beyond one?s reach. And so he lumbered on for years, smearing Robert Bork, bellowing red-faced on the Senate floor no matter the issue, never reconsidering the discredited liberal theologies of the 1960s. If this is senatorial greatness, then all Americans should take comfort in what the liberal media have been telling us all week: We shall not see the likes of him again.

-- William J. Gribbin is a former White House, Senate, and House aide. He served at the Reagan White House and his congressional experience includes serving on the staffs of Sen. James L. Buckley and Rep. Henry Hyde.

HADLEY ARKES
?Not many people know zis, but zee Führer vas a terrific dancer!? Nor did they appreciate his scheme of children?s allowances or the pump-priming stimulus that improved the condition of the working classes. Yes, yes, and we?re told that Ted Kennedy devoted his life to lifting up the poor and advancing the cause of equality.

Put aside the question of whether his measures actually conduced to the well-being of those masses he professed to love but rarely saw in Hyannis Port. Even if they had lifted the condition of mankind, they cannot offset the two acts that must mark forever his character: the death of Mary Jo Kopechne and the savaging of Robert Bork. ?Nothing personal,? he said to Bork -- while looking away, not looking him in the eye -- after he had maligned the judge in his vicious caricature. Nothing personal there, but the crisis over Kopechne was entirely about himself: his layers of negligence, his utter absorption in his own interests, and saving his public position. Saving his own career, he helped prepare the public mind for the things to come later: the kinds of conduct that stamped people in the past as immoral, as not fit for the company of respectable people. Ted Kennedy helped instruct the American people not to care much about these things when it comes to the men and women who would govern us, even though they could not govern themselves. 
 
-- Hadley Arkes is the Ney Professor of Jurisprudence at Amherst College.

GEORGE H. NASH 
On March 30, 1981, Pres. Ronald Reagan was nearly assassinated. What if he had died that day, before he had persuaded Congress to enact his signature program of tax cuts? Would his liberal opposition on Capitol Hill have given up their philosophical opposition to his agenda? Would they have stood silent if militant conservatives had tried to rush through sweeping tax-cut legislation as a monument to Reagan?s legacy? 
 
Such thoughts come to mind as we witness the first reactions to the passing of Sen. Edward Kennedy. It is fitting at this time to pause respectfully and assess the meaning of his career. But the reaction in some quarters to his death underscores one of his ambiguous legacies. Although by all accounts a man who worked hard for what he believed, during his 46 years in the Senate he also came to symbolize a disconcerting historical trend: the royalization of American politics. 
 
From Theodore Roosevelt to Franklin Roosevelt to the Kennedys and Camelot, American liberalism has repeatedly succumbed to this phenomenon. It begins in a cult of personality, extends to the leader?s wife and children, and then to a ?court? of retainers and apologists. Among the leader and his entourage, it encourages a feeling of entitlement to power and a sense that one?s office is heritable property. It starts in hero-worship and ends in nostalgia. Perhaps most disturbing, it encourages the growth of aristocratic notions about the purpose of government and the relationship between citizen and state. 
 
Thus today we are told by some that we -- a self-governing republic of more than 300 million citizens -- should swiftly and deferentially adopt massive health-care legislation in ?tribute? to a departed leader who believed ?passionately? in this cause. 
 
Senator Kennedy will properly be remembered as a tireless champion of American liberalism. His ardor will no doubt inspire many of his followers. But the American body politic will become healthier if we now abandon the royalist approach to governance that for nearly a century has afflicted American liberalism. As the current commotion at town-hall meetings attests, most Americans do not want to be ruled by an insulated, quasi-aristocratic class of their ?betters.? Most Americans continue to prefer a government of and by, as well as for, the people. 
 
-- George H. Nash is the author of The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945. His book Reappraising the Right: The Past and Future of American Conservatism will be published by ISI Books in November.

LINDA CHAVEZ
Perhaps because I got to know Ted Kennedy when I was still a liberal and a Democrat, I was never able to muster the personal antipathy toward him felt by many of my fellow conservatives. He was smarter and harder working than many of his detractors gave him credit for being, which made him a far more potent adversary than virtually any of his fellow liberals -- and therefore a greater threat to conservatives.

He also treated even those with whom he disagreed with respect, which is why he was able to successfully woo Republicans into bipartisan support for legislation he favored. Sometimes that meant he had to compromise his own views. But just as often, it meant he convinced Republicans to compromise theirs. Had he been healthy enough to participate fully in the current health-care debate, we?d likely have a bill now that would have garnered enough Republican support to be touted as bipartisan legislation. Without him, the Democrats are left to try to push through a deeply flawed, unpopular, and totally partisan bill. Simply plastering Kennedy?s name on the legislation is no substitute for the loss of his powers of persuasion with friends and foes alike.

-- Linda Chavez is chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity.

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Full post as published by Bench Memos - National Review Online on August 28, 2009 (boomark / email).