More thoughts on Kennedy
A story in the Herald provides some food for thought:
Kennedy’s office, one of the best-staffed legislative engines on Capitol Hill, claims 2500 bills, 500 of which have been signed into law, over a 47-year Senate career.
Regardless of whether or not you agree with his policies, and also regardless of his shameful personal behaviour at times, there are few people in history who could claim to be responsible for 500 laws. That is more than most Presidents or PMs will achieve.
“Teddy was the only Democrat who could move their whole base,” Senator Orrin Hatch, another veteran Republican, said. “If he finally agreed, the whole base would come along even if they didn’t like it.”
Kennedy won countless battles by embodying an increasingly rare type of bipartisanship. It was perceived not as a threat to ideology or money-raising prowess but as a way of getting something done, however imperfect.
“Bipartisanship takes a person that has leadership and personal charm, quite frankly, and a desire to get a result,” said former Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott. “He didn’t try to destroy you. That’s what’s happening in Washington now. It’s gotten so mean.”
Over 47 years in the Senate, Kennedy evolved into an institution himself, equal parts liberal icon and effective dealmaker who combined those skills to forge agreement on some of the most sweeping and contentious social reforms of his time.
The praise from Republican lawmakers is significant I believe, and not just being nice to the man because he is dead.
Without Kennedy, the 99-member chamber lacks anyone playing precisely his role – to dole out the goodwill and procedural expertise necessary to make the Senate wheels spin through controversial legislation. …
No one is irreplaceable in the Senate, a popular saying goes. But Senator John McCain called Kennedy just that yesterday. McCain, last year’s Republican presidential nominee, was even clearer during the weekend.
“He had a way of sitting down with the parties at a table and making the right concessions, which really are the essence of successful negotiations,” McCain said.
I suspect part of why Kennedy could be so effective is that he was pretty much immune from attacks on his left. His liberal credentials were so established that he never had to worry about attacks from the “Daily Kos” faction of the Democrats, if he did a deal with the Republicans.