Tuesday, April 25, 2006
Ruth Marcus (hearts) Ted Kennedy
Ruth Marcus has written a love letter to Senator Kennedy and the Washington Post has printed it as an op-ed. Ms. Marcus tries to impart a sense of the Senator as a kind of throwback to the good old days when things got done in Washington because politicians could work together. Here’s her Ted Kennedy – in 25 words or less:
“Into his fifth decade in the Senate, he is a dogged, pragmatic practitioner of the legislative arts.”
But alas, the times - they are a changing and the good Senator may be too good for this latest set of colleagues. Ms. Marcus worries:
“If Kennedy is a dinosaur, we should all -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- lament the arrival of a new political ice age in which the ability to legislate is frozen and bipartisanship extinct.”
Of course, for many of us Ted Kennedy is the lead in “The Ice Man Cometh”. We all have our signal event for the changing discourse in DC but mine will always be Senator Kennedy’s near-libelous assault on Judge Bork immediately following Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court by President Reagan in 1987. His predictable, bile-filled rhetoric has been a mainstay of the political conversation for years and I cannot imagine a list long enough where Ted Kennedy could show up among my most admired.
“Into his fifth decade in the Senate, he is a dogged, pragmatic practitioner of the legislative arts.”
But alas, the times - they are a changing and the good Senator may be too good for this latest set of colleagues. Ms. Marcus worries:
“If Kennedy is a dinosaur, we should all -- Republicans and Democrats alike -- lament the arrival of a new political ice age in which the ability to legislate is frozen and bipartisanship extinct.”
Of course, for many of us Ted Kennedy is the lead in “The Ice Man Cometh”. We all have our signal event for the changing discourse in DC but mine will always be Senator Kennedy’s near-libelous assault on Judge Bork immediately following Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court by President Reagan in 1987. His predictable, bile-filled rhetoric has been a mainstay of the political conversation for years and I cannot imagine a list long enough where Ted Kennedy could show up among my most admired.
