Kennedy Legacy Shapes Health Care Reform Debate

The light of Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.’s burning ambition flickered out with death of his youngest son, Edward Moore Kennedy, known to most as Ted.

The patriarch Kennedy’s rapacious reach for the pearl -- the presidency – extended two generations, his own and his sons’. Fate stiff-armed that drive, snatching back the prize even once won.

Although the father’s yearning was more about social aspiration, the sons turned it into a mission to do good as they saw it. Their vision enlightened some, terrified others. Their ascension pulled up an opposition. As the Kennedys rose, so grew the conservative movement. Nixon’s Silent Majority was a reaction to the Kennedy/Johnson legacy. Ronald Reagan’s national stature grew as he fought against the liberal push, particularly Medicare.

The Kennedy hand helped stir the post-war calm, pushing currents that carry us today – in the wrong direction, some would say. And still others would say the changes in the 1960s and those pursued by Ted Kennedy in his 47 years in the U.S. Senate were necessary to right wrongs. That can be argued, but what can’t be disputed is that the Kennedys etched their legacy indelibly on the face of today’s America.

Cancer cut down Ted Kennedy’s booming Bostonian baritone, but that voice will echo through the health care debate. Will Kennedy’s death shape his dream of reform, just as John F. Kennedy’s memory propelled Lyndon B. Johnson’s liberal policies?

When Ted Kennedy conceded the presidential nomination in 1980, he famously said, “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.”

Whose hope? Whose dream? That is always the battle.

That is the real fight in health care reform, a struggle between two fundamentally different views of government and society. Yes, people screaming at politicians in town hall meetings have some details wrong, but they are looking past the reform bills and see behind them what they identify as the hand of government control pushing its way into health care. Proponents of change call attention to the distortions. And they are right about that. But they are wrong to discount the motivating fear.

Because Ted Kennedy made health care reform his final mission, it is the last piece of his father’s legacy, at least in this generation. It is up to the rest of us to make certain that what comes out of this fits the American way of doing things, that unique mix of helping others while preserving individual freedom and responsibility.

Everyone honors the Kennedys’ service to their country by doing what they believe is best for America, and by defending their own dreams for what the nation should be.