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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2009 > August > 27
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Editorial: Kennedy: Great partisan target was top bipartisan
It’s an odd thing about Ted Kennedy. No non-president in the politics of his time was more viciously, relentlessly reviled by voices on the other side of the political spectrum. In most of the years between 1968 and 1992, when the Democrats only held the presidency for four years — and when many other Democrats were in ideological retreat — he was the chief bull’s-eye of the haters.
He gave the targeters plenty of material, from the fact that he was elected to the Senate at an extraordinarily young age on the strength of his brother’s name; to his role in the death of a young woman passenger in his car; to his uncowed advocacy of the liberal agenda; to his difficulties in speaking off-the-cuff; to his drinking and carousing.
Bashing him proved irresistible for the right-wing warriors.
Yet, by the end, he was known — with good reason — as the great bipartisan, as the reigning grandmaster of legislating in a way that works for both sides.
His cooperation with Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine is noted elsewhere on this page. Perhaps even more interesting is his work with Rep. John Boehner, a stauncher conservative. They worked on No Child Left Behind, one of President George W. Bush’s big early initiatives. Today it’s widely trashed by the left.
Sen. Kennedy made headlines in Dayton when Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and Hanscom Air Force Base were fighting over jobs. He stepped in forcefully on behalf of Massachusetts, to Ohio jeers.
He didn’t have a compelling case. And the project was really Republican Gov. Mitt Romney’s efforts to protect a much smaller base. Sen. Kennedy was doing his part as a member of his state’s team. He was the front man, because a senator has a role in defense policy, not a governor.
It would be stretching a point to say that the episode shows something about Sen. Kennedy’s bipartisanship. Anybody in his position would have done what he did. Bipartisanship in defense of local interests is one form of bipartisanship that hasn’t waned.
Sen. Kennedy’s characteristic form was much bigger.
He died in the middle of big fight about the great cause of his late career: the effort to provide health insurance to all Americans. Nobody knows if the fight would be going much differently if he were involved. He couldn’t help Bill Clinton win reform in the 1990s.
And yet the absence of the Kennedy legislative style is clear. The Democrats have made the decision that if they make many concessions to Republicans, they will lose Democratic votes in Congress without picking up any Republicans. So, for example, there is no “tort reform” (defined by supporters as the effort to protect doctors from frivolous lawsuits) in the major proposals.
Sen. Kennedy’s favorite conservative partner, Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, was the last person to leave the negotiations now taking place in the Senate. He has hinted that things might be different if Sen. Kennedy were around.
Whether Republicans have been largely absent because they’re being excluded or because they were never going to agree to anything resembling reform is a chicken-and-egg debate.
What’s clear is that hyperpartisanship is exacting a price and that Washington could use more people like Ted Kennedy, who know when there’s a way around it.
He was a flawed man who figured out how to make the most of his life. He leaves venerated by his allies — widely ranked as the most effective liberal of his time — and respected by his adversaries, even missed by some.
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