Senator Kennedy Diagnosed with cancer

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The outpouring of affection and tribute for Ted Kennedy, cutting across partisan lines, speaks volumes about the place he has occupied in our national life.

The Massachusetts Democrat has been an incredibly productive member of the U.S. Senate in the four and a half decades since he won the seat vacated by his brother the president. But that is not what the emotional reaction to the diagnosis of his brain tumor is about.

It is about the family, which has been touched by tragedy for so long, and for which he is the link to history. Two brothers, assassinated. John Jr., killed in a plane crash. Jackie's cancer, Patrick's alcohol problem, and on and on. Some of these problems were self-inflicted, including the horror of Chappaquiddick, but Kennedy has soldiered on. At 76, he has lived the long life of which JFK and RFK were robbed.

The other reason this has struck so deep a nerve, I think, is that Kennedy has been a happy warrior in pursuit of his liberal goals. Even those who are opposed to just about everything he stands for respect the relationships he has built with the other side and the moments of cooperation, such as his working with President Bush to pass the now-criticized No Child Left Behind legislation. Ted is a throwback to the days before national politics was quite so toxic.

(A digression: Michelle Malkin is among those conservatives asking readers to put aside political differences and pray for Kennedy and his family, and most of her commenters did just that. But there were a few, revoltingly hateful exceptions-- posters who were reveling in the news and, in one case, talked of celebrating.)

I remember interviewing Kennedy during his 1980 campaign and thinking he really had trouble making the case for why he should be president. But his "dream will never die" speech at Madison Square Garden was one of the great moments of political oratory.

"News about the Kennedys has so often come in shocking bursts, such as plane crashes and gunfire, that yesterday's revelation that the senior senator from Massachusetts is suffering from a deadly illness had a quiet poignancy all its own," the Boston Globe says.

"Days when Democrats worried that an assassin might try to remove the last Kennedy brother have long since receded, and Ted Kennedy carries a new image as the Senate's indefatigable warrior. So it was a surprise that something as ordinary as cancer would be what slows down Kennedy's relentless drive to promote liberal causes, build coalitions, and pass legislation."

Kennedy's endorsement of Barack Obama, so ballyhooed by the media, may turn out to have been his last major political act.

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Last lion of Camelot

ROBERT Byrd, the 90-year-old senator from West Virginia, sat in his wheelchair on the Senate floor and sobbed uncontrollably.

Chris Dodd, senator from Connecticut, broke short his comments to journalists, overcome with emotion. President George W. Bush was praying. Washington's political class was in a state of shock.

Yesterday doctors gave the giant of the Senate, Ted Kennedy, the brother of the slain John F. and Bobby, and keeper of the flame of one of America's most storied families, the bleak news. He has a malignant brain tumour that experts think gives the 76-year-old just months to live, probably two years at best. Six months ago he had surgery to clear a blockage in a major neck artery, a common procedure to prevent a stroke.

The heartfelt tributes poured in all day, mostly via the cable news networks that broke with regular programming and devoted hours and hours of coverage to a man who is the US's most evocative living link to the tragedies and triumphs of the turbulent 1960s.

Senator Kennedy's diagnosis comes after months of hectic campaigning for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, and represents a poignant juncture in US political history since it is Obama who Kennedy says touched his heart and most reminded him of his assassinated brothers and the optimism of a new generation they had represented.

"I sense the same kind of yearning today, the same kind of hunger to move on and move America forward," Kennedy said when endorsing Obama in late January. "I see it not just in young people, but in all our people. And in Barack Obama, I see not just the audacity, but the possibility of hope for the America that is yet to be."

Kennedy's full-throated endorsement for Obama was a bitter blow for Obama's rival Hillary Clinton, who along with her husband and former president Bill Clinton, had hoped to carry the torch for the Kennedys into the 2008 presidential campaign.

But politics was set aside yesterday as both Hillary Clinton and Obama offered support to the Kennedy family. "Senator Kennedy has been a fighter for his entire life, and I have no doubt that he will fight as hard as he can to get through this," Obama said in a statement. "He has been there for the American people during some of our country's most trying moments, and now that he's facing his own, I ask all Americans to keep him in our thoughts and prayers.

"Ted Kennedy's courage and resolve are unmatched, and they have made him one of the greatest legislators in Senate history," Clinton added, referring to bipartisan recognition of his role as the man who got things done in Congress.

Kennedy is a champion of causes including health care, education, workers rights and immigration reform. He also irritated Democrats with his willingness to compromise. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act is the most notable recent example. He reached across party lines to compromise with the administration, ignoring complaints from Democrats who said he had given up too much for the sake of a deal. Kennedy later decided Bush had failed to live up to his commitment to provide more money to state-run schools and became a critic of the administration on that issue and others.

He has been in the Senate since 1962 and has served with nine US presidents. Only Byrd has served longer. "Ted, my dear friend, I love you, and I miss you," Byrd said. "Thank God for you, Ted. Thank God for you."

The diagnosis of a cancerous tumour came after Kennedy suffered a seizure on Saturday at his Cape Cod oceanfront home. He was airlifted to hospital but remained conscious. The scare initially appeared over until a battery of tests revealed the tumour.

It was another shock to a family that even Kennedy considers is cursed. The Kennedys combined accomplishment, glamour, melodrama, tragedy and mythology, creating an intense public fascination that has lasted half a century. John F. Kennedy and wife Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy began the story by creating an American royal court dubbed Camelot by writer Theodore White.

"Ted Kennedy and the Kennedy family have faced adversity more times in more instances with more courage and more determination and more grace than most families have to," said 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and fellow senator from Massachusetts.

"Every one of us knows what a big heart this fellow has. He's helped millions and millions of people, from the biggest of legislation on the floor to the most personal. "This guy is one unbelievable fighter."

Kennedy's doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston said he had a malignant glioma in the left parietal lobe, a region of the brain that helps govern sensation, movement and language.

A glioma is an especially lethal type of tumour.

In a statement, Lee Schwamm, vice-chairman of neurology at Massachusetts General, and Larry Ronan, Kennedy's primary physician, said the senator "has had no further seizures, remains in good overall condition, and is up and walking around the hospital". "He remains in good spirits and full of energy," the physicians said.

Kennedy is expected to remain in the hospital for the next couple of days as the medical staff and Kennedy ponder treatment options, including chemotherapy and radiation. No mention has been made of surgery, suggesting the cancer is inoperable.

Medical experts say surgery cannot cure such a tumour, which sends fingers of cancerous cells into nooks and crannies of the brain.

"A diagnosis of a malignant brain tumour can be one of the most terrifying diagnoses that patients or their loved ones can hear," says Keith Black, chairman of the department of neurosurgery at Cedars-Sinai Medical Centre in Los Angeles. There is no hope of a cure.

Kennedy's wife since 1992, Vicki, and his five children and stepchildren have been at his bedside.

In a statement Bush, whom Kennedy supported most recently in trying to pass relatively liberal immigration legislation, much to chagrin of many of Bush's conservative allies, said Kennedy was "a man of tremendous courage, remarkable strength and powerful spirit. We join our fellow Americans in praying for his full recovery."

Ronald Steel, a historian and author of a book on Robert Kennedy, says JFK brought charm and wit to government while Bobby is remembered for what might have been. "But Ted should be thought of as someone who showed how government could be made to serve the people."

He is the last of the lions but not last of the Kennedys. His son Patrick Kennedy, a Democratic congressman, called political allies to report on his father's condition. Numerous offspring of the John-Robert-Edward generation have gone into public life or public service.

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Standard bearer for liberal America who held Ireland close to his political heart

Endorsing Barack Obama was something of a last will and testament for Ted, who saw the same ideals in the senator as he did in the Kennedys from Wexford

All his life Ted Kennedy was running faster to catch up with a family that defined political dynasty and a name that became a synonym for political assassination.

Fighting for his life in a modern hospital in Boston yesterday prompted flashbacks to his two brothers who lost their battles in Dallas and Los Angeles.

Ted Kennedy had a glittering 46-year career in the US Senate and grew old in office.

But he was always following John and Bobby whose death had suspended them near the summit of their lives.

For two generations Ted shone as a beacon of old liberal values in the US Senate, but it was always in the shadow of his slain brothers.

His passing will leave an enormous void in a US where a neocon philosophy all but eclipsed his apparently old-fashioned principles.

One of his last major public acts was to endorse Barack Obama for president, the young African-American who is now favourite to become the Democratic party's candidate.

Being a great and conspicuous friend of Ireland in the United States was as much a part of the Kennedy family tradition as playing ferociously competitive football.

And Ted Kennedy took up the banner and was a great friend of this country through more than 30 years of civic strife.

From 1969, every Irish government sought his guidance, help and support. And he was always there to give wise counsel and active support.

John Hume and the beleaguered nationalists in Northern Ireland beat a pathway to his door. And he managed to walk that vertiginous tightrope between constitutionalism and militant activism without losing his balance.

Ted Kennedy was always conscious of his Irish heritage, proud of that visit by his brother, President John F Kennedy, who visited the family homestead in Wexford 45 years ago next month.

His sister Jean Kennedy Smith, who Bill Clinton appointed US ambassador to Ireland, hopes to visit New Ross next month for the anniversary.

Of course, Ted made many unannounced and private visits to Ireland and spent many a day and long night celebrating the craic with Chris Dodd and other Irish-American pals.

He was an occasional visitor to Irish bars in New York too, and spent many a night in the late Tommy Makem's pub on New York's 57th Street.

But all the publicity about his occasionally colourful private life sometimes overshadowed the work he did for the Irish on Capitol Hill in Washington.

He was a very influential Senator, sitting on the Labour and Human Resources committee, the Judiciary sub-committee that looked after immigration and refugee affairs, the Armed Services committee and the Joint Economic committee.

He either chaired or attended some 200 meetings a year, which for all their importance can be stultifying, and belies his playboy reputation.

He steered legislation that ensured civil rights for the less fortunate, increased the minimum wage in 1981, made access to healthcare easier for the poor, funded meals-on-wheels for pensioners.

Ted Kennedy was a standard bearer of liberalism in an age dominated by conservatives such as Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George W Bush.

Three months after his brother Bobby was assassinated in 1969, Kennedy attended a party in Chappaquiddick and gave a lift to Mary Jo Kopechne who died when his car skidded off a bridge.

The ensuing scandal put paid to his own presidential ambitions, although he did challenge his own party's sitting president, Jimmy Carter, in 1980.

When he was asked: "Why do you want to be president?" by CBS's Roger Mudd, Ted Kennedy dithered.

Profile

In the 1980s, he was described in a critical profile as someone who "grew to manhood without learning to be an adult" as his private life was plagued by scandal.

After his divorce and remarriage, he spent the 1990s living down his hell-raising days by toiling long and hard.

In 2001, Ted Kennedy worked with president George W Bush to enact the No Child Left Behind Act. Though later he complained he had been tricked because the legislation did not include funding to pay for it.

He looked unhealthy in recent years but Ted Kennedy never eased up on his punishing work rate.

And in 2003 he voted against the invasion of Iraq and said: "There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud."

More recently, his endorsement of Barack Obama was a devastating blow to Hillary Clinton, a colleague and long time friend of the Kennedy family.

Ted Kennedy's huge following with hispanics was also a great help to Obama.

Endorsing Obama was something of a political last will and testament for Ted Kennedy who saw the same ideals in the African American Senator as he did in the Kennedys from Wexford.