Ted Kennedy was by far the most successful of the Kennedys. Bobby was my hero, Jack was my inspiration, but Teddy was a true Irish American pol -- he did the heavy lifting and did it for a long time. There are damn few ballads about guys who under-attain but do great things. It took the R's 40 years to find a target to fund raise against more lucrative than Teddy. I met him once, and never heard anything bad from anyone who knew him. Far cry from most of us...he could have become a complete afterthought after the Mary-Jo thing; instead, he won re-election overwhelmingly, and nobody ever came close, in western or eastern Massachusetts. Hell, is being alive even a requirement to be a Senator? Dead, he'd be a better Senator than Strom Thurmond. The best the Republicans could do against him was Mitt Romney...tell me how that worked again?
The Irish have a knack for flawed heroes. We put them on pedestals so they can fall further. He fell, and bounced and vaulted higher. And, like Frank Skeffington in The Last Hurrah, when some hypocritical yahoo mutters "I bet he'd do a few things differently now, if he could," I'm fairly sure he'd rise up, laugh and say, "Pogue mahon, you bastard...the hell I would."
The Irish have a knack for flawed heroes. We put them on pedestals so they can fall further. He fell, and bounced and vaulted higher. And, like Frank Skeffington in The Last Hurrah, when some hypocritical yahoo mutters "I bet he'd do a few things differently now, if he could," I'm fairly sure he'd rise up, laugh and say, "Pogue mahon, you bastard...the hell I would."
Comments