Kennedy remembered for intellect, passion
WASHINGTON -- Within hours of his Tuesday death, friends, family and colleagues hailed Sen. Edward Kennedy as a stalwart of the Senate whose intellect, passion for the underdog and ability to find common cause with Republicans made him a towering figure in American public life for nearly a half century.
Congressional Democratic leaders promised to pay lasting tribute to Kennedy's legacy by passing a sweeping overhaul of the nation's health-care system — a cause the Massachusetts Democrat championed for decades. Republicans praised his willingness to compromise on health care and other issues while sticking to his convictions.
"Ted Kennedy's dream of quality health care for all Americans will be made real this year because of his leadership and his inspiration," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a statement.
"The liberal lion's mighty roar may now fall silent,," added Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., "but his dream shall never die."
Kennedy's battle with brain cancer kept him on the sidelines as the congressional fight raged over President Obama's health-care initiative, but ConnecticutSen. Chris Dodd, one of his closest friends in the Senate, said he "fought to the very end" for its passage. Dodd took Kennedy's place at the helm of the Senate health committee and visited with him over the summer at his Hyannis Port, Mass., home to plot strategy.
When the Senate panel passed its version of the health-care initiative in July, "the first call I got at 6 a.m. in the morning was from Ted Kennedy, bellowing and cheering that his committee was the first" in Congress to finish action on the bill, Dodd told reporters Wednesday.
Dodd called Kennedy "a hero for those Americans in the shadow of life who so desperately needed one ... I will miss him every day I serve, and every day I live."
Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., who has emerged as a leading voice on health care as head of the Senate Finance Committee, said he would "continue to advance the ideals and issues that were so close to his heart and such a part of his remarkable life."
West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd, the country's longest-serving senator, said any health-care legislation that passes Congress should bear Kennedy's name. The 90-year-old Democrat said the Senate is changed without Kennedy's "eloquence and reason."
Republicans — including former presidents and political rivals — joined the outpouring of tributes.
"A giant tree falls from the skyline," said former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson, who worked with Kennedy on a major immigration bill in 1986. The two appeared together for eight years on a radio show called "Face-Off," on which they argued about conservative and liberal points of view.
Former president George W. Bush, who with Kennedy's backing saw his signature No Child Left Behind education law pass Congress in 2002, recounted their work together on issues as far ranging as mental heath and immigration. But he also noted Kennedy's optimism in the face of personal tragedy.
Kennedy "never gave in to self-pity or despair," Bush said. "He maintained his optimistic spirit, his sense of humor, and his faith in his fellow citizens.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, noted Kennedy's role as heir to a legacy, elected at age 30 to a Senate seat once held by his brother, then-president John F. Kennedy.
He "was famous before he was accomplished," McCain said of Edward Kennedy. "But by the end of his life he had become irreplaceable in the institution he loved and in the affections of its members."
The Kennedy tributes, McCain said, will note Kennedy's hard work, humor and integrity.
"What is harder for us to express is the emptiness we will feel in the Senate in his absence," McCain added. The Senate's ornate chamber "will seem a quiet and less interesting place, in the knowledge that his booming voice, fueled by his passion for his convictions, will never encourage or assail or impress us again," he said.
California Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is married to Kennedy's niece, Maria Shriver, called him "Uncle Teddy" in a statement.
The man known to the world as the "Lion of the Senate," Schwarzenegger said, was "the rock of our family."
Well known as a champion of liberal causes, Kennedy could have easily become cast as a Democratic ideologue.
That's pretty much what Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, expected when he entered the Senate in 1977. "I was filled with conservative fire in my belly and an itch to take on any and everyone who stood in my way, including Ted Kennedy," Hatch recounted in a statement released Wednesday.
But Hatch, the top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee long chaired by Kennedy, said he soon learned that while they "could actually get together and find common ground."
The two went on to collaborate on nearly a dozen major pieces of legislation, including the American with Disabilities Act and to a bill providing federal money for health-care services to people living with AIDS and HIV.
In more than four decades of service, Kennedy left his mark on virtually every piece of social legislation that passed Congress — starting with a 1965 immigration bill that opened U.S. borders to Asian and Latin American immigrants to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act passed this year, making it easier for women and others to sue for alleged wage discrimination.
"He was a legislator's legislator," said Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, "the best of our generation."
Kennedy will lie in repose Thursday and Friday at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston before his funeral Saturday morning at Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in the Mission Hill section of Boston. He will be buried Saturday afternoon at Arlington National Cemetery.
Contributing: John Fritze and Kathy Kiely