The hope still lives...

I woke up this morning as I do most mornings: sometime around 5:58 am, when NPR begins to emit softly from my radio. Typically I hear the closing lines of the Marketplace Morning Report, and maybe a few bars of the Morning Edition theme song, before being overtaken by sleepiness and spending the next 45 minutes lapsing between dozing and vague snippets on the economy or Iran. Every once in awhile, something catches my attention and piques my interest enough to interrupt this daily snooze button-esque ritual (a recent story on college team colored Bud Light cans comes to mind).

This morning, around 6:17, I caught a segment on the accomplishments of Senator Ted Kennedy. Knowing, on some level of my sleepy consciousness, what this probably meant, I quickly woke up. A few minutes later, Steve Inskeep confirmed my assumptions – the senator passed away last night after a long battle with brain cancer.

To say I feel remorse is an understatement - Ted Kennedy was the third longest serving senator in history. The last scion of America’s most iconic political dynasty, he labored tirelessly for liberal causes like education and healthcare, while simultaneously maintaining strong personal friendships with his colleagues across the aisle and committing himself to the bipartisan pragmatism necessary to get bills passed. Though I did not personally live through the Kennedy tragedies of the ‘60’s or Teddy’s 1980 presidential primary campaign, the story of this family is tied inextricably to modern American history. I could write at length about my respect for the career of Sen. Kennedy, but I will leave that to those far more qualified than I. The news coverage is sure to be extensive. Instead, I’ll reflect briefly on my one personal experience with the venerable senator.

On January 28, 2008, coming off a busy period at work, I decided to take a large swath of the afternoon off to metro downtown and meet Jimmy at American University. Though the presidential campaign had been dragging on for months, the actual primaries had only recently begun. Maryland’s – where I was still living – was scheduled for February 12th and no one really had any idea, at that point, how long the primary battle would stretch. I had struggled for awhile with supporting Barack Obama’s candidacy – though I had read both of his books and very much wanted him to be president someday, I was worried that his effectiveness would be limited by the inherited quagmire from Bush. Regardless, I had decided that I preferred Obama to Hillary (and either of them to McCain).

So on that bright, chilly winter day, I was playing hooky from work to watch Barack Obama speak at AU. He was to receive a formal endorsement from Sen. Ted Kennedy – a big deal because the assumption, at the time, was still that Hillary was probably going to win the nomination. The support of the embodiment of the Democratic establishment was symbolically very important, to say nothing of the tangible benefits of having the backing of a Kennedy. Introduced by his niece, Caroline, Teddy Kennedy stepped up to the podium and blew me away.

The event was so crowded that Jimmy and I ended up crammed into a room in the student union, watching raptly on TV with a crowd of hundreds of others. It wasn’t so much that his speech was inherently great, but, to me, the sense that his booming baritones seemed heavy with gravitas. Indeed, Sen. Kennedy spoke with the weight of history – the stolen potential of his murdered brothers, his own derailed national ambitions, the wisdom gained from his decades of leadership in the U.S. Senate, and, at the forefront, the momentous significance of the presidential candidacy of the man standing next to him on the platform.

That day re-awoke within me a long-held certainty of the importance of the ‘08 campaign. It helped me to view the possibility of a President Obama as more than just a pipe dream, ruefully expressed every time I watched the 2004 DNC speech or picked up Dreams from my Father. Many people speculate that Sen. Kennedy saw Barack Obama as a contemporary torchbearer, driven to carry on the family legacy of inspired hope and dogged public service. His unwavering belief helped me to rediscover mine.

Because of my youth, this is what I expect I will remember most intimately about the late senator. In his own famous DNC speech, in 1980, Kennedy reassured his supporters that, despite his concession to Jimmy Carter, “the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.” These often repeated words embody the spirit not only of this dignified politician, but of the remarkable nation to which he dedicated his life.