Ted Kennedy. To many conservatives and others, he will always be remembered for what happened on July 18, 1969 and the tragic death of Mary Jo Kopechne, a former secretary to his brother Bobby and the trapped passenger in his car which flipped off a small bridge into a pond: Chappaquiddick. As a young Catholic teen with memories of Ted's assassinated older brothers, perhaps I had unrealistic expectations of the remaining Kennedy brother, and there was a strong desire to give Ted the benefit of a doubt: what would I have done in his place if I was concussed, motivated by an instinct to survive, and unable to see in murky water under the darkness of the night? "Say it ain't so, Ted..." But too many nagging questions remain: Was he driving under the influence? What was he doing driving too fast in unfamiliar territory on dark roads? Why, with a pregnant wife at home, was he driving alone with an unrelated young woman? Even if he couldn't find the car to rescue Mary Jo, why hadn't he let someone, anyone know, on his way to the hotel, so emergency units could reach the scene? Was there a double standard applied to the benefit of Ted under the circumstances? In particular, the gap in time to reporting the incident to police cannot be explained away or excused. What's particularly sad is the policeman whom had observed Ted driving before the accident and whom Ted was trying to lose was simply trying to give an ostensibly lost motorist driving directions.
Ted Kennedy. The liberal lion of the Senate. Whatever the human failings of Ted and his late brothers, one can never dispute the commitment to public service and sacrifices made by the Kennedy clan. Ted Kennedy was set for life; he could have lived a life of leisure, but he had a passion and unquestioned commitment in support of people whom are not born into a family of means but whom struggle to achieve the American dream.
Ted Kennedy. A man who could do business with the GOP and President Bush, despite differences on issues such as the liberation of Iraq. A key figure in bipartisan efforts on education and immigration reform, pragmatic enough to compromise, honorable enough to stand by the concessions made to seal the deal, civil enough to treat one's opponent honorably and not with the disdain of his colleagues.
I still remember being disillusioned as a liberal Democrat (except for being pro-life) with the hapless Presidency of Jimmy Carter, and Ted Kennedy's entry, his only foray on the national scene, seemed a final opportunity to recapture the lost promise of Camelot. I stood for him in the Texas precincts. Unfortunately, Kennedy's preliminary lead over Carter evaporated as the latter got a "rally-around-the-chief" spike at the beginning of the Iranian hostage crisis. This was a Pyrrhic victory for Carter forced to defend a lackluster economy and a foreign policy overshadowed by the Iranian crisis. But Kennedy turned in a strong convention speech with his oratorical skills, his defiant voice brimming with confidence.
My migration to conservatism, unlike others, was not inspired by Reagan. There was the part of me that has been always been suspicious of the fusion between his personality and his conservatism, his reliance on oversimplified soundbite gimmicks like the "misery index" and "evil empire", and the gap between promise and performance, e.g., the federal budget deficit. My transition actually began by taking the standard economics courses on the way to earning my MBA. None of my professors espoused an overtly political point of view.
My conversion was not a sudden one. People who have converted to other religions based on their own initiative understand. Let me give an example from a diferent context. In my academic discipline (MIS), there was a widely-used measure for computer user satisfaction. I was looking to develop my own measure for a different construct, and in the process of devising validation procedures, I took a closer look at the base measure and its process of validation. (It was based on a dissertation from an engineering school.) It suddenly occurred to me that the kinds of arguments and statistical tests being used were idiosyncratic and had no precedent that I could find in the applied psychology literature. But certainly a peer reviewer to this prestigious journal or many of the MIS scholars whom had reviewed and/or had used the measure would have noticed before me... While my own research went in a different direction, I now worried about the fact that other MIS researchers were using a measure I now considered questionable. I wrote an article which basically noted the emperor was wearing no clothes. The article was rejected with venomous personal attacks from anonymous reviewers (I suspect the article was sent to reviewers with a vested interest in the criticized measures).
The point is, I did not set out to question liberalism or its implementation in public policies. I was more concerned with why things didn't seem to be changing, despite all the money we were spending to solve the problem. Educational reform seemed to be on a collision course with the agenda of teacher unions, a key special interest group. I didn't understand the logic of college quotas that put lesser qualified students in classes or programs where they couldn't compete. I didn't see how we could address the poverty cycle without addressing extramartial sex and breakdown of the family. It bothered me that whereas business and state/local governments have to accommodate budget cuts due to a slowing economy, including staffing adjustments, there are no comparable cutbacks on the federal level. It puzzled me how legislators, dominated by those from the legal profession, whom had no business experience or background in economics, were imposing new costs on business with punitive policies (e.g., windfall profits taxes) or excessive regulations. I disliked the fact that a legislator could keep the Pentagon from shutting down an obsolete base or force it to accept military hardware it didn't need or want. I disagreed with the strategy of growing the federal bureaucracy rather than to foster cooperation with the private sector to achieve the desired goods and services.
I didn't necessarily disagree with the goals of Ted Kennedy. It's more about methods, footprint, priorities and realistic expectations. (For example, I don't think Democrats can simply will their way to technological breakthroughs in scalable alternative energy by picking winners and losers in the private sector and throwing money at them. Similarly, non-scientists cannot will their way to breakthrough stem cell-based therapies by simply throwing money at scientists. Throwing multiple cooks at an egg boiling doesn't make the egg boil any faster. What will help is providing support for college science and engineering majors, and ensuring high school students are prepared for rigorous science and engineering programs.)
Still, as I watched a frail Ted Kennedy, suffering from terminal brain cancer and traveling against doctors' orders, make his way to the podium, I remember and honor the man for whom I stood in the Texas precinct caucuses in 1980--valiant, passionate, undeterred from his goal to pass the torch to the new generation. But does Ted Kennedy remember that as a man of his word, he voted against the same poison-pill amendments to the immigration bill that Obama supported, even after having worked a concession in the compromise measure? I just wish King Mufasa had picked a more worthy Simba.
Barack Obama, I remember Jack Kennedy. He was my President. He didn't ask me what America could do for me; he challenged me to put America first. And, Barack Obama, you are no Jack Kennedy.
