The Kennedys
Aug. 29th, 2009 06:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fabrisseI wasn't exactly brought up to spit after saying John F. Kennedy's name, but pretty close. Both my parents, and especially my father, were more socially liberal than many people with their upbringing, but they had some distrust of a Catholic holding high office (fear that the Pope would end up having a say in US policy for those of you who are baffled).
None of this was helped by my parents hearing the phone ring on June 1, 1961, as they were bringing me home from the hospital. My dad had orders (and the only other man with these orders from the same base had adopted his child less than a month earlier) to Viet Nam as one of the original advisors. After five weeks of language school, Dad was shipped off. He returned about two weeks before my first birthday. The story of me walking out on the tarmac holding my arms up to any man in a uniform and saying "Daddy?" is either heartbreaking or hilarious depending on the perspective.
So. Not fond of JFK. (Even less fond of Robert McNamara architect of our Southeast Asian foray.)
We were in Britain when Robert Kennedy was making his run for office. The first newspaper story I ever read was the news of his assassination in The Times. I wanted to know why that man had a funny look on his face, so I read the article.
But still, we weren't as a family, Kennedy fans.
This changed in 1976. When my father returned from his third tour in Viet Nam on March 25, 1975, several things happened that made him want to stay away from the Pentagon for awhile. He applied to be a Congressional Fellow and was the first military officer to do so. I believe there's only been one since. (Every year lots of officers apply to be White House Fellows and every year a few make it. I would think more would be interested in the Congressional side, if only because Congress approves the budget.)
He worked for five months for Gillis Long of Alexandria Parish in Louisiana on the House side and nearly seven months for Charles Percy of Illinois on the Senate side. During that time, Dad developed a profound respect for Ted Kennedy as an opponent, an ally, and a man.
Kennedy's people nearly always won their point because they were always, Dad says, the best prepared people in the room. In later years, Dad would make certain the officers serving under him were the best prepared people in any room they were in -- and he always acknowledged learning it from Kennedy's team.
Kennedy himself was charming. He spoke to other Senators privately and quietly before any meetings and smoothed over ruffled feathers as soon as the meeting were over. He used humor when he could and strong arm tactics only if he had to.
Whole books, fiction and nonfiction, have been written about great leaders of the Senate. The seniority system gives them clout. Representatives rarely last long enough; Justices are limited to commenting on cases brought before them; Presidents burn out after two terms -- now by law. Senators have long legislative arms and longer memories. They work with each other because they are likely to have thirty year or longer relationships with some of the other ninety-nine people they shape policy with.
If I stay where I am, chances are I will never again have a Senator, much less two. I think I was very lucky to be able to claim Ted Kennedy as one of my Senators for nearly twenty years.
Massachusetts is lucky in this -- their junior (now senior) Senator, John Kerry, has greater seniority than most State's senior Senators. I hope he has learned from Ted Kennedy how to be charming, how to be ruthless when required, and, most of all, how to be prepared.
None of this was helped by my parents hearing the phone ring on June 1, 1961, as they were bringing me home from the hospital. My dad had orders (and the only other man with these orders from the same base had adopted his child less than a month earlier) to Viet Nam as one of the original advisors. After five weeks of language school, Dad was shipped off. He returned about two weeks before my first birthday. The story of me walking out on the tarmac holding my arms up to any man in a uniform and saying "Daddy?" is either heartbreaking or hilarious depending on the perspective.
So. Not fond of JFK. (Even less fond of Robert McNamara architect of our Southeast Asian foray.)
We were in Britain when Robert Kennedy was making his run for office. The first newspaper story I ever read was the news of his assassination in The Times. I wanted to know why that man had a funny look on his face, so I read the article.
But still, we weren't as a family, Kennedy fans.
This changed in 1976. When my father returned from his third tour in Viet Nam on March 25, 1975, several things happened that made him want to stay away from the Pentagon for awhile. He applied to be a Congressional Fellow and was the first military officer to do so. I believe there's only been one since. (Every year lots of officers apply to be White House Fellows and every year a few make it. I would think more would be interested in the Congressional side, if only because Congress approves the budget.)
He worked for five months for Gillis Long of Alexandria Parish in Louisiana on the House side and nearly seven months for Charles Percy of Illinois on the Senate side. During that time, Dad developed a profound respect for Ted Kennedy as an opponent, an ally, and a man.
Kennedy's people nearly always won their point because they were always, Dad says, the best prepared people in the room. In later years, Dad would make certain the officers serving under him were the best prepared people in any room they were in -- and he always acknowledged learning it from Kennedy's team.
Kennedy himself was charming. He spoke to other Senators privately and quietly before any meetings and smoothed over ruffled feathers as soon as the meeting were over. He used humor when he could and strong arm tactics only if he had to.
Whole books, fiction and nonfiction, have been written about great leaders of the Senate. The seniority system gives them clout. Representatives rarely last long enough; Justices are limited to commenting on cases brought before them; Presidents burn out after two terms -- now by law. Senators have long legislative arms and longer memories. They work with each other because they are likely to have thirty year or longer relationships with some of the other ninety-nine people they shape policy with.
If I stay where I am, chances are I will never again have a Senator, much less two. I think I was very lucky to be able to claim Ted Kennedy as one of my Senators for nearly twenty years.
Massachusetts is lucky in this -- their junior (now senior) Senator, John Kerry, has greater seniority than most State's senior Senators. I hope he has learned from Ted Kennedy how to be charming, how to be ruthless when required, and, most of all, how to be prepared.
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no subject
Date: 2009-09-02 01:54 am (UTC)As far as the story, yeah. It's both.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-30 07:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-02 02:07 am (UTC)I'm also against our being subsumed into Maryland. We're too close to Annapolis; we're larger and more prosperous than Baltimore. Including the District of Columbia which has three towns in it (Georgetown, Anacostia, and Washington though for most purposes we're all counted as one city), throws off the balance and would cause issues around funding and State representation.
What I would like to see is The District of Columbia retain its status as "the Federal City," but be allowed representation, commensurate with our population, in the House of Representatives.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-30 10:30 pm (UTC)I did not vote for Ted Kennedy after 1994. In 2000, as I recall, he would not debate his opponents, and I was not about to give him my incremental reward for that. I don't remember for whom I voted in 2006, but by then had long thought that Ted had spent way too much time in that Senate seat: I don't believe in legal term limits, but *nobody* should be in the same office almost fifty years. (I think Mr. Kerry and many others have also--well--overserved.) This seniority system is garbage!!!
One night in 1994, shortly before the election, WBUR broadcast an event at which Ted took questions. Somebody asked him one about the Constitution. I don't remember the question, other than that it touched on the possibility of amendments. I thought Kennedy replied almost unintelligibly, not something I thought a long-time senator who'd been to law school and who'd voted on several supreme court nominees should have done.
All in all, I think he was basically a good guy who often did the right thing on big issues and right by individuals. I suspect that many of his compromises were more political than principled, but at least he had the sense to try to work with his political opponents in the Senate and the White House. But we should not shroud him in a myth, especially since it seems inevitably to cloud many of our minds with notions of a Kennedy dynasty.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-02 02:13 am (UTC)I became anti-term limits in the early 1990s when I visited my sister in Georgia. Everyone talking about term limits in Boston made reference to keeping out Newt Gingrich, who was her local Representative. Everyone in Georgia who talked about term limits referenced Kennedy.
I'm not certain he was a good man. I think he tried to vote in line with his conscience and bring a better world to pass. Would that I felt the same of more modern politicians.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-02 01:30 pm (UTC)Exactly! I came to oppose term limits in the mid-1980s, and it may have been inspired by my rep at the time, Brian Donnelly. I gather, though, that term limits do seem to have existed at the time of our war for independence. At any rate, we might be much better off on the whole if we more regularly replaced old bastards with new ones.