An Era Ends With Death Of Kennedy.

An Era Ends With Death of Kennedy
By NAFTALI BENDAVID

Sen. Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy, scion of the political dynasty that embodied liberal politics for a generation and also one of the most polarizing political figures of his time, died at age 77 after a long battle with brain cancer.

Mr. Kennedy's death at the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port, Mass., marked both the end of an era in American politics and the closing of a political career sculpted by profound tragedy and his own extraordinary missed opportunities.

More on Kennedy's Impact

Over 47 years in the U.S. Senate, Mr. Kennedy successfully engineered sweeping legislation that directly affected the lives of millions of Americans. Yet political miscalculations and questionable personal conduct obstructed Mr. Kennedy's once seemingly certain ascendency to the White House.

President Barack Obama on Wednesday noted the outpouring of affection for the venerable Massachusetts Democrat. He ordered flags flown at half staff, and issued a formal proclamation calling Mr. Kennedy "one of the most accomplished Americans ever to serve our democracy." United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called Mr. Kennedy "the voice of the voiceless."

"We've lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism, and perseverance will live on in our hearts forever," said a statement Wednesday by the Kennedy family.

While many Republicans expressed their condolences, Mr. Kennedy's death underscored the deep division between his political followers and conservatives who long characterized him as a relic of self-indulgent 1960s liberalism. From health care to education, they believed, he pushed for bigger government as the solution to every problem, and in foreign affairs favored a naive approach that appeased America's enemies. Mr. Kennedy's positions in favor of gay rights, abortion rights and gun control seemed, to cultural conservatives, the outward expressions of his personal moral laxity.

Ted Kennedy never had the spiritual following of his martyred brothers, but the Massachusetts senator, who died of cancer at 77, had a storied career and was just as iconic for his championing of health-care reform and bipartisanship, WSJ's Naftali Bendavid reports.

Blasting what he called "slobbering media coverage" of Mr. Kennedy's death that ignored his past "bad behavior," conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday said Mr. Kennedy was a politician who "uses the government to take money from people who work and gives it to people who don't work."

Still, many Republicans praised Mr. Kennedy's memory Wednesday, noting that the Massachusetts senator repeatedly forged unexpected alliances across party lines in the Senate.

"Sen. Kennedy was never afraid to work across the aisle to get things done," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.). "We can all learn from the example he set and work together to build a stronger nation."

Mr. Kennedy was the only one of four brothers to die of natural causes. His older brothers President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert Kennedy were assassinated in the 1960s, and the late Massachusetts senator will be buried Saturday alongside them at Arlington National Cemetery near Washington. His oldest brother, Joseph Kennedy Jr., died in World War II.

Over the course of the third-longest tenure in the history of the Senate, Mr. Kennedy mounted a legislative agenda across a wide range of issues dear to liberal voters and left-leaning Democratic Party constituencies -- school and racial integration in the 1960s, poverty and gender equality in the 1970s, disability in the 1980s and education reform in the 1990s.

Yet Mr. Kennedy died with one of his lifelong goals -- universal health care -- at the forefront of U.S. political debate but still unrealized. After being diagnosed with an incurable brain tumor in May 2008, Mr. Kennedy was unable to play a central role in the Democratic push to overhaul the health-care system. The senator's death, which deprives Democrats of their 60-vote majority in the Senate until at least the end of 2009, further complicates the legislative battle.

Major events and legislative accomplishments in Sen. Kennedy's life.

Over the course of his career, Mr. Kennedy also became one of the most divisive figures in American politics. His own presidential ambitions in the 1970s and 1980s were sabotaged by questions of personal misconduct -- especially a 1969 car crash near Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts, in which a young woman named Mary Jo Kopechne died. Mr. Kennedy survived the crash, but that incident and others reinforced a perception among many that the senator was irresponsible in his personal life.

If ever a man appeared an heir to destiny, it was Mr. Kennedy. He was born on Feb. 22, 1932, the ninth child and fourth son of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Kennedy, who were already pushing their children toward high achievement. (Mr. Kennedy's 88-year-old sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver died on Aug. 11. With Mr. Kennedy's death, the lone survivor of the nine siblings is Jean Kennedy Smith, a former ambassador to Ireland.)

Mr. Kennedy's father was a wealthy financier who dedicated himself in the 1940s and 1950s to seeing his sons rise to national political power. By the time Mr. Kennedy went to the University of Virginia law school and married Joan Bennett in 1958, his brother John was a U.S. senator from Massachusetts.

Mr. Kennedy managed John's victorious Senate re-election campaign at age 26. In 1960, he helped run his brother's presidential campaign against Vice President Richard Nixon, an event that reshaped American political culture and elevated the Kennedy mystique of youthful charisma and intellectual cool to a national platform. In 1962, Mr. Kennedy, though only 30 years old, easily won his brother's former Massachusetts Senate seat.

Then, on Nov. 22, 1963, President Kennedy was assassinated. In the years that followed, Mr. Kennedy began pressing a more ambitious legislative agenda. His first big win came in 1965, when Mr. Kennedy pushed through an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws so they would no longer favor white Europeans. Some critics still blame those changes for the nation's immigration problems, while others hail them for removing a longstanding bias. On June 4, 1968, Mr. Kennedy's other older brother, Robert, then a U.S. Senator from New York, was fatally shot by an assassin after winning the California Democratic presidential primary.

Mr. Kennedy delivered a eulogy that marked his ascent to the leadership of the Kennedy family and the liberal movement. "My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good, decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it," he said.

Mr. Kennedy was expected to be a formidable challenger in 1972 to a President Richard Nixon weakened by civil turmoil and growing concern about the war in Vietnam. By contrast, the Kennedy name -- and its association with the abbreviated presidency of Mr. Kennedy's brother -- had become synonymous for many Americans with good government and principled U.S. ambition. Mr. Kennedy was seen as a charismatic spokesman of the "Camelot" era.

But in the summer of 1969, the accident at the Chappaquiddick bridge in which Ms. Kopechne was killed derailed that future for Mr. Kennedy. After swimming to the surface, the senator left the accident scene and didn't report the incident to the police until the following day. Questions about his conduct on that night were never fully dispelled. In 1980, Mr. Kennedy mounted a campaign against fellow Democrat, President Jimmy Carter. Despite some late primary wins, Mr. Kennedy was routed.

With his presidential aspirations permanently ended, Mr. Kennedy -- a red-faced, white-haired figure who was frequently caricatured for his bellowing laugh and pronounced Boston accent -- focused on repairing his political and legislative stature. In July 1992, Mr. Kennedy, who had been divorced for a decade, married Victoria Reggie. He strongly supported Bill Clinton, the first successful Democratic presidential candidate in 16 years, who in turn embraced Mr. Kennedy and his family's legacy.

Mr. Kennedy's chief strategy became to work closely with such high-profile Republicans as deeply conservative Sen. Orrin Hatch (R., Utah) on compromise bills that achieved portions of Mr. Kennedy's goals. The two senators cooperated in 1997 to enact the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which now insures 11 million children. In 2001 he endured furious criticism from other Democrats for backing President George W. Bush's No Child Left Behind Act. Two years later, his support for Mr. Bush's drive to add a prescription-drug benefit to Medicare was crucial to its passage.

Mr. Kennedy's final months were marked by the poignancy of a man facing his opportunity to accomplish a life goal, even as he fought his own devastating health battle.

In March, Mr. Kennedy came to the Senate floor for a final time, leaning on a cane and accompanied by his son, Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D., R.I.), to vote for a $5 billion bill he sponsored to expand public service. He was greeted with a spontaneous ovation, handshakes and embraces from colleagues of both parties.

—Douglas A. Blackmon contributed to this article.

Write to Naftali Bendavid at naftali.bendavid@wsj.com