|
A Los Angeles Times editorial well captured the
popular reaction to the death of Democratic Senator Edward (Ted)
Kennedy, 77, of Massachusetts. “For once, the extravagant
elegies for a departed public figure are appropriate. Sen. Edward M.
Kennedy, in President Obama’s words, was ‘the
greatest United States Senator of our time.’” The editorial went on to
say that no discussion of the senator’s life and career “should obscure
his achievement as a master legislator who combined principle and
pragmatism in causes greater than his own political preservation” (Aug.
27).
A
conservative magazine chimed in its agreement, stating that Senator
Kennedy was “a staggeringly capable legislator” who “brought more
lasting change to America than any other member of
his celebrated family” (The Economist, Aug. 29–Sept. 4).
Despite
the praise of Kennedy enthusiasts, there lay a wide and disturbing gap
between the senator’s public pronouncements and his practical politics.
These were not merely personal flaws; they highlight the limitations
and failings of Democratic Party policies in even its most triumphant
years.
A
look at Senator Kennedy’s record on civil rights and the Iraq War,
areas in which he is considered to have distinguished himself proudly,
instead reveals a man and a party that betrayed their supporters’ best
hopes. (These are not the only issues in which Kennedy came up
short. On the Counterpunch website of Aug. 28–29, labor
journalist Steve Early documents how Kennedy “was not on labor’s side
when key public policy shifts were engineered that disastrously
weakened and marginalized American unions.” And his tawdry and often
reprehensible acts toward women are well known.)
Senator
Kennedy supported the civil rights movement by voting for all the civil
rights legislation that came before the Senate. In return, Martin
Luther King Jr. invited Kennedy to deliver the keynote address to the
Southern Christian Leadership Conference’s 1966 convention. There the
delegates “stood to cheer when Kennedy asked why the nation would spend
upward of $2 billion per month to make war in South Vietnam and not
make ‘the same kind of effort for the twenty million people of the
Negro race right here in America” (Taylor Branch, “At Canaan’s Edge,”
p. 513).
But
Kennedy was far less outspoken several years later when the civil
rights struggle moved north into Boston. In 1974, U.S. District
Court Judge Garrity ruled “that the entire
school system of Boston was unconstitutionally
segregated” and ordered busing of students as a means to achieve
desegregation. White sections of the city erupted in a vicious and
blatantly racist assault on the desegregation effort.
Senator
Kennedy supported desegregation, but he spoke before an anti-busing
rally held a few days prior to the opening of schools in Boston. At the rally of 8000,
“Kennedy emphasized his understanding of anti-busing feeling, but
repeated his support for busing, unpleasant though it might be, to
achieve desegregation” (Jon Hillson, “The
Battle of Boston,” p. 25).
According
to Hillson, Kennedy was jeered, heckled,
jostled, and shoved. “A shower of tomatoes splattered on bystanders,
spraying Kennedy as escorts pushed the crowd back. The glass doors of
the John F. Kennedy Federal Building shut fast as the senator
was hustled inside. Outside, white fists pounded on the panes,
shattering them” (ibid).
Unable
to placate, much less persuade, the racist mob,
Kennedy abandoned the struggle, which lasted for several more
years. He did not change his formal support for desegregation, but
neither was he an advocate for the cause. At crucial moments, Kennedy
steered clear of Boston and found refuge in Washington, D.C.
It
is true that as a senator he had no direct role in the governance of Boston, but he could have provided
moral leadership by continuing to speak out strongly in favor of
desegregation. Certainly, no other elected Democrat, including the
mayor, had the courage to oppose the racists head on. Kennedy could
have been the beacon of hope and justice that his supporters claimed he
was. He did not live up to that role. He had no stomach for the fight.
In
2002, Kennedy did have the nerve to oppose the Iraq War. Of course, in
liberal Massachusetts, his vote against Bush
posed no political risk. What’s more, Kennedy no longer nursed
presidential ambitions, which determined the vote of his more cautious
Senate colleague, John Kerry.
Yet,
Kennedy presented no principled opposition to the war in Iraq. He never objected to U.S. hostilities against that
country, in fact, he never ruled out the possibility of mounting a war
against Iraq. Kennedy’s antiwar stance
was no more than a dispute over tactics; he disagreed with Bush over
the most effective means of bringing Iraq under U.S. influence.
In
a speech to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies
from 2002, Kennedy said, “No one disputes that America has lasting and important
interests in the Persian Gulf, or that Iraq poses a significant
challenge to U.S. interests. There is no
doubt that Saddam Hussein’s regime is a serious danger, that he is a
tyrant, and that his pursuit of lethal weapons of mass destruction
cannot be tolerated. He must be disarmed.
“How
can we best achieve this objective in a way that minimizes the risks to
our country? How can we ignore the danger to our young men and women in
uniform, to our ally Israel, to regional stability, the
international community, and victory against terrorism?”
Kennedy’s
answer was to offer “realistic alternatives” to war: involve the United
Nations “to enforce the will of the international community.” This
meant continuing a policy of sanctions against Iraq. “Let us follow that
course,” Kennedy said, “and the world will be with us—even if, in the
end, we have to move to the ultimate sanction of armed conflict.”
The
sanctions themselves, imposed for a decade by the U.S. and Britain, were a continuation of war
by other means. These created such an immense crisis in Iraq that the main United
Nations humanitarian coordinators finally resigned in protest against
what they called a “genocidal policy.” This was the “realistic
alternative” that Ted Kennedy favored.
What’s
more, the vise-grip of two-party politics meant that Kennedy would
support the 2004 presidential candidacy of John Kerry, whose platform
included the call for an additional 40,000 U.S. troops to Iraq. With the endorsement of
Kerry, Kennedy’s tactical opposition to the war was effectively
finished.
Of
course, Ted Kennedy’s entire life and career were defined by fidelity
to the two-party system. One of the most pervasive, persistent, and
pernicious myths in politics is the belief that the election of one or
another Democratic or Republican Party politician will make a
fundamental difference in the course of the country. Ted Kennedy did
everything in his power to further the false belief that the Democrats
especially, but the Republicans as well, act in the interests of the
working class, the great majority of Americans.
Decades
ago, Professor Christopher Lasch wrote, “If
the American people have learned anything from it [the Vietnam War],
they will not again turn to a Johnson or a Kennedy merely because he
presents himself to the public as more moderate than a Goldwater or a
Nixon” (“The World of Nations,” 1973, p. 249). This is the great lesson
still to be learned.
Instead,
Americans vote for a “more moderate” Obama
against a McCain, and before long more young
men and women are sent to another foreign war to prop up another
unpopular politician while the death count rises.
In
Ted Kennedy’s most eloquent and famous speech, at the Democratic
National Convention in 1980, he said, “For all those whose cares have
been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still
lives, and the dream shall never die.”
These
words are profoundly true—but their spirit will only be realized when
Americans break with the ruling élite to
create an alternative to the Democratic and Republican parties, an
alternative to the politics of Senator Kennedy.
|