Political Science

Due to reasons I cannot reveal, some students (including me) were required to write a summary/review based on an article of our choice.

Summary

Edward Moore Kennedy, who has died following a battle with a brain tumour at the age of 77, possessed the full mixture of the virtues, and the vices, that defined America's most famous political dynasty. Born into an affluent and influential Irish family, Edward Moore Kennedy affably nicknamed by the press as Ted Kennedy was the youngest of the nine Kennedy children and the last surviving Kennedy brother. His father Joe Kennedy was an ambitious man, who later married Rose, the daughter of John (Honey Fitz) Fitzgerald, the machine mayor of Boston. Although making a fortune in film production, liquor, real estate and stocks, Joe wasn't just a businessman. In the scope of his ambitions and schemes, he was something out of Shakespeare. Thus, the Kennedy brothers were thrust into the public limelight.

In 1944, the eldest and the most promising Kennedy brother, Joe Jr. volunteered for a dangerous combat mission in an experimental flying bomb. The plane exploded before he could bail out. The second son, a sickly, slight, crippled young man, he went on to became President John F. Kennedy. However, his assassination in 1963 threw the mantle to Robert Kennedy. And yet another gun shot in Los Angeles in the middle of Robert’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, and everything fell to Ted. The family was plagued with other tragedies as well. One sister, Kathleen, was killed in a plane crash in 1948. Another sister, Rosemary, was born mildly retarded, but was institutionalized after a botched lobotomy in 1941. She died in 2005 after more than 60 years in mental hospitals. Joseph Kennedy was incapacitated by a stroke in 1961 and died in November 1969, leaving the youngest son as head of the family. He was 37. "I can't let go," Kennedy once told an aide. "If I let go, Ethel [Robert's widow] will let go, and my mother will let go, and all my sisters."

While everyone thought he would one day become president as his brother did, they were wrong. Disaster struck again. An unfortunate accident at Chappaquiddick led to suspicions and blemished his name. Nevertheless as the Romans understood, there can be Emperors of no consequence — and Senators whose legacies are carved in stone. Ted Kennedy spent 46 working years in Congress, he played major roles in passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act and the 1993 Family and Medical Leave Act. Despite his catholic upbringing, he was an outspoken liberal standard-bearer during a conservative-dominated era from the 1980s to the early 2000s. For instance, he abandoned his previous opposition to abortion and advocated a woman's right to choose. He was also one of a handful of senators who supported the concept of same-sex marriages, his own state of Massachusetts becoming the first to give a legal framework to such unions. He campaigned in support of better rights for immigrants to the US and was a consistent advocate of tighter gun control.

So, while he never made it to president, Ted Kennedy, The Lion of the Senate was the one who contributed the most to America. Ted Kennedy, was the brother who mattered the most.

---Based on the article: The Death of Ted Kennedy: The Brother Who Mattered Most