Senator Ted Kennedy Fights On To Victory For Health Care
One of my all-time favorite politicians who turns 77 today has a major front page, above-the-fold article in the Sunday newspaper about him, and as such makes for the best paragraphs in the paper. This is uplifting, gutsy, and so human. All the best, Teddy! Oh, and Happy Birthday!
After the president of Harvard hailed him as a “national leader but a local servant,” after the pastor read the “Let us now praise famous men” passage from the Bible and after the cellist Yo-Yo Ma honored him by performing a Gershwin prelude, Senator Edward M. Kennedy lumbered across the antique stage.
“I have lived a blessed time,” Mr. Kennedy told the audience at a special honorary degree convocation at Harvard in December. His voice started shaky, but gained strength. “Now, with you, I look forward to a new time of high aspiration for our nation and the world.”
As the crowd rose, Mr. Kennedy waved buoyantly, as if trying to acknowledge everyone he saw: a special fist pump for his former staff member, Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the Supreme Court; a salute in the direction of Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.; a thumbs-up for his niece Caroline Kennedy.
Mr. Kennedy’s wife, Vicki, tried to lead him off, but he broke away, grinning. For a few extra moments, he kept the stage.
Since the diagnosis of his brain cancer last May, Mr. Kennedy has been given all manner of tributes and testimonials, lifetime achievement awards, medals of honor and standing ovations. But even as those accolades have provided sweet solace — and even some dark humor — as he endures grueling treatments, Mr. Kennedy, who turns 77 on Sunday, has been intent on racing time rather than looking back on it.
He considers unnecessary what his son Representative Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island calls “the premature eulogizing,” or what Mr. Biden terms “a bordering on an obituary,” that has accompanied his life in recent months.
“Obviously I’ve been touched and grateful,” Mr. Kennedy said in a phone interview Friday from the rented home in Miami where he has spent most of the winter. “Beyond that, I don’t really plan to go away soon.”
Friends who have seen Mr. Kennedy describe him as driven and focused on work. He sometimes gets angry watching C-Span, pores over memorandums and speed-dials staff members and colleagues (sometimes from his sailboat, the Mya). He speaks frequently — and often on his trademark issue, overhauling the nation’s health care system — to President Obama; Mr. Biden; the White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel; and checks up on the Senate “chatter” with lawmakers.
Between chemotherapy treatments, physical therapy sessions and naps, Mr. Kennedy has been lobbying the White House on possible nominees for secretary of health and human services. (He has heard good things about the leading candidate, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, though he does not know her well and has been pressing for other candidates.)
While his office said he planned to return to Washington in a few weeks, Mr. Kennedy has been orchestrating efforts from afar, setting the foundation for legislation on what he calls “the cause of my life.”
“What has been essential to his recovery and motivation has been setting goals,” said Dr. Lawrence C. Horowitz, a former Kennedy staff member who has been overseeing his care. The first goal the senator set after cancer surgery in June was to speak at the Democratic National Convention (he did, despite kidney stones); then he resolved to attend Mr. Obama’s inauguration (he did, though he had a seizure afterward).
“Now, his goal is to play a central role in health care reform,” Dr. Horowitz said. “That’s what keeps him going.”
