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Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy (born February 22, 1932) is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. In office since November 1962, Kennedy is the second most senior member of the Senate, after President pro tempore Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Due to his long history of public service, he has become well known by his nickname "The Lion of the Senate". The most prominent living member of the Kennedy family, he is the youngest brother of the late President John F. Kennedy and the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the father of Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy.
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Encyclopedia
Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy (born February 22, 1932) is the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. In office since November 1962, Kennedy is the second most senior member of the Senate, after President pro tempore Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Due to his long history of public service, he has become well known by his nickname "The Lion of the Senate". The most prominent living member of the Kennedy family, he is the youngest brother of the late President John F. Kennedy and the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the father of Congressman Patrick J. Kennedy. Kennedy is also the sole surviving son of Joseph P. Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy, and one of three of their surviving children (along with Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Jean Kennedy Smith).
On May 20, 2008, doctors announced that Kennedy had a malignant brain tumor, diagnosed after he experienced a seizure at the Kennedy compound situated in Hyannisport, Massachusetts the previous weekend. On June 2, 2008, Kennedy underwent brain surgery at Duke University Medical Center. He returned to the U.S. Capitol on November 17, 2008.
Early life, military service, and education
Kennedy was born in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts, the youngest of nine children of Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. and Rose Fitzgerald, who were both members of prominent Irish American families in Boston. Some of his elder siblings include John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Eunice Shriver.
Frequently uprooted as a child as his family moved among Bronxville, New York, Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, Palm Beach, Florida, and the Court of St. James's in London, Kennedy attended ten different schools by the age of eleven. At age seven, he received his First Communion from Pope Pius XII in the Vatican. He spent sixth and seventh grades in Fessenden School, where he was a mediocre student, and eighth grade at Cranwell Preparatory School, both in Massachusetts. His parents were affectionate towards him as the youngest child but also compared him unfavorably with his older brothers. Between the ages of eight and sixteen he suffered the loss of his sister Rosemary Kennedy to a failed lobotomy and the deaths of his brother Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. in World War II and sister Kathleen Agnes Kennedy in an airplane crash. An early political and personal influence was his affable maternal grandfather, John "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, a former Mayor of Boston and U.S. Representative. Kennedy spent his four high school years at Milton Academy prep school, where his grades were ordinary, but he did well at football. He also played on the tennis and hockey teams and was in the drama, debate, and glee clubs. He graduated from there in 1950.
Kennedy entered Harvard College, residing in Winthrop House, where his brothers had also lived. He played as a large, fearless offensive and defensive end on the freshman football team. In May 1951, anxious about maintaining his eligibility for athletics for the next year, he had a friend who was knowledgeable on the subject take his Spanish language examination for him. The two were quickly caught and expelled, but in a standard Harvard treatment for cases of this kind, they were told they could apply for readmission in a year or two after demonstrating good behavior.
Kennedy enlisted in the United States Army in June 1951. Following basic training at Fort Dix, he requested assignment to Fort Holabird for Army Intelligence training, but was dropped after a few weeks without explanation. He went to Camp Gordon for training in the Military Police Corps. In June 1952, he was assigned to the honor guard at SHAPE headquarters in Paris. His father's political connections ensured he was not deployed to the ongoing Korean War. While in Europe he travelled a lot on weekends and climbed the Matterhorn. He was discharged in March 1953 as a private first class.
He re-entered Harvard in summer 1953 and improved his study habits. He joined the Owl Club in 1954. On athletic probation during his sophomore year, he returned as a second-string end for Harvard Crimson football during his junior year and barely missed earning his varsity letter. Nevertheless, he received a recruiting feeler from Green Bay Packers head coach Lisle Blackbourn, asking about his interest in playing professionally. Kennedy demurred, saying he had plans to attend law school and to "go into another contact sport, politics." Kennedy became a starting end on the Harvard Crimson football team in his senior year, working hard to improve his blocking and tackling to complement his 6-foot 2-inch, 200 pound size. In the 1955 Harvard-Yale game, which Yale won 21–7, Kennedy caught Harvard's only touchdown pass. He graduated from Harvard in 1956 with a B.A. in history and government.
Kennedy enrolled in the University of Virginia School of Law in 1956, and also attended the Hague Academy of International Law during 1958. At Virginia he was in the middle of the class ranking but was the winner of the prestigious William Minor Lile Moot Court Competition. While there, his fast automotive habits were caught when he was charged with reckless driving and driving without a license. He was officially manager of his brother John's 1958 Senate re-election campaign, and Ted's ability to connect to ordinary voters on the street helped bring a record-setting victory margin that gave credibility to John's presidential aspirations. Kennedy graduated from law school in 1959.
Marriage, family, and early career
While still in law school, Kennedy met Virginia Joan Bennett, known as Joan, while delivering a speech at Manhattanville College in October 1957. She was a senior there, had worked as a model and won beauty contests, but was unfamiliar with the world of politics. After their engagement she grew nervous about marrying someone she did not know that well, but his father insisted the wedding not be put off. They were married by Francis Cardinal Spellman on November 29, 1958, in Bronxville, New York. They had three children together: Kara Anne (born February 27, 1960), Edward Jr. (born September 26, 1961), and Patrick (born July 14, 1967). By the mid-1960s, their marriage was troubled by his womanizing and her growing alcoholism. They would divorce in 1982.
Kennedy admitted to the Massachusetts Bar in 1959. In 1960, John Kennedy ran for President of the United States, and Ted managed his campaign in the Western states. Ted learned to fly, and during the Democratic primary campaign he barnstormed around the western states, meeting with delegates and bonding with them by trying his hand at ski jumping and bronc riding. His seven weeks spent in Wisconsin helped his brother win the first contested primary of the season there, and similar time spent in Wyoming was rewarded when a unanimous vote from that state's delegates put his brother over the top at the 1960 Democratic National Convention.
Upon his victory in the general election, John vacated his Massachusetts Senate seat. Ted would not be eligible to fill the vacancy until February 22, 1962, when he would turn thirty. Ted initially wanted to stay out West and do something other than run for office right away; he said, "The disadvantage of my position is being constantly compared with two brothers of such superior ability." His brothers were also not in favor of his running immediately, but their father overruled them. Thus, the President-elect asked Massachusetts Governor Foster Furcolo to name Kennedy family friend Benjamin A. Smith II to fill out John's term, which he did in December 1960. This kept the seat open for Ted. Meanwhile, Ted began work in February 1961 an assistant district attorney for Suffolk County, Massachusetts (for which he took only $1 in salary), where he first developed a hard-nosed attitude towards crime. He also took many overseas tours and began speaking to local political clubs and organizations.
In the 1962 U.S. Senate special election in Massachusetts, Kennedy first faced a Democratic Party primary challenge from Edward J. McCormack, Jr., the state Attorney General. Kennedy's slogan was "He can do more for Massachusetts", the same one John had used in his first campaign for the seat ten years earlier. McCormack had the support of many liberals and intellectuals, who thought Kennedy inexperienced and knew of his suspension from Harvard, a fact which subsequently became public during the race. Kennedy also faced the notion that with one brother President and another U.S. Attorney General, "Don't you think that Teddy is one Kennedy too many?" But Kennedy proved to be an effective street-level campaigner. In a televised debate, McCormack said "The office of United States senator should be merited, and not inherited," and said that if his opponent's name was Edward Moore rather than Edward Moore Kennedy, his candidacy "would be a joke." Voters thought McCormack's performance overbearing, and combined with the family political machine finally getting fully behind him, Kennedy won the September 1962 primary by a two-to-one margin. In the November special election, Kennedy defeated Republican George Cabot Lodge II, another product of a noted Massachusetts political family, gaining 55 percent of the vote.
United States Senator
First years and assassinations of two brothers
Kennedy maintained a deferential attitude towards the older, seniority-laden Southern members when he first entered the Senate, avoiding publicity and focusing on committee assignments and local issues. Compared to his brothers in office, he lacked John's sophistication and Robert's intense, sometimes grating drive, but was more affable than either of them.
On November 22, 1963, he was presiding over the Senate, a task given to junior members, when an aide rushed in to tell him that his brother, President John F. Kennedy, had been shot; his brother Robert soon told him that the president was dead. Ted flew to the family home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts to tell his stroke-afflicted father the news.
On June 19, 1964, Kennedy was flying in a private Aero Commander 680 from Washington to Massachusetts that crashed on landing in bad weather. The pilot and Edward Moss, one of Kennedy's aides, were killed. Kennedy was pulled from the wreckage by fellow Senator Birch E. Bayh II and spent months in hospital recovering from a severe back injury, a punctured lung, broken ribs and internal bleeding. He has suffered chronic pain since the event. Kennedy took advantage of his long convalescence to meet with academics and study issues more closely, and the hospital experience triggered his lifelong interest in the provision of health care services. His wife Joan did the campaigning for him in the regular 1964 U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts, and he defeated his Republican opponent by a three-to-one margin.
Kennedy returned to the Senate in January 1965, walking with a cane but employing a stronger and more effective legislative staff. He took on President Lyndon Johnson in almost getting a ban on the poll tax added to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and was a leader in pushing through the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which despite Kennedy's predictions at the time would have a profound effect upon the demographic makeup of the United States. He also played a role in creation of the National Teachers Corps.
In the 1968 presidential election, Ted first advised his brother Robert to not challenge the incumbent President Johnson for the Democratic nomination. Once Eugene McCarthy's strong showing in the New Hampshire primary led to Robert's presidential campaign starting in March 1968, Ted recruited endorsements for his brother in the Western states. Ted was in San Francisco as his brother won the crucial California primary on June 4, 1968; after midnight, Robert was shot in Los Angeles and died a day later. Ted Kennedy was particularly devastated by this death, as he was closer to Robert than to any other member of the Kennedy family; Kennedy aide Frank Mankiewicz said of seeing Ted at the hospital where Robert lay mortally wounded: "I have never, ever, nor do I expect ever, to see a face more in grief." Ted Kennedy delivered a eulogy at Robert's funeral, which included the oft-quoted section:
My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world.
As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him:
"Some men see things as they are and say why.
I dream things that never were and say why not."
At the chaotic 1968 Democratic National Convention in August, Mayor of Chicago Richard J. Daley and some other party leaders wanted to give the nomination to Ted Kennedy, fearing that Hubert Humphrey would be unable to united the party. The 36-year-old Kennedy was seen as the natural heir to his brothers, and "Draft Ted" movements sprung up from various quarters and among delegates. Thinking that he was only being seen as a stand-in for his brother and that he was not ready for the job himself, Kennedy rejected any move to put him in nomination, and also declined the vice-presidential running mate position. George McGovern became the symbolic standard-bearer for Robert's delegates instead.
After his brothers' deaths, Ted Kennedy took on the role of surrogate father for their 13 children. By some reports, he also negotiated the October 1968 marital contract between Jacqueline Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis.
Following Republican Richard Nixon's victory in November, Kennedy was widely assumed to be the front-runner for the 1972 Democratic nomination.
In January 1969, Kennedy defeated Louisiana Senator Russell B. Long by a 31–26 margin to become Senate Majority Whip, the youngest person to attain that position. While this further boosted his presidential image, he also appeared conflicted by the inevitability of having to run for the position.
Chappaquiddick incident
On the night of July 18, 1969, Kennedy was on Chappaquiddick Island at a party for the "Boiler Room Girls", a group of young women who had worked on his brother Robert's presidential campaign the year before. Leaving the party, Kennedy was driving a 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88 with one of the women, 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne, as his passenger, when Kennedy drove off Dike Bridge into Poucha Pond between Chappaquiddick Island and Cape Poge barrier beach. Kennedy escaped the overturned vehicle and swam to safety, but Kopechne died in the car. Kennedy left the scene and did not call authorities until after Kopechne's body was discovered the following day.
On July 25, Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was given a sentence of two months in jail, suspended. That night, Kennedy gave a national broadcast in which he said, "I regard as indefensible the fact that I did not report the accident to the police immediately," but denied driving under the influence of alcohol and denied any immoral conduct between him and Kopechne. Kennedy asked the Massachusetts electorate whether he should stay in office, and after getting a favorable response, he did.
In January 1970, an inquest into Kopechne's death took place in Edgartown, Massachusetts. At the request of Kennedy's lawyers, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ordered the inquest be conducted in secret. Judge James A. Boyle presided over the inquest. His conclusions were as follows:
- "Kopechne and Kennedy did not intend to return to Edgartown" at the time they left the party.
- "Kennedy did not intend to drive to the ferry slip".
- "[Kennedy]'s turn onto Dike Road was intentional".
Judge Boyle also said that "negligent driving appears to have contributed to the death of Mary Jo Kopechne."
Under Massachusetts law, Boyle could have ordered Kennedy's arrest, but he chose not to do so.
A grand jury on Martha's Vineyard staged a two-day investigation in April 1970 but issued no indictment, after which Boyle made his inquest report public. Kennedy deemed its conclusions "not justified."
Kennedy easily won re-election to another term in the Senate later in 1970, getting 62 percent of the vote against an underfunded Republican.
1970s
In January 1971, Kennedy lost his position as Senate Majority Whip when he lost the support of several members and was defeated by Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, 31–24. Kennedy would later tell Byrd that the defeat was a blessing, as it allowed him to focus more on issues and committee work, where his best strengths lay. Kennedy became chair of the Senate subcommittee on health care and played a leading role with Jacob Javits in the creation and passage of the National Cancer Act of 1971. In October 1971, Kennedy made his first speech about The Troubles in Northern Ireland: he said that "Ulster is becoming Britain's Vietnam", demanded that British troops leave the northern counties, and called for a united Ireland. Kennedy was harshly criticized by the British, and formed a long political relationship with Irish Social Democratic and Labour Party founder John Hume.
Kennedy had declared shortly after Chappaquiddick that he would not be a candidate in the 1972 U.S. presidential election. Nevertheless, polls in 1971 suggested he could win the nomination if he tried, and Kennedy gave some thought to running. In May of that year he decided not to, saying he needed "breathing time" to gain more experience and to take care of the children of this brothers and that in sum, "It feels wrong in my gut." Once George McGovern was near clinching the Democratic nomination in June 1972, various anti-McGovern forces tried to get Kennedy to enter the contest at the last minute, but he declined. At the 1972 Democratic National Convention McGovern repeatedly tried to recruit Kennedy as his vice presidential running mate, but was turned down. When McGovern's choice of Thomas Eagleton had to step down soon after the convention, McGovern again tried to get Kennedy to take the nod, again without success. McGovern instead chose Kennedy's brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver.
In 1973, Kennedy's son Edward Kennedy, Jr. was discovered to have chondrosarcoma; his leg was amputated and he underwent a long, difficult, experimental two-year drug treatment. The case brought international attention both among doctors and in the general media, as did the young Kennedy's return to the ski slopes on an artificial leg half a year later. His other son, Patrick J. Kennedy, was suffering from severe asthma attacks. The pressure of the situation mounted on Joan Kennedy, who was several times checked into facilities for alcoholism and emotional strain and was arrested for drunk driving after a traffic accident. Meanwhile, Kennedy renewed his efforts for national health insurance and campaign finance reform. In April 1974, Kennedy travelled to the Soviet Union, where he met with leader Leonid Brezhnev and advocated a full nuclear test ban as well as relaxed emigration, gave a speech at Moscow State University, met with Soviet dissidents, and secured an exit visa for famed cellist Mstislav Rostropovich.
Kennedy was again much talked about as a contender in the 1976 U.S. presidential election, with no strong front-runners among the other possible Democratic candidates. But Kennedy's concerns about his family were strong, and Chappaquiddick was still in the news, with The Boston Globe, The New York Times Magazine, and Time magazine all reassessing the incident and raising doubts about Kennedy's version of events. In September 1974, Kennedy announced that for family reasons he would not run in the 1976 election, declaring that his decision was "firm, final, and unconditional." The eventual Democratic nominee, Jimmy Carter, built little relationship with Kennedy during his primary campaign, the convention, or the general election campaign. Kennedy himself was up for Senate re-election in 1976; he defeated a primary challenger angry at his support for school busing in Boston, then won the general election with 69 percent of the vote.
The Carter administration years were Kennedy's least successful as a politician. He had been the most important Democrat in Washington ever since his brother Robert's death, but now Carter was, and Kennedy did not have a committee chairmanship with which to wield influence. Despite generally similar ideologies, their priorities were different, and Carter did not push Kennedy's top issue of national health insurance. Kennedy and his wife Joan separated in 1977, although they still rejoined for some public events.
Kennedy visited China on a goodwill mission in late December 1977, meeting with leader Deng Xiaoping and eventually gaining permission for a number of Chinese to leave the country; in 1978, he also visited the Soviet Union and Brezhnev and dissidents there again.
1980 presidential campaign
Kennedy finally threw his hat into the ring for the Democratic nomination in the 1980 presidential election by launching an unusual, insurgent campaign against the incumbent president, Jimmy Carter, a member of his own party. Despite much early support, his bid was ultimately unsuccessful. Carter was highly unpopular at the time of Kennedy's announcement, and Kennedy could have expected to do well against him, but the Iran hostage crisis gave President Carter a large boost in the polls that lasted for several months. The upswing in Carter's popularity knocked the wind out of Kennedy's candidacy, which was predicated on dislodging an unpopular president. In addition, the Chappaquiddick incident still dogged Kennedy, and his opponents often invoked the highly recognizable melody of Simon & Garfunkel's 1970 hit song "Bridge Over Troubled Water" to remind voters of the tragedy and scandal.
Kennedy's campaign received substantial negative press from what pundits criticized as a rambling response to the question "Why do you want to be President?" during an interview with Roger Mudd of CBS News in 1979. Kennedy won 10 presidential primaries against Carter, who won 24. Eventually, he bowed out of the race, but delivered a well-received speech before the 1980 Democratic National Convention in New York City.
Democratic Presidential primary endorsements
While Kennedy himself did not run for President again, he has endorsed and campaigned for other candidates in the Democratic presidential primary contests. In 1988, he supported the successful nomination bid of Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis. Four years later, in 1992, he backed former fellow Massachusetts Senator Paul Tsongas. In 2000, Kennedy endorsed Vice President Al Gore. In 2004, he endorsed and campaigned for fellow Massachusetts Senator John F. Kerry. In 2008, Kennedy supported the bid of Illinois Senator Barack Obama.
Overview
Kennedy was elected to a full six-year term in 1964 and was reelected in 1970, 1976, 1982, 1988, 1994, 2000 and 2006.
Kennedy is the Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. He also serves on the Judiciary Committee, and the Armed Services Committee. He is also a member of the Congressional Joint Economic Committee, a founder of the Congressional Friends of Ireland and a trustee of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
Kennedy's home is in Hyannis, Massachusetts, where he lives with his second wife, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, a Washington lawyer and the daughter of Louisiana judge Edmund Reggie, and her children from a previous marriage, Curran and Caroline. Victoria is president and co-founder of Common Sense about Kids and Guns, an advocacy group that seeks to reduce gun deaths and injuries to children in the United States.
Committee assignments
Brain tumor (cancer)
On May 17, 2008, seven months after having surgery to clear a blocked left carotid artery, Kennedy was rushed to Cape Cod Hospital from the Kennedy Compound after feeling ill. He was transferred by helicopter to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. According to multiple sources, Kennedy was suffering from symptoms of a stroke. It was later reported that Kennedy had suffered two seizures, one initially at his Hyannis Port home and another in a helicopter en route to Massachusetts General Hospital from Cape Cod Hospital.
On May 20, doctors announced that Kennedy has a malignant glioma, a type of cancerous brain tumor. The treatment for this condition is often surgery, radiation or chemotherapy, depending on the type, location and degree of malignancy. Kennedy's own doctors have not publicly released a prognosis, but experts report that the median survival time for patients with this condition is 15 months. Kennedy left the hospital and returned to Cape Cod on May 21. Doctors said that he had "recovered remarkably quickly" from the biopsy in which the tumor was found and that he was waiting for additional test results as well as treatment plans.
On June 2, 2008, Kennedy underwent brain surgery at Duke University Medical Center in an attempt to remove as much of the brain tumor as possible. Surgery was considered the most aggressive route possible in treating the tumor; his doctors had not previously mentioned the possibility of surgery to the public. The surgery, conducted by Dr. Allan Friedman, lasted for about three and a half hours, and according to Friedman, it was successful in its goals. Friedman said that the surgery was performed on Kennedy while he was awake and that he did not expect Kennedy to suffer any permanent neurological effects from the surgery. Kennedy planned to spend a brief period recuperating from the surgery before beginning chemotherapy and radiation treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital. He left the hospital at Duke on June 9, returning to Cape Cod.
Opinions vary regarding Kennedy's prognosis. The surgery can extend survival time but only by a matter of months. John H. Sampson, a neurosurgeon who worked with Friedman, stated: "It almost certainly won't be curative, but it should enhance the chances that additional treatment will be effective." Others noted that some people with similar tumors have survived for years.
Though ill, Senator Kennedy attended the first night of the 2008 Democratic National Convention in August 2008, where a video tribute to Kennedy was played. Introduced by his niece, Caroline Kennedy, he delivered a speech to the delegates in which, reminiscent of his speech at the 1980 Democratic National Convention, he said, "this November, the torch will be passed again to a new generation of Americans. So, with Barack Obama and for you and for me, our country will be committed to his cause. The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives on."
On September 26, 2008, Kennedy suffered a mild seizure while at his home in Hyannis Port, for which he was examined and released from hospital on the same day. Doctors believe that a change in his medication triggered the seizure.
On January 20, 2009, Kennedy suffered a seizure during Barack Obama's Presidential Inaugural luncheon. He was taken via wheelchair from the Capitol building, and was taken to Washington Hospital Center. A statement later that afternoon after tests had been carried out reported doctors believed the collapse was brought on by "simple fatigue" and that he was awake and talking to family and friends and feeling well. The following morning, he was released from the hospital to his home in Virginia. Kennedy was erroneously reported as having died which prompted calls for revisions in the Wikipedia editing process, the original source of the report.
Democratic Party icon
Since his presidential bid, Kennedy has become one of the most recognizable and influential members of the party, and is sometimes called a "Democratic icon". In April 2006, Kennedy was selected by Time as one of "America's 10 Best Senators"; the magazine noted that he had "amassed a titanic record of legislation affecting the lives of virtually every man, woman and child in the country" and that "by the late 1990s, the liberal icon had become such a prodigious cross-aisle dealer that Republican leaders began pressuring party colleagues not to sponsor bills with him".
In 2004, Kennedy was involved in the failed presidential bid of his fellow Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, speaking for Kerry multiple times and lending his chief of staff, Mary Beth Cahill, to the Kerry campaign. Kennedy stated that he would have supported Kerry should he have chosen to run for president in 2008. On January 28, 2008, Kennedy endorsed Senator Barack Obama in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
In 2006, Kennedy released a children's book My Senator and Me: A Dog's-Eye View of Washington, D.C. Also in 2006, Kennedy released a political history entitled America Back on Track.
As of 2009, Kennedy is the second-longest serving current senator, trailing only Robert Byrd. Kennedy won an eighth full (and ninth overall) term in 2006. Currently, he is the chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
Awards and honors
Honorary knighthood
In a speech to Congress on March 4, 2009, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Gordon Brown announced that Kennedy had been granted an honorary knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II for his work in the Northern Ireland peace process, and for his contribution to UK–US relations. As an American citizen, this title would be purely honorary, and therefore he is not entitled to the honorific "Sir", though he is able to use the post-nominal Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE).
Kennedy released a statement saying he is "deeply grateful" for the "extraordinary honor."
"I have always prized the opportunity to work with the British government and strengthen and deepen the role of our two countries as leading beacons of democracy in the world," Kennedy said. "So for me this honor is moving and personal—a reflection not only of my public life, but of things that profoundly matter to me as an individual."
The granting of an honorary knighthood to Kennedy caused controversy in the UK due to his connections with Gerry Adams of the Provisional IRA.
Order of the Aztec Eagle
Kennedy received the Order of the Aztec Eagle in July 2008 in recognition of his support for immigrants' rights, the order is the highest decoration awarded to foreigners in Mexico.
Other
On March 8 2009, Kennedy received the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award, as part of a 77th birthday celebration event at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.
Political positions
A method that political scientists use for gauging ideology is to compare the annual ratings by the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) with the ratings by the American Conservative Union (ACU). Kennedy had a lifetime liberal 90 percent score from the ADA through 2004, while the ACU awarded Kennedy a lifetime conservative rating of 2 percent through 2007.
Using another metric, Kennedy has a lifetime average liberal score of 88.7 percent, according to a National Journal analysis that places him ideologically as the third-most liberal senator of all those in office in 2009.
A 2004 analysis by political scientists Joshua D. Clinton of Princeton University, Simon Jackman and Doug Rivers of Stanford University examined some of the difficulties in making this kind of analysis, and found Kennedy likely to be the 8th-to-15th-most liberal Senator during the 108th Congress.
The Almanac of American Politics rates congressional votes as liberal or conservative on the political spectrum, in three policy areas: economic, social, and foreign. For 2005–2006, Kennedy's average ratings were as follows: the economic rating was 91 percent liberal and 0 percent conservative, the social rating was 89 percent liberal and 5 percent conservative, and the foreign rating was 96 percent liberal and 0 percent conservative.
Various interest groups have given Kennedy scores or grades as to how well his votes align with the positions of each group.
The American Civil Liberties Union gives him an 84 percent lifetime score as of 2009.
During the 1990s and 2000s, NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood typically gave Kennedy ratings of 100 percent, while the National Right to Life Committee typically gave him a rating of less than 10 percent.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence gave Kennedy a lifetime rating of 100 percent through 2002, while National Rifle Association gave Kennedy a lifetime grade of 'F' (failing) as of 2006.
Writings
Electoral history
Further reading
- Gary Allen (1981). Ted Kennedy: In over His Head, Conservative Pr. ISBN 978-0892450206.*Nellie Bly. (1996). The Kennedy Men: Three Generations of Sex, Scandal and Secrets. ISBN 1-57566-106-3.
- Richard E. Burke (1993). The Senator: My Ten Years With Ted Kennedy. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-95133-7.
- Canellos, Peter S. (ed.) (2009). The Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 1439138176.
- Adam Clymer (1999). Edward M. Kennedy: A Biography. Wm. Morrow & Company. ISBN 0-688-14285-0.
- Leo Damore (1988). Senatorial Privilege: The Chappaquiddick Cover-Up. Regnery Gateway. ISBN 0-89526-564-8.
- Burton Hersh (1972). The Education of Edward Kennedy: A Family Biography. Wm. Morrow & Company.
- Murray Levin (1966). Kennedy Campaigning: the System and the Style as Practiced By Senator Edward Kennedy. Beacon Press.
- Murray Levin (1980). Edward Kennedy: The Myth of Leadership. ISBN 0-395292492.
- McGinnis, Joe (1993). The Last Brother. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0671679457.
External links
Official sites
- PAC founded by Kennedy to support and expand the Democratic majority in the Senate and House of Representatives
Kennedy in his own words
- AmericanRhetoric.com
- AmericanRhetoric.com
- AmericanRhetoric.com
- AmericanRhetoric.com
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Nonpartisan information
- collected news and commentary
- profile
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