No patriotic American can take joy or "I told you so" pleasure in the cancerous brain tumor suffered by Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, the surviving patriarch of the New Frontier, Camelot political dynasty.
Conservatives wish him no ill will, nor his family. It would be right down evil to try to take advantage of this tragic situation. On the other hand, his record is what it is, and there is also no cause to suddenly canonize Kennedy, just because he's fallen ill, either.
Ted Kennedy was a fatally flawed character from the outset, and to pretend otherwise now would be hypocritical. From his father building a new library at the University of Virginia law school, so he could graduate, after being thrown out of Harvard for cheating, to the tragic death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick, to the midnight romp with his nephew William Smith on the beach in Florida that resulted in the death of a young woman--these are self-inflicted wounds that bogged down his career.
Being independently wealthy by inheritance, Kennedy could cast off the shackles of the free enterprise system that his father Joe expoited so successfully to build the family fortune, and be the far-left spear carrier for the poor and downtrodden in the Senate. His act was so predictable, that even his fellow Democrats kept him from leadership positions in the Senate, despite his long tenure.
Kennedy's runs for the White House, most seriously when he lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976, were bogged down from the get-go by all the baggage of his past, including the alcoholism of, and subsequent divorce from, his first wife Joan, the mother of his three children.
Significantly, the only legislation he is being lionized for today, is that which liberal Republicans carried and got passed, such as the massive federal takeover of state's rights in education, No Child Left Behind. His amnesty bill for illegal aliens, pushed with Sen. John McCain, went no where.
History is history, and while the liberal news media seems to have lost the facts in light of Kennedy's tragic illness, in the end, the truth does prevail.
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