Using and Abusing Teddy

Since time will undoubtedly stop if a few words don't come from this blog about the late Senator, here they are, in no particular order...

1. He was a man of privilege whose institutional family guilt and ideology steered him towards helping the little man. There's nothing wrong with that per se, since the rich should act in a charitable fashion with their money. Kennedy wanted to act with everyone's money. But he never apologized for being a liberal, something more liberals should adopt. And conservatives should respect.

2. Most conservatives will never forgive him for dodging Chappaquidick and going on to become a Senate Lion. This was undoubtedly due to his family name, something the left never had a problem with, although they hammered George W. Bush for the same thing vis a vis the Texas Air National Guard and Vietnam. The answer lies in number one and the absolute moral authority card his rich family earned by taking a liberal-Democrat stance.

3. Right wingers should now understand and forgive his confusion during the campaign when he called Obama "Obama bin Laden". He had a brain tumor, for crying out loud. Much hay was made with this snippet but perhaps it's now time to apologize, just as the left did after making fun of Reagan in his second term only to later find out he most probably suffered from early-stage Alzheimer's.

4. The Democrat leadership pushing the health care takeover would do well to steer clear of attaching Kennedy's name directly to any bill this fall. Despite what some in the media will try to push, Kennedy's name isn't necessarily synonymous with sweetness and light outside Boston and the beltway. Maybe they figure that after putting him in the ground next to war heroes and all this talk about lions and such the way will be paved, but a more prudent approach would be to take a few more polls and eat in a few truck stops out in the hinterlands before pulling that trigger. Just sayin'.