End of an American Epoch

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Edward M. Kennedy, 1932-2009

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In 1994, Sen. Kennedy defeated a challenge by Republican businessman Mitt Romney and never faced another serious battle for his Senate seat.

Although his party lost the White House six years later, Sen. Kennedy remained in the thick of the legislative action, in 2001 helping to pass President Bush's No Child Left Behind bill, and rescuing it again six years later when it was up for renewal.

On most other issues, notably Iraq, Sen. Kennedy bitterly opposed the Bush administration. He once said his proudest Senate vote was cast in 2002 rejecting force against Iraq. "There was no imminent threat," he said later.

In January 2008, he endorsed the presidential candidacy of another early opponent of the war, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), calling for "a new generation of leadership" in America.

Three months later, he left his hospital bed and flew to the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Slowly making his way to the lectern to the cheers, and tears, of 20,000 rapturous fellow Democrats, he proclaimed, in a voice still strong, "a season of hope."

Delegates of a certain age heard echoes of his brother's 1961 inaugural address and of his own impassioned speech at Madison Square Garden nearly three decades earlier.

"This is what we do," he proclaimed. "We reach the moon. We scale the heights."