The Kennedy Farewell

My first reaction was as a journalist: Had Ted Kennedy died too late to make the newspapers? Who would the morning shows book? Would the coverage go on for days?

But within moments I was flooded with memories of the senator, entwined with images of Jack and Bobby. And that's why the daylong tributes yesterday seemed so personal: The senior Democrat from Massachusetts was a presence in our lives for so many decades, not just as a powerful lawmaker but as the last carrier of the Camelot torch.

I was looking at the Boston Globe's terrific coverage and choked up when I saw a brief clip of Ted delivering the eulogy at RFK's funeral. ("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.") For anyone who lived through the twin assassinations of the 1960s, there was the almost unimaginable burden that fell on Kennedy's shoulders, and which persisted through later tragedies, such as the plane crash that killed JFK Jr. a decade ago.

I interviewed him during his 1980 presidential bid, as a young reporter for the Washington Star, and was struck by how inarticulate he could seem; while it wasn't quite a Roger Mudd moment, he offered little more than cliches. But months later I was in Madison Square Garden, watching him raise the roof with the "dream shall never die" speech, the best crescendo to a political oration that I have ever seen.

Did some journalists agree with Kennedy politically? Probably. But one thing you can't take away from the man is the affection that Republicans had for him, how he was a dealmaker who worked with Orrin Hatch and John McCain and helped George W. Bush pass his No Child Left Behind law.

Ted Kennedy was a flawed man, as anyone familiar with Chappaquiddick well knows. He both benefited from the aura surrounding his family and carried it as a lifelong albatross.

I thought the media overreacted last year when Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama -- who didn't even win the Massachusetts primary -- but in retrospect, there was a quality of passing the baton to the next generation. The president was his usual controlled self when he read a statement about Kennedy's death, but Joe Biden teared up while remembering his longtime friend. It was an extraordinary television moment, the vice president of the United States grieving before the cameras, and very real in a way that all the antiseptic statements issued yesterday were not.

Here is my report:

"The black-and-white images -- of a skinny, short-haired Ted Kennedy, flanked by his brothers -- became video wallpaper yesterday as television moved into mourning mode.

"There was an unmistakably personal tone to the tributes, the anchors and correspondents sounding as though they, and the country, had lost a friend. Diane Sawyer talked about Kennedy's megawatt smile. Andrea Mitchell called him 'the greatest senator of our generation.' Brian Williams, who had flown during the night to Hyannis Port, observed: 'I hope his Irishness . . . isn't lost in all this.' Geraldo Rivera called him a 'mentor.'

" 'I'm not ashamed to admit it, I liked the guy,' Mike Barnicle, the former Boston Globe columnist, said on NBC. 'I admired the guy.'

"We have gathered like this so many times since the November weekend in 1963 when television helped us bid farewell to a slain president. It has become a sad ritual in recent weeks, the on-air obituaries for Walter Cronkite, Don Hewitt, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon. The senior senator from Massachusetts was not just a 'liberal lion,' in the instant cliche; he was a tragic survivor, a tabloid target, the keeper of the flame, the last link to Camelot. He was a Kennedy.