A Prayer for Edward Kennedy

You can't pull an Olds Delmont 88 out of a tidal channel without hearkening back to Teddy's salad days; when he was young, glorious, and on a trajectory that promised the Presidency to a string of Kennedys at least three brothers deep.

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Now a lion in winter, the assessments that once eviscerated the seemingly luckless politician hold him up as a national hero and they are right for atonement is more than a major motion picture once in a theater near you and now on DVD. It is his life's work and he has embraced it. In a Princess Di like turnabout, he became the people's president knowing there was no other avenue to the office. Always a Senator, never a nominee.

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When he landed in the Senate in 1962 he was all of 30 years old. He has made it his home and many would say he has made it his own. From that vantage he has been the conscience, yes conscience, of the nation--calling out when budgets were balanced on the backs of the poor; demanding the nation live up to its promises of liberty, justice, and equality for all, tilting at windmills maybe (recall his railing at the price of hamburger in one of his several doomed attempts to run for President), and making access to affordable, quality health care the capstone of his career.
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Let's send one up for him. He deserves it and he needs it.