Ted Kennedy, Jr Statement to the Mccain Family

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) smiles equally he chats with Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) in July 2006 (Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)

Ted Kennedy liked to tell a favorite story about Sen. John McCain.

The Massachusetts Democrat and the Arizona Republican were on the floor of the Senate and became distracted by a heated fence between two freshmen senators. Just for the fun of it, Kennedy and McCain launched into the fray.

Equally one spoke, the other circled the chamber, pretending to exist agitated. They bellowed away at each other. Finally, they scared the freshman senators off the floor, leaving them unsure why their legendary colleagues had always joined the debate on an issue neither especially cared well-nigh.

At that, Kennedy and McCain went back to doing what they did best, mastering the Senate and crafting a bipartisan bargain that would overwhelm the opposition.

"Ted and I shared the sentiment that a fight non joined was a fight non enjoyed," McCain said during a speech seven years ago inside Boston's John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.

Then-Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) appear with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) after a Senate immigration bill passed in May 2006. (Melina Mara/The Washington Post)

He was delivering a eulogy at the memorial service of "my friend Ted," days later on Sen. Edward M. Kennedy had succumbed to a form of brain cancer known as glioblastoma.

Sometimes tearing opponents, sometimes mischief-making partners, Kennedy and McCain helped define what the mod Senate could exist, or at least should be.

At present, their shared bond has taken a brutal turn: McCain has been diagnosed with the same encephalon cancer that cut Kennedy'south life brusk at 77. The Arizonan's role announced that he is because several medical options, including chemotherapy and radiation — a path that Kennedy chose during his fifteen-month bout with the disease.

It is unclear when McCain volition return to the bedchamber, but his friends have reported that he expects to stay involved while fighting the cancer. On Thursday morning, McCain issued a statement criticizing President Trump'southward conclusion to end assistance to Syrian rebels battling the regime of Bashar al-Assad. "The administration is playing right into the hands of Vladimir Putin," McCain wrote with his tendency not to mince words.

Afterwards a 2008 seizure led to his encephalon cancer diagnosis, Kennedy made very few appearances in the Senate, trying to help monitor the debate over the Affordable Care Act from his home on Cape Cod. If McCain'due south appearances are every bit few and far between every bit Kennedy's were, it volition leave a gaping hole in the Senate's fabric.

[McCain escaped death twice equally a Navy pilot and survived 5 years as a Prisoner of war]

Learning from more senior colleagues such as Kennedy, McCain has become a force unto himself in Congress, a power center with more sway on some issues at times than whoever holds the title of Senate bulk leader. There is no other senator in the rank and file who wields that much clout. The final to do so was Kennedy.

(Victoria Walker/The Washington Post)

In the minority or bulk, McCain uses his identity to shape the bug, and over the past year, nowhere has that fiercely contained status been more than prevalent than in challenging Trump. Through his perch as chairman of the Senate Military machine Commission, McCain has become Trump's near high-profile critic of his attempt to steer a new grade toward relations with Russia.

The 2008 Republican presidential nominee has chosen for a total investigation into the president's 2016 campaign and its ties to Russian operatives. The start sign that something might exist wrong with McCain came at a Senate Intelligence Commission hearing with James B. Comey testifying. His questions to the fired FBI director were dislocated and befuddled, almost making it appear that McCain was defending Trump.

He wasn't, or at least he didn't mean to. Some wondered whether it was fatigue or something worse. This week, nosotros learned it was worse, much worse.

In his tributes to Kennedy over the years, McCain credited his more senior colleague with teaching him how to be a great senator.

"I admired his passion for his convictions, his patience with the hard and sometimes dull piece of work of legislating, and his uncanny sense for when differences could be bridged," McCain told the Boston crowd in 2009.

Theirs was an unlikely pairing. As he recounted in an oral history for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute, McCain initially viewed the liberal lion as "a scrap of a bully and perchance as well passionate in expression of his views."

Kennedy was a playboy in his early years, while McCain served in the Navy and was held captive in Vietnam for 5½ years after his fighter jet was shot downwards.

But they both came from dynasties in which they played the role of the underperforming ne'er-practice-well. Kennedy's older brothers included war heroes, a president and an attorney full general, while immature Ted needed family strings simply to win a Senate seat.

McCain'southward granddaddy and father were Navy legends, four-star admirals who helped control the Pacific armada during World State of war Two and the Vietnam War. John S. McCain III was the grade clown at the Naval Academy, constantly in trouble.

Together, Kennedy and McCain institute mutual cause in the Senate, and there, in many ways, they forged bigger legacies than anyone in their corresponding families. Combined, their service adds up to 77 years, and counting, in the chamber.

Neither could resist the presidential temptation — Kennedy in 1980, running in the Autonomous main confronting Jimmy Carter; McCain, falling short in 2000 to George W. Bush, and so winning the 2008 GOP nomination only to lose decisively to Barack Obama.

In a twist of fate, Kennedy provided a disquisitional symbolic launch to Obama by endorsing the get-go-term senator in the Democratic primary, setting him on the path to an electoral college rout.

The friendship never wavered. "During the presidential campaign, Ted never said anything most me," McCain said.

The Kennedy-McCain bond first blossomed during cabalistic policy hearings of the sea power subcommittee, where they realized their shared interests ofttimes outweighed their ideological distance.

"You never had even a small doubt. . . once his word was given and a course of activeness decided," McCain said in his eulogy.

They both utilized a wicked sense of humour that left everyone at ease one time the laughter concluded. "The nicest thing near his laughter is that it was genuine," McCain told the EMK Institute's oral history.

Kennedy never called McCain past his showtime name merely, always saying, "Oh, John," as if he had two first names. It made McCain smile.

Kennedy may have been called the liberal lion, but he had deep pragmatism that let him piece of work with Sen. Orrin Thou. Hatch (R-Utah) in creating the Children's Health Insurance Program and with McCain on the Patient's Nib of Rights. Neither achieved what Kennedy called the "cause of my life," what became the Affordable Care Act, only they moved the brawl forward in the direction of that cause.

Kennedy challenged presidents of both parties — some Carter allies never forgave him for the 1980 master — and he did non hesitate to challenge his ain leader. He rolled over beau Democrats who objected to his work with the Bush White Firm on instruction and prescription-drug legislation.

McCain's clashes with his party leaders perhaps hit a crescendo in Dec, when he personally delivered to Comey an unverified dossier nigh Trump's ties to Russia.

Two months after Kennedy's decease, McCain told his oral history interviewer that he missed him "every day," expecting to turn the corner and see him in the Russell Senate Office Building, where they both worked.

"Oh, John," McCain recalled Kennedy saying subsequently whatever memorable Sunday news evidence appearance. "I saw you on Sunday, and you really gave the states hell, didn't yous?"

In March 2015, McCain once again trekked to Boston, for the EMK Institute grand opening, next to the JFK Library.

No one told the Phoenix resident that the upshot was outdoors and to prepare for a typical Boston twenty-four hours that went from 55 degrees and sunny to 35 with snow squalls. He later confessed that he borrowed a topcoat from one of Obama's Secret Service agents to suffer the common cold, before taking the stage to pay tribute to Kennedy's Senate career in the same fashion — we all hope it will be some 24-hour interval far in the future — McCain's colleagues volition call back him.

"I miss my friend. I miss him a lot," McCain told the crowd, just later on he finished telling the story about the time they scared those freshman senators. "I knew I would when I said half-dozen years ago that the Senate wouldn't be the same without him. And information technology hasn't been. I have no doubt that the place would exist a piddling more productive and a lot more than fun if he were in that location."

Read more than from Paul Kane'southward archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook.

lasterwastold1981.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/what-john-mccain-learned-from-ted-kennedy-on-challenging-his-own-party/2017/07/20/f40c819e-6d47-11e7-b9e2-2056e768a7e5_story.html

Share this post