Ted Kennedy died today. He was a rich man who was a staunch friend to working people and the poor, a man whose personal life was sordid and messy (though no more so than those of the people who attacked him for that life), a man, judging by his public actions, of conviction and passion, who tried, insofar as he was capable, to do the right thing. He was not a hero; he was a pragmatist who did what little he could--and it was more than most could or can--to better his country (or at least keep it from sinking into utter disrepair and disrepute) and his world. I don't say this about many people who die, even those I know: I respect him and I will miss him.

            If John F. Kennedy was the golden boy, the man to whom everything in life came easily and for whom nothing was impossible, not even travelling to the moon, and if Bobby Kennedy was the tortured Saul of Tarses of our time, the martyr whose transfiguration from ruthless cold-eyed legal assassin to converted saint might have  changed history (but did not), Teddy was the Every-Kennedy. He was the Kennedy brother most like us, the one who fucked up again and again, whose every personal choice was bad, but whose conscience saved him. He was not larger than life, the way his brothers were. His personal demons showed up publicly and dramatically. But through it all, he worked for good. He was like all of us, at our best: fallen and full of sin, but stealing glances at the stars.

For 47 years, most of my life, while the country veered back and forth between the hopeful liberalism of the 60s and 70s (doomed by the adventurism of a land war in Asia) and the wretched I've-got-mine conservatism of the Reagan '80s and Bush '00s, Kennedy did good and often thankless work, battling for single-payer healthcare in the '70s (instead we got Nixon's brilliant idea: HMOs), co-sponsoring the Voting Rights Act in his first full term as a Senator, championing the recent long-overdue minimum-wage hike. He created the Americans With Disabilities Act. His legislative acumen was not perfect: he co-sponsored the horrendous No Child Left Behind act, which has created a school system in which teaching test skills holds pride of place over  imparting knowledge or fostering thought. In general, though, Ted Kennedy's legislative heart has been in exactly the right place, aided by vast skills as political fixer. I can give him--or anyone--no higher praise than this: he did good work.

            In contrast, in his personal and political life, Kennedy reeled from disaster to disaster, bad choice to bad choice. Driving off a bridge with a campaign worker, Mary Jo Kopechne, who drowned, Kennedy failed to call for help or notify police. He was found guilty of only a misdemeanor and was given probation, but lost all hope of the '72 presidential nomination, and just barely kept his senate seat in '70. In 1991, Kennedy was called to testify at the rape trial of his nephew, William Kennedy Smith, after an incident that allegedly occurred following a night of drinking with his sons; the testimony in that trial painted a picture of louche upper-class depravity and misogyny that titillated the public and discredited Kennedy for years to come.

            Perhaps worst of all, Kennedy's ill-fated run against Jimmy Carter for the presidential nomination divided the Democrats and paved the way for the disastrous presidency of Ronald Reagan. (Those who remember Reagan's presidency with warmth or nostalgia were not paying attention at the time, have forgotten or have ulterior motives.) Although other acts of political hubris (the name Nader comes to mind) have since eclipsed Kennedy's, his gigantic miscalculation and its consequences remain with us to this day; without Reagan, there might have been no Bush. Once again, in his personal choices, Kennedy consistently showed a myopia as unfocused as his legislative vision was acute.

            Like the best of us, Kennedy learned from his mistakes, and found that spot in the great chain of being where his link lay. While not a lowly place--the man was a US Senator, and one of the most powerful people in the world's last superpower--it was certainly not as high a place as he might once have attained to. Flawed and fallen, he did his best. And he did good work.