Here in Washington, D.C., there is today—a month early, at least—a nip of fall in the air. Even more improbably, a wave of bipartisanship has swept over this city, one that is sure to last until next Tuesday morning, when partisan warfare will resume as usual on Capitol Hill.
This brief but intense era of good feelings was inspired by the death on August 25 of Senator Ted Kennedy, who has been eulogized both as “the liberal lion of the Senate” and as an exemplar of political generosity. Kennedy’s many Republican friends in Congress—Senator Orrin Hatch and Representative John Boehner, among them—have offered eloquent testimony to Kennedy’s caring and gracious nature, as evidenced by his willingness to collaborate with Republicans. A special issue of The Hill contains a number of such of tributes. In the Washington Post, even George Will found something nice to say about Senator Kennedy last week.
This brief but intense era of good feelings was inspired by the death on August 25 of Senator Ted Kennedy, who has been eulogized both as “the liberal lion of the Senate” and as an exemplar of political generosity. Kennedy’s many Republican friends in Congress—Senator Orrin Hatch and Representative John Boehner, among them—have offered eloquent testimony to Kennedy’s caring and gracious nature, as evidenced by his willingness to collaborate with Republicans. A special issue of The Hill contains a number of such of tributes. In the Washington Post, even George Will found something nice to say about Senator Kennedy last week.
Let’s enjoy this while it lasts. But before the canonization juggernaut gets up a full head of steam, consider how differently things look from where I sit. I mean that literally. I happen to sit in the Capitol Hill office of the John Glenn School of Public Affairs, which is located at 239 Massachusetts Avenue N.E., a few blocks away of the United States Capitol. The Glenn School moved into this old rowhouse a little over one year ago. Before that, the building accommodated a French restaurant called La Brasserie, which Senator Kennedy helped to make notorious.
La Brasserie was one of the local watering holes where Senators went to misbehave, and by that I am not referring to steak tartare. The definitive treatment of Senator Kennedy’s romps at La Brasserie was undertaken by Michael Kelly and published in 1990 by GQ.
As Kathleen Parker wrote in the Post last week, “Kennedy's life was indeed a mixed sack of good works and sometimes-deplorable behavior. A charitable person would hope that he found peace at the end of his life. An observant person might note, without pleasure, that even in death, it’s all politics.”
I see no reason why we can’t be both charitable and observant.
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