Sen. Edward Kennedy was a deal maker

WASHINGTON — In an era of bitter political division, Sen. Edward Kennedy’s death silenced a singular voice of bipartisanship at a time when colleagues are struggling with angry constituents and each other over an elusive plan to overhaul the nation’s health care system.

Some lawmakers said Tuesday the current stalemate is the result of Kennedy’s absence for the past few, crucial months. Some hope to rescue the embattled legislation as his legacy.

It’s not clear that the post-Kennedy Senate includes anyone with the credibility among ideological opponents, the dealmaking skills or the inside knowledge to strike a quick agreement.

“There is nobody else like him,” said Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., who alternated with Kennedy over the years as chairman and ranking minority-party member of the health committee. “If he had been physically up to it and been engaged on this, we probably would have an agreement by now.”

“Teddy was the only Democrat who could move their whole base,” Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said. “If he finally agreed, the whole base would come along even if they didn’t like it.”

Fight he couldn’t win

Kennedy lost the fight he couldn’t win Tuesday, to brain cancer at 77. But he had won countless others by embodying an increasingly rare type of bipartisanship — the kind perceived not as a threat to ideology or fundraising prowess, but as a way of getting something done, however imperfect.

“Bipartisanship takes a person that has leadership and personal charm, quite frankly, and a desire to get a result,” said former Senate Republican Leader Trent Lott of Mississippi. “He didn’t try to destroy you. That’s what’s happening in Washington now. It’s gotten so mean.”

Over 47 years in the Senate, Kennedy evolved into an institution himself, equal parts liberal icon and dealmaker who combined those skills to forge agreement on some of the most sweeping and controversial social legislation of his time.

Kennedy worked out an agreement with President George W. Bush on the No Child Left Behind Act. He regularly worked with Hatch, notably on a federally funded program for those with HIV/AIDS, health insurance for lower-income children and tax breaks to encourage the development of medicines for rare diseases.

When he compromised, Kennedy’s base may have grumbled but did not question his fidelity to liberal principles. Republicans trusted him to be straight with them in tough negotiations and not make it personal. And no one questioned his knowledge of Senate procedure, rivaling even West Virginia’s Robert C. Byrd, who no longer plays a big role in Senate business.

Without Kennedy, the 99-member chamber lacks anyone playing precisely his role doling out the goodwill and procedural expertise necessary to make the Senate wheels spin through controversial legislation. The Democratic caucus falls from an effective supermajority of 60, enough to kill Republican filibusters, to 59, including two independents.

Irreplaceable

No one is irreplaceable in the Senate, or so a popular saying goes. But John McCain, R-Ariz., called Kennedy just that in a statement Wednesday. McCain, last year the GOP presidential nominee, was even clearer over the weekend.

“He had a way of sitting down with the parties at a table and making the right concessions, which really are the essence of successful negotiations,” McCain said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“It’s huge that he’s absent,” McCain added. If Kennedy had been engaged in the debate past June, when he handed his committee chairmanship duties to Chris Dodd, D-Conn., “I think the health care reform might be in a very different place today.”

Big-picture view

Democrats widely mourned Kennedy’s passing on personal and political grounds and urged their colleagues to adopt Kennedy’s big-picture view of the world generally and health care specifically. There was talk Wednesday of honoring Kennedy within the Capitol, possibly by posting his portrait in the Senate Reception Room with the likenesses of other senators hailed for their bipartisan accomplishments.

“My hope is that this will maybe cause people to take a breath, step back and start talking with each other again in more civil tones about what needs to be done, because that’s what Teddy would do,” said Dodd, Kennedy’s close friend who has taken a lead role on health care negotiations and is, himself, battling prostate cancer.

“We all share the same principles. How you get there is complicated, but that’s what Senator Kennedy dedicated his life to,” Dodd added. “In his memory, I will do everything I can as long as I can stand in the United States Senate to help us achieve that goal.”

Vice President Joe Biden, in a salute to his friend, said Kennedy raised the level of discourse and senatorial behavior and in the course of rising from dark chapters of his own life embodied the most selfless human qualities.

“It was never about him ... he never was petty,” Biden told reporters, recalling how Kennedy stood by him when the former senator’s wife and child were killed in a car accident.

“I just hope we remember how he treated other people and how he made other people look at themselves and look at one another,” Biden said. “That will be the truly fundamental, unifying legacy of Teddy Kennedy’s life if that happens, and it will for a while at least in the Senate.”