Katherine Kersten: Kennedy's actions rarely measured up

Since the death of Sen. Edward Kennedy, we've witnessed his canonization as a kind of political saint. Media tributes have taken Kennedy's selfless defense of the poor and downtrodden as a matter of course -- and as iconic for our age.

The New York Times' worshipful praise was typical. Kennedy, the Times assured its readers, "used his privileged life to give consistent, passionate voice to the underprivileged for nearly a half-century."

Was Edward Moore Kennedy, in fact, "one of the greatest senators of our time," as President Obama has declared?

No doubt, Kennedy's efforts regarding the poor were unique and significant. He was, after all, one of only two U.S. senators still sitting in 2009 who were present for the construction of the entire infrastructure of the modern welfare state.

First elected in 1962, Kennedy was a lifelong advocate of the vision that animated Lyndon Johnson's Great Society and War on Poverty. These initiatives ushered in decades of welfare policy predicated on the belief that every social problem is best addressed by a massive, costly government program.

In fact, policies of this kind have been a disaster for the poor. Far from helping low-income people join the middle class, they created a permanent underclass, hobbled by crippling habits of dependence. By subsidizing self-destructive behavior and discouraging work and marriage, these policies contributed to soaring out-of-wedlock birth rates (5 percent in 1960, 39 percent today) and rampant crime and drug use, and helped to make fatherless families the norm in the inner city.

By 1996, President Bill Clinton was promising to "end welfare as we know it," and many Democrats joined him. The resulting reforms emphasized work for recipients of aid to dependent children, and made government assistance temporary. Kennedy fought this new paradigm ferociously, and denounced it as "legislative child abuse."

Clinton-era reform succeeded so well that, within a few years, welfare rolls had fallen by 60 percent. If Kennedy's "consistent, passionate voice" had prevailed, many of America's poor would be substantially worse off than they are today.

Kennedy's death has spurred praise of another kind -- that he was a uniquely bipartisan politician. Here again his actions tell a different story.

In 1987, Kennedy inaugurated the age of attack politics that bedevils our political world today. That year, he led the charge to defeat Robert Bork -- President Reagan's nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court and an eminent legal scholar.

Kennedy denounced Bork in poisonous language of jaw-dropping demagoguery: "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens."

Kennedy's win-at-any-price ethic and his readiness to demonize opponents set the stage for the political divisiveness that, in 2009, seems increasingly insurmountable.

Finally, Kennedy was unique in our time in the depth of his failure of character. Recent media tributes have tended to gloss over his culpability in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick Island. But that incident demonstrated that when compassion and caring -- his self-declared ideals -- required a personal price rather than a rousing speech, he failed monumentally.

Kennedy -- dogged for decades by rumors of boozing and womanizing -- drove off from a party in 1969 with Kopechne, a 28-year-old campaign worker. He drove too fast, and his car plunged over a bridge into the channel. Kennedy managed to escape the submerged and overturned vehicle, leaving Kopechne trapped in eight feet of water.

Kennedy neither reported the accident to authorities nor called for emergency help for more than 10 hours. After others alerted authorities the next day, a police diver quickly recovered Kopechne's body. Later, the diver testified that, had Kennedy run to the nearest residence and immediately summoned help, "there is a strong possibility that she would have been alive on removal from the submerged car."

When brought face-to-face with human suffering, Kennedy used his wealthy and powerful family's connections to protect his political reputation and career. A local Massachusetts judge let him off with a suspended sentence on a minor charge.

The liberal "lion of the Senate" reveled in his role as a champion of the oppressed. But lofty speeches and public poses are not the same as actions and their results. Sometimes, words and results stand at polar opposites. So it was with Edward Moore Kennedy.

Katherine Kersten is a Twin Cities writer and speaker. Reach her at kakersten@gmail.com.