Reflecting on the legacy left by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, President Barack Obama called the late Massachusetts legislator one of the “most accomplished Americans” in history and a man whose work in Congress helped give new opportunities to millions.
“Including myself,” added the nation’s first Back president, while speaking to reporters Wednesday at his rented vacation home on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. The president ordered government flags lowered to half-staff to honor Kennedy who died at age 77 late Tuesday after battling brain cancer.
Obama pointed out that many people — seniors, children, families — have been improved by Kennedy’s work on key legislation. Many can now “pursue their dreams in an America that is more equal and more just…His extraordinary life on this Earth has come to an end. The extraordinary good that he did lives on,” he said.
In nearly 50 years in the Senate, Kennedy, a liberal Democrat, served alongside 10 presidents his brother John Fitzgerald Kennedy among them compiling legislative achievements on health care, civil rights, education, immigration and more.
“I’m a Senate man and a leader of the institution,” Kennedy said more than a year ago in an Associated Press interview. He left his imprint on every major piece of social legislation to pass Congress over a span of decades. Republicans and Democrats alike lamented his absence as they struggled inconclusively in recent months with President Barack Obama’s health care legislation.
Education and civil rights advocates praised the late senator’s legislative accomplishments for helping create social, health care and educational opportunities for Americans. Charles Evers, a longtime civil rights activist, said “America has lost one giant.” He recalled taking Kennedy on tours of poverty-stricken areas of Mississippi in the 1970s and 1980s. Evers said Kennedy told him he would work to improve those conditions.
