“And may it be said of us, both in dark passages and in bright days, in the words of Tennyson that my brothers quoted and loved, and that have special meaning for me now:

“I am a part of all that I have met
To [Tho] much is taken, much abides
That which we are, we are –
One equal temper of heroic hearts
Strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Kennedy took his fight to the convention floor, fighting Jimmy Carter for delegates while marching toward the inevitable endgame. However, he conceded, saying, “For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end.” Senator Kennedy’s final grace note was this: “For those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

Sitting in the rafters of the Garden as a teenage volunteer for the Kennedy campaign in 1980 in this my maiden voyage of a lifetime of political involvement, the moment was potent and true. It was authentic and significant. Ideals had import and impact, and political words and politics and the process of electing leaders could stir the soul. This wasn’t mere rhetoric but a glimpse of what America could be in its finest hour.

Many campaigns followed, most were losses and the successes can be counted on a couple of fingers. To wit: Kennedy, Carter, Jesse Jackson, David N. Dinkins, Mark Green, John Kerry, and some that may be forgotten and need to be fact checked against the rusty campaign buttons housed in coffee canisters beneath the bookshelf. There is the one and only local race on which this writer worked and it was victorious: Joseline Pena-Melnyk, a member of the MD House of Delegates representing the 21st District, and the only woman of color to be elected to this post.

Kennedy’s speechwriter in 1980 would regain notoriety, albeit negatively as the top strategist in John Kerry’s failed presidential bid in 2004. He became the pundit’s piñata for advising Kerry badly when the candidate was perceived as lacking in muscle and pushback to the Swift Boat barrage. Twenty-four years later in 2004, this same Kennedy volunteer drifted aimlessly in a union hall in Flint, MI at the “victory party” for the Kerry/Edwards campaign as Media Director for DNC in this battleground state. Well, at least we won Michigan, I thought on the plane back to Washington as a loud and drunken quartet of Bush leaguers boasted of their victory in the seats behind me for the entire trip. A nasty exchange of words erupted when the plane landed and yes I started it.

With the news of Senator Kennedy’s diagnosis of a malignant brain tumor, there’s a tendency to eulogize this lion of the Senate, this iconic figure on the Hill. I see it as an opportunity to hail the good Senator from Massachusetts for his radical endorsement of the presumptive Democratic candidate and Senator from Illinois. As he did in his 1980 campaign, Ted Kennedy “sailed against the wind” when he endorsed Barack Obama. He could have bent like a palm reed to the pressures exerted by the Clinton machine, especially to the Tony Soprano-like coercion from the man whom Maureen Dowd at The New York Times calls “The Big Dog.” Ted didn’t give way; he kept sailing against the wind. For Ted Kennedy, Bill’s bark didn’t have much bite.

Lest one forget another defining figure in the formative years of this one Kennedy 1980 campaign volunteer, let’s give a shout out to George McGovern. While too young to engage meaningfully in political activism, I shed tears when McGovern lost to Nixon (Nixon!!!???) in 1972. This year McGovern was a Clinton supporter; and then he saw the light, flipped like a pancake and embarked on vigorous campaigning appearances in North Dakota on behalf of Obama. The cynics and death knell tollers are quick to liken Obama’s journey to that of McGovern but in this instance–the past is not necessarily prologue.

A search of the bookshelf proved fruitless in locating “Ted and the Kennedy Legend” by Max Lerner, a tome I consulted for an undergraduate political science paper at NYU. Ted Kennedy went to the Senate in November of 1962; Barack Obama was born in August, 1961. Now, with Obama ascending, alive as long as Kennedy has served and despite the trouncing he took in Kentucky to Sen. Clinton, it seems that the torch has passed to a new generation—as his brother famously said it had when he became President.

What finite but meaningful lessons are there after 28 years as a political tourist? Two come to mind: RFK’s characterization of himself as “an idealist without illusions” and the question posed by Prof. James Carse at NYU in a course called “Existentialism and Political Commitment”: “Do we make history or does history make us?”