Edward M. Kennedy: A Biased

EDWARD M. KENNEDY: A BIASED LIBERAL LEADER

As a result of the recent death of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the youngest brother of the Kennedy family and often referred to by his fellow Democrats as the "Liberal Lion" of the United States Senate, many debates have arisen concerning his political stance and opinions on an immense range of issues, including but not limited to specific federal government programs, health care, taxes, poverty, civil liberties, abortion, and gun control.

Overall, as a staunch liberal Democrat, Senator Kennedy's position on many of these issues tended to lean toward some type of bias which can be defined as "a type of predisposition or inclination related to a personal opinion on an idea, a person or an activity, often more unfavorable than favorable, a form of prejudice based on partiality" (Aschburner, 2000, p. 214). This is not that surprising, due to the fact that Kennedy was a member of one of America's most liberal families and fought hard against many conservative ideals and principles which he saw as detrimental to the average working American and to the goal of achieving the so-called "American dream."

Before discussing a number of viewpoints and opinions held by Senator Kennedy which indicates some form of bias, it would be beneficial to briefly examine his political positions and image as the "Liberal Lion" of the U.S. Senate. First of all, according to the Americans for Democratic Action committee (ADA), Kennedy's political ideology scored 90% liberal in 2004 as compared to the rating of the American Conservative Union (ACU) which in 2008 stood at 2%, meaning that Kennedy's overall liberal score makes him one of the most liberal U.S. senators in the history of the senate ("Committed Senate Liberals," 2009, Internet).

In addition, the American Civil Liberties Union, one of the most strident liberal organizations in the U.S., gave Kennedy an overall rating of 84% liberal; other liberally-based organizations like the National Right to Life committee and several powerful gun control advocacy groups also rated Kennedy as "thoroughly and undisputedly a liberal politician with leanings toward the far left" (Aschburner, 2000, p. 245). In contrast, the National Rifle Association (NRA) gave Senator Kennedy in 2006 an "F" or failing grade as a liberal politician, due to the NRA's stance against any form of gun control and its obvious conservative ideologies ("Committed Senate Liberals," 2009, Internet).

As Susan Milligan points out, Senator Kennedy was responsible for either creating or co-sponsoring over 2,500 senatorial bills during his lifetime; 300 of these eventually became law, beginning roughly around 1973. Many of these bills were also supported by Kennedy's adversaries on the other side of the senate aisle, namely the Republicans, a situation which greatly irritated a number of Kennedy's fellow senate Democrats (2009, Internet). Also, Kennedy was viewed by many Democrats as often standing in the way of American liberalism and as being sometimes too bipartisan (2009, Internet), meaning that Kennedy attempted to appease or work with Republicans who stood against his proposals in order for his senate bills to become the law of the land.

However, Kennedy was clearly somewhat biased when it came to special issues which he saw as fundamental to working Americans and the poor, especially health care, a very hot topic currently facing extreme dissent within and without the Obama Administration. Yet despite

Kennedy's overall record of being a liberal Democrat and practicing bipartisanship in the U.S. Senate, he continues to come under much scrutiny from many Republicans as a result of seeing him as more partisan than bipartisan, an indication that Senator Kennedy did possess some bias in relation to specific issues facing the American public.

Since Senator Kennedy, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1962 at the age of thirty, has for decades been viewed as "the bogeyman used by conservatives in their fundraising appeals" despite the suggestion that many Republicans hated him (Selfa, 2009, Internet), there does seem to be a vein of bias running through most of what Kennedy attempted to have made into law throughout his long and often scandalous career.

As L. Selfa reminds us, Kennedy, as the penultimate representative of the state of Massachusetts, "compiled a consistently liberal voting record with little fear that the Republican Party would be able to mount a serious challenge to him" (2009, Internet), an indication that perhaps the voters of Massachusetts realized Kennedy's biased leanings, thus guaranteeing that their views and ideals would trump any and all resistance from senate Republicans and would eventually be enacted as law in the form of senatorial bills.

When Kennedy first arrived at the U.S. Senate as a "Cold War liberal," he almost immediately took sides with northern Democrats which helped him to ride "the liberal high tide of the Kennedy-Johnson years" between 1963 and 1968 (Selfa, 2009, Internet). During these years, a time when America was facing some very serious political and social problems, Senator Kennedy stood firmly behind President John F. Kennedy (his eldest living brother in 1963) and then supported the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, the Civil Rights Act of 1964-1965, the Voting Rights Act and President Johnson's so-called "war on poverty" in the mid to late 1960's. Clearly, there appears to be some form of bias in Kennedy's outright support and defense of these and other governmental programs and acts, due to the fact that most Republicans, especially those from the Deep South, were firmly against what is now referred to as socialized medicine and certain aspects of Johnson's "war on poverty," particularly socialized welfare to poor and indigent women and their children.

Thus, as a politician, Kennedy was obviously predisposed in his own mind to supporting, at least in most instances, the views and ideals of the Democratic Party while also exhibiting an unfavorable view on specific principles that most Republican senators considered as paramount to preserving the status quo and increasing the influence of conservative values on the American people.

Of course, during his long tenure in the U.S. Senate, Kennedy's "baby" was health care for all Americans. Around 1972, during the Nixon Administration, Kennedy was staunchly in favor of creating some kind of government-operated "single-payer system to make health care a right for every American," but when President Nixon, a Republican, opposed such a measure, Kennedy backed out and abandoned his own bill in 1974 and then openly supported "legislation that preserved the role of the private insurance industry in the health care sector" of American society (Selfa, 2009, Internet).

In the words of Dr. Quentin Young, an advocate of a single-payer health care system in the late 1970's, Kennedy "was the author of an excellent. . . universal insurance bill," but after Nixon's opposition, he no longer considered it as feasible and doable and decided to go along with the health insurance giants (Selfa, 2009, Internet). Certainly, Kennedy in this instance displayed a personal form of bias or inclination to agree with the status quo when it came to health care in the United States; however, it appears that Kennedy's bias toward the health insurance industry never waned, for in the years to come, he would attempt to enact and pass many federal laws aimed at undermining the power of the insurance industry and its influence on the Republican Party and its conservative members.