WASHINGTON — Ted Kennedy wakes up mornings in his house on Cape Cod to a packet of news clippings put together by his wife. If there's a hearing going on in Washington, he watches on his computer.
Five hundred miles away, Congress is wrestling with historic legislation to give every American access to quality healthcare. It is the moment the Massachusetts Democrat has worked toward for 46 years. But instead of marshaling the crowning achievement of his political career, he is sidelined, battling brain cancer.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Tuesday, July 28, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 2 inches; 71 words Type of Material: Correction
Sen. Kennedy: An article in Sunday's Section A about Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's role in Congress' healthcare debate said that Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) had urged his friend to stop drinking after the Massachusetts Democrat's 1969 car accident at Chappaquiddick. Hatch gave the advice in 1991, after Kennedy spent an evening at a Florida bar with his nephew William Kennedy Smith, who subsequently was charged with rape and later acquitted.
For The Record
Los Angeles Times Sunday, August 02, 2009 Home Edition Main News Part A Page 4 National Desk 2 inches; 70 words Type of Material: Correction
Sen. Kennedy: An article in the July 26 Section A about Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's role in Congress' healthcare debate said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) urged his friend to stop drinking after the Massachusetts Democrat's 1969 car accident at Chappaquiddick. Hatch gave the advice in 1991, after Kennedy spent an evening at a Florida bar with nephew William Kennedy Smith, who subsequently was charged with rape and later acquitted.
"He has lived for this day when America would finally extend this right to every citizen. There's no doubt if he could, he would be here in the thick of this," Kennedy's son Patrick, a Democratic congressman from Rhode Island, said in a recent interview, sitting on a bench on the Capitol grounds with tears in his eyes.
But history's third-longest-serving senator isn't out of the game yet. Exerting what influence he can from his sickbed, he advises his aides in Washington over the phone. He has made himself the poster child of what he calls "my life's cause," and is using his illness in a final press for universal healthcare.
Kennedy, 77, seems determined not to miss this. He has outlasted medical expectations since doctors diagnosed a malignant tumor last spring, and is not above expending every last bit of his political capital to deliver the bill he will be most remembered for. Democratic leaders plan to bring him back to the Senate floor later this year in a wheelchair, or a bed if necessary, to cast his vote for healthcare reform.
"I have enjoyed the best medical care money (and a good insurance policy) can buy. . . . Every American should be able to get the same treatment that U.S. senators are entitled to," Kennedy wrote in an unusually personal essay published in this week's Newsweek, adding near the end of the article: "We're almost there."
He cited his sophisticated course of treatment -- risky surgery at Duke University Medical Center to remove part of the tumor, proton-beam radiation at Massachusetts General Hospital and multiple rounds of chemotherapy -- as a privilege of the rich.
"My wife, Vicki, and I have worried about many things, but not whether we could afford my care and treatment."
Kennedy's aggressive cancer is bringing a sense of urgency to a famously slow-moving Congress, with friends on both sides of the aisle mindful of passing a bill in time for him to see it signed.
