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American politician (1932–2009)

Edward Moore Kennedy (February 22, 1932 – August 25, 2009) was an American lawyer and politician who served as a United States senator from Massachusetts. A member of the Democratic Party and the prominent Kennedy family, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died. He is ranked fifth in U. S. history for length of continuous service as a senator. Kennedy was the younger brother of President John F. Kennedy and U. S. attorney general and U. S. senator Robert F. Kennedy, and the father of U. S. representative Patrick J. Kennedy. After attending Harvard University and earning his law degree from the University of Virginia, Kennedy began his career as an assistant district attorney in Suffolk County, Massachusetts. He won a November 1962 special election in Massachusetts to fill the vacant seat previously held by his brother John, who had taken office as the U. S. president. He was elected to a full six year term in 1964 and was re elected seven more times. The Chappaquiddick incident in 1969 resulted in the death of his automobile passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne. He pleaded guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident and received a two month suspended sentence. The incident and its aftermath hindered his chances of becoming president. He ran in 1980 in the Democratic primary campaign for president, but lost to the incumbent president, Jimmy Carter. Kennedy was known for his oratorical skills. His 1968 eulogy for his brother Robert and his 1980 rallying cry for modern American liberalism were among his best known speeches. He became recognized as "The Lion of the Senate" through his long tenure and influence. Kennedy and his staff wrote more than 300 bills that were enacted into law. Unabashedly liberal, Kennedy championed an interventionist government that emphasized economic and social justice, but he was also known for working with Republicans to find compromises. Kennedy played a major role in passing many laws, including the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the National Cancer Act of 1971, the COBRA health insurance provision, the Comprehensive Anti Apartheid Act of 1986, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the Ryan White AIDS Care Act, the Civil Rights Act of 1991, the Mental Health Parity Act, the S CHIP children's health program, the No Child Left Behind Act, and the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act. During the 2000s, he led several unsuccessful immigration reform efforts. Over the course of his Senate career, Kennedy made efforts to enact universal health care, which he called the "cause of my life". By his later years, Kennedy had come to be viewed as a major figure and spokesman for American progressivism. On August 25, 2009, Kennedy died of a brain tumor (glioblastoma) at his home in Hyannis Port, Massachusetts, at the age of 77. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Kennedy was born on February 22, 1932, at St. Margaret's Hospital in the Dorchester section of Boston, Massachusetts. He was the youngest of the nine children of Joseph Patrick Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald, members of prominent Irish American families in Boston. They constituted one of the wealthiest families in the nation after their marriage. As a child, Ted was frequently uprooted by his family's moves among Bronxville, New York; Hyannis Port, Massachusetts; Palm Beach, Florida; and the Court of St. James's, in London, England. His formal education started at Gibbs School in Kensington, London. He had attended 10 schools by the age of eleven; these disruptions interfered with his academic success. He was an altar boy at the St. Joseph's Church and was seven when he received his First Communion from Pope Pius XII in the Vatican. He spent sixth and seventh grades at the Fessenden School, where he was a mediocre student, The ruse was discovered and both were expelled for cheating. As was standard for serious disciplinary cases, they were told they could apply for readmission within a year or two if they demonstrated good behavior during that time. In June 1951, Kennedy enlisted in the United States Army and signed up for an optional four year term that was shortened to the minimum of two years after his father intervened. Following basic training at Fort Dix in New Jersey, he requested assignment to Fort Holabird in Maryland for Army Intelligence training, but was dropped without explanation after a few weeks. He went to Camp Gordon in Georgia for training in the Military Police Corps. In June 1952, Kennedy was assigned to the honor guard at SHAPE headquarters in Paris, France. and was also chosen for the Hasty Pudding Club and the Pi Eta fraternity. Kennedy was on athletic probation during his sophomore year, and he returned as a second string two way end for the Crimson football team during his junior year. He barely missed earning his varsity letter. Green Bay Packers head coach Lisle Blackbourn asked him about his interest in playing professional football. Kennedy demurred, saying he had plans to attend law school and "go into another contact sport, politics." In his senior season of 1955, Kennedy started at end for the Harvard football team and worked hard to improve his blocking and tackling to complement his , size. the team finished the season with a 3–4–1 record. Academically, Kennedy received mediocre grades for his first three years, improved to a B average for his senior year, and finished barely in the top half of his class. Kennedy graduated from Harvard at age 24 in 1956 with an AB in history and government. Due to his low grades, Kennedy was not accepted by Harvard Law School. He was elected head of the Student Legal Forum and brought many prominent speakers to the campus via his family connections. While there, his questionable automotive practices were curtailed when he was charged with reckless driving and driving without a license. Bennett was a senior at Manhattanville and had worked as a model and won beauty contests, but she was unfamiliar with politics. After the couple became engaged, she grew nervous about marrying someone she did not know that well, but Joe Kennedy insisted that the wedding should proceed. The couple was married by Cardinal Francis Spellman on November 29, 1958, at St. Joseph's Church in Bronxville, New York, In 1960, his brother John announced his candidacy for President of the United States and Ted managed his campaign in the Western states. Ted initially wanted to stay out west rather than run for office right away; he said, "The disadvantage of my position is being constantly compared with two brothers of such superior ability." This kept the seat available for Ted. Meanwhile, Ted started work in February 1961 as an assistant district attorney for Suffolk County, Massachusetts (for which he took a nominal $1 salary), where he developed a hard nosed attitude towards crime. He took many overseas trips, billed as fact finding tours with the goal of improving his foreign policy credentials. The Latin American trip helped to formulate Kennedy's foreign policy views, and in subsequent Boston Globe columns he warned that the region might turn to Communism if the U. S. did not reach out to it in a more effective way. In the 1962 U. S. Senate special election in Massachusetts, Kennedy initially faced a Democratic Party primary challenge from Edward J. McCormack Jr., the state Attorney General. Kennedy's slogan was "He can do more for Massachusetts", the same one John had used in his first campaign for the seat ten years earlier. McCormack had the support of many liberals and intellectuals, who thought Kennedy inexperienced and knew of his suspension from Harvard, a fact which became public during the race.

Kennedy was sworn into the Senate on November 7, 1962. On November 22, 1963, Kennedy was presiding over the Senate—a task given to junior members—when an aide rushed in to tell him that his brother, President Kennedy, had been shot. His brother Robert soon told him that the President was dead. The pilot and Edward Moss (one of Kennedy's aides) were killed. Kennedy was pulled from the wreckage by fellow Senator Birch Bayh, Kennedy took advantage of his long convalescence to meet with academics and study issues more closely, and the hospital experience triggered his lifelong interest in the provision of health care. gaining a reputation for legislative skill. He was a leader in pushing through the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended a quota system based upon national origin. He also played a role in the creation of the National Teachers Corps. Ted was in San Francisco when his brother Robert won the crucial California primary on June 4, 1968, and then after midnight, Robert was shot in Los Angeles and died a day later. At the chaotic August 1968 Democratic National Convention, Mayor of Chicago Richard J. Daley and some other party factions feared that Hubert Humphrey could not unite the party, and so encouraged Ted Kennedy to make himself available for a draft. The 36 year old Kennedy was seen as the natural heir to his brothers, and "Draft Ted" movements sprang up from various quarters and among delegates. By some reports, he also negotiated the October 1968 marital contract between Jacqueline Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis. Following Republican Richard Nixon's victory in November, Kennedy was widely assumed to be the front runner for the 1972 Democratic nomination. In January 1969, Kennedy defeated Louisiana Senator Russell B. Long by a 31–26 margin to become Senate Majority Whip, the youngest person to attain that position. While this further boosted his presidential image, he appeared conflicted by the inevitability of having to run for the position;

On the night of July 18, 1969, Kennedy was at Chappaquiddick Island hosting a party for the Boiler Room Girls, a group of young women who had worked on his brother Robert's presidential campaign. A week after the incident, Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and was given a suspended sentence of two months in jail. In January 1970, an inquest into Kopechne's death was held in Edgartown, Massachusetts. The presiding judge, James A. Boyle, concluded that some aspects of Kennedy's story of that night were not true, and that negligent driving "appears to have contributed" to the death of Kopechne. A grand jury conducted a two day investigation in April 1970 but issued no indictment, after which Boyle made his inquest report public. In May 1970, Reuther died and Senator Ralph Yarborough, chairman of the full Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee and its Health subcommittee, lost his primary election, propelling Kennedy into a leadership role on the issue of national health insurance. Kennedy introduced a bipartisan bill in August 1970 for single payer universal national health insurance with no cost sharing, paid for by payroll taxes and general federal revenue. Despite the Chappaquiddick controversy of the previous year, Kennedy easily won re election to the Senate in November 1970 with 62 percent of the vote against underfunded Republican candidate Josiah Spaulding, although he received about 500,000 fewer votes than in 1964. In January 1971, Kennedy lost his position as Senate Majority Whip to Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia, 31–24, probably because of Chappaquiddick. He later told Byrd that the defeat had allowed Kennedy to focus more on issues and committee work, where he could exert influence independently from the Democratic party apparatus. Kennedy began a decade as chairman of the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research of the Senate Labor and Public Welfare Committee. In February 1971, Nixon proposed health insurance reform—an employer mandate to offer private health insurance if employees volunteered to pay 25 percent of premiums, federalization of Medicaid for the poor with dependent minor children, and support for health maintenance organizations. Hearings on national health insurance were held in 1971, but no bill had the support of House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committee chairmen Representative Wilbur Mills and Senator Russell Long. Kennedy was sharply criticised by the British and Ulster unionists, and he formed a long political relationship with Social Democratic and Labour Party founder John Hume. In scores of anti war speeches, Kennedy opposed Nixon's policy of Vietnamization, calling it "a policy of violence [that] means more and more war". In December 1971, Kennedy strongly criticized the Nixon administration's support for Pakistan and its ignoring of "the brutal and systematic repression of East Bengal by the Pakistani army". He traveled to India and wrote a report on the plight of the 10 million Bengali refugees. In February 1972, Kennedy flew to Bangladesh and delivered a speech at the University of Dhaka, where a killing rampage had begun a year earlier. Nevertheless, in November 1971, a Gallup Poll still had him in first place in the Democratic nomination race with 28 percent. George McGovern was close to clinching the Democratic nomination in June 1972, when various anti McGovern forces tried to get Kennedy to enter the contest at the last minute, but he declined. At the 1972 Democratic National Convention, McGovern repeatedly tried to recruit Kennedy as his vice presidential running mate, but Kennedy turned him down. When McGovern's choice of Thomas Eagleton stepped down soon after the convention, McGovern again tried to get Kennedy to take the nod, again without success. McGovern instead chose Kennedy's brother in law Sargent Shriver. In 1973, Kennedy's 12 year old son Edward Kennedy Jr., was diagnosed with bone cancer; his leg was amputated and he underwent a long, difficult, experimental two year drug treatment. Son Patrick was suffering from severe asthma attacks. In February 1974, Nixon proposed more comprehensive health insurance reform—an employer mandate to offer private health insurance if employees volunteered to pay 25 percent of premiums, replacement of Medicaid by state run health insurance plans available to all with income based premiums and cost sharing, and replacement of Medicare with a new federal program that eliminated the limit on hospital days, added income based out of pocket limits, and added outpatient prescription drug coverage. In April 1974, Kennedy and Mills introduced a bill for near universal national health insurance with benefits identical to the expanded Nixon plan—but with mandatory participation by employers and employees through payroll taxes—both plans were criticized by labor, consumer, and senior citizen organizations because of their substantial cost sharing. In the wake of the Watergate scandal, Kennedy pushed campaign finance reform; he was a leading force behind passage of the Federal Election Campaign Act Amendments of 1974, which set contribution limits and established public financing for presidential elections. In April 1974, Kennedy travelled to the Soviet Union, where he met with leader Leonid Brezhnev and advocated a full nuclear test ban as well as relaxed emigration, gave a speech at Moscow State University, met with Soviet dissidents, and secured an exit visa for cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. Kennedy's Subcommittee on Refugees and Escapees continued to focus on Vietnam, especially after the Fall of Saigon in 1975. Kennedy had initially opposed busing schoolchildren across racial lines, but grew to support the practice as it became a focal point of civil rights efforts. After federal judge W. Arthur Garrity ordered the Boston School Committee in 1974 to racially integrate Boston's public schools via busing, Kennedy made a surprise appearance at a September 1974 anti busing rally in City Hall Plaza to express the need for peaceful dialogue and was met with extreme hostility. The predominantly white crowd yelled insults about his children and hurled tomatoes and eggs at him as he retreated into the John F. Kennedy Federal Building and went so far as to break one of its glass walls. Kennedy's concerns about his family were strong, and Chappaquiddick was still in the news, with The Boston Globe, The New York Times Magazine, and Time magazine all reassessing the incident and raising doubts about Kennedy's version of events. (The Times would in 1977 describe Chappaquiddick as Kennedy's Watergate.) In September 1974, Kennedy announced that for family reasons he would not run in the 1976 election, declaring that his decision was "firm, final, and unconditional." Carter in turn sometimes resented Kennedy's status as a political celebrity. Kennedy told reporters that he was content with his congressional role and denied presidential ambitions, but by late 1977 Carter reportedly saw Kennedy as a future challenger to his presidency. Kennedy and his wife Joan separated in 1977, although they still staged some joint appearances. He held Health and Scientific Research Subcommittee hearings in March 1977 that led to public revelations of extensive scientific misconduct by contract research organizations, including Industrial Bio Test Laboratories. Kennedy visited China on a goodwill mission in late December 1977, meeting with leader Deng Xiaoping and eventually gaining permission for a number of Mainland Chinese nationals to leave the country; in 1978, he also visited the Soviet Union and Brezhnev and dissidents there again. During the 1970s, Kennedy also showed interest in nuclear disarmament, and as part of his efforts in this field even visited Hiroshima in January 1978 and gave a public speech to that effect at Hiroshima University. He became chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1978, by which time he had amassed a wide ranging Senate staff of a hundred. As a candidate, Carter had proposed health care reform that included key features of Kennedy's national health insurance bill, but in December 1977, President Carter told Kennedy his bill must preserve a large role for private insurance companies, minimize federal spending (precluding payroll tax financing), and be phased in to not interfere with Carter's paramount domestic policy objective—balancing the federal budget. Kennedy and labor compromised and made the requested changes, but broke with Carter in July 1978 when he would not commit to pursuing a single bill with a fixed schedule for phasing in comprehensive coverage. In May 1979, Kennedy proposed a new bipartisan universal national health insurance bill—choice of competing federally regulated private health insurance plans with no cost sharing financed by income based premiums via an employer mandate and individual mandate, replacement of Medicaid by government payment of premiums to private insurers, and enhancement of Medicare by adding prescription drug coverage and eliminating premiums and cost sharing. In June 1979, Carter proposed more limited health insurance reform—an employer mandate to provide catastrophic private health insurance plus coverage without cost sharing for pregnant women and infants, federalization of Medicaid with extension to all of the very poor, and adding catastrophic coverage to Medicare. and the failure to come to agreement represented the final political breach between the two.)

Kennedy finally decided to seek the Democratic nomination in the 1980 presidential election by launching an unusual, insurgent campaign against the incumbent Carter. A midsummer 1978 poll showed that Democrats preferred Kennedy over Carter by a 5 to 3 margin. Through summer 1979, as Kennedy deliberated whether to run, Carter was not intimidated despite his 28 percent approval rating, saying publicly: "If Kennedy runs, I'll whip his ass." He had already received substantial negative press from a rambling response to the question "Why do you want to be President?" during an interview with Roger Mudd of CBS News broadcast a few days earlier. The Iranian hostage crisis, which began on November 4, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, which began on December 27, prompted the electorate to rally around the president and allowed Carter to pursue a Rose Garden strategy of staying at the White House, which kept Kennedy's campaign out of the headlines. Chris Whipple of Life, who was present for the Mudd interview, wondered if Kennedy's answer was "consciously or otherwise, an act of political self destruction The campaign was over. His heart just wasn't in it". The Chappaquiddick incident emerged as a more significant issue than the staff had expected, with several newspaper columnists and editorials criticizing Kennedy's answers on the matter. In the January 1980 Iowa caucuses that initiated the primaries season, Carter demolished Kennedy by a 59–31 percent margin. Nevertheless, Kennedy lost three New England contests. During a St. Patrick's Day Parade in Chicago, Kennedy had to wear a bullet proof vest due to assassination threats, and hecklers yelled "Where's Mary Jo?" at him. In the key March 18 primary in Illinois, Kennedy failed to gain the support of Catholic voters, and Carter won 155 of 169 delegates. Overall, Kennedy had won 10 presidential primaries against Carter, who won 24. Although Carter now had enough delegates to clinch the nomination, Drawing on allusions to and quotes of Martin Luther King Jr., Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Alfred Lord Tennyson to say that American liberalism was not passé, he concluded with the words:

For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die. The Madison Square Garden audience reacted with wild applause and demonstrations for half an hour. He chose to become the ranking member of the Labor and Public Welfare Committee rather than of the Judiciary Committee, which he would later say was one of the most important decisions of his career. Later that year, Kennedy created the Friends of Ireland organization with Senator Daniel Moynihan and House Speaker Tip O'Neill to support initiatives for peace and reconciliation in Northern Ireland. Kennedy easily defeated Republican businessman Ray Shamie to win re election in 1982. Senate leaders granted him a seat on the Armed Services Committee, while allowing him to keep his other major seats despite the traditional limit of two such seats. Kennedy became very visible in opposing aspects of the foreign policy of the Reagan administration, including U. S. intervention in the Salvadoran Civil War and U. S. support for the Contras in Nicaragua, and in opposing Reagan supported weapons systems, including the B 1 bomber, the MX missile, and the Strategic Defense Initiative. Kennedy became the Senate's leading advocate for a nuclear freeze and was a critic of Reagan's confrontational policies toward the Soviet Union. A 1983 KGB memo indicates that Kennedy engaged in back channel communication with the Soviet Union. According to a May 14, 1983, memorandum from Chairman of the KGB Viktor Chebrikov to general secretary Yuri Andropov, former U. S. Senator John V. Tunney—a friend of Kennedy's—visited Moscow that month and conveyed a message from Kennedy to Andropov. The memo indicates that the stated purpose of the communication was to "'root out the threat of nuclear war', 'improve Soviet American relations' and 'define the safety of the world'". After the Chebrikov memo was unearthed, both Tunney and a Kennedy spokesperson denied that it was true. His weight fluctuated wildly and he drank heavily at times – although not when it would interfere with his Senate duties. In 1987, Kennedy and a young female lobbyist were surprised in the back room of a restaurant in a state of partial undress. After again considering a candidacy for the 1988 presidential election, Following the 1986 congressional elections, the Democrats regained control of the Senate, and Kennedy became chair of the Labor and Public Welfare Committee. By this time, Kennedy had become what colleague and future President Joe Biden termed "the best strategist in the Senate". Bork responded, "There was not a line in that speech that was accurate." In 1988, an analysis published in the Western Political Quarterly of amicus curiae briefs filed by U. S. Solicitors General during the Warren and Burger Courts found that during Bork's tenure in the position during the Nixon and Ford Administrations (1973–1977), Bork took liberal positions in the aggregate as often as Thurgood Marshall did during the Johnson Administration (1965–1967) and more often than Wade H. McCree did during the Carter Administration (1977–1981), in part because Bork filed briefs in favor of the litigates in civil rights cases 75 percent of the time (contradicting a previous review of his civil rights record published in 1983). However, the Reagan administration was unprepared for the assault, and the speech froze some Democrats from supporting the nomination and gave Kennedy and other Bork opponents time to prepare the case against him. When the September 1987 Judiciary Committee hearings began, Kennedy challenged Bork forcefully on civil rights, privacy, women's rights, and other issues. After prolonged negotiations during 1989 with Bush chief of staff John H. Sununu and Attorney General Richard Thornburgh to secure Bush's approval, he directed passage of the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. In late November 1989, Kennedy traveled to see first hand the newly fallen Berlin Wall; he spoke at John F. Kennedy Platz, site of the famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in 1963, and said "Emotionally, I just wish my brother could have seen it."

Kennedy's personal life came to dominate his image. In 1989, paparazzi stalked him on a vacation in Europe and photographed him having sex on a motorboat. It captured Kennedy as "an aging Irish boyo clutching a bottle and diddling a blonde," portrayed him as an out of control Regency rake, and brought his behavior to the forefront of public attention. Time magazine said Kennedy was being perceived as a "Palm Beach boozer, lout and tabloid grotesque" while Newsweek said Kennedy was "the living symbol of the family flaws". Bork and Clarence Thomas were the two most contentious Supreme Court nominations in United States history to that point. When the Thomas hearings began in September 1991, Kennedy pressed Thomas on his unwillingness to express an opinion about Roe v. Wade, but the nomination appeared headed for success. When Anita Hill brought the sexual harassment charges against Thomas the following month, the nomination battle dominated public discourse. Kennedy was hamstrung by his past reputation and the ongoing developments in the William Kennedy Smith case. He then voted against the nomination. Thomas was confirmed by a 52–48 vote, one of the narrowest margins ever for a successful nomination. Due to the Palm Beach media attention and the Thomas hearings, Kennedy's public image suffered. A Gallup Poll gave Kennedy a 22 percent national approval rating. They became engaged in March 1992, and were married in a civil ceremony by Judge A. David Mazzone on July 3, 1992, at Kennedy's home in McLean, Virginia. She would gain credit for stabilizing his personal life and helping him resume a productive Senate career. During 1994 Kennedy became the first senator with a home page on the World Wide Web; the product of an effort with the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, it helped counter the image of Kennedy as old and out of touch. In the 1994 U. S. Senate election in Massachusetts, Kennedy faced his first serious challenger, the young, telegenic, and very well funded Mitt Romney. Kennedy's campaign ran short on money, and belying his image as endlessly wealthy, he was forced to take out a second mortgage on his Virginia home. Kennedy responded with a series of attack ads, which focused both on Romney's shifting political views and on the treatment of workers at a paper products plant owned by Romney's Bain Capital. In the November election, despite a very bad outcome for the Democratic Party nationally, Kennedy won re election by a 58 percent to 41 percent margin, the closest re election race of his career. Kennedy's mother Rose died in January 1995. From then on, Kennedy intensified the practice of his Catholic faith, often attending Mass several times a week. which used increased tobacco taxes to fund the largest expansion of taxpayer funded health insurance coverage for children in the U. S. since Medicaid began in the 1960s. Senator Hatch and Hillary Clinton also played major roles in SCHIP passing. Kennedy was a stalwart backer of President Clinton during the 1998 Lewinsky scandal, often trying to cheer up the president and getting him to add past Kennedy staffer Greg Craig to his defense team, which helped improve the president's fortunes. In the trial after the 1999 impeachment of Bill Clinton, Kennedy voted to acquit Clinton on both charges, saying "Republicans in the House of Representatives, in their partisan vendetta against the President, have wielded the impeachment power in precisely the way the framers rejected, recklessly and without regard for the Constitution or the will of the American people." On July 16, 1999, Kennedy's nephew John F. Kennedy Jr. was killed when his Piper Saratoga aircraft crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha's Vineyard. John Jr.'s wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and his sister in law, Lauren Bessette, were also killed. Ted was the family patriarch, and he and President Clinton consoled his extended family at the public memorial service. Kennedy got 73 percent of the general election vote, with Robinson splitting the rest with Libertarian Carla Howell. During the long, disputed post presidential election battle in Florida in 2000, Kennedy supported Vice President Al Gore's legal actions. After the bitter contest, many Democrats in Congress did not want to work with incoming President George W. Bush. and accused Bush of not living up to his personal word on the matter. Kennedy was a supporter of the American led 2001 overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan. However, Kennedy strongly opposed the Iraq War from the start, and was one of 23 senators voting against the Iraq War Resolution in October 2002. and had strong support from the Bush administration. and despite Kennedy's last minute attempts to salvage it, failed a cloture vote in the Senate. Kennedy was philosophical about the defeat, saying that it often took several attempts across multiple Congresses for this type of legislation to build enough momentum for passage. Also in 2006, Kennedy released a political history entitled America Back on Track. In 2006, a Cessna Citation 550 in which Kennedy was flying lost electrical power after being struck by lightning and had to be diverted. Kennedy again easily won re election to the Senate in 2006, winning 69 percent of the vote against Republican language school owner Kenneth Chase, who suffered from very poor name recognition.

Kennedy initially stated that he would support John Kerry again if he were to make another bid for president in 2008, but in January 2007, Kerry said he would not make a second attempt for the White House. Kennedy then remained neutral as the 2008 Democratic nomination battle between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama intensified, because his friend Chris Dodd was also running for the nomination. The initial caucuses and primaries were split between Clinton and Obama. When Dodd withdrew from the race, Kennedy became dissatisfied with the tone of the Clinton campaign and what he saw as racially tinged remarks by Bill Clinton. Kennedy gave an endorsement to Obama on January 28, 2008, despite appeals by both Clintons not to do so. In a move that was seen as a symbolic passing of the torch, and raised the possibility of improving Obama's vote getting among unions, Hispanics, and traditional base Democrats. On May 17, 2008, Kennedy suffered a seizure, which was followed by a second seizure as he was being rushed from the Kennedy Compound to Cape Cod Hospital and then by helicopter to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Within days, doctors announced that Kennedy had a malignant glioma, a type of brain tumor. The grim diagnosis brought shocked reactions from many senators of both parties and from President Bush. On June 2, 2008, Kennedy underwent brain surgery at Duke University Medical Center in an attempt to remove as much of the tumor as possible. The 3½ hour operation—conducted by Dr. Allan Friedman while Kennedy was conscious to minimize any permanent neurological effects—was deemed successful. Opinions varied regarding Kennedy's prognosis: the surgery typically extends survival time for only a few months, but people can sometimes live for years. The operation and follow up treatments left Kennedy thinner, prone to additional seizures, weak and short on energy, and hurt his balance. In addition, Kennedy was ill from an attack of kidney stones. Against the advice of some associates, The dramatic appearance and speech electrified the convention audience,

On September 26, 2008, Kennedy suffered a mild seizure while at home in Hyannis Port; he immediately went to the hospital, was examined and released later that same day. Doctors believed that a change in his medication triggered the seizure. Kennedy relocated to Florida for the winter; he continued his treatments, did a lot of sailing, and stayed in touch with legislative matters via telephone. Doctors attributed the episode to "simple fatigue". He was released from the hospital the following morning, and he returned to his home in Washington, D. C.

When the 111th Congress began, Kennedy dropped his spot on the Senate Judiciary Committee to focus all his attentions on national health care issues, which he regarded as "the cause of my life". He saw the characteristics of the Obama administration and the Democratic majorities in Congress as representing the third and best great chance for universal health care, following the lost 1971 Nixon and 1993 Clinton opportunities, and as his last big legislative battle. although the move caused some controversy in the UK due to his connections with Gerry Adams of the Irish republican political party Sinn Féin. Later in March, a bill reauthorizing and expanding the AmeriCorps program was renamed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act by Senator Hatch in Kennedy's honor. Kennedy threw the ceremonial first pitch at Fenway Park before the Boston Red Sox season opener in April, echoing what his grandfather "Honey Fitz" – a member of the Royal Rooters – had done to open the park in 1912. Even when his illness prevented him from being a major factor in health plan deliberations, his symbolic presence still made him one of the key senators involved. However, Kennedy's tumor had spread by spring 2009 and treatments for it were no longer effective; this information was not disclosed to the public. By June 2009 Kennedy had not cast a Senate vote in three months, and his deteriorating physical health had forced him to retreat to Massachusetts, where he underwent another round of chemotherapy. In his absence, premature release of his health committee's expansive plan resulted in a poor public reception. Kennedy's friend Chris Dodd had taken over his role on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, Democrats also missed Kennedy's ability to smooth divisions on the health proposals. Kennedy did cut a television commercial for Dodd, who was struggling early on in his 2010 re election bid. In July, HBO began showing a documentary tribute to Kennedy's life, Teddy: In His Own Words. A health care reform bill was voted out of the committee with content Kennedy favored, but still faced a long, difficult process before having a chance at becoming law. At the end of July 2009, Kennedy was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He could not attend the ceremony to receive this medal, and attended a private service but not the public funeral when his sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver died at age 88 in mid August. In a statement, Kennedy's family thanked "everyone who gave him care and support over this last year, and everyone who stood with him for so many years in his tireless march for progress toward justice".

President Obama said that Kennedy's death marked the "passing of an extraordinary leader" and that he and First Lady Michelle Obama were "heartbroken", while Vice President Biden said "today we lost a truly remarkable man," and that Kennedy "changed the circumstances of tens of millions of Americans". Mitt Romney, former Massachusetts Governor and Kennedy's opponent in the 1994 Senate race, called Kennedy "the kind of man you could like even if he was your adversary" and former First Lady Nancy Reagan said she was "terribly saddened". She went on, "Given our political differences, people are sometimes surprised how close Ronnie and I have been to the Kennedy family. I will miss him." Senator Robert Byrd, the President pro tempore of the Senate, issued a statement on Kennedy's death in which he said "My heart and soul weeps at the loss of my best friend in the Senate, my beloved friend"; Byrd had cried uncontrollably on the Senate floor when Kennedy's cancer diagnosis was made public the previous year. There were also tributes from outside politics. Before a Boston Red Sox game, flags at Fenway Park were flown at half staff and "Taps" was performed as players stood along the baselines, and the Yankees observed a moment of silence before a game at Yankee Stadium.

Kennedy's funeral procession traveled 70 mile (113 km) from the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port to the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, Massachusetts, where his corpse lay in repose; over 50,000 members of the public filed by to pay their respects. On Saturday, August 29, a procession traveled from the library to the Our Lady of Perpetual Help Basilica in Boston, for a funeral Mass. Present at the funeral service were President Obama and former presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush (also representing his father, former President George H. W. Bush, who decided not to attend), along with Vice President Biden, three former Vice presidents, 58 senators, 21 former senators, many members of the House of Representatives, and several foreign dignitaries. President Obama delivered the eulogy. Kennedy's remains were returned to Washington, D. C., and laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery, near the graves of his assassinated brothers. Kennedy's grave marker is identical to his brother Robert's: a white oak cross and a white marble foot marker bearing his name and years of birth and death.

True Compass, the memoir that Kennedy worked on throughout his illness, was published three weeks after his death. It debuted atop the New York Times Best Seller list and by mid December 2009 had sold some 400,000 copies. A special election was scheduled for January 19, 2010, for the U. S. Senate seat from Massachusetts left vacant by Kennedy's death. Shortly before his death, Kennedy had written to Democratic Governor of Massachusetts Deval Patrick and the Massachusetts legislature, asking them to change state law to allow an appointee to fill a U. S. Senate vacancy for a term expiring upon the special election. Kennedy had been instrumental in the prior 2004 alteration of this law to prevent Governor Mitt Romney from appointing a Republican senator should John Kerry's presidential campaign succeed. The law was amended, and on September 24, 2009, Paul G. Kirk, former Democratic National Committee chairman and former aide to Kennedy, was appointed to occupy the Senate seat until the completion of the special election. Kirk announced that he would not be a candidate in the special election. ending Democratic control of it going back to 1953. Brown's victory ended the 60 vote supermajority in the Senate that the Democrats had held since mid 2009. Kennedy's widow Vicki attended the signing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, at which both she and President Obama wore blue "Tedstrong" bracelets. Congressman Patrick Kennedy brought a copy of a national health insurance bill his father had introduced in 1970 as a gift for the president. Patrick's earlier decision not to seek re election meant that in January 2011, a 64 year long period in which a Kennedy held Federal elective office came to an end, but resumed in January 2013 (due to the November 2012 election) with Ted's great nephew, Joseph P. Kennedy III, becoming a member of the House. Democratic control of Kennedy's former Senate seat was also regained following Brown's 2012 loss to Elizabeth Warren.

Political scientists gauge ideology in part by comparing the annual ratings by the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) with the ratings by the American Conservative Union (ACU). Kennedy had a lifetime liberal 90 percent score from the ADA through 2004, while the ACU awarded Kennedy a lifetime conservative rating of 2 percent through 2008. Using another metric, Kennedy had a lifetime average liberal score of 88.7 percent, according to a National Journal analysis that places him ideologically as the third most liberal senator of all those in office in 2009. A 2004 analysis by political scientists Joshua D. Clinton of Princeton University and Simon Jackman and Doug Rivers of Stanford University examined some of the difficulties in making this kind of analysis, and found Kennedy likely to be the 8th to 15th most liberal Senator during the 108th Congress. The Almanac of American Politics rates congressional votes as liberal or conservative on the political spectrum, in three policy areas: economic, social, and foreign. For 2005–2006, Kennedy's average ratings were as follows: the economic rating was 91 percent liberal and 0 percent conservative, the social rating was 89 percent liberal and 5 percent conservative, and the foreign rating was 96 percent liberal and 0 percent conservative. Various interest groups gave Kennedy scores or grades as to how well his votes aligned with the positions of each group. The American Civil Liberties Union gave him an 84 percent lifetime score as of 2009. During the 1990s and 2000s, NARAL Pro Choice America and Planned Parenthood typically gave Kennedy ratings of 100 percent, while the National Right to Life Committee typically gave him a rating of less than 10 percent. Kennedy therefore held the record as the longest serving Democratic member of Congress to solely serve as a senator until October 2021, when he was surpassed by fellow Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont. During his tenure, Kennedy became one of the most recognizable and influential members of his party and was sometimes called a "Democratic icon" as well as "The Lion of the Senate". Kennedy strongly believed in the principle "never let the perfect be the enemy of the good," and would agree to pass legislation he viewed as incomplete or imperfect with the goal of improving it down the road. In May 2008, soon to be Republican presidential nominee John McCain said, "[Kennedy] is a legendary lawmaker and I have the highest respect for him. When we have worked together, he has been a skillful, fair and generous partner." Despite his bipartisan legislative practices, Kennedy was a polarizing symbol of American liberalism for many years. Republican and conservative groups long viewed Kennedy as a reliable "bogeyman" to mention in fundraising letters, on par with Hillary Clinton and similar to Democratic and liberal appeals mentioning Newt Gingrich. The famous racially motivated "Hands" attack ad used in North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms's 1990 re election campaign against Harvey Gantt accused Gantt of supporting "Ted Kennedy's racial quota law". University of California, San Diego political science professor Gary Jacobson's 2006 study of partisan polarization found that in a state by state survey of job approval ratings of the state's senators, Kennedy had the largest partisan difference of any senator, with a 57 percentage point difference in approval between Massachusetts's Democrats and Republicans. The Associated Press wrote that, "Perhaps because it was impossible, Kennedy never tried to shake his image as a liberal titan to admirers and a left wing caricature to detractors." However, Ted was never able to carry on the "Camelot" mystique in the same way that both of his fallen brothers had, with much of it disappearing during his failed 1980 presidential bid. The Associated Press wrote, "Unlike his brothers, Edward M. Kennedy has grown old in public, his victories, defeats and human contradictions played out across the decades in the public glare." Kennedy's New York Times obituary described him via a character sketch: He was a Rabelaisian figure in the Senate and in life, instantly recognizable by his shock of white hair, his florid, oversize face, his booming Boston brogue, his powerful but pained stride. He was a celebrity, sometimes a self parody, a hearty friend, an implacable foe, a man of large faith and large flaws, a melancholy character who persevered, drank deeply and sang loudly. He was a Kennedy.

Kennedy's honors include an honorary knighthood bestowed by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, the Order of the Aztec Eagle from Mexico, the U. S. Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Order of Merit of Chile, and honorary degrees from several institutions including Harvard University.