August 30, 2009
David Gregory: “He was the Lion of the Senate.”
Doris Goodwin: He was the greatest senator ever.
Note that the historian does not dash that judgment off in the same manner as one dubs one’s latest hamburger “the best hamburger I’ve ever had” or the latest actress one has espied “the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” Rather, she offers it after first comparing him to Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Arthur Vandenberg (really?), and other senators who earned the plaudits of John Kennedy and his colleagues decades ago. She means it seriously: Ted Kennedy was the greatest senator ever.
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