In 1994, during the last competitive political race of Ted
Kennedy’s career, opponent Mitt Romney encountered a Kennedy
supporter aggressively waving a sign in his face asserting that
Dorchester was “Kennedy Country.” Observing the empty storefronts
and decaying urban landscape in the Boston neighborhood, Romney
agreed that Dorchester was indeed “Kennedy Country.” Sixteen
years later, with the help of the taxpayer, Dorchester will host
a cult-of-personality center honoring the late senator assuring
its permanence as Kennedy Country.
The federal taxpayer is on the hook for more than $38.3 million
for the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate. The
planned center will be a neighbor to the John F. Kennedy
Presidential Library and, as its name suggests, will promote the
career of the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Senator John Kerry
and Congressman Ed Markey of Massachusetts slipped the earmarks
into the federal budgets for defense and education, among other
departments.
The duo seeks an additional $30 million from next year’s budget,
which would push the Temple of Ted’s take from the taxpayer to
more than $68 million. Both complexes, distant from the
UMass-Boston MBTA stop, will undoubtedly accrue millions of
dollars more in subsidies via free shuttle-bus trips. It is
unclear, what, if any, federal capital will pour into the
Institute following these initial subsidies.
Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what your country
can do for the Kennedys.
What will the Temple of Ted do with all that money? A spokesman
for the institute told the Boston Herald that he could
not make public the details of the outfit’s programs since they
were “still in development.” And what about siphoning off nearly
$19 million from the defense budget as America wages two wars?
There will be special programs targeting the children of armed
forces personnel, the president of the institute, Peter Meade,
assures the Herald.
Following a carefully choreographed August 2009 funeral farewell
— with nearly a week of media events, photo-op motorcades, and
multiple public services — that cost the city of Boston $431,000
and the state of Massachusetts at least $115,000, the federal
government pitching in tens of millions for a Church of St. Ted
risks backlash. After all, it’s not as though the Kennedys lack
for money and it is as though Americans paying to promote the
family’s legacy do. And the polarizing Ted Kennedy has raised
hundreds of millions of dollars-for friends and foes-over the
course of his half-century in politics. Why can’t the planned
Institute raise money from the Kennedy family or the family’s
many friends who have subsidized the political ventures of its
members?
Indeed, the Institute has already raised an enormous amount of
private money. “In lieu of flowers, the Kennedy family requests
you consider a contribution for educational programming at the
Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate,” Kennedy’s
funeral website announced. To that end, the Temple of Ted has
reportedly raised $45 million in private donations.
There is precedent for a center promoting the legacy of a
deceased U.S. Senator receiving tax funds. The Dirksen
Congressional Center, honoring the former Republican Senate
leader, received a $2 million start-up appropriation from the
Congress in the late 1970s, as well as subsequent support. But
the practice seems rare, and at the gaudy level enjoyed by the
Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the U.S. Senate, unprecedented.
Most presidents don’t even have official libraries, and the
extant presidential libraries rely primarily on private
donations.
So, too, do the few outfits honoring deceased senators. The Jesse
Helms Center operates on private donations. The Fulbright Center
eschews federal funding. Why then should a fellow senator, albeit
with a longer tenure but perhaps a less pronounced impact on
public policy, garner tens of millions in taxpayer tribute?
The man who occupies the Senate seat Kennedy once held seems to
have the right idea. Senator Scott Brown devotes a wall in his
Washington office to remembering the man who held his seat for 47
years. This voluntary tribute for the benefit of visiting
constituents, rather than a forced tithing of his constituents to
benefit the late senator’s reputation, preserves the senator’s
memory in a dignified manner that contrasts with to the crass,
cultish manner in which Senator Kennedy’s votaries have chosen to
honor him.
Worried about the form of government in store for Massachusetts,
Abigail Adams wrote her husband a few months before George
Washington, from his perch atop Dorchester Heights, drove the
British permanently from Boston. “I am more and more convinced
that Man is a dangerous creature,” the matriarch of the first
family of Massachusetts politics noted, “and that power whether
vested in many or a few is ever grasping, and like the grave,
cries give, give.”
From the grave, the last brother of the second family of
Massachusetts politics, cries give, give, give. His former
colleagues are only too happy to do so.
