More than a little tired of Ted

DURHAM -- For some Democrats, the news that Sen. Ted Kennedy would endorse Sen. Barack Obama pretty much settled matters. Obama's rival for the Democratic nomination, New York Sen. Hillary Clinton, has much to offer. But so too, obviously, does the magnetic young senator from Illinois. The choice is difficult.

Now Kennedy, who once aspired to the throne himself, has spoken. Gee, if Obama has the endorsement of the senator from Chappaquiddick, what better reason to support Hillary Clinton?

It might surprise commentators in the national media, but many Democrats have had their fill of the Kennedys. And they've had their fill of Ted, in particular. There is every reason ordinary Americans should hope for change and for a candidate whose loyalties are to middle-class families and wage earners, not the very rich who have been fattened under George W. Bush. There is every reason to think either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama is that candidate.

But there is no reason to think the imprimatur of Ted Kennedy is tantamount to pinning the tail on the Democratic donkey. Beyond Boston and the Beltline -- and, apparently, the op-ed page of The New York Times -- ordinary Americans don't give two hoots about the Kennedys. What's to care about? If the Clintons are yesterday, as many would claim, the Kennedys are the day before. None more so than the septuagenarian Ted.

Give the man his due. He has been a tireless champion of the right causes, from greater opportunity for the poor and disenfranchised to better health care and a narrowing of the income gap between rich and poor. Few have been so steadfast. Until a few years ago, he still cut a striking figure, with that silver hair and square jaw. His voice, when not raspy from who knows what, could still be resonant.

Now, in Kennedy's 76th year, the once-chiseled countenance has gone jowly and the square shoulders of a younger, athletic man are hunched. The once and future king of another day instead is the candidate whose time never came, a knight errant whose armor was more than a little tarnished.

And yet here was the usually judicious David Brooks, in his New York Times op-ed page column, brushing off what he seems to regard as youthful indiscretions -- Kennedy was 27 at the time of Chappaquiddick -- and genuflecting before the image of a man who never was:

"After his callow youth," Brooks wrote earlier this week, "Kennedy came to realize that life would not give him the chance to be president. But life did ask him to be a senator, and he has embraced that role and served that institution with more distinction than anyone else now living -- as any of his colleagues, Republican or Democrat, will tell you. And he could do it because culture really does have rhythms."

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AND SO, WE ARE TO BELIEVE, WE ARE BLESSED in having the chance to live Camelot all over again, this time with the charismatic Barack Obama playing the role once played by the gallant president who would be slain that November day in Dallas. The sad truth is that Camelot was a fairy tale then, and it is farcical now.

The presidency of Jack Kennedy was, for sure, undertaken with a high idealism and a renewed hope in a vigorous America. But its actual results were thin and, at best, ambiguous.

Kennedy, of course, was assassinated three years after being elected. Yet the accomplishments of those years were largely chimerical. And those that weren't can be recalled only with dismay -- the sending of military advisers to Vietnam, the Bay of Pigs, the parade of women secreted into the White House for Jack's carnal pleasure. Even if he had lived, could Kennedy have coaxed and cajoled and all but coerced a recalcitrant Congress into passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965? It's highly doubtful. That task required the legislative mastery of his successor, the tragic Lyndon Johnson.

Denied the chance to celebrate what Kennedy might have achieved, we instead buried him. And then, five years later, we buried Robert F. Kennedy, himself assassinated. It was grief enough that we had to do so. Now it's time we buried -- metaphorically speaking -- another Kennedy, this time with relief. Democrats have abundantly good reasons to support Barack Obama, just as they have for supporting Hillary Clinton. The endorsement of Ted Kennedy is not among them. Good night, Ted.

(Michael Skube teaches journalism at Elon University. He is a former editor at The N&O, where he won the Pulitzer Prize for criticism in 1989.)