Updated Monday, September 7, 2009 9:23 am TWN, The China Post news staff

Where is Taiwan's Ted Kennedy?

At a time when the outcome of a comprehensive reform of the health care system in the United States is highly uncertain, the leadership of Sen. Ted Kennedy, who died of brain cancer on August 25 at age 77, “will be sorely missed,” said Geoff Garin in a recent commentary special to The Washington Post. While Garin entitled his article “Where is the GOP's Kennedy?” as a way to challenge Republican members in Congress in the post-Kennedy era, the same question should also be aptly and pointedly asked in the political arena in Taiwan, “Where is Taiwan's Kennedy?”

Kennedy's death triggered an outpouring of eulogies from both Democrats and Republicans as well as foreign leaders around the world.

“An important chapter in our history has come to an end,” U.S. President Obama said in a written statement. “Our country has lost a great leader, who picked up the torch of his fallen brothers and became the greatest United States senator of our time.” Then Obama went on to point out that “for five decades, virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health and economic well-being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts.”

Indeed, Kennedy is seriously missed by many. But, those fond memories of him are cherished not because he was a man with a flawless character and an extremely successful career. As a matter of fact, he was neither. He was far from being a perfect person as his record showed his expulsion from Harvard University for cheating and his involvement in the Chappaquiddick scandal in 1969 in which a young woman in his car drowned.

After the tragic deaths of his two brothers, President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert Kennedy, Teddy also harbored presidential ambitions, but his only run for the presidency ended in 1980 when he failed to take the nomination by the Democratic Party from Jimmy Carter. This was probably the price he had to pay for his misbehavior.

However, he was not discouraged by failures. He chose not to withdraw from playing an active role in politics. He worked hard in the Senate, thus earning respect from his colleagues, whether they were Democrats or Republicans and whether they agreed with him or not.

Ted Kennedy Jr., the senator's eldest son, recalled how his father taught him to overcome the hardest of times. Such an attitude of confidence in being able to turn defeat into triumph was one of his father's greatest legacies bequeathed to him, he stressed.

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