Senator Ted Kennedy: The LastSymbol of the Roosevelt Era

In United States politics, Senator Ted Kennedy was the last symbol of the so-called “Roosevelt era”. In addition to his personal and family dramas, he also brought the echo of idealistic battles to the 21st century, for example, the current polarization on health care reform proposed by the government of President Barack Obama.

Reforming health care was the principal legislative goal of the senator for years and one of the Democrats’ outstanding debts since the “Great Society” program of Lyndon Johnson (1963-1969) – the program that created two national systems for financing public health, Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor, without achieving universal access to medical treatment.

With its limited impact on the costs of the Vietnam War, the “Great Society” was the only social project in the last 30 years since the New Deal period – defined by President Franklin Roosevelt (1933-1945), as the period in which the Democratic Party challenged the dogma of “government indifference” to the fate of citizens.

Between the 1930s and 1970s, during the rise of conservatism in the U.S. political system, a public pension system was created, finance reform against monopolies was adopted, the voting rights of blacks and the poor were lifted, the power of unions increased, racial segregation ended, and large sums were invested in infrastructure, regardless of the party in power.

A large part of these measures were taken in a combative environment driven by leaders, who like Roosevelt and Kennedy, himself, came from families that represent the closest the U.S. has to an “aristocracy,” speaking with idealism and behaving as good politicians. Emotional arguments were focused on the fight against powerful interests and ensuring long-term prosperity and national cohesion.

With the current economic crisis, unemployment and increasing inequality in the U.S., Obama now has a similar challenge ahead. But his style is very different. Rational, professorial, allergic to confrontation, many American analysts question whether he can overcome the flood of lobbyists and activists from the right that fight against reforms for universal access to healthcare, treating the word “public” as an obscenity and accusing the “bureaucratic” government of the potential murders of senior citizens.