Ted Kennedy, Capitol Hill icon, has brain tumor

BOSTON — For much of his life, Sen. Edward Kennedy has taken on the role of caregiver, watching over the country's most storied political family after tragedies, pushing for sweeping health care, retirement and education legislation, and other social-welfare programs.

Now he is the one in need after being diagnosed with a cancerous brain tumor. Some experts gave the liberal icon less than a year to live.

Doctors discovered the tumor after the 76-year-old Kennedy clan patriarch, whose brothers President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated while in office, suffered a seizure over the weekend at the family Cape Cod compound at Hyannis Port, Mass.

The diagnosis cast a pall over Capitol Hill, where the Massachusetts Democrat has served since 1962.

"All of the oxygen went out of the room," when the news broke, said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who called Kennedy "a mentor."

Some senators later wept as they publicly considered the potential mortality of a man who was at the center of nearly a half-century of some of the nation's most important legislative issues.

His constituents reacted similarly.

"Kennedy is a big name in this town and a beloved name. I think everybody just feels sad that he has to go through this," Anne Marie Burke said Tuesday as she waited outside Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where Kennedy was being treated and the diagnosis announced.

Surgery not mentioned

Kennedy's doctors said he had a malignant glioma — an especially lethal type of brain cancer — in the left parietal lobe, a part of the brain that helps govern sensation, movement and language.

Kennedy's doctors said he will remain in the hospital for the next couple of days as they consider chemotherapy and radiation. They did not mention surgery, a possible indication the tumor is inoperable.

Kennedy's wife since 1992, Vicki, and his five children and stepchildren have been at his hospital bedside.

Kennedy, the Senate's second-longest serving member, was re-elected in 2006 and is not up for election again until 2012.

News of the brain tumor generated reaction from around the world, where Kennedy's family legacy and his 46 years in the Senate have made him a well-known figure.

Hundreds of phone calls, 19 bouquets and more than 2,500 e-mails reached Kennedy's office. King Abdullah II of Jordan sent an orchid. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown sent a get-well note, as did actors Glenn Close and Martin Sheen, rock musician Don Henley, Nancy Reagan and Al Gore, according to a Kennedy staff member, who requested anonymity.

Often demonized by conservatives as a liberal standard-bearer, Kennedy is held in high esteem by Republican colleagues for his determination, understanding of issues and willingness to work in a bipartisan fashion.

"Sen. Kennedy enjoys great respect and admiration on this side of the aisle," said Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader. "He is indeed one of the most important figures to ever serve in this body in our history."

Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., the Senate's longest-serving member, wept as he prayed for "my dear, dear friend, dear friend, Ted Kennedy" during a speech on the Senate floor.

"Keep Ted here for us and for America," said Byrd, 90.

Kennedy has cast more than 15,000 votes, written more than 2,500 bills and is as much a monument in Washington as its granite edifices. His absence could complicate his party's legislative agenda. Democrats, usually joined by two independents, hold a 51-49 Senate majority.

His absence would leave Democrats without a key leader, but also without someone who can build political bridges in a highly partisan Senate.

President Bush, who teamed with Kennedy to pass his signature domestic achievement, the No Child Left Behind education law, then broke with him over Iraq and the conduct of the war on terrorism, saluted Kennedy as "a man of tremendous courage, remarkable strength and powerful spirit."

Kennedy was elected to fill the seat once held by his brother John — who two years earlier had been elected president — and faced just one tough re-election fight, in 1994, against Mitt Romney, who would be elected Massachusetts governor in 2002.

A high point in his career came in 1980, when Kennedy challenged Jimmy Carter for the Democratic presidential nomination. He eventually bowed out with a stirring speech in which he declared, "The cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die." His eulogy for his brother Robert was equally stirring.

The low point was 1969, when Kennedy drove a car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island on Martha's Vineyard. The accident killed aide Mary Jo Kopechne. Kennedy at the time was married to his first wife, Joan, whom he later divorced. The crash may well have cost him the presidency.

Haunted by tragedy

The Kennedy family has been struck by tragedy over and over. Kennedy's eldest brother, Joseph, died in a plane crash during a mission to France in World War II; President Kennedy was assassinated in 1963; and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1968. The tragedies thrust "Uncle Teddy" into the role of surrogate parent to his brothers' children. He walked President Kennedy's daughter, Caroline Kennedy, down the aisle at her wedding.

One of his sons, Edward Kennedy Jr., lost his right leg to cancer in 1973.

Kennedy, whose back was broken in 1964 plane crash that killed an aide and the pilot, has been active for his age. Six months ago he underwent surgery to repair a partially blocked carotid artery in his neck, but has maintained an aggressive schedule on Capitol Hill and across Massachusetts.

He has made several campaign appearances for Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and his endorsement of the Democratic front-runner boosted his campaign.

"I would not be sitting here as a presidential candidate had it not been for some of the battles that Ted Kennedy has fought," said Obama, hailed by Kennedy as the standard-bearer of the legacies of his fallen brothers.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said: "Ted Kennedy's courage and resolve are unmatched, and they have made him one of the greatest legislators in Senate history."

Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, said, "I have described Ted Kennedy as the last lion in the Senate, and I have held that view because he remains the single most effective member of the Senate."

In Massachusetts, the impact of Kennedy's persona and political legacy is hard to overestimate.

"There'll never be another Ted Kennedy," said Paul S. Grogan, president and chief executive of the Boston Foundation, an organization that finances nonprofits involved in economic development and other state issues. "He's been such an outsized figure, so influential, so effective."

Grogan said that Kennedy had given Massachusetts a level of political prominence beyond what would normally be accorded a state of its size, and that he had helped engineer policies and financing mechanisms that benefited important sectors of the state.

Just one example, he said, was that Massachusetts institutions receive a large proportion of financing from the National Institutes of Health.

"He's single-handedly postponed the onset of Massachusetts' political decline, and whenever Sen. Kennedy is no longer active in politics, I think that is one of the things that is going to be incredibly shocking to people," Grogan said.

Don Kettl, a University of Pennsylvania political scientist, said the absence of the "dean of liberalism" could also alter the direction of the Democratic Party as it redefines what it considers the role of government, potentially with one of its own in the White House.

"The result could be a drift rightward, in a way that leaves Obama more isolated on the left," Kettl said. "It would be hard to underestimate the role that Kennedy has played in the Senate, and what his loss — even if temporary — would mean to the Democrats."

Compiled from The Associated Press, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times reports