Musing over the recent death of Ted Kennedy, the last of the Kennedy brothers of that ‘Camelot’ era, it got me thinking that not that death stalks them in a tragic way, but often in a positive way. The only true tragedy was Booby Kennedy’s senseless assassination by a Palestinian no-mark. JFK’s administrative drive had stalled by November 1963, even with the political capital he acquired for facing down the Soviet Union over the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was idling into what would be Bill Clinton mode decades later. His murder gave Lyndon Johnson, a politician’s politician, the impetus to launch the Great Society and advance civil rights. When a drunken Ted Kennedy abandoned Mary Jo Kopechne after driving into the river at Chappaquiddick, he lost the chance to become president, but by being stuck in the Senate, there was national, rather than personal gain. If he had become president, he might have achieved four or eight years pushing a progressive agenda. But being in the Senate, for 47 years, he gave to the USA far more. He was the second-longest serving senator in US history. “Second again,” his brothers might greet him after his failed presidential nomination bid in 1980, but his contributions mark him out as one of the greatest of legislators.