miércoles, 26 de agosto de 2009

EL PALO CON ASTILLAS: TED KENNEDY

Lo he visto varias veces hablar sobre la salud y sobre la guerra injusta. Siempre, invariablemente, me emociona, pero lo más que me sorprende no es él, sino darme cuenta de cómo nuestra clase política imita lo peor de la "americana".


¿Quién entre esos políticos de carrera que se almacenan en Puerta de Tierra habría podido pronunciar un discurso como éste que adjunto? Nadie, naaaaadie. Y esa es nuestra ruina.





Algunas de sus ejecutorias son descritas por el TIME como sigue. Desde mi humilde opinión, son impresionantes:

"Because Kennedy never made it to the finish line, he never had to endure a post-presidential twilight. Instead, by the time of his death on Aug. 25 in Hyannis Port at the age of 77, he had 46 working years in Congress, time enough to leave his imprint on everything from the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act of 2009, a law that expands support for national community-service programs. Over the years, Kennedy was a force behind the Freedom of Information Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. He helped Soviet dissidents and fought apartheid. Above all, he conducted a four-decade crusade for universal health coverage, a poignant one toward the end as the country watched a struggle with a brain tumor. But along the way, he vastly expanded the network of neighborhood clinics, virtually invented the COBRA system for portable insurance and helped create the laws that provide Medicare prescriptions and family leave. (See a Kennedy family photo album.)

"And for most of that time, he went forward against great odds, the voice of progressivism in a conservative age. When people were getting tired of hearing about racism or the poor or the decay of American cities, he kept talking. When liberalism was flickering, there was Kennedy, holding the torch, insisting that "we can light those beacon fires again." In the last year of his life, with the Inauguration of Barack Obama, he had the satisfaction of seeing a big part of that dream fulfilled. In early 2008, when Obama had just begun to capture the public imagination, Kennedy bucked the party establishment. Just before Super Tuesday, the venerable Senator from Massachusetts enthusiastically endorsed the young Senator from Illinois, helping propel Obama to the Democratic nomination and ultimately the White House."

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