Montage From an American Funeral

Distilled from a half century of seeing Kennedys up close and reporting their history, feelings about today's mass in Boston prompt renewed wonder about the complexity and unpredictability of American life.

President Obama's eulogy, eloquent as always, was after all the tribute of someone who has known Ted Kennedy for only a few years, graciously lauding him as "a Happy Warrior" and "a kind and tender hero."

His words were part of a much larger tableau, the sense of how love and conflict, wealth and ambition, personal failings and the search for redemption play out across generations of a public family.

The weekend's celebration was graciously orchestrated by Ted Kennedy's second wife, Vicki, who saved him when his personal and political fortunes were at low ebb in the early 1990s.

There was only a passing mention of his first wife, Joan, mother of his children, a stunningly beautiful woman who wrote about her chronic alcoholism for me in McCalls before their divorce in the 1970s and, of course, none at all of Chappaquiddick, which in 1969 marred the legend of Camelot and ruined the chances of another Kennedy in the White House.

Fittingly enough, an unspoken theme in that church today was atonement, and Ted Kennedy's most impressive advocates were his sons, Ted Jr., telling how his father's relentless devotion carried him through the loss of a leg to cancer and Patrick, still visibly shaky from addiction, testifying to the healing power of paternal love.

Their tributes brought no outward reaction from two men in the first row who grew up without that, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, but it would have taken a heart of stone not to be moved by them.

As Ted Kennedy is taken to join his brothers in Arlington Cemetery, what comes to mind is something JFK said in an interview with me only weeks before he died.

He was talking about the brutal and violent instincts of human beings that, in his words, “have been implanted in us growing out of the dust.” In controlling those destructive impulses, John Fitzgerald Kennedy said sadly, “we have done reasonably well——but only reasonably well.“

He would have been proud of what his little brother did about that in the 77 years he was granted on earth.

Mission for the Mourner-in-Chief

It will be a short trip for Barack Obama from his vacation site in Martha's Vineyard to Ted Kennedy's funeral in Boston Saturday, but the Senator's interment will be the start of a longer, tougher journey for the President.

He will have to follow his mourning by channeling the departed's gift for inside politics, summoning up Kennedy's legendary blend of toughness and people skills to lure Senators out of their "ideological caves" and come together to rise above lobbyist pressures and political posturing to pass meaningful health care reform

Sen. Robert Byrd suggests today, in expressing grief for Kennedy, that "in his honor and as a tribute to his commitment to his ideals, let us stop the shouting and name calling and have a civilized debate on health care reform which I hope, when legislation has been signed into law, will bear his name for his commitment to insuring the health of every American."

In the coming weeks, the President will have to put more than Ted Kennedy's name on health care reform. When the eulogies are over, he will have to put the old pol's stamp on his efforts to get a good bill passed by members of the club in which Kennedy spent almost half a century wheeling and dealing.

That would be the tribute Kennedy would cherish most of all.

Update: He can start by convincing Congress and the public to undo Medicare Advantage, "a wasteful bonanza averaging about $17 billion a year for [insurance] companies, which critics say provide few benefits beyond regular Medicare" but that Dr. Karl Rove insists gives seniors "better care and better value for their money."

A year ago, Ted Kennedy rallied from his illness to cast the deciding Senate vote to protect Medicare. The President will have to pick up that torch.