What nobody dared to say last night before or after Ted Kennedy’s remarks at the Democratic National Convention last night is how likely it was that he would never address another. But the little waver in Caroline Kennedy’s voice as she began to introduce him, the more obvious tears in the eyes of her cousin Maria Shriver, and the short but unmissable moments of choking up in Teddy’s own voice made it clear to anyone paying attention. Farewell, he said, even though he promised to stand with Barack Obama come January. Farewell, he said, even though he vowed to return to the Senate chamber he has occupied as long as I have been alive. Nearly thirty years ago he brought millions of people to tears as he swore that the dream of his brothers would not die, and last night he recalled his own words as he concluded “The dream lives on”, and brought people to tears with the knowledge that it is he who is dying.

Nobody can seriously dispute that Ted Kennedy’s personal foibles have tarnished his legacy almost as much as his legislative achievements have burnished it, but he shares those failings with a rather broad and deep collection of his fellow lawmakers. Few of them, though, can rightly claim to have so dedicated their public service to the betterment of the lives of ordinary people. Too many individuals in politics use their position to further their own fortunes or the fortunes of those who bankroll them, but Kennedy’s agenda and his most significant accomplishments have always been far more concerned with directing the blessings of fortune to the unfortunate. This, friends, is the true call of liberalism and the greatest duty of anyone elected to govern. With Ted Kennedy’s nearing exit from the national stage, we will likely not see it again in the Senate chamber, on the floor of the House, or in the Oval Office.

The dream does indeed live on. It lived well before Ted or Bobby or Jack in the words of Thomas Jefferson, in the deeds of Abraham Lincoln, in the grand designs of Woodrow Wilson, and in the decisive actions of Franklin Roosevelt. The dream itself can never die, though the torch that John Kennedy claimed for his own on a bitterly cold January morning forty-seven years ago has flickered and dimmed nearly to ashes in the hands of those who picked it up in his absence. The torch waned even more last night as Ted finished his course. If America is very lucky, in the hands of Barack Obama it might not completely extinguish, but we have witnessed the exit of its longest runner.