By William Drumright

When I read about Ted Kennedy's passing, I thought about Abby Wambach. Senator Kennedy co-sponsored and helped shepherd through Congress the 1972 Title IX legislation that effectively initiated girls' and women's scholastic athletic programs. Largely because of the access opened up by Title IX, the Rochester native could become who she is now: one of the finest women's soccer players in the world.

Much has been written about Kennedy, who, at various times during his 77 years, was both his own redeemer and nemesis. In an August 27 editorial, the Boston Globe summed up Kennedy's numerous virtues and flaws in this passage: "The extraordinary events of his life clashed with his human frailties, and the frailties sometimes won." Certainly, he was no plaster saint.

Yet in nearly 50 years of public service, Kennedy demonstrated why politicians like him matter to all Americans, especially to those who believe in and strive for a liberal and a progressive interpretation of Jefferson's "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." From his first election victory in November of 1962 until his death on August 25, Kennedy staunchly labored to further include the excluded so they could become, in the words of Charles DeGaulle, "citizens with a full share."

Senator Kennedy co-sponsored nearly 1,000 laws and drafted more than 300 laws himself, and much of this legislation benefits benefit the vast majority of Americans. Through Kennedy's substantive efforts, Americans enjoy a higher minimum wage; safer workplaces and mines; grants and low-interest loans for those who attend college; family leave; and protection of pensions.

The 1965 Voting Rights Act, which contains his amendment banning the poll tax, helped enable African-Americans who voted for Obama in 2008 to do just that. The 1965 Immigration Reform Act, which Kennedy guided through the Senate, has allowed tens of millions of immigrants from continents other than Europe to live and to prosper in the United States. The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act, which bans discrimination in employment, transportation, and access to public facilities, has transformed the lives of millions of disabled people.

Kennedy's achievements in health care alone are enough to solidify his reputation as one of the finest lawmakers in United States history. Through his efforts, millions of low-income mothers can properly feed their babies (Women, Infants, and Children program). Children can be covered under health insurance (State Children's Health Insurance Program). Those who are jobless can receive health insurance between jobs (COBRA).

Patients can maintain their privacy, and insurance companies cannot arbitrarily cancel coverage (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). People with mental illnesses, instead of being institutionalized, can remain in their homes and in their communities (Mental Health Parity Act). Low-income AIDS patients can receive better care (Ryan White Care Act). In addition, as the Boston Globe editorial points out, there are the "millions of people with cancer whose treatments were developed with billions of research dollars for which Kennedy was the leading - and most relentless - advocate." This reality is apparent to Newsweek's Jonathan Alter. "As a lymphoma survivor myself," Alter writes, "the beneficiary of breakthrough treatment, I'm only one of tens of thousands of people who can say without exaggeration that Ted Kennedy's efforts have helped keep me alive."

Until Kennedy was slowed down by the brain cancer that eventually killed him, he demonstrated the "public" in public service. He mastered the Senate's intricacies and rituals from the markups of bills and the conference committees to the human niceties that testified to his ability to forge consensus and compromise. Kennedy knew how to "reach across the aisle," and he used all these skills to champion the causes he supported.

When the Reagan Administration in the 1980's sought to roll back part or all of the socially progressive legislation - from civil rights to workplace safety - passed in the 1960's and 1970's, Kennedy employed his mastery of the legislative process to thwart such efforts. He did his legislative homework; he read and analyzed the contents of legislation, yet he never forgot that behind the facts and figures were human beings.

As President Obama stated in his eulogy, "He was given the gift of time that his brothers were not, and he used that gift to touch as many lives and right as many wrongs as the years would allow." In fact, what Jack and Bobby envisioned, Teddy helped turn into reality. The journalist Robert Scheer, writing for The Nation, put it nicely: "The light has gone out, and with it that infectious warm laugh and intensely progressive commitment of the best of the Kennedys. Not, at this point, to take anything away from the memory of his siblings ... but Senator Ted Kennedy was the real deal."

Scheer's allusion between the "real deal" and the New Deal is accurate. More than John and Robert Kennedy, more than even Lyndon Johnson, Ted Kennedy exemplified the substance and the spirit of those stalwarts of 20th-century liberalism: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt.

In his 1944 State of the Union address, President Roosevelt put forth the principles for what he called an "economic bill of rights." These included gainful employment to provide for the necessities and reasonable wants of life; remunerative commodity prices for farmers; safe and affordable housing; good medical care; protection from economic destitution because of old age, illness, accident, and unemployment; and a good education.

Both Roosevelts knew, as FDR stated in 1944, "that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence." As FDR put it, "Necessitous men are not free men." Thirty-six years later, at the 1980 Democratic National Convention, Ted Kennedy restated those truths: "I am asking you to renew the commitment of the Democratic Party to economic justice," he said.

In both his life and his public service, Kennedy understood what the Roosevelts knew: That one could be wealthy and still care intensely for the condition of those who were less fortunate.

In 2009 - 65 years after Roosevelt's call for an economic bill of rights - the link between individual circumstance and social good is fully evident in the battle for universal health care. This clash, for which Kennedy long fought the good fight, retakes center stage as Congress returns from its summer recess. What is also at stake is whether the Democratic Party, especially President Obama, will uphold a principle of "Kennedy liberalism" - that the federal government can and should be a force for good.

For Obama, as the opposition surges and his poll numbers ebb, there is the temptation to cave in to those who oppose meaningful reform of the broken US health-care system. Now, more than ever, Obama must exemplify the spirit of Kennedy's liberalism. For inspiration, the president can read Kennedy's 1980 convention speech, which contained this passage about the Democratic Party: "It is the glory and the greatness of our tradition to speak for those who have no voice, to remember those who are forgotten, to respond to the frustrations and fulfill the aspirations of all Americans seeking a better life in a better land. We dare not forsake that tradition."

Nearly thirty years later, however, that tradition seems lost to the nearly 46 million Americans who lack health insurance and to the 14,000 Americans who each day lose their healthcare coverage.  For them, and for hundreds of millions of Americans, let us hope that Obama proudly holds high the torch that Ted Kennedy long carried for each of us.

William Drumright is an assistant professor of history at MonroeCommunity College and is a former journalist. Mary Anna Towler's Urban Journal returns next week.