Teddy got them into this mess...

...and they sure miss him now.

The late Ted Kennedy was pretty good at getting into scrapes during his lifetime, but he was even better at getting out of them.  The Dems, and particularly our floundering  president, could sure use him now.

Were it not for the late Ted Kennedy's endorsement, the callow B. H. Obama might never have become president.  Early in the 2008 campaign Senator Hillary Clinton and Obama had each won a couple of primaries but Hillary was considered the frontrunner.  Teddy's endorsement of Obama changed all that and launched the candidate on a path to nomination and election as president.

During the first year of the Obama regime a dying Kennedy made a couple of dramatic appearances in the Senate to cast the 60th vote to break G.O.P. filibusters.  Then, and after his death, he was constantly invoked by the Democrats at they attempted to pass their wildly unpopular "comprehensive health care" bill.  His shade loomed large over the political manoeuvering which broght the bill to the threshold of passage, but the unlikely election of Republican Scott Brown to fill the Senate seat Kennedy had occupied for 47 years seemed to toll the death knell for the legislation.

Alas, Teddy's spirit hadn't yet given up the ghost.  Even as the Democrats engaged in some extreme logrolling and extra-parliamentary finagling to pass the bill at all cost and by any means, "We did it for Ted" became their all-purpose apologia.

In due course the midterm elections rolled around.  You know the results.  Voters were generally dissatisfied with the economy, but they were specifically opposed to the president and his eponymous healthcare plan.  Perhaps they should have called it "Teddycare"?

Teddy's political legacy is clear.  He bequeathed to America an inexperienced and incompetent chief executive, a political extremist who is the most polarizing president since Nixon.  And as a bonus we got an ill-considered, intrusive, and economy-wrecking "comprehensive health care" plan whose repeal is the G.O.P.'s #1 campaign promise.

He got them - and us - into this mess.  I, for one, am relieved that he has passed from the political scene, but the Democrats could sure use him now.  Say what you want about ol' Ted - I sure have - but he was a veteran political operator and knew how to cut his losses.  At least he'd have been able to mentor the feckless Obama, who now seems intent on doubling-down on the disastrous policies that have left the recovery to stagnate while irritating a majority of the country and leading his party to the most stinging midterm rebuke since - when? 1946? 1938? - at least fifty years hence.