Forty-seven years ago, Ted Kennedy was elected to the Senate to take the seat that had once been held by his brother, then-president John Kennedy. At the time, he was largely regarded as an undeserved novice -- the benefactor of a family name, a Harvard failure who had coasted on privilege.
Among the nine members of the freshmen Senate class in 1962, the youngest Kennedy brother -- just 30 years old at the time -- was not pegged to leave an indelible legacy. But, over time, he stood out among his peers. Nearly five decades later, another member of that class declared definitively that Kennedy had become "the greatest Senator of the 20th Century."
In an interview with the Huffington Post, former senator and Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern expressed his deep sorrow with the news of Kennedy's passing from brain cancer on Tuesday evening. But the South Dakota Democrat also celebrated Kennedy for how he remembers him: Congress' most diligent worker, a master of the policy minutia, and a source of personal and political strength for his party and family.
"He and I both came to the Senate the same year as part of the class of '62. And I sat side-by-side with him for several years in the Senate and we remained close friends over the years," McGovern recalled. "He was probably as hard a working person as I knew at the Senate. He got to the office early and worked late. He definitely was a senator's senator. I never thought that either John or Robert Kennedy's first love was the Senate. They were thinking first about the executive branch. But Ted, throughout his long career, was wedded to the Senate. And I think, over time, he became the greatest Senator of the 20th Century."
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