Susan Estrich: At caring, Sen. Kennedy a natural

He was not a natural.

He did not have the gift that Bill Clinton had, that Barack Obama has, of making whatever he said sound smart and moving.

The first time I wrote "talking points" for him, for a floor statement on something 30 years ago, I hid in the back of the Senate gallery as he mumbled his way through it, adding "uhs" instead of verbs.

He was not a great "student," the way Hillary Rodham Clinton is, someone who could consume information, demand more - the smartest kid in the class who actually enjoys reading policy tomes.

I learned to write short memos. Say it in a page, now-Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer used to say when we were putting things in Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's briefcase.

I've been to the bridge at Chappaquiddick. He was flawed. He knew that. The world knew that. Whether you forgive him or not doesn't matter anymore.

The point is, he persevered. I don't know how he got up in the morning sometimes, much less why he would want to look in that briefcase every night.

People made fun of him when he became a senator at 30. He gave them ammunition. He was responsible for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, and then he failed to alert authorities and take responsibility.

He worked. He became great at what he did. He cared passionately about the people on society's bottom rung, and he dedicated his life to them. That was his blessing.

He started out way ahead in 1979, and then he was humiliated in Iowa and New Hampshire. He kept fighting. The Democrats lost control of the Senate, and we moved into even smaller offices.

The senator took "ranking" member of the Labor and Human Resources Committee instead of Judiciary because he wanted to lead the fight for the poor during the Reagan Revolution. We would get three or four votes. Out of 100.

Most of the people who had worked on the campaign drifted away. He was never going to be president.

He worked.

Rock stars generally don't last in the Senate. Too much work, too little juice. Getting something accomplished takes a remarkable amount of tedious work. Rock stars either run for something else or retire on the job. They certainly don't make a mark.

The senator took a few of us out sailing with his mother in the summer of 1980. He introduced me to her. She looked right through me, uninterested in whether I was the first woman whatever, and treated him as if he were about 13 years old.

He shook his head, and we went back to talking about what he cared about. We were fighting to put a plank favoring national health insurance on the Democratic platform.

Keep the rudder true.