Forty-eight years to the day after his brother was inaugurated as president, Edward M. Kennedy, the frail, white-haired patriarch of the most star-crossed American political family, flashed that famous Kennedy grin as Barack Obama took the presidential oath, virtually within arm's reach. A short while later, the senator, who had been struggling with brain cancer, went into convulsions at a luncheon honoring Obama. He never fully recovered.

And now, the last of the Kennedy brothers has passed into history, dying Tuesday night at the family compound on Cape Cod.

That the elder Mr. Kennedy, a civil rights stalwart, lived to see a black man sworn in as American president – a black man he so memorably anointed as the torchbearer of his martyred brother Jack's legacy – must be counted a blessing. But he did not survive to see the issue he cared about most – comprehensive health care reform guaranteeing coverage to all Americans – become law. It was doubtless his greatest professional disappointment.

Ted Kennedy's long and agonizingly eventful life had more than its share of curses. He lived through the public murders of his older brothers, Jack and Bobby. In 1964, he survived a plane crash that broke his back. His heavy drinking and womanizing over the years made him fodder for late-night comedians, his immaturity a tragic flaw. The young senator's disgraceful behavior in the 1969 drowning death of Mary Jo Kopechne all but ended the possibility that he could become president, though there was seemingly nothing the people of Massachusetts wouldn't forgive a Kennedy.

Nevertheless, he persevered in the Senate and became a peerless master of its ways. Despite his well-earned public image as a fiery, polarizing liberal, Mr. Kennedy's ability to get along with his colleagues made him a stunningly effective legislator – in fact, arguably the most effective senator of the past half-century. He was also a canny political survivor, having endured the high tide of Reagan and Bush conservatism, and emerged to witness the rebirth of American liberalism in the 21st century.

Now the last and most iconic 20th-century embodiment of that political tradition is no more. His flaws were great, but his public-spiritedness was greater. On this day, whatever your politics, take a moment to think about what that generation of the Kennedy family has meant to our country. Their role in the political and cultural history of our time is monumental.

We have but one regret today: that we never got to see Ted Kennedy in Dallas. This city broke his heart; after JFK was murdered here in 1963, the youngest Kennedy brother couldn't bring himself to visit. Understandable, but unfortunate. We suspect that Mr. Kennedy would have found friends in Dallas he didn't know he had.

Dallas is not known for its ardor for liberals, but we do love and respect true American patriots. RIP.