'Meet the Press' transcript for August 30, 2009

MR. DAVID GREGORY:  This Sunday, a special edition:  remembering Senator Edward M.  Kennedy, who was laid to rest yesterday evening alongside his brothers at Arlington National Cemetery.  With us to honor his remarkable life and career in public office:  his nieces Maria Shriver, the first lady of California and daughter of his sister Eunice Shriver who died just weeks ago, and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the eldest child of his brother Robert F. Kennedy; two of his closest colleagues in the Senate, fellow senator from Massachusetts John Kerry, and Chris Dodd of Connecticut; plus, Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, longtime political adviser to the senator who helped write his famous speech at the 1980 Democratic National Convention...

(Videotape)

SEN. EDWARD KENNEDY:  The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.

(End videotape)

MR. GREGORY:  ...and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, who authored the best-selling book "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys."

But first, it has been a weekend filled with tributes and remembrances as Ted Kennedy's life was celebrated, his loss mourned and his body laid to rest. Friday evening, after the moving memorial service in Boston, I sat down at the Kennedy Library with his niece Maria Shriver.  I began by asking her what the tremendous public outpouring for Senator Kennedy meant to her and her family.

MS. MARIA SHRIVER:  I think driving from Hyannis Port to Boston, it was so moving to see people standing along the freeway, gathered on bridges; entire families, many in tears, boys with their hands over their hearts saluting.  It was a great piece of American history that you were able to drive by.  And this was a weekday, in the middle of the day, so people obviously had to leave work or leave their vacations, park their cars and wait to just watch a hearse go by.  And I thought it was so generous of the people, and so moving.  It's something I think Teddy would have been so thrilled by and also humbled by.

MR. GREGORY:  It's interesting, for the past several days you hear so much about the career, about the issues, about the passion.  And yet at this memorial service, you heard about the man.

MS. SHRIVER:  Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY:  And you understood that public service, for him, was about other people, about serving people.

MS. SHRIVER:  Well, Teddy was, I think, known to the people who knew him, and his heart was extraordinary.  He was the most compassionate, empathetic man. And I think he was that way because he himself was wounded and he himself knew pain, he himself knew struggle, he knew abandonment.  He knew all of the things that pain a human being.  And so when he saw other human beings in pain, or where their character was questioned or where they had loss, he was always the first person to reach out.  And nobody does that who hasn't felt that way themselves.  And I think that that was something that people often overlooked about him, didn't understand about him.  But this was a man, you know, who had fought a lot, who had struggled a lot, who had been through a lot, and he understood when other people also went through a lot.  And I think you have that outpouring because people--regular people understood that about him.  They saw through all of the labels, they saw through, you know, what people wrote, they saw that this was a man who understood family, who understood struggle, who understood triumph and who understood, you know, weaknesses.  And we all have that.  And rarely do you see it, I think, so openly in a public person as you saw it with Teddy.

MR. GREGORY:  What has it been like?  You know, Americans watch all of this coverage, and they're watching the family and...

MS. SHRIVER:  Hm.

MR. GREGORY:  ...wondering how everybody is.  As the president said, this wasn't unexpected, but it was dreaded.  How's everybody been doing?

MS. SHRIVER:  I think people, you know, people often say, "Well, it wasn't a surprise." Well, I think death is always a surprise.  And I've just gone through two in two weeks.  And it's always a surprise and it's always final and it's always difficult, and I think people grieve in their own way and in their own time.  So I think Teddy was one of those larger-than-life figures in our family, he was really the center of our family, and he was one of those people that you never expected to die.  You just expected him to beat the odds, you expected him to defy everybody's expectations.  And I think anybody who's been through cancer knows how up and down it is, so you hear one day it's bad, one day it's good and you, I think, always hope that this person is going to beat the odds.

MR. GREGORY:  He's been called the rock of the family, and yet you just referred to your mother, who you lost just in the past few weeks.

MS. SHRIVER:  Mm-hmm.  Yeah.

MR. GREGORY:  Another rock of the family.

MS. SHRIVER:  Yeah.

MR. GREGORY:  It's a lot of loss for this family in a short time.

MS. SHRIVER:  It's a, it's a lot of loss.  It's a lot of pain.  And--but both of them lived extraordinary lives and they lived lives that had purpose, that had meaning, that had a mission.  I remember my mother once said, "If you don't have an idea, what do you have?  Where's your idea?" She would always say to me, "What are you doing?  What--where's your idea?" And I think both of these people had great ideas, and they fought their whole lives to make them reality.  And I think one of the things that I think is so great about Mummy and Teddy is that--the duration of their fight.  I think we live in a society today that's all about instant success, instant gratification; you know, you fight for something and you expect to get it in a week.  And both Mummy and Teddy fought their entire lives, their entire lives, 40 years--50 years, in Mummy's case, to give people with intellectual disabilities the same rights as everybody else.  It took her lifetime to achieve that.  Teddy fought his entire life for health care and all of the legislation you heard talked about. And if he'd given up in a year or five years or 10 years, when many people wrote him off, none of the things that he accomplished would have been accomplished.  I, I think both of them are incredible testaments to how long it takes, how hard one has to work to accomplish something.  And I think we've lost sight of that in this country in all professions, whether it be journalism or politics.  People expect you to get elected president and solve all the problems immediately.  And I think if they look at people like Teddy or like Mummy, they see how long they had to stay in there and keep hammering away and hammering away.  And I think that that gives us hope, when people get disillusioned that they didn't get something done right away, if you look at people like that and say, "Wow, they accomplished a lot, but it took a long time."

MR. GREGORY:  You, you talk about health care.

MS. SHRIVER:  Mm-hmm.

MR. GREGORY:  I mean, as he got toward the end, as he watched what was happening in Washington, it's still an unresolved story.

MS. SHRIVER:  Right.

MR. GREGORY:  Did he feel like he was really on the verge of, of seeing this dream realized?

MS. SHRIVER:  Yes.  I think he, he thought, with the election of Barack Obama, this country was on the verge of seeing so many of his dreams realized. And I think, I think that will be realized.  I think a lot has been written about how much his voice has been missed, and I think it has.  But I think perhaps his passing will reinvigorate people to get it done.  And he gave his life to that.  But he gave his life to so many things, I mean, so he saw so much of what he fought for accomplished.

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