Memoirs and histories are narratives, moving, revealing, and poignant. Ted Kennedy’s cancer stirs feelings that are strong because of who he is as a public figure, but are even stronger because of what he indelibly represents in our national legend, the finale of the Kennedy era. He was elected to the Senate in 1962 at the age of thirty when the Kennedy family was at the peak of its political ascendancy. What he has undergone personally—the assassination of JFK and RFK, a plane crash that broke his back, the never-to-be-forgiven Chappaquiddick episode, his first wife Joan’s debilitating alcoholism, cancer in two of his three children, and the death as young men of several nephews, including JFK, Jr.—were all deep hurts that we witnessed and shared in some measure.

And yet, the response to Kennedy’s illness has been less about his life story than about his contributions to the Senate, which even his critics acknowledge have been prodigious. Young JFK was dashing, with his political gifts idealized. Young RFK was, in retrospect, almost saintly in his commitment to social and economic equality. Ted Kennedy is shambolic, a great hulk of an old man, whose identity has been untied from his earlier failings of character. What will endure are his legislative accomplishments and goals, a record his brothers could never match.

The Kennedy saga is so rich a tale of melodrama and pain that it tends to overwhelm the real meaning of what it has meant to our politics and national spirit. We are a distinctly better country for the messages, each in their own way and time that JFK, RFK, and Ted conveyed about our priorities as a people. Regularly over the presidential cycles, “the next Kennedy” has been anointed, invariably ending with disappointment. There was Ted himself in 1980, Gary Hart in 1984 and 1988, and aspects of Clinton in 1992 and John Kerry (another JFK, after all) in 2004. It has happened again this year with Barack Obama, and this time the comparison may be genuinely valid.

Sorensen certainly thinks that is the case. He says President Obama will be a transforming figure in setting the national agenda, the way JFK turned out to be. Writing in the summer of 2007, Sorensen said:

Kennedy was both nominated and elected, not by secretly outspending or out gimmicking his opponents, but by outworking and out-thinking them, especially by attracting young volunteers and first-time voters. Most of Kennedy’s opponents, like Obama’s, were fellow senators who initially dismissed him as neither a powerhouse on the senate floor nor a member of their inner circle. That mattered not to the voters. . . .

Above all, after eight years out of power and two bitter defeats, Democrats in 1960, like today, wanted a winner and Kennedy, despite his supposed handicaps, was a winner. On civil rights, the Cuban missile crisis, the race to the moon and other wishes, president Kennedy succeeded by demonstrating the same courage, imagination, compassion, judgment and ability to lead and unite a troubled country that he had shown during his presidential campaign. I believe Obama will do the same.

Obama definitely has elements of JFK’s style and eloquence as well as RFK’s appeal to blacks and younger people. Ted Kennedy clearly feels a strong bond with Obama, as does his niece, Caroline, given their endorsement and the campaigning they have done on his behalf. Senator Kennedy has been the only member of his clan able to fulfill the potential of early promise (his son Patrick, in Congress; his nephew Joe, a former congressmen; his niece Kathleen, who ran and lost for a Senate seat, have had small impact so far). It is possible that with the Obama candidacy, as Ted Sorensen once wrote (or as, he insists, helped to write), “the torch has been passed to a new generation.”

Peter Osnos is Senior Fellow for Media at The Century Foundation. Sign-up to receive Osnos’ columns weekly by email here. Read past columns here.