Kennedy 80 Sunrise

Illustration of a yellow sun on a white background with blue and red text. 

The biographer John A. Farrell wrote of Ted Kennedy’s (1932-2009) presidential campaign in a 2022 Time’s article, noting that Kennedy’s quest for redemption has similarities to Joseph Conrad’s titular character in Lord Jim (1900): “’I shall be faithful,’ he said…letting his eyes wander upon the waters, whose blueness had changed to a gloomy purple under the fires of sunset.”

Sun and sunset remain a theme to Kennedy’s presidential run. In 1980, Kennedy challenged then-incumbent President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination. The self-proclaimed “cause of his life” was universally accessible health care, and he balanced his wealth and fame with philanthropy well. Still, Kennedy had pleaded guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident; in 1969, he drove his car off a bridge, resulting in the death of Mary Jo Kopechne, his female passenger. The incident and its aftermath hindered his chances of becoming president and, in 1980, Kennedy lost the presidential campaign to Carter.

Thus is the sad irony of this button. Kennedy was nicknamed “the Lion of the Senate,” which brings to mind the sun, as the constellation Leo—“the lion”—is associated with the sun. Kennedy used sunrise symbolism in his campaign materials, and yet, the presidential campaign, in many ways, hastened the “sunset” of his higher political aspirations.