Kennedy was a stalwart backer of President Clinton during the 1998 Lewinsky scandal , often trying to cheer up the president when he was gloomiest and getting him to add past Kennedy staffer Greg Craig to his defense team , which helped improve the president 's fortunes . In the trial after the 1999 impeachment of Bill Clinton , Kennedy voted to acquit Clinton on both charges , saying " Republicans in the House of Representatives , in their partisan vendetta against the President , have wielded the impeachment power in precisely the way the framers rejected , recklessly and without regard for the Constitution or the will of the American people . " On July 16 , 1999 , Kennedy 's nephew John F. Kennedy Jr. was killed when his Piper Saratoga light aircraft crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Martha 's Vineyard . John Jr. 's wife Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy and his sister-in-law were also killed in the accident . Ted was the family patriarch , and he and President Clinton consoled his extended family at the public memorial service . He paraphrased William Butler Yeats by saying of his nephew : " We dared to think , in that other Irish phrase , that this John Kennedy would live to comb gray hair , with his beloved Carolyn by his side . But like his father , he had every gift but length of years . " Ted now served as a role model for Maria Shriver , Kerry Kennedy Cuomo , Robert F. Kennedy Jr. , Joseph Patrick Kennedy II , and other family members . '' The Boston Globe '' wrote of the changed role : " It underscored the evolution that surprised so many people who knew the Kennedys : Teddy , the baby of the family , who had grown into a man who could sometimes be dissolute and reckless , had become the steady , indispensable patriarch , the one the family turned to in good times and bad . " Kennedy had an easy time with his re-election to the Senate in 2000 , as Republican lawyer and entrepreneur Jack E. Robinson III was sufficiently damaged by his past personal record that Republican state party officials refused to endorse him . Kennedy got 73 percent of the general election vote , with Robinson splitting the rest with Libertarian Carla Howell . During the long , disputed post-presidential election battle in Florida in 2000 , Kennedy supported Vice President Al Gore 's legal actions . After the bitter contest was over , many Democrats in Congress did not want to work with incoming President George W. Bush . Kennedy , however , saw Bush as genuinely interested in a major overhaul of elementary and secondary education , Bush saw Kennedy as a potential major ally in the Senate , and the two partnered together on the legislation . Kennedy accepted provisions governing mandatory student testing and teacher accountability that other Democrats and the National Education Association did not like , in return for increased funding levels for education . The No Child Left Behind Act was passed by Congress in May and June 2001 and signed into law by Bush in January 2002 . Kennedy soon became disenchanted with the implementation of the act , however , saying for 2003 that it was $ 9 billion short of the $ 29 billion authorized . Kennedy said , " The tragedy is that these long overdue reforms are finally in place , but the funds are not , " and accused Bush of not living up to his personal word on the matter . Other Democrats concluded that Kennedy 's penchant for cross-party deals had gotten the better of him . The White House defended its spending levels given the context of two wars going on
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John F. Kennedy Jr. plane crash
Ted Kennedy