The passing of Edward Kennedy is the end of a special kind of era.

For many Baby Boomers, their first introduction to the exciting world of politics was the Inauguration of his brother John as President in January 1961. Politics was then seen as an honourable profession with a belief that political leaders could actually work for the betterment of human society. People paid high taxes in those days (the highest marginal tax rate was 87cents in the US$ in the conservative Eisenhower years of the 1950s) and people could see via the New Deal and winning World War II what a united country mobilized by a government could achieve. There was a sense that progress was possible and that we were living on a New Frontier.

But that idealism later disappeared. It was kept alive after the assassination in November 1963 by the young Kennedy brothers Robert (assassinated in 1968) and then Ted.

Meanwhile the mood of politics began to change. The political spectrum moved to the right and became far more focussed on making a virtue out of selfishness. New Right economic rationalism, which has dominated politics in the English-speaking world since the late 1970s, has changed the focus of politics. The state is no longer about assisting society in general - it is simply the stage for competition to see who can make the most money for themselves.

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John Kennedy in his January 1961 Inauguration speech spoke about "not asking what your country can do for you - but what you can do for the country." That idealism gradually died away. Instead, the New Right says forget about the country - think only of yourself. As Ronald Reagan once said, "the government is not the solution - it is the problem". Mrs Thatcher later famously declared that she did not know what the word "society" meant - she knew only about herself and her own family. The Clinton Administration later dismantled many of the Roosevelt New Deal welfare reforms. Bush and his mates looted the country and wrecked the US's standing overseas.

Therefore in the US, where voting is not compulsory, more Americans vote in "American Idol" than in presidential elections. Politics is about personal gain - rather than public good.

Ted Kennedy was therefore a reminder that a better alternative had once existed.

For example, 47 million Americans still lack access to decent healthcare. It is notable that one of his first major speeches was on that subject - and that one of his last major speeches (when he knew that his own time was running out) was still on that subject. The Obama Administration (due to the vagaries of the US election system) has now lost one crucial vote for the healthcare reform package in the Senate.

I met Ted Kennedy twice. I was living in Boston in the summer of 1970 and was recruited for the early stage of his Senate re-election campaign. I met him again in Geneva in 1975 when I was at the Review Conference of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and he flew to Geneva for a short visit to encourage greater attention to the cause of nuclear non-proliferation.

He truly was a charismatic figure. He knew how to make a person feel very important albeit in a very short conversation (a technique that the British Royal Family also have).

Perhaps that is another reason why he was special - he really was a charismatic politician and not just a synthetic figure created by media hype and spin.

Keith Suter