"This image of liberal impotence, however, can be misleading. For as the 1990s begin, Ted Kennedy sits in the catbird seat on Capitol Hill. He will not be president, and seems to know that; instead, he has channeled his energy and ambition into the Senate, a small, clubby hive of barons that perfectly suits his talents. Now fifth in seniority in the upper chamber, he has built a kind of shadow government as chairman of the Labor and Human Resources Committee and head of Judiciary and Armed Services subcommittees. Through serendipity and political acumen, he is positioned to dominate the domestic agenda for the rest of this century as few legislators have in the 200-year history of Congress. Even Kennedy's political adversaries acknowledge that as he nears the end of his third decade in the Senate his fingerprints may be found on much of the significant social legislation of the past quarter-century: voting rights, immigration reform, occupational safety, fair housing, consumer protection, and on and on. In the 100th Congress, he shoved 39 bills through his committee and into law, including a big AIDS package and restrictions on the use of lie detectors in the workplace. Of nine Democratic objectives in the Senate for this second session of the 101st Congress, five will be routed through Kennedy's Labor Committee."