Trivia quiz:

The lost child wanted only a home and family. The metal man wanted a vulnerable heart, and the straw man a reason for being.

What essence of identity was the lion stalking?

Courage.

It was Teddy's answer, too. In the end, the Lion of the Senate found his identity in courage, just as he found a home in his family, the love of his life in humanity and his reason for being in public service.

In the bustling house where he grew up, Teddy was the youngest of four brothers and five sisters. The arts of play, teamwork and compromise must have come intuitively. He must have learned how to stand his ground, too.

It took courage to set out in the footsteps of his brother, taking the U.S. Senate seat Jack had vacated to become the first Catholic Irish-American president. Surely, those shoes would never be filled twice by one family.

And they never were.

The thousand days of Camelot ended with Jack's assassination. His death hammered at the Kennedy family, posing the usual existential questions plus this chilling one: What obsessed hatred could pierce the life of the world's best-protected man? It was enough to give one pause.

Four years later, Bobby stepped up to claim Jack's mantle and take on poverty, racism and most of all, that damned war. But then Bobby, too, was slain by a bullet.

Conspiracy theorists can't believe it's possible that these two powerful men from the same family were both gunned down by men acting alone. But Teddy believed it, whether based on the evidence or whether in part because considering the alternative would be too paralyzing.

Yes, Ramona, it's more than possible that Teddy devoted himself to the health and wellbeing of others in part because he felt responsible for the death of Mary Jo Kopechne. If so, he did his penance in public service for the rest of his life.

Even before Chappaquiddick, Teddy had stood up courageously for civil rights, voting rights, women's rights, educational rights, worker rights, and health care rights for the elderly.

After Bobby's death, while still passing landmark legislation, he fought alcohol and philandering for two decades until finally he faced the ghosts and dispelled the demons. He became the Lion of the Senate.

But this is supposed to be about what Obama could learn from Teddy. So here's the point:

The worst of the Far Right scoff at Ted Kennedy. They consider him a cowardly lion who never came to face himself or Mary Jo's ghost. But they are wrong.

Anyone who takes a public stand for others at the risk of personal harm to himself is no coward.

Anyone who spends a lifetime bettering the life of a nation is no coward.

Anyone who enters a confessional to wrestle for his soul is no coward.

Anyone who faces death often and intimately but still chooses to give their life in service to others is no coward.

Anyone who makes an issue important without making it personal is no coward.

Anyone who achieves so much for so many is no coward.

And anyone who can accept themselves as human but have the courage to finally drive out the demons is no coward.

Those are things Obama can learn from the Lion of the Senate. A home and family, intelligence and a heart: all these are insufficient for leadership unless one also finds courage. Teddy possessed all the qualities that Dorothy and her companions searched for -- the same qualities all of us search for and find in various proportions. It's just that Teddy had hearth and home, intelligence and heart to spare.

Most of all, Teddy had courage.

He could have chosen the life of a jet-setting playboy that his family's wealth and some of his early behavior made easy for him, but he didn't. He saw the same Zapruder footage we all have and the same shaky film of a hotel kitchen where Bobby's lifeblood drained away -- plenty of reason to think somebody had it in for Kennedys -- but he chose to walk in footsteps of slain brothers and roar for common people, so much so that he was marked as the most vilified "librul" of our time.

Don't get me wrong, I think Obama has courage, too. But to be the president we voted for, the one we know deep down he might be, he'll have to combine Teddy's touch for bipartisanship with Teddy's greatest asset: the courage that comes from looking death in the eye and realizing it has no power over what we do in life.