Ted Kennedy will always be a huge and complex figure for the country, for Democrats, for progressives, and for women.

Amid the barrage of obituaries and reflections on the Senator's death, I received a statement from Ellen Malcolm, president and founder of EMILY’s List, the largest political action committee in the nation for pro-choice, Democratic women: “I am deeply saddened by the loss of Senator Kennedy. He was a true champion for women and families in the United States and around the world," she wrote. Malcolm pointed to Kennedy's advocacy for the Equal Rights Amendment and Title IX, and his leadership in passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. "He will be truly missed," she declared.

At the same time that Kennedy championed women's rights, his legendary sexual escapades rendered him embarrassingly mute during the Clarence Thomas hearings, when women's anger over sexist and exploitive "bad boy" behavior by men in power boiled over.

In the end, though, his legislative record trumps all.

Kennedy was an elite insider, and a pillar of the Washington Establishment. But he fought for increasing the minimum wage and expanding access to health care, particularly for poor children.

He called universal health care "the cause of my life." He was instrumental in achieving many concrete health care reforms, including adding prescription drug benefits to Medicare, and passing the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990.

He worked tirelessly to pass the mental health parity bill that requires HMOs to cover mental health and substance abuse along with other medical conditions.

"He had a powerful sensitivity to human emotion and his life writ large the range of human experience: great triumphs and sudden reversals," progressive Representative Dennis Kucinich--possibly the biggest outsider in the U.S. Congress--said in his statement on Kennedy's death. "Yes, he made himself into one of the greatest Senators. But Ted Kennedy was more than a great Senator. He was a great friend.”

George W. Bush also described Kennedy as a "friend" and "a man of tremendous courage, remarkable strength and powerful spirit."

By working with everyone, Kennedy drafted and passed important legislation.

At the same time, he took clear, unapologetic ideological stands. He supported gay marriage, was an early and vocal opponent of the Iraq War, and, as head of the Judiciary Committee, stood up against Bush's rightwing nominees.

For decades, when his Democratic colleagues were running to the right and ducking for ideological cover, he was the only visible, national figure who still proudly carried the liberal banner.

In 2005 I was one of a handful of reporters who met with Kennedy in his Capitol "hideaway" office, to discuss Bush's Supreme Court nominees. Kennedy was working his access to the White House and Republicans in Congress to push for information and input to try to get the best possible nominee. Most of all, he was trying to persuade the White House to respect the Constitutional process, instead of withholding information and putting on faux hearings designed to reveal as little as possible.

It was this understanding of how our democratic system is supposed to work that earned him the respect of his colleagues.

As a veteran of twenty previous Supreme Court nomination processes, including the one in which he helped put Thurgood Marshall on the Court--and set up the "liberal, activist" judicial legacy the Republicans have been running against ever since--Kennedy knew the process inside out.

Despite being a direct-mail gold mine for Republicans, his name being synonymous with big-government liberalism, he earned deference from his rivals.

That makes him a good model for President Obama.

Obama has been closely linked to Kennedy since the 2008 campaign. During the primary, it was a big moment when he received the Senator's endorsement. Since taking office, the Obama White House has benefitted from comparisons to the Kennedy family's glamour and panache.

The Right used the comparisons to attack Obama as "more liberal than Ted Kennedy." But it was Kennedy's pragmatism and his willingness to reach across the aisle that Obama most admired.

And now, Kennedy has died at the same time that health care reform is heating up as the major national issue.

Already, reform advocates are saying that Congress should pass reform as a tribute to him. But it will only be a fitting tribute if the reform is real.

While the right has organized to bash Obama for his "socialist" plan, industry appears to have achieved everything it wanted, exacting promises from the White House to drop the key elements of reform: negotiating better prices on drugs, and running a meaningful, competitive "public option."

At this crucial moment Obama should take a lesson from Kennedy: Stand your ideological ground against the critics, don't take your eye off the ball when it comes to meaningful legislative accomplishments, and, most of all, don't confuse being willing to work with the other side with giving away the store.