Ted Kennedy made a stop through Indiana during the 1972 presidential campaign and I covered the rally in Tarkington Park in Indianapolis. I was in the press section with my colleague Brian Knowlton, now with the New York Times. In addition to local government and politics, I wrote about rock’n’roll and covering those ear-blistering concerts prepared me well for that Kennedy rally. He was a political rock star. He was there to speak on behalf of Rep. Andrew Jacobs, who was facing a tough re-election bid, and George McGovern, the presidential nominee for the Democrats.
But the crowd was there for Kennedy. He barked out a speech in staccato bursts and the crowd cheered at all of the scheduled intervals. What a pro, I thought. This dude oozes politics from his pores.It was at the end of the speech that Brian turned to me and noted something interesting about Kennedy’s talk. He was there for McGovern, had spoken for 20 minutes about the virtues of the Democratic ticket, but had never once mentioned the candidate by name.
Truly a pro. He knew there would be a massacre at the polls and didn’t want to taint himself by even mentioning the presidential candidate. That’s a great politician, I thought.
That was just a few years removed from the bridge at Chappaquiddick and was too soon for Kennedy to have rehabilitated himself for a presidential run. For two generations, he was the president in waiting. But it was not to be.
It was never the right time. After Watergate, the country wanted an outsider and got Jimmy Carter. The ill-fated 1980 campaign showed Kennedy had lost a step as he finished a humiliating second in his party to Carter. By the middle of the 1980s, he had lost the charisma war to Ronald Reagan and settled into his senatorial role as the former boy wonder aging into the role of happy warrior.
His brothers all died suddenly, in war or by assassination. Ted Kennedy had a longer time to reconcile himself to his long decline and, eventually, to accept and face death. As the patriarch-by-default, however, it was his sad duty to preside over the tragedies and excesses of the whole Kennedy bloodline. It was the price of longevity.
The press had a fascination with that family, a lurid obsession that was the equivalent of political porn.
Through the alcoholism, the Palm Beach rape, the accidents, the drugs, the drugs and the drugs, American audiences could not get enough of anything Kennedy. Ted Kennedy fought his own battles with excess but when things were at their worst, he was often at his best.
That was not always the case. Rarely had a political life been through such a symphony of scandal.
Chappaquiddick would have been the end of any other politician’s career. Perhaps it should have been the end of Kennedy’s. But once he recovered politically, it seemed, there was a new scandal – divorce, alcoholism – to be faced down. And then another one.
In death, some tributes will call him the lost president. He was the sure thing that wasn’t.
It was a life bursting with trial and tragedy. Perhaps it was not unusual in that regard. But the spectacle for this family was played out in the tabloids and it was the sad duty of the last surviving son to hold things in line the best he could.
He retained the family’s oratorical magic. When I think of him, I’ll recall his stirring eulogy for his brother Robert in 1968, and his concession speech at the 1980 Democratic Convention.
After running a brutal and somewhat mean-spirited campaign against Carter, he gave up with a speech as moving as any political speech I ever heard. Looking back, you can see it as a farewell to the old days of Kennedy politics and his public realization that he would not fulfill what those of us in the press often called the family destiny. But as a skilled politician and speechmaker, he knew how to tantalize and hold out hope. “The dream shall never die,” he said. Then he waved, stepped back from the podium, and it was all over.
