The Kennedy Challenge
It is smoky and sweltering in the high-ceilinged Pennsylvania Room at the Sheraton Hotel on John F. Kennedy Boulevard in Philadelphia. Some 300 Democrats have paid $250 each to attend a fund-raising reception, but instead of bunching around the bar and the hors d'oeuvres table, they are jostling for position at the door, waiting for the main attraction. "I do hope I can just see him," an elderly woman gushes.
Suddenly, Ted Kennedy strides into the room, his flushed face beaming and his right hand reaching out. "Ooh," squeals an elegantly coiffed woman. "He shook my hand. Did you see that? This hand right here." Kennedy sweeps through the room, bellowing in his Boston accent, "Hi, how are you, good to see you." "Go, Teddy!" someone yells. Kennedy gives a short pep talk for the object of the reception, former Congressman William Green. "I want to introduce the man who will be the next mayor of Philadelphia," Kennedy says. Green takes the microphone and shouts: "I want to thank the man who will be the next. . ." He is drowned out by laughter and applause.
An hour later, showered and changed into a fresh dark-blue suit and white shirt, Kennedy is on the podium in the Sheraton's grand ballroom. He has been working on his address until the last moment, and sometimes he stumbles over the notes in the margins, but he is one of the most effective stump speakers in the country, and his vigorous attack on Jimmy Carter comes through loud and clear. Though he does not mention the President by name, the words leader and leadership keep recurring, 17 times in all. This is Ted Kennedy's main theme, tonight and in the long months ahead. Scoffing at Carter's suggestion that the Government's powers to solve problems are limited, Kennedy sounds a more ebullient tone: "I reject those views completely. They are counsels of defeat and despair, excuses for leadership that has failed to do its job." He echoes, deliberately and inevitably, the older brothers who were assassinated. "We can light those beacon fires again," he promises. "From the hilltops of America, we can send another call to arms, a call for more effective action on all the challenges we face." The crowd of 600 partisan Democrats roars in approval, and when Kennedy strides off the stage, the six-piece band in the balcony plays music from Camelot.
Twenty minutes after that, at a rally of 3,000 working-class Democrats in South Philadelphia, Kennedy clambers onto a table. He has no text. His sentences are simpler. His speech strikes a booming rhythm, and the crowd chants in response to him. "At other times in our history when we were facing problems, we didn't throw up our hands in despair." "No!" shouts the crowd. "We didn't talk about malaise in the American spirit." "No!" comes the reply. "We rolled up our sleeves." "Yes!" the people shout. "And set out on the job to be done."
"Yes!" "And we can do it again." The crowd begins to chant: "We want Teddy! Teddy! Teddy!"*
The last of the Kennedy brothers, the youngest, the most vulnerable, the most thoroughly political, is finally running for President. For more than a decade, he has distorted American presidential politics, three times a possible candidate and three times pulling back. "I would like to be President," he said at one point, "but not at this time." Now, disdainful of Carter's leadership, he has decided that the time is right. After a considerable amount of coy public indecision, he is expected to announce this week that he has formed a campaign committee, headed by Brother-in-Law Stephen Smith, 52, who helped run John Kennedy's presidential campaign in 1960. Then, barring some highly unlikely event, Edward Moore Kennedy, 47, will formally declare before Thanksgiving that he is a candidate for President of the U.S.
In advance of that announcement, Ted Kennedy is already putting the screws to Democratic Senators and Congressmen, competing with Carter for their endorsements. The pressure from both rivals is heavy and direct, and some Democratic politicians try to please both. As Kennedy left the Senate floor one day, a well-known Democrat who has already announced his support for Carter beckoned the Senator aside. The Democrat passed Kennedy a list of people in his home state who might help him campaign. Said Kennedy: "He's playing both sides. There's a lot of that. People are staying loose."
Kennedy's formal announcement will open a major new chapter in the alternately tragic and triumphant saga of the nation's most eminent modern political dynasty. Americans have gone through the bright hopes of Camelot and the dark night of two Kennedy assassinations. They were both titillated and dismayed by the spectacular dramas of Jackie's widowhood and remarriage and by Mary Jo Kopechne's death at Chappaquiddick.
They have even begun to follow the tribulations of a whole new generation: young Teddy's cancer, David's drug problems and Joe's driving accidents. Now, the Senator from Massachusetts is reasserting the family's claim to the White House.
Not in this century has a challenger overthrown an incumbent President of his own party. But Ted Kennedy thinks he is the natural force--indeed the only possible Democratic force--to fill that vacuum.
Every poll shows him with nearly a 2-to-l lead over Carter among Democrats and independents. Carter has disappointed almost every constituency that put him in office. And those constituencies, especially the blacks, Hispanics and working-class white ethnics who form the spine of the Democratic Party, seem ready to invest many of their hopes in Ted Kennedy.
They have done so partly because of a nostalgia for his brother's Administration, for Camelot. Says California Pollster Mervin Field: "Kennedy's popularity is an accumulated, generational perception. He is part of the American culture." No matter that John Kennedy blundered into the Bay of Pigs and first widened the war in Viet Nam and saw almost none of his main legislative proposals pass Congress. Americans have a sense, says Theodore H. White, the chronicler of Presidents, "that Jack Kennedy's Administration was the last one in which it seemed that politics could give people control of their destiny."
In Florida, TIME National Political Correspondent John Stacks was interviewing State Comptroller Gerald Lewis about Kennedy. Reports Stacks: "Soon it was clear that he was not just talking about Ted Kennedy but about John Kennedy and Bob Kennedy and Camelot and the antiwar movement and God knows what other half-remembered moments of modern Democratic politics. Had he ever met Ted Kennedy? 'No, I haven't,' he answered, and it made no difference to him that this is a different Kennedy."
But this is indeed a different Kennedy. Critics have said with considerable truth that no matter what his accomplishments in the Senate, Ted has neither John Kennedy's sharp intelligence nor Robert Kennedy's passionate convictions. He carries with him the burden of Chappaquiddick, a reputation for womanizing and the problems of separation from his troubled wife. But his biggest liability may be his image of being a big-spending liberal at a time when many public opinion analysts believe Americans have become more conservative. Opponents attach considerable significance to a Boston
Globe poll in September of New Hampshire Democrats, which showed Kennedy's 58% support dropped five points when voters were reminded of Chappaquiddick and twelve points when they were told of Kennedy's support for expensive Government programs.
No matter how optimistic Kennedy supporters are at the moment and how high the polls place him, Carter vs. Kennedy will be a long and bruising battle.
Many Democrats fear the party will be so badly split by it that the White House will be lost to the Republicans. On the other hand, many Republicans dread the possibility of a Kennedy victory. Says House Republican Leader John Rhodes:
"I'd help Carter, if I could. I don't want Ted Kennedy. He's tougher than hell.
He's got mystique--the name, the two dead brothers, the money. It adds up to trouble."
The White House strategy is to hit Kennedy early and hard. Last week Carter used ridicule to attack Kennedy. Said the President, at a dinner for supporters: "I asked my mama. She said it was O.K. My wife, Rosalynn, said she'd be willing to live in the White House for four more years." The point, said a Carter operative, is to test whether Kennedy has "the stomach to go through the humiliating, deflating experience of fighting for the nomination." Says another Carter aide of Kennedy: "He's going to get clawed. He's going to bleed, and then he's going to start dropping in the polls." Carter, who has already made public claims that he is not a man who panics, recently told a staffer, "Kennedy has no idea what he's in for." If not, the Senator has only to look around him. While campaigning in Louisville two weeks ago, he was confronted not only with placards bearing Mary Jo's name, misspelled as Kopechna, but also with a dummy of a female corpse and the sign KILLER.
Kennedy says he has thought it all out. He has been through so much already, he feels, that he does not see how this could be worse. "Maybe I'm wrong," he says. "Maybe it will be a lot worse than I think." Friends say that Kennedy is fatalistic about his life and about the special danger that he faces in running for President. For that reason, his family and closest friends refused their counsel when he asked for advice about getting into the race. To an outsider, one of them would admit only, "It's really scary." Says Kennedy: "I know how they feel. That's why it's a very personal decision."
Why does Kennedy want to run for President now, when he could have waited until 1984, as some supporters urged him to do? Kennedy circled the question carefully in an interview with TIME Washington Bureau Chief Robert Ajemian. The Senator was wary of sounding too self-serving, but he soon raised a point that he rarely discusses. "Because I'm ready now," he said, looking straight ahead. "I've made my own record. I'm a man of the Senate, and I can be judged on that." He explained that it was important to him personally that he put some distance between himself and his brothers. "I'm proud of them, obviously," he said, "but I don't want nostalgia to be a part of this thing. Now the criticism will be aimed at me." He seemed pleased at that, sure of his own thought. Said he: "I'm the person who will be judged, not them."
That process of judgment has already begun, and among the things it will strip away are uncertainties about exactly what Kennedy's policies are. In this area, his opponents see great opportunities. Says Democratic National Chairman John
White: "I just know that there is a built-in factor of people not knowing what Kennedy stands for." Asks a White House aide: "What happens when people realize that Kennedy's voting record is more liberal than George McGovern's?"
The fact is, Kennedy's and Carter's views are close on many issues, and there is considerable truth to the Republican wisecrack that "if you liked Jimmy, you'll love Teddy." Kennedy ranks fourth among Senators in support of Administration positions on roll-call votes; so far this year, he has backed Carter 85 times and opposed him only twelve. The similarities in their positions led California's Jerry Brown to ask, "Why is Kennedy running? What is his debate with Carter? The only issue is career advancement."
Still, by two widely followed barometers, Kennedy is the Senate's liberal standard bearer. Last year, as usual, the Americans for Democratic Action gave him a nearly 100% approval rating for his voting record on major legislation, while the Americans for Constitutional Action graded him at close to zero.
Yet Kennedy for several years has avoided the liberal label. It is a designation that has fallen on hard times since the demise of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. Congressional liberals once took pride in supporting vigorous Government action to solve the nation's economic and social problems. But although most Americans still favor a high level of Government services, the increasing cost, waste and bureaucracy surrounding these services inspire many citizens to oppose Government operations that do not directly benefit them. Moreover, many of today's disputes have gone beyond the classic liberal-conservative debate. In a conflict between environmental damage and a loss of jobs, for example, there is no clear liberal position.
Lately the word liberal has become something of a political epithet, meaning that the target is an impractical spendthrift. Kennedy's staff has taken to calling him a "pragmatist," which is supposed to convey the impression that he is a hard-headed problem solver not bound by any ideology. That definition, too, can be read in more than one way. Says an old Kennedy friend, conservative Republican Congressman Barber Conable of New York: "Ted is the son of Joe Kennedy and the brother of Jack and Bobby. Like them, he accommodates himself to the prevailing views."
Kennedy often seems to be trying to accommodate himself to as broad a range of views as possible. Sometimes he sounds much like a New Frontier liberal. To Wall Street investors in New York, and again at a rally in Louisville, he said that Americans "are not asking much from Government," and then went on to define "not much" as jobs, moderate supermarket prices, reasonable mortgage rates, good schools, a healthy environment and safe streets. Providing all that in today's world economy is quite an order, even for a pragmatist. On other occasions, Kennedy has seemed to be harking back to a 19th century form of liberalism. In his New York speech, he said: "We are making a clean break with the New Deal and even the 1960s. We reject the idea that Government knows best across the board, that public planning is inherently superior or more effective than private action. There is now a growing consensus, which I share, that Government intervention in the economy should come as only a last resort."
This general principle provides for considerable flexibility. On the one hand, Kennedy was an avid proponent of deregulating the airlines, and he is now sponsoring legislation to deregulate the trucking industry.
On the other hand, Kennedy wants the Government to be more aggressive in intervening to stop large corporations from dominating their markets. He has co-sponsored a bill that would greatly restrict mergers among large corporations. He urges more vigorous enforcement of existing antitrust laws, arguing that some big corporations, like Big Government, are "too large and unresponsive."
On other issues, Kennedy has blurred his positions or moved them toward the right. In January he endorsed Carter's proposed overall fiscal 1980 spending of $531 billion, with a deficit of about $29 billion. Kennedy urged, however, that $4 billion be cut from the defense budget--he did not say exactly what he would trim--and spent on domestic needs, such as health. But by the time the Senate voted on the budget, Kennedy had changed his mind about reducing Pentagon spending. Far from cutting the defense budget, he voted to increase it to $141.2 billion, $18.5 billion more than Carter's original proposal. Said conservative Democrat Ernest Rollings of South Carolina to Kennedy as they left the Senate floor: "I saw you vote for that, Ted. You ain't so bad. There's hope for you yet." Other Democrats thought otherwise. Complained Budget Committee Chairman Edmund Muskie of Maine: "Like a good New England sailor, Kennedy has learned to tack with the wind." Kennedy did so, moreover, without explaining whether he wants to get the extra money for the Pentagon by cutting domestic programs or by increasing the budget deficit.
Kennedy has also shifted on national health insurance. Originally, he wanted to replace all private programs with a comprehensive Government insurance plan that would cost an estimated $130 billion a year. He now proposes that employers be required to broaden the coverage they already provide for workers and then-families and that the Government pick up the medical bills of everyone else. Carter's approach is somewhat similar, but he would have the program adopted in steps over five to ten years. Kennedy reckons the cost to the Government in the first year at $28.6 billion more than it now pays for health care; his critics say it could hit $45 billion.
Kennedy has no basic disagreement with Carter's economic views, but like Carter has given no clear idea of how he would solve inflation and other economic problems. He does charge that Carter has not been pushing his policies aggressively enough. Says Kennedy: "I believe those economists who say that psychology contributes at least 50% to the state of the economy. This economy has been managed erratically. Problems weren't seen ahead of time." For instance, he says, he would have established wage and price guidelines earlier than Carter and backed them with strong pressure from the White House. Kennedy is more inclined than Carter to propose a tax cut early next year to stimulate the economy.
On energy, Kennedy originally opposed ending Government regulation of crude oil prices, calling decontrol "the worst form of rationing because it is rationing by price." Nowadays, however, he seems resigned to Carter's decision to abolish price controls. Kennedy is also skeptical of Carter's synthetic-fuels program. The Senator favors encouraging conservation, and he has proposed making available $34 billion in grants and loans to homeowners and industry for energy-saving projects.
Politicians are divided over whether Kennedy is hurting himself by edging toward the center on too many issues. Many agree with liberal Democrat Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin that "it is inevitable in a campaign for you to moderate your views." Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont disagrees. Says he: "People where I come from want their leaders to take a position. Those who try to shift with the wind tend to lose."
Though Kennedy's overall philosophy sometimes seems uncertain, there is no doubt about his skill at the profession of politics. He has a natural instinct for the feel and flavor of it, the ebb and flow of events, the camaraderie of the people involved. His expertise is both instinctive and the result of years of training, first under the aegis of his brothers and then in the Senate. He became a Senator in 1963 at the age of 30, almost inheriting the seat that had once been held by his brother Jack and then kept warm by a Kennedy lieutenant until Teddy reached the Senate's minimum legal age. ("If your name was Edward Moore your candidacy would be a joke," his defeated Democratic rival said bitterly during the 1962 primary campaign.)
At first, Kennedy impressed colleagues mostly by his unexpected deference to his seniors. Gradually, however, he increased in stature and influence. Then the death of his brother Robert heaped personal responsibilities on him, making him the leader of the Kennedy clan, and that made him a more serious figure in the Senate as well. He carved out areas of expertise in civil rights and law enforcement, hired better staffers, did his homework and became a sharp debater.
In 1969 he was elected Democratic whip, making him second in command to Majority Leader Mike Mansfield. In the aftermath of Chappaquiddick, however, Kennedy became distracted, neglected the job and left too many of his responsibilities to the No. 3 Democratic leader, Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Byrd did the work so well that he upset Kennedy for the post in 1971.
Kennedy joked afterward about the defeat. Said he at a Washington dinner:
"I want to thank the 28 Senators who promised to vote for me--and especially the 24 who actually did." But he was nonetheless shocked by the loss. He pulled himself together and became a very energetic Senator. At one point, he served on about three dozen committees and subcommittees, more than any other Senate member, and too many to be efficient, as he later learned. Senators on both sides of the aisle have come to respect him as an able legislator, on the Senate floor and in its hearing rooms. Republican Majority Leader Howard Baker calls him "one of the half-dozen most effective people in the Senate." Many of his colleagues agree.
Says Wisconsin's Nelson: "Early on, he frequently wasn't prepared. He took on too many issues. That's not so the last half-dozen years. He works hard. He does his homework."
Since Kennedy became chairman of the Judiciary Committee last January, he has impressed other Democrats by his ability to get along with the committee's ranking Republican, former Segregationist Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. They were able to compromise, for example, on the testy question of whether nominees for federal judgeships should be required to resign from private clubs that discriminate against blacks. The problem arose over Carter's nomination of a Tennessee jurist, Bailey Brown, to the U.S. Court of Appeals. Brown had a strong pro-civil rights record as a district court judge, but he stubbornly refused to resign from the all-white University Club of Memphis. Thurmond and Kennedy worked out a compromise: Brown agreed to stop participating in club activities, and Kennedy and Thurmond cosigned a letter suggesting vaguely that it was "inadvisable" for a judicial nominee to belong to a club that "engages in invidious discrimination."
Kennedy spends an unusual amount of his time at Senate committee hearings.
On one typical day this fall, he started work at 7:30 a.m., going over a briefing book with three staffers at his home, a rambling, 16-room gray-shingled house in McLean, Va., that overlooks the Potomac River and is surrounded by five wooded acres. The subject was immigration, and as Kennedy flipped through the pages, he read questions he had scrawled in blue ink the night before. He kept asking for obscure facts, almost as if he were probing to make certain that the aides knew what they were talking about. Says one:
"He wants to be told how the hearing will go, almost minute by minute, so he knows what he is going to get out of it." Adds another: "Heaven help you if you are unprepared. He has a very sharp temper, and he uses it very effectively." The questioning continued as Kennedy and two aides rode in a Secret Service black limousine (driven by an agent) on the 20-min. trip to the Dirksen Office Building.
As Kennedy strode toward his six-room corner suite on the second floor, accompanied by half a dozen dark-suited Secret Service men, TV crews in the corridor snapped on their lights and correspondents crowded around to ask questions. All they got was a three-second glimpse of him closing the door. After a quick huddle with more aides, Kennedy popped across the hallway--on went the TV lights--and into the paneled Judiciary Committee hearing room. There was a hush in the audience and then an excited buzz. Kennedy walked quickly to his seat and rapped the committee into session. With his half-rimmed glasses perched on his nose, he read an opening statement in a sure, powerful voice, but lapsed into the stammering, wandering style that sometimes makes his questions or unrehearsed remarks seem relatively incoherent. Said he at one point to the witnesses: "The case we, uh, that has to be made, and I'd like to see what each of you has to say on this, is uh, why should we do it for Mexico and why not others?" (Kennedy at times seems uneasy with statistical charts and figures, jumbling them and obfuscating his points. He also has a disconcerting habit of leaving sentences unfinished, though this has the advantage of allowing his listeners to finish them, in their own way.)
The hearing continued for two hours, until the wall buzzer sounded and the stars on the clock lit up, signaling a roll call vote on the Senate floor. Kennedy recessed the hearing and walked briskly down the long corridor, with Secret Service agents brushing aside people ahead of him. Photographers, TV crews and aides carrying briefing books followed close behind. But Kennedy shed most of them at the private elevator for Senators.
On the Senate floor, Kennedy did not join in the debate, though he is a master at it, acting solemn one moment and laughing at himself the next. (One afternoon, he thundered at Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah, "No, I will not yield, sir," and made a great show of being enraged.
When the exchange was over, he drifted toward Hatch's desk and good-naturedly bantered with him for a few minutes.) This day, Kennedy merely cast his vote, for emergency financial aid to help the poor and elderly pay their energy bills. He then returned to his office for more work on pending legislation, until it was time to go home, at 7:30 p.m. As usual, he did not leave the Dirksen building for lunch. His fare: soup and a salad with low-calorie dressing, in keeping with the diet that holds his 6-ft. 1-in. frame down to 205 Ibs., 20 Ibs. lower than last February. Dieting does not come easily. Kennedy has been known to search his staffers' desks for peanuts and crackers. Ethel Kennedy says he can describe a meal with so much gusto that "you feel you've eaten it yourself."
Two or three evenings a week, Kennedy holds staff meetings at his home.
Otherwise, unless he has to appear at a political function, he almost always stays home with Son Patrick, 12. Daughter Kara, 19, is a sophomore at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn.; Son Edward Jr., 18, is a freshman at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.
TIME's Robert Ajemian recently joined Ted and Patrick for dinner at Kennedy's home. His report: he Senator stood in the bedroom, dressing for a night swim and needling Patrick about the cold pool waiting outside. Kennedy slipped off the canvas back brace he usually wears under his suit, put on his khaki trunks and flipped on a small color TV set. Suddenly Jimmy Carter's face appeared on the screen, speaking of politics and 1980. Kennedy, his arms folded and a hand at his mouth, watched intently, never moving. As Carter spoke, the son looked back and forth from the screen to his father's face. When Carter finished, Kennedy, still impassive, switched off the set and the two of them headed outdoors.
"A Secret Service man swiftly appeared, aiming a flashlight at the wet flagstone walk. Shouting a challenge to his boy, Kennedy dived into the cold water and swam half a dozen lengths. He is still in good shape, his body thick but not flabby, the mat of hair on his chest and back now gray. Every morning he either swims or jogs a mile and does 25 pushups.
"Dinner was ham and green beans.
Afterward, Kennedy and his son played a game of Eights, rushing against the clock because the Senator was due to speak that night at a fund raiser for Indiana Senator Birch Bayh at Ethel Kennedy's house at Hickory Hill, about a mile away. There he moved easily through the rooms, recognizing some of the faces from his brother Bob's 1968 primary victory in Indiana. Reminders of other Kennedy campaigns happen frequently, and the reunions always give him a lift."
It is a bittersweet life. For all of Kennedy's bouncing self-confidence in public, intimates say that in private he appears troubled by the breakdown of his marriage and his lingering sense of guilt over Kopechne's death at Chappaquiddick.
When his marriage began to turn bad, there were reports of dalliances with New York Socialite Amanda Burden, Skier Suzy Chaffee, Washington Socialite Page Lee Hufty and Margaret Trudeau, among others. In the past year, however, there has been no report of an affair. Insists Kennedy: "It doesn't happen." Kennedy carefully insulates himself, staying far away from the Washington social scene. Says Washington Star Gossip Columnist Betty Beale: "He never frequents parties and never goes out. To have seen him recently three times in one week was astounding, absolutely astounding."
In the evening, Kennedy usually works in his library, sitting in a high-backed wing chair near a crackling blaze in a stone fireplace. The floor is covered with a gray fur rug. Near him is a white phone, and taped to it is a list of his family's home numbers. When he is not dipping into his attache case for staff papers, he places calls to friends and relatives, including Joan. Says an intimate: "They talk regularly about all sorts of things--decisions about the house, the children and school." At 11 p.m., he watches the TV news and then retires to a king-size bed.
Kennedy finds his weekend relaxation within the clan. He drops by Hickory Hill from time to time, often leading Ethel's younger children, Chris, 16, Max, 14, Doug, 12, and Rory, 10, through tennis or touch football, or a kind of hide-and-seek called sardines. One evening the uncle squeezed between attic walls on the third floor and hid behind a chimney. Says Ethel: "He has a sixth sense of knowing when my kids are alone and need him."
Of his three sisters, the closest to Kennedy is Jean Smith, but he frequently calls Eunice Shriver and Pat Lawford and keeps up with their children. He tries to attend all family birthdays and graduations. Ted's relationship with Jackie Onassis is more formal, and the two are not often in contact. He sees his 89-year-old mother regularly. Ethel speaks admiringly of the gallant way Ted escorts Rose Kennedy into the homes of her Palm Beach friends. Says Ethel: "I don't know many men who show that kind of constant affection."
Kennedy has a well-deserved reputation for being a tightwad, despite his income of roughly $700,000 a year, the main source of which is a blind trust. (Staffers have had to argue with him for even small raises.) But where his family is concerned he spends freely: $500,000 for his McLean house in 1968, $100,000 for the apartment in Boston in which Joan lives and $75,000 in 1961 for the white frame house on Squaw Island, about a mile from the Kennedy family compound at Hyannis Port. He is at Squaw Island almost every weekend during the warm-weather months, and these weekends focus on family and sports. Kennedy loves the outdoors, even though he has dry skin and too much exposure causes it to break out in red blotches. He and Patrick swim before breakfast, then they may go surf casting for an hour. After another hour of tennis at Rose Kennedy's house, Ted visits with his mother, often taking her for a short walk along the beach. On Sundays, though not deeply religious, he usually attends Mass. The Rev. James English, Kennedy's pastor in Washington, describes him as "a believer who does his best to live his life as a Roman Catholic."
By noon, he is aboard his 55-ft. sloop Curragh, which he treats the way a teenager nurses his first automobile. Kennedy will hastily grab a rag to wipe a thumbprint off a chrome fitting or to polish the brass. Once Ethel dropped a deviled egg on the teak deck. Kennedy frowned as she wiped up. "I'll bet we don't get invited back tomorrow," she murmured to a companion. She was right.
After lunch on Curragh, Kennedy frequently races off Hyannis Port aboard his 25-ft. Wianno Senior Victura. Wearing shorts and a T shirt, he jovially bellows orders at his crew, usually Nephew Joe and Son Patrick. Kennedy likes to win and often does. After the races, there is more fishing, more swimming, more tennis (in Washington, he plays doubles two or three times a week; his back does not permit singles). Opponents describe him as having a solid serve and playing aggressively.
Dinner is a family affair, with Kennedy, a meat-and-potatoes man, sometimes acting as chef. A favorite: steaks with lots of Worcestershire sauce, salt and pepper. He drinks wine with his meals and takes a Scotch and soda or two at night. After dinner he often plays charades or other parlor games with the children until about 9:30, when he turns to his attache case for bedtime reading.
There is only one person who comes close to being what Kennedy's brothers were to him. That is his brother-in-law Stephen Smith.
Only a few people qualify as buddies: Senator John Culver, of Iowa; former Senator John Tunney, of California; Real Estate Developer Claude Hooton, who lives in Houston; and New York Lawyer Timothy Hanan. These men know his worries and can talk openly with him.
Kennedy has trusted political agents, such as Washington Attorney Paul Kirk, 41, and ABC News Vice President David Burke, but he rarely mixes with them socially.
Kennedy also remains somewhat aloof from his Senate staffers. He almost never goes out with them on social occasions and rarely gets involved in personnel problems. He has a brisk approach to subordinates that he may have inherited from his father. He often tells his staff how the patriarch would have handled a problem. Like Joseph Kennedy, the Senator rarely hands out compliments or credit but is quick to assess blame when something goes wrong. Once he angrily dressed down an aide for not informing his mother that he was going to appear on a TV interview show. After he cooled off, the aide explained in a memo that Rose had been out when the staff called and that she had been sent a videotape of the interview. Kennedy scrawled an apology of sorts: "I'll eat my hat--the next time Bill Buckley writes a good column about me."
Kennedy's staff is regarded in the Senate as first rate. He has about 100 people working for him, which makes his staff about the same size as those of other committee chairmen. Generally in their 20s and 30s, his aides are exceedingly loyal and enthusiastic, and heartily disliked by colleagues on Capitol Hill for always putting Kennedy's interests first. Unlike most Senate staffs, Kennedy has no office manager. The senior men report directly to Kennedy. The most important aide is ten-year veteran Carey Parker, 44, Kennedy's balding, warmly humorous chief legislative assistant. The other top aides include Stephen Breyer, 41, who took a leave from his professorship at Harvard Law School to serve as chief counsel to the Judiciary Committee; Lawrence Horowitz, 34, a physician and top staffer on Kennedy's health subcommittee; and Richard E.
Burke, 26, the Senator's administrative assistant. There are only men at the top level of Kennedy's staff; women work in subordinate jobs. Aides have urged him to put women in senior positions, but he has not done so.
For the most part, Kennedy's campaign will be led by a different cast of characters. The overall direction is in the hands of Kirk, who served as Kennedy's top Senate aide for eight years. He is one of Kennedy's closest political cronies and one of the ablest political strategists in the country. Rick Stearns, 35, a former assistant district attorney in Massachusetts, who was a strategist for George McGovern in 1972, will be the campaign's delegate hunter, trying to fill the Kennedy slates. Carl Wagner, 34, who was Kirk's successor on Kennedy's Senate staff, will fly around the country, setting up campaign committees. Only a few of the draft-Kennedy volunteers will be taken on. In Kennedy's view, goodwilled, enthusiastic amateurs are fine for leafleting and doorbell ringing, but the running of campaigns must be left to professionals.
Most public opinion analysts suspect that Kennedy's popularity may already have peaked, that it is the mythic Ted Kennedy who leads Carter 2 to 1. Says Pollster Field: "His popularity is like a great reservoir that is filled to the brim.
He can't use much more support; it would just slop over. The question is how much of that reservoir will he have to draw down?"
Down it doubtless will go as Kennedy is forced to take more specific stands on issues about which he so far has been vague. Says New York Democrat Howard Samuels, a Carter supporter: "So far, Kennedy has been getting a free ride. He is carrying on his shoulders the uncompleted agendas of a collection of specific interest groups--blacks, the young, the poor, the working class. He can't satisfy them all."
Kennedy feels he can make the question of leadership more important than any single issue, and quite a few politicians agree. Argues Democratic Senator Gary Hart of Colorado: "The nation is looking for a politician of stature, perhaps as a substitute for solutions."
Carter's powers of incumbency --his control of the party machinery in many states, of federal patronage and funds--are offset at least in part by strengths that Kennedy inherited from his brothers. Says Theodore White: "The shadow legions of the Kennedys stretch from Maine to San Francisco. Just as Ezekiel's prophecy had the power to wake the dead, the Kennedy name will bring out the people who remember the old days with the sentiment of youth."
Kennedy supporters started mobilizing those forces only hours after helping to dedicate the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library in Boston on Oct. 20. They had held off until then because the Senator did not want the ceremony to be turned into a political event--a grace note that somehow was not communicated to his nephew Joe, who made a fiery attack on the Carter Administration's energy and economic policies. That day, at a strategy session, Kennedy's top advisers made plans for a money-raising blitz that will qualify him for federal campaign matching funds within a week's time. This requires raising $5,000 in gifts of $250 or less in each of at least 20 states.
Kennedy intends to enter all 35 Democratic primaries, at which 80% of the National Convention delegates will be chosen. He is heavily favored to win the first three primaries, New Hampshire, Vermont and Massachusetts.
But campaign fortunes will almost surely seesaw. Both Carter and Kennedy may at times look unbeatable, then be beaten. After New England come primaries in which Carter now appears to be invincible: Florida, Alabama and Georgia. In these states, as in most of the old Confederacy, Kennedy is about as popular as cold grits. Says Richard Dick, a high Virginia Democrat: "Kennedy's coattails in this state would work like a noose, strangling our candidates." The first real showdown may come when both candidates face off outside their home regions, in Illinois on March 18. The challenger got a significant lift for that battle last week when Chicago Mayor Jane Byrne, previously a Carter supporter, gave word that she was switching and will back Kennedy.
At this point, it seems likely that the Carter-Kennedy battle will continue through the rest of the primaries, perhaps culminating in the free-for-all of eight primaries on June 3. Voters in California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Dakota and West Virginia will elect 696 delegates, more than one-fifth of the total that will select the party's presidential nominee at the convention in New York City in August.
The outcome may be close, certainly closer than the polls now indicate. Already the Kennedy challenge has begun to redefine the presidential election. Already it has brought out new mettle in Jimmy Carter, given focus and direction to his campaigning. Determined not to allow Kennedy to dominate him or the news, Carter has geared nearly every recent move he has made to the primary battles (see following story). Some Democrats fear that the struggle between the two will irreparably damage the party's chances of holding on to the White House. To Democratic National Chairman White, the Carter-Kennedy fight is much like two railroad locomotives hurtling toward each other.
Says he: "It sure creates lots of excitement, but what you are left with in the end is a big train wreck." Other party pros argue that the primary fight will guarantee a bigger turnout of Democratic voters in November and a stronger commitment to the party's nominee among those who do turn out. Says Kentucky Senator Wendell Ford: "It's like cats in the night. You think they are fighting and killing each other, but all you get later on is more cats."
The Democratic struggle is forcing Republicans to reassess the free-for-all in their own party. Many G.O.P. leaders fear that a Carter victory would make him much harder to beat in November. Says G.O.P. National Chairman William Brock: "He would have successfully met the question of his leadership and taken some of the wind out of issues that we would like to have first crack at." But the prospect of a Kennedy victory poses even more imponderables for Republicans. If the Democratic tide runs toward Kennedy, would the G.O.P. want to field its aging front runner, 68-year-old Ronald Reagan, against a much younger, dynamic Senator? At the moment, many party pros say no. That answer would seem to give an advantage to John Connally, 62, who is Kennedy's equal as a tub thumper. If Connally turns out to be unacceptable to rank-and-file Republicans, they might turn either to Howard Baker or George Bush. Both lack flair as campaigners, but they have long experience in Washington, they have no scandal in their backgrounds and their views are only moderately conservative.
However the G.O.P. contest comes out, it promises to be as action filled as the fight between Carter and Kennedy. After that will come what House Speaker Tip O'Neill grimly calls "an s.o.b. of an election."
*Kennedy prefers to be called Ted, though a few longtime friends use Teddy. His sisters still call him by his childhood nickname, Eddie.
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