A Hesitant Candidate
GLASS, ANDREW J.
Washington-USA A HESITANT CANDIDATE BY ANDREW J. GLASS Washington There are those who contend that Edward M. Kennedy's quest for the Presidency was inevitable. He is, after all, the youngest of...
...A few Kennedy associates go so far as to contend that if Carter had not gone out of his way both politically and personally to alienate Kennedy, the Senator from Massachusetts would have stayed out of the race...
...Robert was struck down by an assassin hidden in the kitchen of a Los Angeles hotel while seeking the office in 1968...
...And, of course, there was Chappa-quiddick, the 1969 accident that sobered him up and kept him from seeking the 1972 nomination against Nixon...
...There are more serious flaws in this line of reasoning than the fact that it is being pedaled by people like Robert Strauss, who once swore that Kennedy would endorse Carter by Thanksgiving Day...
...In 1969, with Richard Nixon in the White House, Senators Kennedy and Walter Mondale led a three-day tundra-hopping investigation into the poverty-ridden shacks and hogans of Alaska's remote Indian tribes...
...Carter's people, of course, express their fear only in private...
...That could leave California Governor Jerry Brown with 10 per cent of the delegates-And the balance of power between his rivals...
...Congressional Quarterly's tabulation of votes in the current Congress reveals that Kennedy supported the President 84 per cent of the time...
...I take the course compelled by events and by my commitment to public life," he told the 5,000 enthusiastic supporters gathered for the occasion in Boston's Faneuil Hall...
...As the day of the big announcement approach-ed.the Wall Street Journal, in a tough editorial, concluded that "voters will have to ask themselves whether they can believe [Kennedy's] account of the major crisis of his life, and whether they could believe what he would tell them about any crisis of his Presidency...
...John was elected President in I960 and was killed by a volley of rifle shots in Dallas 1,000 days later...
...A computer," he replied...
...Why, then, did he decide to challenge Carter...
...Surprisingly, too, the surveys show that Democrats who label themselves as conservative seem more prone to preferring Kennedy over Carter than those who see themselves as moderates or liberals...
...For a time, Teddy's view prevailed...
...His tongue-tied manner sometimes leads people who do not know him well to conclude that he is not overly smart, that he has to be propped up by aides who manipulate him from behind the scenes...
...At times, he must think he's still dealing with the Georgia Legislature," Kennedy said not long ago...
...Psychiatrists have told him that the more publicized he becomes, the more tempting a target he is for a crazed assassin...
...Moreover, polls indicate that the voters are even less concerned about issues than the hard-bitten political reporters who troop around with the candidates on the road show...
...Some political analysts believe that this phenomenon is attributable to Kennedy's powerful pull among Catholic voters, who, as a group, are conservative on most domestic issues...
...But Teddy said No, telling his brother that talk of a "Kennedy Dynasty" would soon overshadow Bobby's sincere efforts to alter Johnson's Vietnam policies...
...But now Edward Kennedy has made up his mind: His seemingly erratic swings between escapism and activism are being channelled into an all-out pursuit of the Presidency...
...He is, after all, the youngest of a fabled Irish brood sired by a benevolent tyrant of a father and groomed to aspire to the White House...
...Jimmy Carter, the old Navy man and peanut grower, who is no great shakes himself when it comes to personal pronouns, clearly hopes he will be helped to carry the day by Kennedy's inarticulateness when the two men clash in a nationally televised debate in Des Moines next January 7. But the fear among White House insiders is that Kennedy and Carter will debate to a standoff that will hold until August, and that each will come into the Democratic National Convention with 45 per cent of the delegates...
...Chappaquiddick will doubtless haunt the Senator in the campaign...
...In addition, he wears a brace and suffers from constant backaches, the remnants of a near fatal 1964 plane crash...
...Teddy himself seemed to lend credence to the inevitability theorists in the November declaration of his candidacy...
...It was only after the growing antiwar sentiment destroyed what was left of LBJ's political clout that Robert Kennedy finally moved...
...When Robert Kennedy was debating whether to challenge President Lyndon Johnson for the 1968 nomination, most of his aides said Yes...
...The oldest brother, Joseph Jr., died a hero in World War 11...
...He has watched, with increasing dismay, Carter's tendency to surround himself with a small circle of Georgia-based political and legislative advisers, instead of reaching out to Capitol Hill-And to Kennedy-for advice and support...
...The dirty little secret," a longtime political associate once said, "is that the real brain trust behind Kennedy is Kennedy...
...In public, they are saying that Kennedy, for all his vaunted political skills, is too far Left of the American people...
...Basically, he supports the President's positions but regards him as a weak man unable to bring them to fruition...
...For one thing, Teddy has always been a strong party man-A meat-and-pota-toes politician honed not in ran Tied Manhattan or Beverly Hills, but in those working-class Boston precincts where traditionally "the organization" has reigned supreme...
...Further, it downplays his deeply rooted network of party allies and dedicated followers, who respond with an electric tingle of excitement whenever he is in the room...
...Finally, the record does not substantiate the charge that Kennedy is to the Left of where the American people want to be-or, at least, he is no more Left than Carter is...
...On the commercial flight home, Kennedy loosened up with alcohol and talked with a reporter about his father, about his dead brother Joe, about Bobby...
...The truth, however, is that there was nothing inevitable about a Kennedy Presidential bid...
...His son Patrick, 12, lives with him in the Virginia suburbs while his wife, Joan, seeks to re-establish her life in a Back Bay Boston apartment, following recurrent bouts with alcoholism and depression...
...Now only the youngest is left to redeem the family dream...
...They're going to shoot my ass off the way they shot Bobby's," he predicted...
...Well, maybe that's what we need now in the Presidency: a computer with alcohol in all its circuits...
...When that is made clear to everybody, the argument goes, Carter will prevail...
...A third factor behind Kennedy's hesitancy has been his deep-seated personal troubles, which far exceed those of most men who seek the nation's highest elected office...
...His elder son, Teddy Jr., 18, has lost a leg to cancer...
...He also has a strong distaste for security guards, whom he derisively describes in private as "those men in the dark blue suits...
...Another liability Kennedy has is his relative inarticulateness, particularly when it comes to his private life...
...To begin with, the argument overlooks Kennedy's pragmatic streak...
...A second reason Kennedy has hesitated for so many years to make the race is, of course, his fear of being killed...
...What does it really cost a President to come out and say that so-and-so has a lot of expertise on such-and-such a subject and that he's come up with a great bill which the Administration will gladly support...
...Still, Kennedy's reluctance to talk about himself, except in the abstract, whenever he is interviewed may cause him problems in the coming campaign...
...Actually, it is a reflection of an upper-class Irish upbringing that has left him with a $500,000-a-year trust fund and a deep aversion to the capital pronoun "I...
...Andrew J. Glass, a frequent New Leader contributor, is head of the Cox Newspapers bureau in Washington...
...Even a decade after Chappaquid-dick, Kennedy knew he could not challenge Carter without once more triggering interest in what happened on the night he drove his black Olds mobile 88 into the dark waters of Poucha Pond and drowned his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne...
...On a visit to supposedly friendly New Hampshire, Kennedy was greeted with a similar editorial on the decidedly unfriendly front page of the Manchester Union-Leader...
...Once, a Boston friend of John and Robert was told that Teddy had a computer-like ability to absorb and assess information...
...Those who have known Kennedy for many years say he was extremely reluctant to run...
...Among the 100 Senators, Kennedy's is the fourth highest score...
...He is less of a fatalist about his death than his image-handlers contend...
...Whatever happens, it promises to be a good show...
...He used to drink heavily...
...This is probably a false reading...
...How can anything like that diminish a President...
Vol. 62 • November 1979 • No. 22
