PATRICK KENNEDY, MAN & MYTH

...In it, Uncle Jack excerpts the diary of a cabinet member, describing the Senate as being primarily populated by "small lights, mentally weak, and wholly unfit to be Senators...

...Even before being handpicked to head the DCCC, Kennedy had his own leadership PAC as well as a joint fund-raising committee with Gephardt, and had raised over $1.5 million for Democrats as a tireless celebrity campaigner...

...There were the Life magazine spreads of toothy wide receivers playing touch football on Hickory Hill, of Chanel suits and pillbox hats, of Jack and Bobby's perfectly coiffed thatches, so un-mussed by world crises...

...I love being around him...

...Though Kennedy has spent most of his time in Congress solidifying his hold on the senior vote with Mediscare politics and shunning the national media spotlight (wouldn't you while "testing your feet...

...Here is a verbatim question that Kennedy asked when quizzing the secretary of the Navy on how to eradicate racial intolerance from the military: "So what happens is, things don't get reported because, you know, let's not make much to do about nothing, so to speak...

...He defended Clinton with the awe you'd expect from someone who once gushed after sailing with the president off Martha's Vineyard: "I'm sitting next to him, and he's talking to you, and he's asking for something for lunch, and my family is there, and I realized, oh my God, it's just an incredible feeling to be that close to the president of the United States...

...At a recent National Press Club press conference, he recited electoral minutiae with the fixed stare of an autistic savant reciting 1930s box scores...

...As a junior minority member, Kennedy didn't manage to wangle much more than a half-pound of bacon for his state, but he did provide entertainment...

...Play with the devil, die with the devil...

...Between the intervention sessions for his mother and the taunts from classmates over his father's dropping off his Chap-paquiddick date in a watery grave when Patrick was two, it's a wonder the boy was as likable as old acquaintances recall...

...Sensing trouble, he floated a statistic on how many children are killed by guns...

...Actually Kennedy doesn't need that much protection...

...When Patrick moved a few doors down from Skeffington's ex-wife, she invited Patrick and his mother over...

...With his hands in check, his voice pitched lower, he gave a near flawless performance, except for his ad lib about gun control, in which he claimed that "the number of Littletons every week that go on in this country . . . are astounding...

...Kennedy didn't seem bothered that his patron Richard Gephardt had spoken to the same group as Barr some years earlier...

...His subsequent races in a heavily Democratic district have not been close...

...Similarly, during the 1998 impeachment debate, Kennedy became incensed when Rep...

...We brought these guys in and we're all out on the porch," says the fund-raiser...

...Indeed, he gained essential experience in defending indefensible behavior by shilling for his father and cousin, a skill that would come in useful during President Clinton's impeachment trial some seven years later...

...Some are vulgar demagogues . . . some are men of wealth who have purchased their position . . . [some are] men of narrow intellect, limited comprehension, and low partisan prejudice...

...That's what I was trying to get across...

...They've got good staff over there, and I think they are trying to put Kennedy in a position where he can't cause himself or the committee any damage...

...Over the course of the Lewinsky affair, Kennedy found fault with quite a few politicians, but never with Clinton...

...He was playing hide and seek with some kid...

...More laughably, Patrick began "testing his feet" as a partisan bomb-thrower, blaming the media frenzy at his cousin's trial on a Republican establishment "threatened by the kind of mission my father is on Capitol Hill...

...Since Dick Gephardt has withdrawn from the presidential race and cast his lot with Kennedy, whose fund-raising efforts he hopes will secure him the Speaker's title, their relationship has grown more symbiotic...

...Newly appointed head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and cousin of Maria Shriver and John Jr., now in his third term from Rhode Island's 1st congressional district, Patrick has come to preach the gospel of Richard Gephardt...

...But it's not just for fund-raising that Kennedy uses his family connections...

...Kennedy informed Barr that he was a "duly elected member of Congress...

...He said, 'I hope you realize that I don't want to be here, I don't like this, but you understand it's my cousin and I was asked to do it...

...Kennedy accused Weygand of "covering his backside," while Rhode Island polls showed it was in fact Kennedy who was playing it safe with voters...

...Vigilante said it as I would like to say it...

...Bob Barr quoted Uncle Jack on the floor...

...Which is not to say he didn't have a sense of his place in the world...

...Since his appointment last November, the dCcC has set a new quarterly record for the most funds raised in a non-election year...

...Kevin Vigilante, who clearly outdebated him...

...But Patrick didn't have a suit, so he showed up in one of Ted's...

...They had tea...

...the Clinton impeachment raised his profile...

...One prominent New England Democrat recalls Patrick's appearance at a 1990 campaign event for Claiborne Pell...

...And mangled his cliches: "Impeachment proceedings are just like pulling a fire alarm in a crowded room...

...Ted pushed Patrick, just to get his name out there...

...The president of the United States...

...Though Boston Herald columnist and Kennedy tormentor Howie Carr has labeled Cousin Joe the "Wizard of Uh's," Patrick is probably the Kennedy one would be least likely to cheat off of when taking the SAT...

...And so it has gone for Patrick in Rhode Island, where Uncle Jack married and summered, where old Irish widows keep Jesus and JFK in companion frames on the walls of their triple-deckers, and where locals tell you that anyone who is "warm and breath-ing"—a "duck-billed platypus" or a "child molester with five arms"—can win with Patrick's last name...

...Gephardt has made him the DCCC chairman, entrusted with winning the House back for Democrats...

...But even after he had forged an alliance with the man who would shepherd his career in Washington, Kennedy proved less than polished...

...He said it very well...

...It was right out of the movie Big...

...So pleased is his audience that one union leader rewards young Patrick with a chocolate lollipop...

...In 1996, for instance, during a debate on the repeal of the assault weapons ban, Kennedy took to the well, trembling with emotion, as he leveled a shot at former representative Gerald Solomon: "Shame on you...

...Barr said he was "duly impressed...

...They are the farthest thing from it that I can imagine...

...Of Cousin Willie, Patrick said he "could not have done anything like that," despite the fact that three additional women said Kennedy-Smith had similarly accosted them (the judge did not allow their testimony to be introduced at trial...

...But that is not to deny his skill at milking his bloodline for political contributions...

...He tells me that 14 kids are killed every day, and 40 kids are killed every week...

...I said, 'Well jeez, at least take my [campaign] buttons off,'" he recalls...

...I almost threw up on the spot, I was so embarrassed...

...Being pals with the House minority leader is heady stuff for the boy once described by his mother Joan, Ted's ex-wife, as "a slow starter...

...As for wobbly, pants-less Dad, Patrick was "proud" of his father, who, he added, was a "fun terrific person...

...Having flown down to the family's beachfront compound, Teddy decided to celebrate Good Friday by rousting Patrick and Cousin Willie from their beds to imbibe at Au Bar (Patrick testified that he only downed ginger ales...

...uncles and father (Ted, that poco diablo, had been expelled after cheating on his Spanish exam...

...This was totally repugnant to me...

...Like his father and uncles, Patrick wasn't much of a student and elected not to go to Harvard like his KENNEDY RAILS AT REPUBLICANS IN A MANNER so ARTLESS YOU CAN ALMOST HEAR UNCLE JACK TURNING OVER UNDER HIS ETERNAL FLAME...

...Dick Gephardt hosted a $50,000 coming out party for Kennedy on Capitol Hill and told Rhode Island voters that young Patrick was headed for the Armed Services Committee, where he could wangle pork on behalf of the state's considerable naval interests...

...It may be unfair—brutal even—to make such comparisons with Patrick's more famous, more talented, more comely kin...

...If Providence voters were infatuated with their new state representative, party chieftains were less so...

...The former senator was delayed and a surrogate speaker was needed...

...As he once astutely noted, "I don't need a Senate seat to get national stature...

...The only hint of embarrassment came from John Jr...

...I don't think it's fair.'" Patrick was so green he solicited voters outside his district and was stumped when radio-show callers asked if he knew where his campaign headquarters was located...

...In rather un-Kennedyesque fashion, they sat on separate beds until, Patrick said, they finally "kissed a little...

...Confused, I buttonhole him afterwards, trying to get clarification...

...Can you answer that in terms of communication...

...If that's still the case, Dad may want to save Patrick a seat...

...Skeffington, still in the funeral business, says that Kennedys flooded the polls in two-hour shifts with Polaroid cameras, offering prospective voters a chance to get their picture taken with a real-life Camelot heir...

...According to Cassone, that was when Teddy entered the room in a long dress shirt "with no pants," walking "kinda wobbly," with love's pure light in his eye...

...More remarkable were the resources at Patrick's disposal: from the family's deep-pockets donor lists to the Brown University speech coach hired to improve Patrick's dadaist delivery, to Dad himself helicoptering in to the district to accompany his son door to door...

...His candidacy was announced with suitable pomp, a $25-a-head chicken dinner at the Rhode Island convention center, where swooning matriarchs could gawk at more imported Kennedys...

...Rhode Island has long had the reputation of being "a state for sale, cheap," as Lincoln Steffens once put it...

...One of the worries I have about, you know, a really zero-defect mentality with respect to defect—I'm not talking now—I mean everyone can acknowledge that if there's a little bit of extremism, I'm not saying that that isn't just grounds for you know, expulsion from the military...

...In the hallway afterwards, he accosted Barr in front of a gaggle of reporters: "You quoted my uncle," he screamed, "and went to a White Citizens Council meeting," referring to a Council of Conservative Citizens meeting that Barr claimed he had addressed without being fully apprised of their agenda...

...Favorite entries ranged from Patrick's admitting that because of his family wealth, he doesn't have to "make mends meet," to his saying that he was trying to "test my feet...

...Barr called Kennedy a "punk" and said he wasn't quite certain if Kennedy hadn't "gone off the deep end...

...this guy in a suit five sizes too large, trying to be Dad...

...But neither does he possess cousin Joe's charm, or cousin John's chin, or his uncles' laconic wit...

...Patrick, Terzian says, came to the lobby of the newspaper building, and called him on the security guard's phone...

...Nearly a dozen Kennedys weren't so much recruited as conscripted to win Patrick's 1988 race...

...Cosmetic snap judgments may be unfair, but this is a Kennedy after all, American royalty...

...SOME DEMOCRATIC INSIDERS HAVE TROUBLE DISCERNING WHERE GEPHARDT'S FINGERS END AND KENNEDYS PULLSTRING BEGINS...

...And the name still works its spell...

...Kennedy was picked for his ability to attract liberal money, especially from the northeast, like it's never poured in before," says one prominent Democratic consultant...

...In one contest, after flubbing an answer, Kennedy waited for Vigilante to respond, then added, "Dr...

...Robert Weygand, for voting to move forward with an impeachment inquiry...

...He seems to have taken to the job...

...He was a perfect gentleman," says Skeffington...

...Indeed, his swift rise to fifth-ranking Democrat in the House can only be explained by his mastery of the time-honored, three-pronged family strategy: (1) Invoke the Kennedy name as often as possible, (2) Learn how to buy friends and influence people, (3) Invoke the Kennedy name to raise money to help you buy more friends...

...Besides, he says, he's better suited to the "hurly-burly" of the House...

...With my family name, I'm still able to get that anyway...

...That's when we started calling him 'Ted Lite.'" There was schadenfreude among his political enemies when Patrick was ensnared in cousin William Kennedy Smith's 1991 Palm Beach rape trial...

...Then there's Patrick, whose voice pitches too high, and whose freckled hands flail like wounded finches...

...He'll be the nominal leader, and he'll let Dick make most of the decisions...

...Solomon, a Marine veteran of Korea and recovering from prostate surgery, became so agitated that he offered to take Kennedy outside...

...It was the funniest thing you ever saw, AT THE POLLS, KENNEDYS WITH POLAROID CAMERAS OFFERED VOTERS A CHANCE TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED WITH A REAL-LIFE CAMELOT HEIR...

...So I grabbed him and I said, 'Patrick, you wanna play games, go in the backyard—there's a swingset...

...He was completely out of control, physically, rhetorically, and mentally as far as I could tell—threatening to assault me,"says Terzian...

...Our civil servants, in their short-sleeved dress shirts and referee-style wingtips, graze their ties across heavily-oiled iceberg lettuce, rising to pay deference to the nephew of JFK and RFK...

...Still trim and only a moderate drinker, he has yet to inherit his father's ChivasMatt Labash a staff writer at THE WEEKLY STANDARD...

...His relatives are also rhetorical crutches, and he never misses an opportunity to employ them when shrilly denouncing Republicans in a manner so artless one can almost hear Uncle Jack rolling over under his eternal flame...

...And what was the Camelot franchise built on if not wisely invested cosmetic capital...

...After his election, Gephardt did secure the freshman Kennedy the spot on the coveted Armed Services Committee, even though the committee had lost Democratic seats to the new Republican majority...

...While take-charge Cousin Willie had sex with his date on the compound lawn, Patrick returned to his room with his date Michelle Cassone...

...At the DCCC, Kennedy is surrounded by a knot of formidable Gephardt deputies, from executive director David Plouffe (Gephardt's former deputy chief of staff) to communications director Erik Smith (Gephardt's former deputy press secretary...

...But mostly he screamed about Uncle Jack from the floor of the House: "These Republicans are not profiles in courage...

...Palm Beach itself, he complained, was a "place of the idle rich who are more worried about how to get into clubs and golf courses than they are about social justice...

...Still, watching them watch him, it's difficult not to sense the slight disappointment...

...He awkwardly assures union members, "I'm on your sheet of music," and, "I'm on a working, uhhh, person's agenda...

...By 1993 the undistinguished state legislator who had already declared that he had presidential aspirations, was ready to become the distinguished gentleman from Rhode Island...

...At one campaign event at a Shriver cousin's house, a Democratic fundraiser attempted to interest moderate Republican donors in the newest Kennedy's candidacy...

...Rare is the speech or interview where he does not utter the words "my father," "my family," or (his favorite) "my uncles...

...Kennedy called Barr a "white supremacist" and a "liar," later saying, "It appalled me that a racist would invoke my uncle's name...

...I faced a situation where I wanted to run for public office, and I was told to wait my turn...

...or rather, his family's place...

...But nobody has invited those comparisons as much as the man himself...

...He was also picked because he won't be as independent as [his predecessor] Martin Frost...

...Whether it's every day or weekdays," Patrick says, "it's too many...

...They tried to dissuade him from running, but the 21-year-old Kennedy didn't take it well...

...There are families out there . . . [you'll] never know what it's like, because [you don't] have someone in your family who was killed...

...He might, however, want to re-read Profiles in Courage...

...Then there were his parents, divorced when he was 15...

...And discoursed on the Constitution: "I myself have educated myself about the severity of the Articles of Impeachment, and I want to share with my colleagues and the American people some of the thoughts that I have learned...

...In fact, even some Democratic insiders have trouble discerning where Gephardt's fingers end and Kennedy's pullstring begins...

...Indeed, he accompanied Gephardt to a Harvard speech at the Kennedy School of Government where Gephardt invoked Uncle Jack's name without incident...

...He attacked Sen...

...One local radio host repeatedly tweaked him by playing "If I Only Had A Brain...

...John Chafee for "masquerading" as a moderate—high slander for the collegial, middle-of-the-Rhode Island delegation...

...With record-setting contributions pouring in (80 percent of which came from the family's out of state network), and with a barrage of negative ads, Kennedy handily beat Vigilante, one of the few such Democratic victories in 1994...

...And after a trip to Puerto Rico with Hillary Clinton (who had proclaimed in an earlier Rhode Island stop, "I love Patrick Kennedy...

...Take February's National Treasury Employees Union conference, when Joe and Rose's grandson appeared at the Capitol Hill Holiday Inn...

...says a still wounded Skeffington...

...But don't embarrass me.' He just went, 'Huh?' and ran around the corner...

...As the pro told Laurence Leamer, author of The Kennedy Women, Patrick sullenly declared, "We Kennedys pay people like you to pick up balls for us...

...But how do we address the broader issues...

...Never mind that the help testified that Patrick woke up at the crack of noon for his usual half-pound of bacon breakfast, crab thermidor lunch, and family-mandated daiquiris...

...swollen mien...

...Joan was an acknowledged alcoholic who collected DWIs like rummy hands, and his father was an unacknowledged souser and philanderer...

...I come from a well-recognized family," he said later...

...No math whiz myself, I scribble quick calculations...

...One day, after Aunt Ethel had hired a tennis pro to coach the cousins, the pro encouraged the boys to pick up the balls, promising that whoever collected the most could hit with him for an extra half an hour...

...If 14 kids are killed a day, that would be 98 kids killed per week, 70 excluding weekends...

...Phil Terzian, also a Bulletin writer, drew a similar conclusion after writing a piece in 1987 about Patrick's father that was light on sympathy and heavy on Mary Jo Kopechne references...

...Other skeptics mocked young Kennedy...

...Instead, he headed for Providence College, where he earned solid Bs and Cs as a social science major and developed a taste for the family business (politics, not bootlegging...

...Considering that Patrick spent $87,000 (or $78 per vote, a Rhode Island record for a state representative's race) to win a part-time legislator's gig that paid $300 a year, it didn't come that cheap...

...The Providence Journal-Bulletin endorsed his opponent, Dr...

...Confounding Patrick's political foes, Kennedy-Smith was acquitted, and Patrick suffered almost no collateral damage...

...Not only did Kennedy rub out their candidate, but he also developed a reputation as a headline-hunter by decrying the insular practices of then-speaker of the House Joe DeAngelis...

...It would be inaccurate to peg Patrick as caring only about the three Kennedy vices, "getting laid, getting elected, and getting a drink," as one Providence Journal-Bulletin writer says, "but he doesn't know very much, other than family history...

...Legislators used to send me tapes in a brown paper bag," says a wistful Howie Carr, the nation's premier collector of Kennedy malapropisms...

...With staff work like that, it is no wonder that Kennedy has forgone a run at retiring Senator Chafee's seat, which he was an odds-on favorite to win...

...When John Jr., then People's "sexiest man alive," showed up at the polls, Skeffington's female campaign staffers lined up to get their pictures taken with him...

...In the brief time before I get back to my office, a DCCC spokesman (and former Gephardt aide) manages to track me down and leave a message, straightening out Patrick's numbers...

...Not exactly Aeschines and Demosthenes, Barr called Kennedy "son...

...Patrick came running around the corner and got down on his knees to peer in the window...

...And Kennedy hopes to narrow the traditional Republican money lead even further with his recently announced fund-raising stroke of genius—rewarding $100,000 donors with a clambake at Hyannisport, where starstruck contributors can presumably play touch football with Patrick and Dick and maybe even Teddy, assuming he can still run...

...I love listening to him"), Kennedy went after his fellow Rhode Island Democrat, Rep...

...When it came to shilling for the president, Kennedy was rivaled only by the Congressional Black Caucus and Judiciary Committee Democrats...

...Still in his sophomore year at Providence, two years out of rehab for a high school drug habit, Patrick set his sights on the job of state representative John Skeffing-ton, a funeral director and nine-year Democratic incumbent who was beloved by party bosses...

...Journalists began receiving documentation of Kennedy's stumblebum performances on the house floor...

...Both cousins made the pleasure of women's company and returned to the estate in the middle of the night...

...Growing up with a brother and sister six and seven years his senior, respectively, Patrick Kennedy once said, "I'd always be the one everybody got a laugh out of, because they ended up making me cry or run from the room...

...Still, Skeffington was plowed under, losing the loyalty of voters, campaign workers, even family members...

...But they seem to love him, as he decries "malicious, negative politics" while blaming Republicans for a racist truck-dragging death in Jasper, Texas, and the gay-bashing murder of Matthew Shepard...