Ted Kennedy: The Dream That Never Died (19 page)

“He was invisible,” said Estrich. “[Steve] disappeared from the campaign. I mean that campaign was just a nightmare … at the top. I mean—Steve Smith … I recall went to Madrid or something for some extensive period of time during that time.”
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As a result, said Peter Hart, Ted’s chief pollster, “there was no sense of central leadership…. I don’t think that I was ever asked or given the opportunity to really explore [Chappaquiddick]…. I don’t think I ever did a focus group for Senator Kennedy, and I’m not sure that there was ever a focus group done in that campaign.”
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An even bigger problem was the candidate himself. Ted Kennedy had always been ambivalent about the presidency. Amateur
psychologists speculated that Ted was torn by the idea of leaping over the Kennedy family hierarchy, superseding his dead brothers, and perhaps even succeeding where they had faltered and failed.

There was also a far simpler explanation. “My view,” said CBS’s Roger Mudd, “is that he wasn’t prepared, because he had never really sat down and asked himself [the] question: Why do I, Edward Moore Kennedy, want to run this country? Who are my enemies, who are my friends? Who am I going to reward? Who am I going to punish? He’d never been up to the top of the mountain. And I think he’d never asked himself that question. Simply because he, I suspect … could sort of ascend to the nomination and he didn’t have to go through that rigorous self-examination that [other politicians] went through and they all are supposed to go through.”
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E
VERYTHING THAT FOLLOWED
the Mudd interview was anti-climactic. On November 4, 1979, Ted’s announcement of his candidacy was buried by the news that Iranian students had taken over the United States embassy in Tehran and held fifty-two American diplomats hostage. The sudden upsurge in patriotism and support for President Carter was largely responsible for Ted’s defeat in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. The hostage crisis would last for 444 days and color the entire primary campaign. On March 11, 1980, Carter annihilated Ted in the Florida primary, 60.7 percent to 23.2 percent.

Later that month, Jackie Kennedy Onassis convened a group of friends in her New York apartment to discuss how Ted could gracefully bow out of the contest. But then, suddenly, Ted won two primaries in a row—in New York and Pennsylvania. “We were always looking for a clean opportunity to get out,” a member of the Kennedy inner circle told the writer Theodore H. White. “We said if we
lost in New York, we could get out; if we lost in Pennsylvania, we could get out. But we won in both, so we couldn’t get out.”

Those victories only prolonged the agony. For although Ted won the last batch of primaries in June, Carter’s lead in the delegate count had become insurmountable. On June 5, 1980, Frank Moore and Bill Cable, who handled congressional liaison for President Carter, sent a “confidential” memo to Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan:

About 11:40 A.M. Senator Kennedy talked to the Speaker [Tip O’Neill]. After his phone call the Speaker called Bill Cable and told him the following. The President should not push hard with Kennedy at their meeting this afternoon—he should not be confrontational. The Senator is pleased that his victories on Tuesday gave him a dignified way out and raised his stature within the Senate and within the Democratic constituencies…. According to the Speaker, “Ted sounds like a changed man—very relieved.”

H
E
WAS
A changed man. The gut-wrenching experience of the primary campaign had changed him. But not in the way Speaker O’Neill meant.

At the start of the campaign, when the Carter administration seemed at a total loss over how to cope with long gas lines, runaway inflation, and the Iranian revolution, everyone told Ted Kennedy that he was a shoo-in for the nomination. And he believed them—first, because he wanted to, and second, because it bolstered his belief in the legend of Kennedy invincibility.

“And he sort of then started to look at the race in a tactical manner,” said Ted’s pollster, Peter Hart. “And as he looked at it in a tactical manner he lost the strategic advantage that he really had. His
voice. Which was his strength. And his voice was his vision…. I would tell you that Edward Kennedy lost his way during that period of time…. And it wasn’t until he had lost the nomination that he got back the fundamentals. That was the ultimate irony of the election. He found his [liberal] voice.”
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Susan Estrich, the deputy campaign manager, witnessed firsthand how Ted evolved during the campaign. “I have a very positive view of that [campaign] and what happened,” she said, “and the evolution of attitudes toward women, and toward abortion and a whole range of issues…. The 1980 [Democratic Party] platform was the first time that sexual orientation ever appeared in a party platform. And it was because of… Ted.”
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Ted had become the tribune not only of the sick and poor and helpless but also of women and gays and lesbians. Ted’s speech at the 1980 Democratic National Convention ranked with the great convention speeches of the past—William Jennings Bryan’s “cross of gold” speech in 1896; Hubert Humphrey’s “bright sunshine of human rights” speech in 1948; and Adlai Stevenson’s “talk sense to the American people” speech in 1952.

“I congratulate President Carter on his victory here,” Ted said. “… And someday, long after this convention, long after the signs come down and the crowds stop cheering, and the bands stop playing, may it be said of our campaign that we kept the faith. May it be said of our Party in 1980 that we found our faith again…. For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”
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PART FOUR
“Victory out of Failure”

16

A
FTER THE DEMOCRATIC
Convention, Ted and Joan flew to the Cape, and there, in their gray-shingled home on Squaw Island overlooking Hall’s Creek, Joan brought up the subject of divorce.

“I remember Ted saying to me … ‘You’re doing so great, Joansie, how about moving back to Washington, to McLean?’ He didn’t say, ‘I love you’ or ‘I want you to come back’ or ‘I’m going to be good.’ … But I sort of knew that he would never make any changes.

“And I guess I just decided that I felt too good about myself to put up with what—I had been putting up with for some time,” Joan continued. “He said, ‘I want to stay married to you.’ He said I could have all the freedom I wanted. I could carry on with my life. ‘You could see anybody you want to see.’ How many women are offered that? The money, the prestige, the freedom.”
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Racked with doubts about her decision, Joan turned for support to her favorite sister-in-law, Jackie Kennedy Onassis.

“I spent four hours talking to Jackie,” Joan recalled. “She said she’s crazy about Ted, but she’s known for years that I should have done it fifteen years ago. She was so supportive. She even suggested I use her New York lawyer. If Jackie recommends him and says he’s distinguished, he must be good. Jackie said not to worry about Ted, that he’ll be fine. She said I should look out for myself.

“Jackie also told me that she wishes she had given me this advice before and maybe I wouldn’t have gotten so sick,” Joan continued, referring to her alcoholism. “But back then, fifteen years ago, I probably wouldn’t have been able to take her advice.”
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Even now, it wasn’t easy. Joan knew that a divorce from Ted Kennedy would change everything—where she lived, the amount of money she could spend, how people would treat her. If only she were thick-skinned enough to tolerate Ted’s philandering. But she wasn’t a hardened case like Rose Kennedy, who had taught herself to look the other way whenever her husband strayed. Joan wore her heart on her sleeve, which, ironically, was one of the qualities that had drawn Ted to her in the first place.

Ted did not welcome the circus of publicity that was sure to accompany the announcement of a Kennedy divorce. And yet, he still cared enough for Joan to realize that, at this lamentable stage of their marriage, divorce was probably her best course. However, he asked her for a favor: would Joan postpone the announcement of their decision to divorce until after the inauguration of Jimmy Carter? As a loyal Democrat, Ted was expected to campaign for his old adversary, and he wanted Joan to join him on the hustings. Joan agreed, and for the next couple of months, they appeared as a loving couple at Carter campaign rallies.

After the election was over, Joan was represented at the divorce proceedings by Alexander Folger, the attorney recommended by Jackie Kennedy. Folger’s upper-class demeanor led some people to suppose that he abided by the legal equivalent of the Marquess of Queensberry rules. That, however, was not the case; he was as tough as the toughest Massachusetts divorce lawyer. And from the outset, the two sides engaged in a contentious battle over the terms of the financial settlement.

“To determine [Joan’s] living allowance, the [Kennedy] lawyers were averaging her expenses of the last four years,” her assistant, Marcia Chellis, observed. “Joan felt that the past year was a more realistic one, but Ted’s lawyer pointed out that people spend more during a campaign year.”
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As part of the settlement, Joan wanted Ted to pay for repairs and improvements in her Boston condo and the Squaw Island house. She drew up a list of what needed to be done—everything from painting and slipcovering to remodeling and cabinetwork.

“Ted ignored me [during our marriage],” she told Marcia Chellis. To which Chellis commented: “But that was in the past…. In her battles with Ted she may have been both difficult and demanding, but she would no longer be ignored.”
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Indeed, Joan surprised everyone—perhaps most of all herself—by her resolve and willpower. She was shrewd enough to guess that Ted would be vulnerable just before the start of a reelection campaign, when he was polishing his image in the media. As the election year 1982 approached, the last thing Ted wanted was an angry wife complaining to the media about his adulteries.

“I’m going to stick this out until I get what I want,” Joan said. “He thinks I’m too nice to fight, but I’ll play my trump card…. I’ll say, ‘He throws millions at the poor, but he’s stingy with his wife.’
He wants this over before the Senate election next fall, but I’m in no rush. They are treating me like an alcoholic who is still drinking and I won’t let them.”
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In the settlement, Joan received a lump-sum payment of $5 million, plus child support and annual alimony of $175,000. But Ted was adamant about keeping the Squaw Island home.

“When Ted and I were getting a divorce,” Joan said, “he insisted on the house. ‘You can go over and get a really nice house in Osterville with all your Republican friends. This is Kennedy territory.’ I really took offense [at that remark]. ‘Like hell it is. The Bennetts were here in 1901…. This is where I’m staying….

“That house means more to me than any other place in the world,” she went on. “It’s where my children, their friends, and I go from late May until September, and we are there often in the winter months, too. I use the house as a retreat. I go there to be alone to think, read, walk on the beach, play my piano. Just a few days there and I’m renewed.”
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The frail and delicate Joan Bennett Kennedy wouldn’t budge. She was determined to have the deed to ownership of the house transferred to her name. What’s more, she insisted on making Ted pay for its upkeep.

In the end, Joan won on both counts.

S
HORTLY BEFORE CHRISTMAS
in 1985, Ted called Bob Shrum, who had written the famous “the dream shall never die” speech, and asked him to come to Hyannis Port. Speculation was mounting that, after the New Year, Ted would announce his intention to run for the White House in 1988.