I can’t remember where, but years ago I read something that,
politically speaking, captured the essential Ted Kennedy. He was
doing some advance work before an appearance by his brother. One
look at the auditorium or gym and he knew it was too big. He had
the event moved to a much smaller room. It would be easier to fill,
and the cameras would make the turnout seem like a standing room
only throng. Artifice was the heart and soul of the Kennedy
operation.
Teddy rather knew as much, which is what made him such a good
political performer at Democratic conventions and other such
occasions, a blowhard in the best rhetorical sense, dutifully
pounding and harrumphing away from the podium in the name of all
the usual Democratic nonsense. Even with a delicious Boston accent
it was a tough act to sustain over 47 often stale years, but he
retained enough public charm and wit to pull it off, most notably
to the benefit of presidential upstart Barack Obama in early 2008.
And what luster he had lost was more than made up for that day by
Caroline Kennedy’s participation.
It’s when his words actually mattered—or were supposed to
matter—that he ran into serious problems. Even a diehard loyalist
like Hendrik Hertzberg noted after Teddy’s death the permanent
damage caused by “considerable evidence” of the efforts Kennedy
took to create “a false alibi” in the immediate wake of
Chappaquiddick. The savaging of Robert Bork was worthy of father
Joe’s Hitlerian proclivities. A simple question from Roger Mudd
proved deadlier than drink itself. Among the Kennedy faithful, for
whom the dream has always endured, none of that of course mattered.
Political sycophancy is as old as time, leaving its practitioners
blissfully beyond the requirement of self-respect.
Some three years ago I was on a long Interstate drive, always an
ideal time for a blast of NPR’s “Fresh Air.” Dave Davies was
interviewing Ted about his new book, America Back on
Track. The bowing and scraping I heard wasn’t my muffler
bumping the roadway. Late in the piece Davies inquired about Ted’s
famous role as surrogate father to Robert’s and John’s children.
Oh, they’re just terrific kids, Ted replied, unable to say anything
specific about them, noting only that some are doing wonderful work
in environmentalism, making documentaries, or in “Save The
Children, different types of activities.” He mentioned how he and
they had all recently read up on their John Brown and taken a bus
trip to Harpers Ferry, high-lighted by “the excellent presentations
that are made by the Park Service down there...” So many years in
the Senate, so many years on automatic government pilot.
And now he rests on hallowed government property, after a
sendoff of sendoffs (even if most of those lining Washington’s
streets appeared to be tourists lucky to witness something
unexpected), ending up near the spot where his brother is said to
have said in 1963, “I could stay here forever.” CBS and
Time magazine revived that quote during their coverage of
Teddy’s death, though one had JFK saying it eight months before his
assassination, the other just eleven days before Dallas. Not that
it makes any difference, since we all know the words probably
belong to Theodore Sorensen.
Oddly, Ted’s alleged final words were never spoken by him, just
put down on paper and in the first case fed to the press days
before he died, his letter calling for speedy naming of a
successor, and in the second case read at his burial by one of the
family’s favored clerics. Unfortunately, the cleric read aloud not
only Kennedy’s self-serving missive to Pope Benedict but also the
Vatican’s curt reply—a public blowoff that a hale Ted Kennedy would
have anticipated and thus prevented. But he’s gone, and when I went
by his grave two days later there were but four or five visitors in
front of it, a smattering of flowers still wrapped in grocery store
cellophane, and a single guard not quite sure what he should be
doing. It was late in the day, and what tourists were left all
seemed to gather around John Kennedy’s grave, oblivious to the
presence of a newcomer a few hundred feet away.
