Theodore White & The Kennedys, Conclusion: Ted Kennedy Represented More Than The End of Camelot

 

Edward M. Kennedy, as White refers to him in the index of every one of his Making of the President series, is mentioned sporadically in his brothers 1960 campaign, always referred to as 'Teddy'.  Most of it is in regard to how he was assigned to work in the Rocky Mountain States in order to earn delegates for the Democratic nomination and how he'd been courted them in Wyoming since the fall of 1959. It seems to have paid off – all 15 delegates cast their votes for his brother John at the convention, officially giving him the Democratic nomination.

When we meet him again four years later it is in the aftermath of his brothers assassination when he has become the junior senator from Massachusetts. He only appears three more times after the first section most of it having to do with his voting on the Civil Rights Act which is finally being passed. It mentions in a footnote the near tragedy plane crash which injured seriously but not fatally both he and Indiana Senator Birch Bayh. After that the focus turns to Bobby and how he was considered the heir apparent.

Then he takes his biggest role yet on the national stage though it is overwhelmingly against his will. He is mentioned in the musings of how his brother is considering running for the Democratic nomination to challenge LBJ. At first he and Sorensen advise strongly against it in December of 1967; then after a briefing his resistance is diminished.

In the weeks leading up to Bobby's decision to run for the Presidency its harder to discern Teddy's role, at least from White's perspective. Its clear that Ted seems very against the idea of a primary challenge. There's a discussion of not splitting the peace vote with McCarthy. Then he meeting with the wise men of the campaign have a fateful meeting with Bobby. By this point its clear forces are in play Bobby can't control: his name has already been placed on the Oregon and Nebraska ballot. But the men have made a decision

They are unanimous. The perspective of this morning's announcement must point to the convention. It must not pit Kennedy against McCarthy in fratricidal strife, primary state by primary state. They wait on Bobby Kennedy and someone asks where he is.

Then (Bobby) Kennedy appears, opening the French windows and walks in. He listens to the group. "I am not going to come out for McCarthy in the primaries…I'm going to do it myself. I'm going."

For all his public statements and in his own writing in the years and decades to come Ted Kennedy must have spent the rest of his life wondering if he could have said or done anything to convince his brother to changing his course. We know that in private he thought it was a futile task, commenting "Bobby's therapy is going to cost this family ten million dollars." This remarks is incredibly tone-deaf considering what followed but when White acknowledges what an uphill battle Bobby Kennedy's campaign for the Democratic nomination was – even with the raw emotions of his assassination still fresh in his mind – its difficult to blame him.

It is horrible enough that Ted had to bury his second brother in five years in the aftermath of an assassination but even worse was the fact that with his brother's death the anti-war faction was now focusing their attention on him as taking up the banner. Even given the horrors of the time and the reality of what was happening both at home and abroad to place this burden on a man who was not even thirty seven to engage in that same doomed quest was arguably the most horrific that has ever been forced on any elected official in America to that point in history. 

And yet with the death of his brother the 300 plus delegates he had won in the primaries had to go somewhere and there was no one to lead. George McGovern had taken up the burden just two weeks before the convention, as I've written before out of a greater sense of obligation and guilt then most. But even he was yearning for Ted to announce.

By this point the leadership for the antiwar cause was rudderless mainly because McCarthy was still refusing to lead. (I'll deal with how White viewed him in his own entry in a different series later on.) Instead we must deal with one of the oddest factors that White describes in Chicago: the Kennedy boom.

Kennedy's brother-in-law Stephen Smith has arrived on August 25^th and meets with various delegation heads. On Monday:

…what is happening is a Kennedy boom, leaderless, incohesive, a strange, insubstantial, yet inexplicably romantic combination among peace delegates and hardened politicians.

Unauthorized, former Ohio Governor DiSalle announces he, personally, will put Edward Moore Kennedy's name in nomination on the floor, a Kennedy volunteer headquarters opens at the Shearman House Hotel; and the Hilton hotel, by Monday afternoon, is speckled with Kennedy button banners.

On Tuesday:

Self-winding Kennedy spokesmen…begin to sound off in delegation after delegation, like a system of organ pipes hammered by a demonic player…the black people are all for Kennedy, any Kennedy. So too, are now most of the McCarthy people.

On Tuesday evening:

Now, a sudden romantic unity is given by the surge of Teddy Kennedy, the prince returning to claim his inheritance his people on the floor rising to reclaim honor from chaos and squalor.

That was the story. White knew the reality.

Kennedy "anguished and brooding, numbed by love, hurt and shock…had earlier given friends days of concern that he might retreat from politics altogether." He was aware of the plans for the draft but even in his grief he still had his savvy: he knew if he announced availability he'd been trapped, forced to accept the Vice Presidency if it didn't come and with no real desire for the nomination.

Edward Kennedy behaved well and wisely, according to White. He made it clear if there was a draft, it had to spontaneous and he wouldn't do anything to lead it or start it. The taste for power as White rights was fouled in his mouth.

The closest it had a chance of happen was perhaps late that afternoon when Smith was invited by a mutual friend to McCarthy's suite. Smith said Kennedy was not a candidate and that he had come at McCarthy's invitation. McCarthy's response shows that not even death and tragedy had done anything to foil his contempt for the Kennedy family

McCarthy said he would like to see his own name go into nomination; but at some point in the balloting, he would stand on the floor, withdraw his name and urge his people to support Edward Moore Kennedy. Yet he, McCarthy, would not nominate Edward Kennedy. Then McCarthy continued, gratuitously adding:  "While I'm willing to do this for Teddy, I never could have done this for Bobby."

Smith was enraged because in addition to insulting a dead man McCarthy had yet to promise anything substantial.  The boom collapsed though it took a bit longer – and more chaos unfolded – before the news reached the delegates.

Kennedy would campaign with Humphrey but that would be the end of his involvement. No one could have known that was the closest the final Kennedy brother would ever get to the Presidency.

 

It is a measure of what a different time politics and journalism was in 1972 that the death of Mary Jo Kopechne and the role that Edward Kennedy might or might not have played in it is referred to by white as 'the Chappaquiddick Incident'. Kopechne's name is not even mention and it is only referred to as how it 'scarred Kennedy'

It says a lot about just how powerful the family name  was that even after the death of Kopechne  so many Americans still thought that it could be his for the asking. We now know much that was going on beneath the surface but White didn't pursue it in the 1972 book because Kennedy had made it clear as early as 1971 he had no intention of running for the Presidency. He considered it briefly when George Wallace was surging in the polls (with good reason given the man's history in counterpoint to liberalism) but even then it was something he only considered a remote possibility.

But by the time George McGovern was essentially the Democratic nominee he was publicly saying he wanted Kennedy as his running mate. Its clear that Kennedy was no more interested in the nomination then he had been even considering it in 1968 and White is very clear that this is a 'courtship that had become embarrassing to Kennedy" That at one point he makes the request at a funeral for a fellow Senator was a sign of both McGovern's desperation and bad taste.

What's still unclear is just how much the Kennedy name hung over this. During the selection for the Vice Presidency one of the names that comes up is Sargent Shriver, a Kennedy-in-law, former ambassador to France, first director of the Peace Corps. There was some movement for it and McGovern tried to reach Shriver but found out he was in Moscow. So he dropped it.

Their was discussion between two candidates Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri and Boston Mayor Kevin White. At some point the decision had been for White and McGovern made a call to get clearance from Kennedy. Kennedy was cool to White and wanted time to think it over. McGovern immediately ceased on this as a chance that Kennedy himself wanted the nomination. At the same time the Massachusetts delegation made it clear they would revolt if White was chosen. When Kennedy calls back it's to suggest Wilbur Mills of Arkansas. This irritated McGovern  - but not enough to ask him yet again when Eagleton fell through.

Eventually Shriver was chosen. But even had he had been picked the first time, it's unlikely it would have made much of a difference for McGovern's hope for the Presidency which had begun to dissolve after he won the California primary and had collapsed even as he claimed the Democratic nomination.

 

It's impossible not to mention White's view of the 1980 election without giving the context of the volume in which it is related.

By this point White knew this was going to be his last book and compared to a history of America during the nearly quarter of a century he'd been covering Presidential campaigns. The title is America in Search of Itself: The Making of the President 1956-1980. 

There is a fair measure of nostalgia mixed with cynicism through much of the book yet despite that the clear-eyed historian is still there more often then not. That part is clear in the middle section of his book which he titles 'The Transformation of American Politics: 1960-1979."  And in the first two chapters he puts together a collections of facts, figures and historical evidence in which he draws the only conclusion he can – and one that almost certainly has been rejected by everyone calling themselves a liberal in the period afterwards:

Even before the 1980 election the increasingly liberal policies of the 1960s and early 1970s had grown so big, unwieldy and expensive that they had become to impossible to manage and measuring success by them was impossible to note.

White had been making arguments like this since the 1968 volume and it is difficult to argue with what a man who described himself as a liberal is putting forward at the time. By his definition liberalism was already dead even before the 1980 election: all Reagan did was perform last rites.

I will discuss the metrics White uses in a different series of articles but in the context of Edward Kennedy's campaign they take on a different note. White clearly has immense respect and admiration for Ted Kennedy and the causes he has fought for. And its clear he has as much difficulty with Jimmy Carter as so many of his contemporaries did at the time. He acknowledges the legacy of his brothers but is smart enough to know that he is 'the man of the unabashed liberal extreme." And he is more cynical about it:

Concern for the sick, the aged, the black, the underprivileged, had become, by 1980 his central cause."

While he is impressed with Kennedy's love of government and he clearly shares the frustration with Carter, he has absolutely no illusions about the campaign that followed. "Rarely has any campaign been so mismanaged as the Kennedy campaign in its first two months."

The Kennedy campaign was, from the beginning, historically preposterous. What the Senator proposed to do was to destroy the chief of his own party, the President of the United States. Having undermined the President, he would then have to pull the Democratic Party together and face the Republicans, defending a record he had spent a year denouncing."

This would seem to be a contradiction with White's immense respect for Robert's decision in 1968 to do basically the same thing. However at the time the Vietnam War was a clear national crisis that was destroying the entire country and would could make a justification for it.  Furthermore Eugene McCarthy's decision to run in New Hampshire would have given some cover for it.

Indeed White lays in bare in terms of organizational stills:

The Kennedy campaign lurched into action in early November as if from a cold start without organization, with no clear lines of authority, without the blooding of experience in the changing tactics of field campaigns that had developed since 1968, the last time the Kennedy team had tried the race.

This has been more than borne out by multiple writers over the years. White is more cynical about how TV and the media has become much harsher during this period (its here his nostalgia for the Kennedys of old has blinded him of their flaws.) He deals with the Roger Mudd interview in a paragraph but makes it clear he's just as baffled by Ted's inability to answer: "Why he wants to be President?"

And the makes it clear that the Kennedy's money, once their greatest strength, was no longer helping them. He acknowledges campaign finance restrictions hurt as well as the fact that the Kennedys are spending to meet 1960 prices.

But at the day he makes clear what the biggest problem of Kennedy's campaign was and it wasn't technical"

Ted Kennedy had nothing, at this point, to say. Whatever he had to say echoed back to the 1960s and the popular insurgency of that time. In a troubled country, this was no longer enough.

If liberalism as White believed was dead Kennedy was campaigning as if he never read the obituary – but the rest of America had. More to the point:

No message had come clear enough to remove a sitting President from leadership. The rest of the Kennedy campaign was an exercise in personality – an effort of the challenger to redefine his themes and heritage in more positive terms then 'leadership'.

When it comes to the primaries its worth noting that White has no real use for the presidential primary process in any form believing it weakens the power of the executive office and follows an absurd process. (I sympathize with him from the benefit of the passage of time but even now this is by far my biggest disagreement with White's writing.) Still he remains an effective chronicler when it comes to the primaries, particularly the Democratic one.

He divides it into three chapters. The first is the shortest and in White's mind is over after the New Hampshire primary. After he had lost that one Kennedy knows it over but decides to carry on. In his opinion his serious campaign is over by the time of his humiliation in the Illinois primary. The family seems determined to withdraw after the New York primary on March 25^th.

Then the second chapter begins and it extends from their until the Pennsylvania primary in April 22^nd. By that point world events in Iran are working against Carter and White accurately described what follows as a protest vote against Carter.

"The results of the New York primary showed that no amount of organization could overcome the disarray of a world outside. That world was troubled and growing more so; if a vote for Kennedy was the only possible protest, so be it." The Kennedy campaign was now forced to stayed in because of those events."

Even then Carter was still building up his lead and by the end of the second chapter Carter has 1207 delegates to Kennedy's 667. "There was no hope of denying Carter the 1666 delegates needed to win the nomination and then the third chapter of the Democratic primary began.

It unrolls over a six week period from the end of April until June 3^rd, Super Tuesday. The failed rescue attempt of the hostages is only the beginning of Carter's problem. A recession is predicted after he has said they turned the corner on the economy; Miami is deluged with Cuban refugees who Carter first welcomes and two weeks later has to call the coast guard out. The Common Market recognizes the PLO; India detonates a nuclear bomb.

On the last day of the primaries Kennedy wins five states and Carter wins three but Carter still clinched the nomination.

When it comes to Kennedy's 'open convention' policy  he is blunt calling it 'a power struggle – in this case the desperate attempt by Edward M. Kennedy to overturn the verdict of the primaries and by doing so, throw Jimmy Carter out of office." And he has no use for how so many good liberal people are arguing. Of particular contempt he holds George McGovern who won his nomination by insisting the convention was bound by the rules it had adopted  and "that no one could change the rules in the middle of the game. Now he argued the opposite. This the McGovern of 1980 arguing against the McGovern of 1972, the delegates must be freed of the rules adopted by the party."

The term flip-flop didn't exist in 1980 but this is the prime example of it. Once again Carter has Kennedy outnumbered but when Kennedy withdraws White says, "the contest had been hopeless from the beginning."

Of the famous speech that was Kennedy's last moment White acknowledges the mystique of the Kennedy family. He is impressed by the oratory of it says it is one of the great convention speeches he's ever heard. And perhaps because he is stirred by it gives little attention to the part that future historians will remember. After Carter gives his acceptance speech and everyone waits to see if Kennedy would appear:

Carter's face was gaunt as he waited for Kennedy's appearance , then the burst of shouts of "We Want Ted, We Want Ted!" announced that the Senator was coming. Kennedy's appearance was quick and crisp – what politician call a 'drop-by'. He shuffled on to the platform for a minute. Carter clasped his hand but Kennedy dodged the traditional hug and greeting. He lifted his hand in a seigneurial  wave of goodbye, as if he had appeared at the wedding of his chauffeur and was gone."

This is a remarkable amount of discretion for a moment that, when carried on TV across the nation, had such symbolic importance that it truly represented a fissure. To be fair White is a good enough reporter to let Carter have the final word on this campaign done after Carter has been trounced:

Kennedy had undermined the natural Democratic base, used up the party's resources in the primaries so that, when it came to the election "I didn't have time to devote to the wooing of the farmers in the Midwest or wooing the Southerners. I had to spend my time…to recover the support and confidence of the traditional, historic Democratic constituency."

White makes it clear he can't tell yet if the 1980 election is a repudiation of Democratic politics or of Jimmy Carter's Presidency - though he is inclined to think it is the former more than the latter.  By that logic he would seem to have reached a conclusion that the liberalism of that era of which Edward Kennedy had been the proudest member of was over. And that everything that his brothers had promised with their campaigns had reached a conclusion that had been repudiated in the biggest possible term with the Reagan landslide – of which Kennedy's run had almost certainly laid the groundwork for.