Catching The Wind: Edward Kennedy And The Liberal Hour 1932 -1975, Gabler - A*

          "Ted was the heir, the one who said after Robert's death that he now had to pick up his brothers' fallen standard, and his own death, however tarnished his personal reputation might have been, not only stirred memories of his brothers but also signified the end of the Kennedy era in American politics and for many, the extinguishing of a last flickering hope." He lived in their shadow, in their reflected glory. He was always the 'least' of the clan. Yet he accomplished more than they ever had, he was one of "the most consequential legislators of his lifetime, perhaps in American history."

            This book is the first of two volumes that "tell what is perhaps the most important story of the late-twentieth and early-twenty-first centuries in American politics: the story of the shift in the nation's political tectonic plates from liberalism to conservatism." "This book tells how he caught the liberal wind and tried to keep riding it, and in telling that story, it attempts to tell how the entire country, for a brief time, seemed to have caught the wind too, before it stopped blowing."

            The ninth Kennedy was born on Feb. 22, 1932.  Joe Kennedy raised his children to be very close and to always compete to win. Family was both a fortress and a weapon. Ted's childhood was lonely and friendless as he shuttled to an endless array of schools as his parents were constantly on the move. Rose moved him so often that the schools he would alight in for a few months couldn't even sort out what grade to put him in. His life settled down in high school when he was able to go to one boarding school for four years. His time at Harvard was brief after his freshman year expulsion for cheating and in the summer of 1951, he joined the army. Ted met regular, rough, poor, and Black people in the service and began to develop a sense of empathy, as well as learn how to handle life on his own. That said, his assignment to the MP's at NATO headquarters in Paris had Joe's hand behind it. He left after two years, and went back to Harvard, albeit on probation. He finished in the top half of his class and lettered in football. He was then on to Virginia Law School, where he and his lifelong friend, John Tunney, studied and had a fair amount of fun. Ted's grades were mostly gentlemen's C's, but somehow he and Tunney won the prestigious Moot Court competition. He married Joan Bennett of Bronxville and Manhattanville College in the fall of 1958 and graduated the following spring.

         Jack in the White House, Bobby as AG and Ted in the Senate was Joe's plan. Ted worked very hard in 1960, and made significant contributions to Jack's victory. Joe advised his sons that Ted would run for the Senate in 1962 and began the process. The vaunted Kennedy organization went to work, favors were called in, money was spread around, and most importantly, the hardest working Kennedy went to work. Ted hustled from one end of the state to the other. Both Jack and Bobby professed neutrality but pulled an endless number of strings. Ted was the best campaigner in the family, an extrovert who loved people, in contrast to his diffident brothers, who despised retail politics. He beat Ed McCormack in the primary, and George Cabot Lodge in the general. He won because he was the best candidate. As the ninth child in the family, Ted understood how to defer to and how to work with, if not charm, older people and this was a very important skill when he went to the Senate. It was run by the southern bulls who commanded all of the important committees. He went slowly, stayed quiet and averted attention. He was there to become a Senator and not cruise by on his last name. He loved the Senate and wanted to be a Senate man.  He courted James Eastland, chair of the Judiciary Committee which Ted had joined. And as unlikely a pair as anyone could imagine, they became friends. 

         The assassination of John Kennedy changed Ted's mission because he felt he had to carry on the dream and the hope engendered by the young president. 
"And that task would be both a thrilling obligation to honor his brother and an agonizing burden he would never be able to lift." His first Senate speech was in support of the civil rights bill that Jack had introduced and LBJ now pursued. It passed in June, 1964. That very night, Ted was in a plane crash that very nearly killed him. The doctors were unsure he would live or ever walk again. Six months later, he walked out of the hospital. He had made good use of his time and elicited legions of scholars to tutor him on political and economic issues. Someone compared the Ted Kennedy transformed by injury to FDR forty years earlier, when the young Franklin had grown and matured after contracting polio. And although Ted was a better and stronger human being, the best athlete in the family would spend the rest of his life in pain wearing a four pound brace every single day.  The Senate he returned to, after the 1964 Democratic landslide, was focused on fulfilling longstanding liberal dreams. Amongst the flood of new laws was the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which was a topic near to JFK's heart and which Ted had an instrumental part in passing. He slowly and methodically became a player in civil rights and community healthcare as well.

        Losses in the 1966 mid-terms and the increasing unpopularity of the Vietnam War began to take the wind out of the sails of the triumphant liberals. Both Kennedy senators opposed the war, but only Bobby was willing to go public with his concerns. Ted was an institutionalist and traditionalist and was unwilling to take on the administration. His Immigration and Refugee Sub-committee held hearings putting the US actions in a very bad light. It would not be until January, 1968, after a twelve day visit to Vietnam, that Ted decisively parted with LBJ. As Tet unraveled the US commitment to Vietnam, and as Gene McCarthy rattled LBJ, Bobby dithered about running for president. Ted was completely opposed because he did not think the establishment could be beaten and he feared for his brother's safety, that some wacko out there would go for a twofer. Bob announced on March 16 and LBJ withdrew two weeks later. A week later, MLK was assassinated. Bobby's campaign drew crowds and he started winning primaries, although most believed he could not catch Hubert Humphrey's deep party support among the professional politicians. Bobby's victory in the California primary was an ecstatic moment that ended in tragedy and another death. Ted eulogized his brother at St. Patrick's, and descended into a summer of overwhelming grief. He spent it sailing up and down the Long Island and Nantucket Sounds.

        Ted committed to carrying the flame forward during a speech in August. "Like my three brothers before me, I pick up a fallen standard...I shall try to carry forward that special commitment to justice, to excellence, and to courage..." He returned to the Senate, but didn't really participate. Colleagues noticed that his drinking ticked up a notch or two. He ran for, and was elected, whip of the caucus and prepared to face the presidency of Richard Nixon, a man who relied on fear and resentment to propel himself forward. Ted's plan was to establish a liberal counterweight to Nixon's agenda. He "embraced the burden in the Senate of saving the country's soul for his late brother..." Ted slowed down Nixon's ABM plans and spoke up against the ongoing conduct of the war. He worked hard, but continued to drink, and it was apparent to all that he still was buried in grief for Bobby. His life further spun out of control in July when he drove a car off a wooden bridge at Chappaquiddick, killing Mary Jo Kopechne, and inexcusably failing to report the accident. Upon reflection, he knew he had "cost himself the inheritance his brothers had left him." "There would be no resurrecting Camelot after it, no Ted Kennedy regency." For many, the party and the whole liberal cause went off that bridge too. It would be a remorseless pain for the Kopechne's for the rest of their lives and it would haunt Ted for every day of his remaining forty years.

         Physically diminished by a 20 pound weight loss and emotionally scarred, he returned to the Senate and realized he had to start over. And he did. Many observers felt that he was a stronger human being, and in turn, a better Senator afterwards. A speech against the war in September led the paranoids in the White House to renew their snooping and focusing on Ted as an existential threat. The Plumbers were looking into Chappaquiddick, and the White House tried to counter everything he did or said. At the same time, Joan began to drink more and more. She had never been comfortable as a Kennedy, was troubled by Ted's incessant womanizing, and after Chappaquidick succumbed to alcoholism, the disease that ruined her mother's life.  With his re-election on his mind and forever fearful of the Kennedys, Nixon went down the path that would cost him the presidency in 1974. He authorized dirty tricks, the use of federal agencies to find mud and specifically targeted Larry O'Brien, DNC chair, because he was a Kennedy man. "To get Ted Kennedy. That became Richard Nixon's political mission..." He mused about IRS investigations, wiretapping, and had spies trailing Ted around. And perhaps the White House had reason to fear Ted. In the year before the election, he traveled the country eviscerating Nixon's polices. Nixon, of course, won re-election and in so doing, put the final nail in the heart of the old Democratic coalition, with the blue collar vote now firmly in the Republican column. 

      Nixon told Haldeman that the second term would be "awesome power with no discipline" because he wouldn't have to run again. Ted determined to fight Nixon on every front. Knowing that Nixon's men were thugs, Ted had his Administrative Practices Sub-committee begin the investigation of the Watergate burglary before Mike Mansfield set up the Select Committee under Sam Ervin. A special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, was appointed to investigate Watergate under a remit that Ted structured. Nixon's paranoia was so extreme that he believed Ted was manipulating the burglars, who were now pleading guilty and implicating their superiors. When Cox was fired, Ted led the charge against the administrations actions. In the midst of the Watergate crisis, the Kennedy family faced a major crisis when Ted, Jr. had to have a leg amputated because of cancer. Ted took his son to almost all of his treatments, often staying overnight on a hospital cot.  The experience took Ted away from Washington quite a lot that winter and further enforced his commitment to health care as a necessity for all Americans.  Ironically, Nixon so needed a distraction from Watergate that he authorized discussions on national healthcare between his administration and Ted Kennedy. They actually came close before Nixon's August resignation. Ted co-sponsored the first law authorizing public funding of elections and worked to expand the FOIA. When the democrats swept the mid-terms, the party and Ted seemed revitalized and poised for the future.

         Both Gerald Ford and Ted Kennedy began to think about the 1976 election in an America that had shifted to the right in the last few years. The question Ted did not have an answer to was whether he could overcome Chappaquidick. He still was spending a considerable amount of time with Ted Jr. who was undergoing experimental treatment in Boston. He also faced a very troubling series of events in Boston. The Boston Irish were vehemently opposed to busing, something that Ted had supported in the Senate. On two different occasions in 1975, Boston crowds cursed and insulted him and threw bricks and bottles at their own Senator. Announcing that his primary responsibility was his family, Ted stated publicly that he would not run.              In many ways, this is a very grim assessment of all things Kennedy, with special and unyielding criticism of Joe and Rose, as not being the creators of an American dynasty, but rather the enablers of an American tragedy. They are presented as uncaring, indifferent and only interested in the appearance of it all.  Joe's life was an obsessive  fight back against Protestant dismissiveness of the Irish. Joe, Jr is criticized for wasting his life in order to compete with Jack's military record. And, Jack, in turn is depicted as lazy and diffident; Bobby, too strict and moralistic. The author, however, appears to have great respect for Ted as someone who overcame difficult odds and unimaginable personal pain to commit his life to helping the underprivileged and who did it very well. This is a long book at 732 pages of text and, for any student of the period, is a rehashing of the era. That said, as a reasonably attentive person who has read a great deal about the Kennedy's, I admit to having know very little about Ted. Thus, for me, this has been a constructive and rewarding effort.