The Bradley Report

I met him at occasional interviews where I asked some of the questions and he was supposed to answer them. My job was to write news, I was a reporter. So I covered him. But, of course, there was more.

Like any news writer, I had my opinions on lots of public figures. Kennedy looked a lot like strong presidential fodder. That was obvious to everybody.

Also, one of my family’s oldest friends, Polly Fitzgerald, was a Kennedy disciple. She had organized the hundreds of “teas” that introduced John Kennedy to women throughout the nation. When John fell, apparently to the bullets of Lee Harvey Oswald, Polly shifted gears to work for her favorite among the Kennedys, Bobby. She went all over the nation for Bobby. Then assassin Sirhan Sirhan killed Bobby. So Polly helped Ted. But that never led to a presidential campaign. There were some early thoughts about ousting Presidents Jimmy Carter in 1980, but it came to nothing. Ted stayed in the Senate. And this was the luckiest turn for the nation.

Ted has become the nation’s leading liberal; he has liberal ideas and he had the power to make many of them national law. No other Kennedy has come close to accomplishing such goals. But to some Kennedys, the White House was the only goal .

Joseph P. Kennedy, father of the four sons, wanted to be president. He did himself out of contention forever when he served as British ambassador and declared, in a Boston Globe article on Nov. 10, l940 – during the early years of WWII, when Germany was bearing down on Britain – that: “Democracy is finished in England.”

That one quote meant Joe, Sr., would never be president. So he turned to his son to retain the presidential hope.

Of course, his eldest, for whom he held the highest hope, Joseph, Jr., died in a WWII airplane crash; but it wasn’t just the loss of one more warplane piloted by a brave American who was fighting with the British. Joe Kennedy, Jr., recognized by virtually everyone as the highest of achievers as well as an erudite and delightful companion, had fulfilled his military obligations and could have sailed back to the states, but instead he took on a secret mission – what today would be called a ‘black ops’ scenario – to fly a plane that had been so loaded with explosives that it was essentially a flying bomb.

Even today, the purpose of that secret mission is shrouded in mystery, including just how it ended, though it is recognized that the plane blew up prior to reaching its target and that apparently there was so little left that it is even uncertain where and how it came to its end.

The fact that Joe, Jr., was smart, witty, brave and handsome is well recorded, and it has even been suggested that while he had taken on other dangerous missions, he might have passed on this one, which was largely considered suicidal, if he had not recently heard about his brother Jack’s heroism in saving his crew after PT109 was cut in two by a Japanese destroyer.

And of course, in the heartbreak that followed, history shows that as Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. began to recover from the devastating loss of his namesake, he also began to view his second son as presidential material.

So then came Jack, and he proved himself well.

Then came Bobby.

Next in line was Ted.

All of the brothers before Ted died in the line of civic duty, but Ted still lived.

There are many reasons why Edward, ‘Ted,’ Kennedy never became president, and they are well known, but in the end it was a blessing for the people of his district.

No, he did not wield the power of a president. But he set out to put together a liberal voice that has seen the nation grow in care for its people and has railed at conservative excess when no one else dared.

When Ted Kennedy first came to my publisher’s office – he never simply came to the newsroom – he had all the charisma of a Kennedy, and he was there to discuss the issues of the Senate, nothing else. Yet in those earlier days, most of the people around him took it for granted that this was just the warm up for a presidential battle, and it was noticed that early in his Senate tenure he depended great deal on his aides.

After some questioning, though, the real cache what was in Ted’s presentations. So it was the aide who had the factual answers. Ted would listen carefully to the question, use the Kennedy charm to get the response going, then hand it over to the aide with all the backup material. On his own, Kennedy was almost clueless at the beginning.

At least that was how in seemed.

But he had all the moves: his strong jaw would flex as he listened, a blue stare would suddenly be pointed at the questioner, a bit of dangling hair would follow his face like a punctuation, a hand would reach out for the answer and end up pointing to the readied aide. Masterful.

His presence was enough to stir the thought that another Kennedy was about to make the grab for the grail. Caesar was here, in the publisher’s office, talking with regular reporters.

But that seemingly ingenuous period didn’t last long. It was soon apparent to reporters everywhere, but especially here in Massachusetts, where in the suburbs around Boston in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s voices of extreme conservatism and reaction were increasingly pronounced, that it became apparent Ted Kennedy no longer needed aides to help him make his point.

Taller than many thought, well over six feet, he could command a high school gymnasium purposefully filled on one side with people who subscribed to a John Birch Society view of the world. He could handle the hecklers with ease and when some of their more cogent members asked what they believed to be hard questions, he seemed able to bat the question out of the park every time, answering them so completely, so witheringly, that the questioner had no choice but to sit down and retire from the field.

And so it appeared that the last Kennedy brother was now ready to seek the Democratic nomination for president.

But then came the fateful and confusing chapter in which Mary Jo Kopechne died because Ted drove off the narrow, wooden and unlighted bridge leading to Chappaquiddick, which is a small island separated from Martha’s Vineyard by a deep channel. He apparently managed to swim safely to shore while she drowned.

There was also his messy divorce – not very Catholic of Ted – after a tumultuous marriage to Virginia Joan Bennett.

Tarnished and diminished, Kennedy returned to the senate and simply went to work in the environment he knew and loved best. There was one last, perfunctory try, years later, for the presidency, but to those who had witnessed earlier Kennedy efforts, it seemed clear that when it was over Ted was very happy to return to the senate. Some might have thought he had failed his legacy, but he rose far beyond such assertions.

Kennedy’s concentration on legislative matters gave America something it desperately needed during an increasingly reactionary political period: the unwavering liberal with rhetorical stamina and unflagging persistence who was willing to engage and sometimes even pick the fights with the radical conservatives and press them to conclusion in the United States Senate.

With his eye fixed on Senate business, Kennedy built a breathtaking record: he led the fights for abortion rights, immigration policy, sensible gun control, energy policy, the war on terrorism, the war in Iraq, the No Child Left Behind, the Northern Ireland problem, judicial appointments, same-sex marriages, minimum wage, environmentalism, aid for students and hundreds of other battles that brought relief to average citizens.

He became the liberal lion. An accomplished Senator whose efforts and influence are recognized everywhere. He is one of the members who has passed from apprentice to journeyman to a master of the senate. This is a vitally important point to remember, because the U.S. Senate is ruled by rules, and an even greater grasp of Senate rules was needed in recent years when Republicans held the House of Representatives and the Senate during Bush’s tenure in the White House and wished to turn the Congress to their personal advantage.

Now, Kennedy can again press his issues, by one vote, since the Democrats have power to set the body’s agenda. Even though 51 Democratic votes in the Senate could not dictate any new legislation, the 51 Democrats do set the agenda. Deciding what the Senate will debate is key; it can bring important issues to the fore when the president wants to stifle debate.

Kennedy, second only to Democratic Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia in seniority, is now in a position to pressure Washington to turn aside or moderate Republican conservative policies.

More recently I saw Kennedy at Polly Fitzgerald’s funeral services at St. Bartholomew’s Catholic Church in Needham. It was before he knew he had cancer.

He was then, as we see him know, showing his age at 76, and he had trouble walking. With him were his wife, Victoria Reggie, and his sister Eunice.

Yet it was Massachusetts and the first Tuesday in February and Polly’s funeral services were ironically on primary election day, and Kennedy had drawn a clear line that put him on Sen. Barack Obama’s side and against Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Clearly Kennedy could have bowed out early and started campaigning on this crucial primary election day. No one would have blamed him. But Kennedy and his family members stayed for the whole service.

I was in the front seats as a pall bearer, along with my brother Mike. We turned and gave a sign of peace, a hand shake, to Ted and wife and sister.

He was of course not the man he had been in the early 1970’s, when the aura of a potential presidency hung over him, but in the end he has been even more to the nation. He has been a powerful influence in the Congress from the administration of his brother to the disastrous years of George W. Bush. The aura now was one of quiet dignity.

Within weeks of the Fitzgerald funeral, Kennedy had a seizure and was diagnosed as having brain cancer. This may last for years of treatment, or it might lead to a quick downturn. No one can guess.

But it is not hard to guess how hard it will be for this great nation to find another liberal firebrand, someone who will never back away from the forces of reaction, the forces of fear, the forces of self-interest and the forces of power politics, all of whom wish to misuse patriotism for their own ends.

The aura of dignity Ted Kennedy now bears is well deserved, as is the mantle of respect due him from every American who believes in the Constitution.

9/08