Thanks for the critique and kind words. I remember buying a copy of National Defense in the hardback edition, back when the cost of a book had to be weighed with rent and beer. It is still on my shelf, an excellent example of paradigm-busting for young, aspiring journalists. I, too, heard stories about why EMK was late to the podium. One of them, in the EMK oral histories, was that Ed Koch, a Carter supporter, contributed to the traffic jam in misplaced spite, by pulling off the NYPD police escort. EMK was surely piqued when he got there and found "every freeholder from New Jersey" on the podium, but he did shake Carter's hand several times, and the president could very well have yanked that handshake into a hands-aloft victory pose. What alternative history: imagine if Carter had tried to do this, and Teddy had resisted! We would still be talking about the wrassling match at the Garden.
With humility, I dissent. I find “what if” history to be useless. It is merely a Rorschach test for one’s fondest hopes. If history was merely a binary exercise, a choice between two paths, then contemporaries could have seen it just as well and avoided the unfavorable outcomes. “What if” exercises are an example of false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy. To ask what would have happened if Ted Kenned was not a drunk is a meaningless exercise. Maybe he could have defeated Carter and Reagan. Maybe Reagan would have defeated both Carter and Kennedy. But the fact remains that Ted Kennedy was a drunk. He enervated the Democratic Party and delegitimized Carter.
Which brings me to my second dissent. Notwithstanding the occasional flights of rhetorical fancy, Ted Kennedy’s most enduring legacy which has shaped a couple generations of Americans, and will likely alter the life course of a few generations to come, the legacy that will last beyond all legislative accomplishments, is the election of Ronald Reagan.
Thanks, appreciate your weighing in, in this depth.
The reason I find "what if?" to be illuminating is that it clarifies the role of *pure chance* in our public lives. Which is probably depressing to think about, but I believe it's a real thing.
On the 1980 election: As far as I know Jimmy Carter still believes that with one more helicopter, the Desert One mission would have succeeded, and he would have been re-elected. We'll never know, but I think he is probably right. With or without the destructive 1980 run by Ted Kennedy.
I think the absence of that one additional copter is not so much "what if," but more in the nature of a reasoned after-action report. If they could have gotten all of the guys with guns into the Embassy, they would have overpowered those kids and got everyone out. But...they didn't have that copter. We did, however, have Ted Kennedy.
For all of Ted Kennedy's faults, he was not a grasping, criminal-minded sociopath, although his weaknesses would have probably resulted in a disastrous presidency. He actually reminds me of Hunter Biden, Billy Carter and Roger Clinton - all brothers of presidents, and all deeply flawed.
I lived in an older sibling's shadow for most of my life and understand the tremendous subconscious effect it has. Ted Kennedy lived in the shadow of two highly successful older brothers. One devastating mistake in his youth (Chappaquidick) could have confirmed to him that he was a failure, and worthless. Hunter Biden lived in the shadow of the great and exalted Beau Biden, and I feel sad for him whenever his father gets sentimental and teary eyed in public over his favorite son, who was a hero and died an untimely death. Over the years I have read a bit about Ted Kennedy, and I know he grew up under tremendous pressure to be like his brothers.
“This is the greatest lesson a child can learn. It is the greatest lesson anyone can learn. It has been the greatest lesson I have learned: if you persevere, stick w/it, work @ it, you have a real opportunity to achieve something. Sure, there will be storms along the way. And you might not reach your goal right away. But if you do your best and keep a true compass, you'll get there.”
― Edward M. Kennedy, True Compass: A Memoir
“The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die.”
“I have fallen short in my life, but my faith has always brought me home.”
“Integrity is the lifeblood of democracy.
Deceit is a poison in its veins.”
“Ronald Reagan must love the poor; he is making so many of them.”
“One of the great lessons I’ve learned from a life in politics is that no reform is ever truly complete. We must constantly keep moving forward, seeking ways to create that more perfect union.”
― Edward M. Kennedy, True Compass: A Memoir
“What counts in our leadership is not the length of years in Washington, but the reach of our vision, the strength of our beliefs, and that rare quality of mind and spirit that can call forth the best in our country and the best in the world.”
Another great article for our breakfast read, thanks! And, the comments section is always very interesting and it brings up many different, totally fascinating points of view. "Like" all comments!
About our Ted: He was the most forthright, most insistent, most courageous champion of international human rights. That makes his problem with Carter even more tragic: President Carter gave us hope by basing foreign affairs on basic human rights, and spending his life defending human rights. What an incredible role model.
(Let's all reread the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a legal instrument signed by most countries in our world. Everyone on our planet has the right to basic human rights including safety, housing, a job, medical care, schooling. Ironically, for the past human rights champions, in 2022 we now have enough resources to feed and care for every single person on the planet, but we do not have the political will to do so.)
Yes, Ted Kennedy had his major human flaws. Let's count up all of humanity's leaders that had the same flaws, for perspective. It's a long list.
Watching the Mad Men series again recently, I remembered that the show took us through the darkness of the vicious murders of MLK, President Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy.
How our society reeled as guns tore apart our leaders and our dreams. Ted Kennedy loved his brothers very much.
Senator Kennedy was called "The Lion of the Senate." In the Reagan era, human rights advocates working on genocide and refugee rescue knew the real reason for that. Most assumed it was because he was a senior Member. No, it was because you could hear his loud roar of disapproval of GOP anti-refugee tactics, sounding through the marble hallways of Russell Office Building, as he walked to the hearing room. You could hear him coming down the hall from a mile away.
Senator Kennedy is responsible for holding the line on human rights during the hearings for the Immigration Reform Bill of 1984. The Bill offered sweeping new, unique protections to refugees and immigrants, all opposed by the GOP.
You could always count on Senator Ted and the entire Kennedy family to be our American human rights protectors. That's their legacy.
Let's admit: most of the world cares so little about the forgotten, the poorest of the poor.
Let's care about the least and the most forgotten among us, the poorest of the poor, the refugees who have lost everything. In America, as the brilliant Congressman Barney Frank liked to say, "Unless you are speaking Navajo, you came from somewhere else." It can be us.
Refugees and immigrants deserve our help and protection. They deserve to have human rights in their own countries, so they can stay home if they want to. That is what foreign policy geniuses like Senator Kennedy and President Carter know is the best way to good international policy.
Usually, the refugee makes it to America using the very last of their resources, mental and physical. Lane Kirkland, head of AFLCIO, would say during the hearings for the landmark Immigration Reform Bill: " We welcome all refugees and immigrants, anyone who wants to come here. We'll give them jobs and a Union card." ;) True story, he repeated it many times.
Thanks for all of this. Another strength of this new bio — for which, again, I'll await the "real" reviews — is that it goes into (a) the record of achievement, and (b) the reasons for EMK's flaws and vulnerabilities, while also being clear-eyed about (c) his self-inflicted flaws and wounds. A complex and balanced portrayal of a complex man.
The Dalai Lama said, when I feel like criticizing other people, I try to focus on my own faults.
That's great for an advanced karmic being of enlightenment but the rest of us have to work to overcome the glass house phenom.
Especially in politics, we are only human after all, with flaws. If you lived in DC at the time, Senator Ted's flaws were right on display. Alcohol is probably the reason many have difficulty in Washington, with its boatloads of free drinks available for all politicians.
Twain's dilemma is something common to all, I would like to be a better self-editor tbh, so thanks for reading! :)
we await more pearls of wisdom on the substack, thank you for sharing your memories too
It is never more true, "history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes"
“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
As the youngest of 3 brothers and an alcoholic who has been sober for 32 years, I can certainly relate in many ways to Ted Kennedy. And like others, I find "what if?" scenarios interesting and informative. When we study these possible microscopic diversions, we begin to understand how often monumental changes in the course of history turn on a simple whim or detail - as you have pointed out above.
I love the term "butterfly effect" to describe these tiny changes (the flap of a butterfly's wings) that end up determining major events some time in the future (a major hurricane). When imagining these scenarios, particularly regarding politics, there is one unavoidable question that keeps rearing its head: "What if I were to become more involved in politics at this point? Is it possible for one individual to be the butterfly that flaps its wings and causes a hurricane?"
We have numerous inspirational quotes that point us in that direction, all centered on the wisdom behind the alleged Gandhi quote, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." But how many of us truly believe that we could be that butterfly - how many of us dare to flap our wings?
The fact is, just as Ted Kennedy had no awareness of the eventual consequences of getting behind the wheel of that car in 1969, or the butterfly has no awareness of its effect on the movement of air molecules and the chain reaction that results in our hypothetical hurricane, so none of us can ever be aware of the influence we have on the world around us. A simple act of kindness on a street corner can be passed along from one person to another, metastasizing into a decision by someone in power to alter a policy, thus changing the lives of millions in a positive way.
Indeed, do we have to involve ourselves in politics at all in order to affect change? Or can we simply do our best each day to pour as much positive energy and good will into the world around us? Perhaps instead of focusing on engineering a hurricane, it's more important for us to just flap our wings and allow the laws of nature to do the rest? In simpler terms, maybe we should all just focus on doing the Next Right Thing?
There could be a good lesson here for members of Congress.
I very much enjoyed reading Farrell's book on Nixon, so I'm definitely looking forward to this one. And btw Jim, because of your mention of it, I'm rereading Blue Highways, 40 years later, same copy of the book.
Thanks! There is an infinite supply of books, and we all have finite time and attention for reading them. So I appreciate hearing that you've found this one worthwhile (again).
I'm actually surprised at how much I don't remember after 40 years, particularly since part of his route, route 2 through Montana, was terrain I traveled on my bicycle maybe 6 years before he took his trip, and I was surprised that he found that the road wasn't pristine, as it was when I'd in 1975. He also cut through Canada between Detroit and NY State, something I'd done on a cross-country car trip in 1973, but going east to west. (You go through London and Paris Ontario.)
My father's mentor, somewhere in middle age I think, calculated that he only had time to read another 3000 books, which he found depressing.
A couple of colleagues and I went to see Ted Kennedy speak at lunch hour in San Francisco during his 1980 campaign. We arrived at the event favorably disposed toward his run; headed back to the office shaking our heads and thinking along the lines of George W. Bush a couple of generations later: “That was some weird shit.” His speech was rambling and disjointed, and punctuated every few lines with what I can only describe as a “mad scientist” cackle. Off-putting doesn’t begin to describe it. I honestly think the candidate was drunk.
I thought Kennedy’s treatment of Carter at the podium later that year disgraceful. I flinch to disclose that come November I voted for John Anderson, because I was peeved at Carter for resuscitating Selective Service registration (I’d aged out by then, but memories of the Nixon years were still tender), and because I never dreamed that the American electorate was depraved enough to award Reagan the laurels. This taught me for all time that to spurn the (perceived) lesser of two evils serves only to engorge the greater, a lesson which, it pains me to report, has eluded some of my friends from 1980.
Thank you. I had left Carter's staff by the time of the 1980 convention, and was in New York in my first year of working for the Atlantic. But I thought even then that EM Kennedy was playing with fire in running against Carter — and doing so in such a half-assed, entitled way — when Reagan was waiting in the general election.
You say that Kennedy sounded as if he was drunk during this 1980 campaign appearance. Farrell's book doesn't deal with that moment specifically but says it was an ongoing likelihood — really until his marriage to Victoria Reggie in the 1990s.
When Ted was still a Senator I was surprised to read that despite his severe alcoholism he was still a very effective Senator. Apparently in meetings with colleagues he was well informed on the issues.
David Corn’s new book “American Psychosis” traces the anti-democracy extremism and racism of today’s Republican Party back decades. I agree with him that Eisenhower backing off repudiating McCarthy was a huge missed opportunity to turn the party away from its extremism and conspiracy mongering.
The WaPo’s Dana Milbank believes that Republicans choosing Newt to be Speaker of the House was an important turning point. In his new book “The Decontructionists” Milbank describes how Newt not only didn’t hide the extremism and nasty partisanship, he normalized it by proudly putting it on display for the whole country to see. Unfortunately the mainstream media also help normalize it by treating both parties as if they were equally extreme and partisan.
I voted for Anderson too, but as someone who I thought had a much better approach to energy issues than Carter (I ran a publication aimed at renewable energy activists at that time). And I had heard that Anderson had a lot more support than the polls were indicating.
But looking back, I agree with you that I should have voted for Carter. Reagan ditched the Fairness Doctrine, rendering close to half the population ignorant on critical issues, undercut unions, and did much else that has hurt us in the long run.
Many third-party candidates are appealing, and more so than the two major-party nominees.
The most recent one of them (or "new party" candidate) to win the presidency was Abraham Lincoln. In all the times since them, votes for third-party presidential candidates are inevitably "spoiler" votes. It shouldn't be that way. But it is.
History professor here, and I love "if" history. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., had a favorite: A car that hit a man crossing 5th Avenue in New York City between 76th and 77th in 1931. The man was all right, but wrote about the odd sensation of flying into the air. What if the car had been going faster when it hit Winston Churchill?
Ted Kennedy accomplished so much, and yet there will always be those ifs surrounding him--and his family. And I remember a member of my family who was not exactly sympathetic toward him on most political issues saying that when you consider what he went through--the murder of his two brothers, and the responsibility that being the last male child entailed--he had a great burden to bear even without public life.
Thanks for the critique and kind words. I remember buying a copy of National Defense in the hardback edition, back when the cost of a book had to be weighed with rent and beer. It is still on my shelf, an excellent example of paradigm-busting for young, aspiring journalists. I, too, heard stories about why EMK was late to the podium. One of them, in the EMK oral histories, was that Ed Koch, a Carter supporter, contributed to the traffic jam in misplaced spite, by pulling off the NYPD police escort. EMK was surely piqued when he got there and found "every freeholder from New Jersey" on the podium, but he did shake Carter's hand several times, and the president could very well have yanked that handshake into a hands-aloft victory pose. What alternative history: imagine if Carter had tried to do this, and Teddy had resisted! We would still be talking about the wrassling match at the Garden.
With humility, I dissent. I find “what if” history to be useless. It is merely a Rorschach test for one’s fondest hopes. If history was merely a binary exercise, a choice between two paths, then contemporaries could have seen it just as well and avoided the unfavorable outcomes. “What if” exercises are an example of false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy. To ask what would have happened if Ted Kenned was not a drunk is a meaningless exercise. Maybe he could have defeated Carter and Reagan. Maybe Reagan would have defeated both Carter and Kennedy. But the fact remains that Ted Kennedy was a drunk. He enervated the Democratic Party and delegitimized Carter.
Which brings me to my second dissent. Notwithstanding the occasional flights of rhetorical fancy, Ted Kennedy’s most enduring legacy which has shaped a couple generations of Americans, and will likely alter the life course of a few generations to come, the legacy that will last beyond all legislative accomplishments, is the election of Ronald Reagan.
I’m taking a pass on the book.
Thanks, appreciate your weighing in, in this depth.
The reason I find "what if?" to be illuminating is that it clarifies the role of *pure chance* in our public lives. Which is probably depressing to think about, but I believe it's a real thing.
On the 1980 election: As far as I know Jimmy Carter still believes that with one more helicopter, the Desert One mission would have succeeded, and he would have been re-elected. We'll never know, but I think he is probably right. With or without the destructive 1980 run by Ted Kennedy.
I think the absence of that one additional copter is not so much "what if," but more in the nature of a reasoned after-action report. If they could have gotten all of the guys with guns into the Embassy, they would have overpowered those kids and got everyone out. But...they didn't have that copter. We did, however, have Ted Kennedy.
For all of Ted Kennedy's faults, he was not a grasping, criminal-minded sociopath, although his weaknesses would have probably resulted in a disastrous presidency. He actually reminds me of Hunter Biden, Billy Carter and Roger Clinton - all brothers of presidents, and all deeply flawed.
Well put. I think a strength of Farrell's book is that it emphasizes this "burden of being the youngest brother" theme, among others.
I lived in an older sibling's shadow for most of my life and understand the tremendous subconscious effect it has. Ted Kennedy lived in the shadow of two highly successful older brothers. One devastating mistake in his youth (Chappaquidick) could have confirmed to him that he was a failure, and worthless. Hunter Biden lived in the shadow of the great and exalted Beau Biden, and I feel sad for him whenever his father gets sentimental and teary eyed in public over his favorite son, who was a hero and died an untimely death. Over the years I have read a bit about Ted Kennedy, and I know he grew up under tremendous pressure to be like his brothers.
“This is the greatest lesson a child can learn. It is the greatest lesson anyone can learn. It has been the greatest lesson I have learned: if you persevere, stick w/it, work @ it, you have a real opportunity to achieve something. Sure, there will be storms along the way. And you might not reach your goal right away. But if you do your best and keep a true compass, you'll get there.”
― Edward M. Kennedy, True Compass: A Memoir
“The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dreams shall never die.”
“I have fallen short in my life, but my faith has always brought me home.”
“Integrity is the lifeblood of democracy.
Deceit is a poison in its veins.”
“Ronald Reagan must love the poor; he is making so many of them.”
“One of the great lessons I’ve learned from a life in politics is that no reform is ever truly complete. We must constantly keep moving forward, seeking ways to create that more perfect union.”
― Edward M. Kennedy, True Compass: A Memoir
“What counts in our leadership is not the length of years in Washington, but the reach of our vision, the strength of our beliefs, and that rare quality of mind and spirit that can call forth the best in our country and the best in the world.”
― Edward M. Kennedy
goodreads quotes
Another great article for our breakfast read, thanks! And, the comments section is always very interesting and it brings up many different, totally fascinating points of view. "Like" all comments!
About our Ted: He was the most forthright, most insistent, most courageous champion of international human rights. That makes his problem with Carter even more tragic: President Carter gave us hope by basing foreign affairs on basic human rights, and spending his life defending human rights. What an incredible role model.
(Let's all reread the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a legal instrument signed by most countries in our world. Everyone on our planet has the right to basic human rights including safety, housing, a job, medical care, schooling. Ironically, for the past human rights champions, in 2022 we now have enough resources to feed and care for every single person on the planet, but we do not have the political will to do so.)
Yes, Ted Kennedy had his major human flaws. Let's count up all of humanity's leaders that had the same flaws, for perspective. It's a long list.
Watching the Mad Men series again recently, I remembered that the show took us through the darkness of the vicious murders of MLK, President Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy.
How our society reeled as guns tore apart our leaders and our dreams. Ted Kennedy loved his brothers very much.
Senator Kennedy was called "The Lion of the Senate." In the Reagan era, human rights advocates working on genocide and refugee rescue knew the real reason for that. Most assumed it was because he was a senior Member. No, it was because you could hear his loud roar of disapproval of GOP anti-refugee tactics, sounding through the marble hallways of Russell Office Building, as he walked to the hearing room. You could hear him coming down the hall from a mile away.
Senator Kennedy is responsible for holding the line on human rights during the hearings for the Immigration Reform Bill of 1984. The Bill offered sweeping new, unique protections to refugees and immigrants, all opposed by the GOP.
You could always count on Senator Ted and the entire Kennedy family to be our American human rights protectors. That's their legacy.
Let's admit: most of the world cares so little about the forgotten, the poorest of the poor.
Let's care about the least and the most forgotten among us, the poorest of the poor, the refugees who have lost everything. In America, as the brilliant Congressman Barney Frank liked to say, "Unless you are speaking Navajo, you came from somewhere else." It can be us.
Refugees and immigrants deserve our help and protection. They deserve to have human rights in their own countries, so they can stay home if they want to. That is what foreign policy geniuses like Senator Kennedy and President Carter know is the best way to good international policy.
Usually, the refugee makes it to America using the very last of their resources, mental and physical. Lane Kirkland, head of AFLCIO, would say during the hearings for the landmark Immigration Reform Bill: " We welcome all refugees and immigrants, anyone who wants to come here. We'll give them jobs and a Union card." ;) True story, he repeated it many times.
Thanks for all of this. Another strength of this new bio — for which, again, I'll await the "real" reviews — is that it goes into (a) the record of achievement, and (b) the reasons for EMK's flaws and vulnerabilities, while also being clear-eyed about (c) his self-inflicted flaws and wounds. A complex and balanced portrayal of a complex man.
Thank you!
The Dalai Lama said, when I feel like criticizing other people, I try to focus on my own faults.
That's great for an advanced karmic being of enlightenment but the rest of us have to work to overcome the glass house phenom.
Especially in politics, we are only human after all, with flaws. If you lived in DC at the time, Senator Ted's flaws were right on display. Alcohol is probably the reason many have difficulty in Washington, with its boatloads of free drinks available for all politicians.
Twain's dilemma is something common to all, I would like to be a better self-editor tbh, so thanks for reading! :)
we await more pearls of wisdom on the substack, thank you for sharing your memories too
It is never more true, "history doesn't repeat itself, but it rhymes"
“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”
― Mark Twain
thank you
thank you Mary! hope you are having a good day!
As the youngest of 3 brothers and an alcoholic who has been sober for 32 years, I can certainly relate in many ways to Ted Kennedy. And like others, I find "what if?" scenarios interesting and informative. When we study these possible microscopic diversions, we begin to understand how often monumental changes in the course of history turn on a simple whim or detail - as you have pointed out above.
I love the term "butterfly effect" to describe these tiny changes (the flap of a butterfly's wings) that end up determining major events some time in the future (a major hurricane). When imagining these scenarios, particularly regarding politics, there is one unavoidable question that keeps rearing its head: "What if I were to become more involved in politics at this point? Is it possible for one individual to be the butterfly that flaps its wings and causes a hurricane?"
We have numerous inspirational quotes that point us in that direction, all centered on the wisdom behind the alleged Gandhi quote, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." But how many of us truly believe that we could be that butterfly - how many of us dare to flap our wings?
The fact is, just as Ted Kennedy had no awareness of the eventual consequences of getting behind the wheel of that car in 1969, or the butterfly has no awareness of its effect on the movement of air molecules and the chain reaction that results in our hypothetical hurricane, so none of us can ever be aware of the influence we have on the world around us. A simple act of kindness on a street corner can be passed along from one person to another, metastasizing into a decision by someone in power to alter a policy, thus changing the lives of millions in a positive way.
Indeed, do we have to involve ourselves in politics at all in order to affect change? Or can we simply do our best each day to pour as much positive energy and good will into the world around us? Perhaps instead of focusing on engineering a hurricane, it's more important for us to just flap our wings and allow the laws of nature to do the rest? In simpler terms, maybe we should all just focus on doing the Next Right Thing?
There could be a good lesson here for members of Congress.
Thank you for this. I've written over the decades about David Allen and his emphasis on doing the *next* thing.
I very much appreciate your emphasis on doing *the next Right thing.*
Wonderful comment!
I very much enjoyed reading Farrell's book on Nixon, so I'm definitely looking forward to this one. And btw Jim, because of your mention of it, I'm rereading Blue Highways, 40 years later, same copy of the book.
Thanks! There is an infinite supply of books, and we all have finite time and attention for reading them. So I appreciate hearing that you've found this one worthwhile (again).
I'm actually surprised at how much I don't remember after 40 years, particularly since part of his route, route 2 through Montana, was terrain I traveled on my bicycle maybe 6 years before he took his trip, and I was surprised that he found that the road wasn't pristine, as it was when I'd in 1975. He also cut through Canada between Detroit and NY State, something I'd done on a cross-country car trip in 1973, but going east to west. (You go through London and Paris Ontario.)
My father's mentor, somewhere in middle age I think, calculated that he only had time to read another 3000 books, which he found depressing.
One of my favorites! I think I'm going to be reading it again too.
A couple of colleagues and I went to see Ted Kennedy speak at lunch hour in San Francisco during his 1980 campaign. We arrived at the event favorably disposed toward his run; headed back to the office shaking our heads and thinking along the lines of George W. Bush a couple of generations later: “That was some weird shit.” His speech was rambling and disjointed, and punctuated every few lines with what I can only describe as a “mad scientist” cackle. Off-putting doesn’t begin to describe it. I honestly think the candidate was drunk.
I thought Kennedy’s treatment of Carter at the podium later that year disgraceful. I flinch to disclose that come November I voted for John Anderson, because I was peeved at Carter for resuscitating Selective Service registration (I’d aged out by then, but memories of the Nixon years were still tender), and because I never dreamed that the American electorate was depraved enough to award Reagan the laurels. This taught me for all time that to spurn the (perceived) lesser of two evils serves only to engorge the greater, a lesson which, it pains me to report, has eluded some of my friends from 1980.
Thank you. I had left Carter's staff by the time of the 1980 convention, and was in New York in my first year of working for the Atlantic. But I thought even then that EM Kennedy was playing with fire in running against Carter — and doing so in such a half-assed, entitled way — when Reagan was waiting in the general election.
You say that Kennedy sounded as if he was drunk during this 1980 campaign appearance. Farrell's book doesn't deal with that moment specifically but says it was an ongoing likelihood — really until his marriage to Victoria Reggie in the 1990s.
When Ted was still a Senator I was surprised to read that despite his severe alcoholism he was still a very effective Senator. Apparently in meetings with colleagues he was well informed on the issues.
David Corn’s new book “American Psychosis” traces the anti-democracy extremism and racism of today’s Republican Party back decades. I agree with him that Eisenhower backing off repudiating McCarthy was a huge missed opportunity to turn the party away from its extremism and conspiracy mongering.
The WaPo’s Dana Milbank believes that Republicans choosing Newt to be Speaker of the House was an important turning point. In his new book “The Decontructionists” Milbank describes how Newt not only didn’t hide the extremism and nasty partisanship, he normalized it by proudly putting it on display for the whole country to see. Unfortunately the mainstream media also help normalize it by treating both parties as if they were equally extreme and partisan.
I voted for Anderson too, but as someone who I thought had a much better approach to energy issues than Carter (I ran a publication aimed at renewable energy activists at that time). And I had heard that Anderson had a lot more support than the polls were indicating.
But looking back, I agree with you that I should have voted for Carter. Reagan ditched the Fairness Doctrine, rendering close to half the population ignorant on critical issues, undercut unions, and did much else that has hurt us in the long run.
Many third-party candidates are appealing, and more so than the two major-party nominees.
The most recent one of them (or "new party" candidate) to win the presidency was Abraham Lincoln. In all the times since them, votes for third-party presidential candidates are inevitably "spoiler" votes. It shouldn't be that way. But it is.
Which is why we need ranked choice voting.
History professor here, and I love "if" history. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., had a favorite: A car that hit a man crossing 5th Avenue in New York City between 76th and 77th in 1931. The man was all right, but wrote about the odd sensation of flying into the air. What if the car had been going faster when it hit Winston Churchill?
Ted Kennedy accomplished so much, and yet there will always be those ifs surrounding him--and his family. And I remember a member of my family who was not exactly sympathetic toward him on most political issues saying that when you consider what he went through--the murder of his two brothers, and the responsibility that being the last male child entailed--he had a great burden to bear even without public life.
Thank you. I had heard (but didn't recall last night) the Winston Churchill car-crash story. Whoa.
Agree with you entirely about the private burdens that fell upon a man who spent nearly 50 years in the intensive public limelight.
I didn't know about that event, but thinking about England without Churchill as Hitler made war is absolutely frightening!