Free Ted Kennedy: The Dream That Never Died by Edward Klein Page B

who would succeed Walter Cronkite as anchor of the CBS Evening News . That, at least, was Ted’s theory. In practice, things didn’t work out that way when the TV cameras began rolling.
    “So he comes across, as so many reporters and journalists in Washington knew him to be, as a physically dominating, very fine-looking, handsome sort of an Irish sculpted lord,” Mudd recalled of the interview. “But at times hopelessly inarticulate … grasping for words. Not terribly well collected. But nonetheless a major force that just fills the screen. And then suddenly to have this great face and visage not being able to put a complete sentence together in answer to some very simple questions.” 10
    “Why do you want to be president?” Mudd asked in the interview.
    “Well,” Kennedy began, “I’m—were I to—to make the—announcement … is because I have a great belief in this country, that it is—has more natural resources than any nation in the world … the greatest technology of any country in the world … the greatestpolitical system in the world … And the energies and the resourcefulness of this nation, I think, should be focused on these problems in a way that brings a sense of restoration in this country by its people … And I would basically feel that—that it’s imperative for this country to either move forward, that it can’t stand still, or otherwise it moves back.”
    Ted’s disastrous performance in the Mudd interview reflected a fatal flaw at the heart of the Kennedy campaign organization: Ted’s handlers didn’t treat him like an ordinary political candidate who needed to be prepped for his media close-up. Instead, they treated him like royalty. Certain words were never to be mentioned in Ted’s presence, words such as “Chappaquiddick” or “alcoholism” or “adultery.” Nobody had the guts to speak frankly to Ted about Joan’s drinking, Ted’s womanizing, and the residual fallout from Chappaquiddick. If these negatives were brought up at all, they were bundled together in a single, innocuous phrase: “the character issue.” The only person who was close enough to Ted to force him to confront “the character issue” was Steve Smith, the campaign manager, but according to Susan Estrich, the deputy campaign manager, Smith was a total washout.
    “He was invisible,” said Estrich. “[Steve] disappeared from the campaign. I mean that campaign was just a nightmare … at the top. I mean—Steve Smith … I recall went to Madrid or something for some extensive period of time during that time.” 11
    As a result, said Peter Hart, Ted’s chief pollster, “there was no sense of central leadership…. I don’t think that I was ever asked or given the opportunity to really explore [Chappaquiddick]…. I don’t think I ever did a focus group for Senator Kennedy, and I’m not sure that there was ever a focus group done in that campaign.” 12
    An even bigger problem was the candidate himself. Ted Kennedy had always been ambivalent about the presidency. Amateurpsychologists speculated that Ted was torn by the idea of leaping over the Kennedy family hierarchy, superseding his dead brothers, and perhaps even succeeding where they had faltered and failed.
    There was also a far simpler explanation. “My view,” said CBS’s Roger Mudd, “is that he wasn’t prepared, because he had never really sat down and asked himself [the] question: Why do I, Edward Moore Kennedy, want to run this country? Who are my enemies, who are my friends? Who am I going to reward? Who am I going to punish? He’d never been up to the top of the mountain. And I think he’d never asked himself that question. Simply because he, I suspect … could sort of ascend to the nomination and he didn’t have to go through that rigorous self-examination that [other politicians] went through and they all are supposed to go through.” 13
    E VERYTHING THAT FOLLOWED the Mudd interview was anti-climactic. On November 4,