The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [433]
Teddy was a young man of prodigious energy; as late as he stayed up and as wildly as he caroused, he was the first one up in the morning, ready to get on with his explorations. Across the continent he was greeted not as another hustling American politician but as his brother’s surrogate. He had picked up the president’s most idealistic phrases and talked fervently about the terrible plight of the poor and their aspirations. When his brothers had made their youthful foreign journeys, they had gone off without entourages and friends walling them off from the experience they sought. They had either published articles themselves or written extensively in their diaries, and their travels had marked them deeply. Wherever Teddy went, ambitious young men latching themselves onto his future surrounded him. It was unthinkable that he would sit down and do the grunt work of writing about his travels or penning extensive notes in a diary to be read only by him. Instead, when he returned to Massachusetts, the Boston Globe ran a five-part series on Teddy’s journeys, with detail worthy of a president or a secretary of State and a notable lack of attention to his evening adventures; and celebrated his new insights, such as that “some 200 million human beings in Latin America are demanding membership in the 21st century.”
Bobby was the least enchanted with Teddy’s desire to run for the Senate. The attorney general was not only the most moralistic of the Kennedy men but the most moral, and the whole idea rankled him. He was the president’s protector, not little Teddy’s, and he was not about to sign on to an enterprise that might embarrass the president. Even Joe was not as determinedly behind Teddy’s candidacy as he had been in pushing the president-elect to name Bobby attorney general.
Before his stroke, Joe asked Clark Clifford, a man of astute political judgment, to make his own assessment. Clifford, though initially opposed, came around to the idea that Teddy should be allowed to make his race. “Bobby was opposed still,” recalled John Sharon, a Democratic Party campaign organizer involved with the matter. “Teddy wanted to run, but he obviously saw that his family had pulled in this outside adviser.”
There were others criticizing the possible candidacy. Kenny O’Donnell worried about the damaging political implications of the race, as did Kennedy’s dear friend Chuck Spalding. “The only argument I ever had with Jack was once when we were going to Camp David when Teddy was being considered to run for the Senate,” recalled Spalding. “I thought it was possibly too much. Jack asked, ‘What is bothering you?’ He provoked me to say what I felt. I said, ‘You’re going to get all kinds of criticism. Teddy hasn’t done anything.’ Jack said, ‘He’s going to win in Massachusetts bigger than I did. And besides, Dad is interested.’”
Teddy went ahead and announced his candidacy on March 14, 1962, but one major obstacle remained if he was going to run the race he wanted to run. That was the Harvard cheating scandal. All across the Commonwealth there were whispers about a scandal at Harvard that the Kennedys had covered up. It had become a matter that, if not handled properly, could saddle Teddy with enough shame to doom his candidacy before it began. This was a matter of such importance that the president himself decided that he would be the maestro orchestrating every detail.
The Kennedys needed the proper publication, and that inevitably was the pro-Kennedy Boston Globe. Dick Maguire, the Democratic Party treasurer, called Bob Healy, the Globe’s Washington bureau chief, who happened to be in Boston. Healy was a fine reporter and a Kennedy partisan privy to many of the inner workings of the family. Maguire invited Healy to his suite at the Parker House.