The Kennedy Men_ 1901-1963 - Laurence Leamer [434]
“Can you put it in a profile?” Kennedy asked, warming to the idea of sticking the story in the middle of a larger story, hoping that it would get lost in the rest of the article.
“No,” said Healy, a word that the president heard only rarely.
“What do you mean?” Kennedy asked.
“Because that would give you five stories on this thing, day after day,” he said. “I’m only going to do this piece if I can do it in one complete piece, the story at Harvard, everything.”
The president decided that he could not handle this matter in a phone call. So he invited Healy to the White House the next afternoon. There the two men spent an hour discussing how the Globe would break the story. Healy laid out everything he would need, from the Harvard academic records to an interview with Teddy.
“How’ll you play the story?” asked Kennedy.
“I don’t know,” Healy said, though it seemed doubtful that a story of this magnitude would be anywhere but on the front page. “You know enough about newspapers that basically a story is played on the basis of the news.”
“Well, that’s unfortunate,” Kennedy said, his irony intact. “I’ll get back to you.”
That evening the president called to say that he had decided to go ahead, and he wanted to meet with Healy again the next day. This time the president called in Bundy, who would arrange for the records at Harvard, as well as O’Donnell, Kennedy’s trusted political adviser, who remained opposed to Teddy’s electoral adventure. The four men discussed the smallest nuances and details of their agreement. When they had finally decided their strategy, O’Donnell turned to the president: “We’re having more problems with this than we had with the Bay of Pigs.”
“Yeah, with about the same results,” Kennedy quipped.
As Healy was leaving, Kennedy stopped him a moment to add an afterthought. “Hey, you better call Teddy about this, too.”
Two weeks after Teddy announced for the Senate, a front-page story appeared in the Boston Globe under the headline “Ted Kennedy Tells About Harvard Examination Incident.” Healy insisted later that the publisher softened the article. It was a masterpiece of gentle euphemism in which words such as “cheating” and “expelled” never appeared. Teddy made his obligatory mea culpa (“What I did was wrong”), but there was a dangerous tone to the story, dangerous most of all to Teddy himself and his future. Cheating is a coward’s ploy, and he was cheating again now by refusing to face up to what he had done. He had not had the strength and the will to handle the matter himself. His brother, the president, had taken care of it. Then Healy and the Globe had done their part to take care of him again. There were always people taking care of Teddy.
The president’s prestige was on the line now, however, and it was simply unthinkable that Teddy would be allowed to lose in what was practically a Kennedy principality.
One of those who flew north to help with the campaign was Milton Gwirtzman, a speechwriter and attorney. “Teddy and his brothers considered a political campaign an athletic competition by another name,” Gwirtzman reflected. “Teddy wanted to get in as many campaign stops as possible, just as he wanted to get in as many downhill ski runs, to get in that nineteenth run even though it was getting dark and sometimes dangerous…. Teddy got it down to an absolute minimum the time it took him to get up in the morning, showered, shaved, dressed, and ready to go out campaigning. He got it down to five minutes so he could be down on the wharf at six-thirty in the morning shaking hands with fishermen.”
Teddy’s Democratic opponent, Edward McCormack, bore another famous Massachusetts political name. His uncle, Congressman John McCormack, was speaker of the House. Unlike Teddy, thirty-eight-year-old Eddie