Kennedy: he won’t run—or will he?

Press, 20 February 1979, Page 18

Kennedy: he won’t run—or will he?

By

ROBERT KAISER

ill the “Guardian,” London

What is Edward Kennedy up to? “I think,” the Massachusetts Senator replies, “that the interpretation is best left to others.” Or, let them all guess. In fact, Mr Kennedy, nearly 47, is like the child in the nursery rhyme who “could if he would, but he won’t.” He could, the polls say, trounce the sitting President of his own Party in 1980 if he would just say he is running. But he won’t—or at least he says he won’t. He also won’t do anything to squelch the speculation. He clearly enjoys keeping both the options open and the White House on edge. That gamesmanship greets visitors the moment they enter his office. “It’s about time the ‘Washington Post’ got here,” the receptionist says with a grin. “He’s been on the front page of the ‘Star’ the last eight days running.’’

Most of those stories reported Mr Kennedy’s disagreements with President Carter’s proposed budget cuts. Day after day, Mr Kennedy or members of his huge and hyperactive staff produced some jibe or comment, analysis or rebuttal that put him at odds with Mr Carter—and into the papers.

What about that? Been blown out of proportion, Mr Kennedy replies. “We’re talking about $4 billion or .$5 billion of difference in a budget of $530 billion.” But he also confirms —by refusing to deny it—that he warned his staff recently not to let him appear too critical of Mr Carter. “Let’s cool it,” one associate quoted Mr Kennedy as saying. The ironies here are juicy. Mr Kennedy gets enormous publicity for

criticising the Administration, yet the record shows that he is among Mr Carter’s staunchest supporters in the Capitol on roll-call votes. When asked if he has consciously passed up a chance to criticise the Administration —if he ever ducked one bebecause he did not want to look too critical —the Senator laughs. “Not that I can think of,” he replies. And would he dispute John Connally’s observation that “if you have ever seen a man positioning himself to run for President, Senator Kennedy is?” This provokes the line that “interpretation is best left to others.” A little later Mr Kennedy adds that “my position is clear,” but of course it isn’t. And he makes no effort to clarify it further, except to repeat what he has often said before, that he anticipates a Carter renomination and a Carter re-elec-tion in 1980.

This banter passes back and forth between Mr Kennedy and two visitors to the Dirksen office building. In the huge, airy office that Mr Kennedy has inherited from Senator James Eastland, along with his new job as chairman of the judiciary committee. During a 25minute interview, the Senator doesn’t complete many sentences. He plays with his eyeglasses a lot. One visitor asks if he is impatient with all the questions about his presidential ambitions. “I can’t say I’m impatient,” he replies. “Realistic, I guess.” Well, does he foresee a time when he may have to make a categorical denial of candidacy, something beyond his stated expectation that Mr Carter will

be re-elected? "I certainly don’t see that as necessary now, or in the foreseeable future,” Mr Kennedy replies. Eward Kennedy may occupy a unique political role in the history of the Republic. He carries what amounts to a royal name that guarantees high visibility and public attention. He has a national following at a time when even the President can’t say that with confidence. He is probably the biggest celebrity in the nation’s public life.

The pollsters report that Mr Kennedy is running far ahead of Mr Carter among Democrats. A “Los Angeles Times” poll in New Hampshire (where the key early presidential primary has often been carried with write-in votes) found in December that Democrats favoured Mr Kennedy 57 to 21 per cent over the President for the 1980 nomination. Nationally, a Lou Harris survey, also in December, gave Mr Kennedy a 56 to 39 per cent lead over Mr Carter among Democrats. An activist by instinct, surrounded by an aggressive, competent and energetic staff, now blessed with a major committee chairmanship as well as membership on three other useful committees, Mr Kennedy is now placed to become one of the titans of the Senate. He has more than 70 working for him, including an inner circle of about 10, at least some of whom see themselves as the equivalent of a White House staff. (“It’s a better group than Carter has around him,” one Senator friendly to Mr Kennedy said recently.) Kennedy encourages his associates to find areas

worthy of his attention or involvement, a mode of operations that augments the flow of news releases and position papers on a wide variety of subjects. Some friends see him filling the vacuum left in liberal leadership by the death of Mr Hubert H. Humphrey.

Others think he really has his eye on supplanting Mr Carter. Some of Kennedy’s closest associates — people who share the traditional liberalism that the Senator still espouses, despite the current political fashions — doubt that Mr Kennedy’s positions on issues make much differ-

ence to his popularity. “He’a Kennedy,” one said. "He can talk about whatever he wants

to. If Mr Kennedy will not signal an intention to run, he has made moves that tantalise those who are hoping for his candidacy. One of those was the hiring of Mr Carl Wagner, a widely admired political organiser who reportedly chose to work for Kennedy instead of taking a job with the Carter Administration. The Kennedy potential intrigues a variety of Democrats dissatisfied with Mr Carter’s leadership, and they spend time concocting strategies that would put him in the race without his having to take the first step.

A favourite plot, described by Mr William Winpisinger, the outspokenly anti-Cartet President of the International Association of Machinists calls for the election of nominally uncommitted but openlv pro-Kennedy delegates in next winter’s lowa precinct caucuses, the first step in the 1980 Democratic nomination process.

A political consultant sympathetic to the Kennedy cause says it would be possible for dissident labour, farm and liberal groups to win 50 per cent of the lowa delegates on a pro-Kennedy uncommitted slate, against candidacies by both Mr Carter and Mr Jerry Brown, Governor of California. That would send an unmistakable invitation for him to run, he says. “Obviously,” he adds, “the political scene is continually evolving and changing. But some things don’t change. The President will be a candidate and he will be renominated — and I think he’ll be re-elected.” —“Washington Post.”