Mondale leads scramble for Kennedy’s mantle

Press, 17 December 1982, Page 15

Mondale leads scramble for Kennedy’s mantle

From

ROBERT CHESSHYRE

in Washington

Having buried the Democratic Party's favourite son with faint praise and somewhat hastv glee, the surviv-

ing candidates for the party's 1984 presidential nomination set about raiding the attic in an unseemly search for the family jewels. Or so it seemed as the mad scramble to inherit Teddy Kennedy’s mantle — and liis staff — erupted even before the last of the most celebrated fraternity in American politics had formally announced his decision to'depart the scene. The air over Washington was dark with hats being cast into the ring. Names that one suspects 'are scarcely household in their own homes were floated. And the naked ambition that propels men towards the most important elected office in the world was stripped bare for all to see.

One sought in vain for principle and policy: never mind what the race is for, it's the winning that counts. Perhaps the most unseemly stroke of all came from Senator John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth and a man considered in the Eisenhower mould — mainly because he has a square head and is known to the public. Glenn swept into the Senate television gallery to claim that he had taken Bobby Kennedy's bereaved children home after their father had been assassinated. One half expected a bloodstained memento of that grisly day. Other grinning faces bobbed hourly before the public. Senator Gary Hart, who is often referred to as

an "issues" politician'(what does that make the others?), was smirking ecstatically at us on breakfast television. Senator Alan Cranston, whose chief claims to fame are that he is almost as old as Ronald Reagan and comes from California, was stressing his “liberal” credentials. Senator Dale Bumpers (Senator who?), whose tenuous claim to the White House seems to rest on the fact that he votes regularly with Kennedy. announced to a breathless world that he would be "keeping my options open." Congressman Maurice “Mo" Udall, who ran Carter relatively close in the 1976 primaries and is a genuine liberal, beloved of the press because he is both witty and wise, but who suffers from Parkinson's disease, announced that he was “forced to reconsider staying on the sidelines.”

The genuine front-runner, former Vice-President Walter “Fritz - ” Mondale, whose chief plank recently has been the support of protectionism against the wicked Japanese in order to woo the labour vote, did have the sense not to go snuffing too obviously in the trough, but his people were said to be “working the phones" to former Kennedy supporters and staff. On every side candidates arose, like birds from the bush startled by gunfire. It seemed for a while that almost everyone who had ever voted Democrat was in with a chance, as nonentities of every description an-

nounced they were "reconsidering." ,All of which made Teddy himself seem somewhat nobler and more dignified than he sometimes is. when he announced in a packed and emotional Senate committee room that he was quitting before the game was even afoot.

Some of his huge army of young staff — there seemed to be one for every day of the year — were red-eyed, and ' even a cynic would hesitate to suggest that they, had been weeping for their careers rather than for a lost dream.

Whatever Kennedy's faults and political liabilities — and it is a very open question to judge from soundings round state Democratic parties whether he could have got the nomination, never mind won the Presidency — he stands for something. In him, the poor, the black, the bereaved, the nuclear freezers, have a champion. It is an irony, no doubt, that one so rich, privileged, and morally wilful, should embody these causes, but he does, and he does it from the heart. He defines the otherwise incoherent Left of American politics. True, there was a mite of hypocrisy in his renunciation: what is personal, what is political when you are as famous as Kennedy, when your every action is pounced on and dissected? . Certainlv his children — and it was a sentimental master-stroke to have this

poor motherless brood gazing with anxious longing and obvious relief as their father did the gracious deed — don't want him to run. But why not? Because they don’t want Chappaquiddick and late nights with ’ blondes dragged once more across the front pages of America's newspapers. Why. if the decision had been entirely personal, did Kennedy tell us that he had been consulting across the country with leading Democrats? ’ Twelve other Democratic senators did better than Kennedy in the recent mid-term elections, and the opinion polls found voter after voter who had just cast a ballot for Kennedy’s reelection to the Senate, saying they didn't want him in the White House. It was a dignified and sensible step to quit so early, but the packaging was not entirelv frank.

Will he be back? Unlikely. The baggage he carries with him grows no lighter down the years. Chappaquiddick will never eo a-«ay. Certainly he is young enough, but age is not his problem. Others have come back — Richard Nixon, for one — but they never ceased to seek ."the ultimate prize in their every waking moment." Four times Kennedy has walked away from the challenge. only' taking it. up against an incumbent President of his own party. To win in this business, you have to be prepared to walk through fire.

To that end some of those who will soon be setting up "exploratory" committees are already donning asbestos suits. They run because it's there.