Tim Hogdson writes…
Getting older is a bitch, isn't it? Particularly when you not only start forgetting things but also begin to remember things that never happened. In your otherwise even-handed little appreciation/reminiscence about Ted Kennedy, you say: "…in 1979 [Kennedy] was thinking of challenging incumbent Jimmy Carter for the presidency…I also recall a certain relief a few months later when he decided not to run. I just didn't want to invest that much time and emotion in a guy who seemed so likely to disappoint us on some level. Since then, of course, they all have."
Kennedy did in fact launch an insurgent Presidential campaign against Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter on on November 7, 1979. The campaign self-sabotaged almost from the outset (do you remember the infamous CBS interview with Roger Mudd when Kennedy couldn't answer a straightforward question about why he was running for the Presidency?). In the event Carter won 24 of the Democratic primaries in 1980, Kennedy just 10. But Kennedy didn't end his campaign until the 1980 Democratic Convention in New York. Despite the overwhelming odds against an upset victory, his team firmly believed they could force through an amendment to the party's nominating rules and free delegates from being bound by primary results. They couldn't. The Kennedy move was defeated on the first night of the convention and the Senator withdrew from the race. He went on to deliver perhaps the most electrifying speech of his career on the second night of the Democratic gathering before folding his tent and stealing away back to Washington (or maybe Hyannis), offering only the most tepid endorsement of Carter before he left (and making a complete mockery of the notion of party unity in the process).
Anyway, I won't go on. Probably 29,000 other people have pointed out this little memory glitch.
Well, not quite 29,000. So far, it's yours and one other. But yeah, I shorthanded in writing that piece last night and I shouldn't have. What I actually recall is that about two months after that dinner meeting, the person who was organizing the Comedy Writer Squadron for Kennedy called and said that the plans were off; that Kennedy was not going to mount a serious challenge against Carter…just a "favorite son" candidacy to give himself some leverage at the convention.
I dunno if that was ever Kennedy's intent. It certainly was not what he went on to do. He did mount that serious challenge that she'd told me he was abandoning but he did so without the gang of joke writers that had been assembled. I was never asked again and neither were the others I knew at that dinner. I also recall a great disappointment in Kennedy (and my own relief that I hadn't invested a lot of emotion in him) when he gave that grudging, minimal endorsement of Carter.
That's kind of what I was trying to get at. Too often, we channel our passions towards some leader who looks like he's different, like he won't let us down. And then of course, they all do to some extent. We may not admit it. I have Republican friends who are in spectacular denial about what Bush-Cheney did because, I guess, it's too painful. I also have friends (Democrats, mostly) who strike me as too hasty to give up and admit defeat or betrayal. Ted Kennedy took his supporters on a roller coaster ride, up and down, up and down. I suppose that's better than one who only goes down but still…