True Compass: A Memoir

by Edward M. Kennedy

  Well, Reagan said, then we're still mandating it at the federal level. I think that setting up a whole new kind of process and whole new regulations is not wise. It would be very good if the states did that on their own, of course, and we ought to encourage them to.

  Then Reagan reflected some more and went on: But, you know, there have never really been definitive studies linking the availability of guns and deaths. And I'm just not sure that, if we banned "Saturday night specials," we'd be doing very much about the problem. There's a study being done by a foundation out on the West Coast that shows that it isn't just Saturday night specials; it's handguns in general.

  Reagan cited the example of Great Britain--where, as he told it, they had a presumption that if you were carrying a gun, you were going to use it. They tried you with the presumption that you had the intent to kill somebody. So it was a very strict law over there. The burglars didn't carry guns and you didn't have as many shootings.

  That, President Reagan pointed out, is a different concept than we have over here; but that's what happens in Great Britain.

  I responded that I knew other countries had other laws. But what I was interested in, I repeated, was reaching some common ground on the gun issue in America.

  Well, said Reagan, I think it's difficult to mandate to the states any kind of requirement.

  I heard the door to the Oval Office open behind me, and felt the presence of someone who had walked in and was standing behind me. It was a signal that my time with the president was up.

  This conversation took place about two months after John Hinckley stepped from a crowd outside a Washington hotel and fired a shot that ricocheted into President Reagan's lung with a German-made "Saturday night special" that was traced to a pawn shop in Dallas. Hinckley struck two others with the shots he fired. The pistol contained six foreign-made explosive cartridges, illegal in the United States. (None of the shells exploded.) Had the bullet struck the president directly, he could easily have been killed.

  Reagan could be warmly gracious. He offered an eloquent tribute to Jack's memory in a 1985 fund-raiser to endow the John F. Kennedy Library, held at my home in McLean It was a wonderful evening.

  When the president arrived, he took special care to talk to the children in attendance and pose for individual photos with them. There was a joke about where to stand, and Reagan remarked how important such directions were, particularly in the movies, because if you didn't hit your mark it could upset the whole scene. Many times, he said, scenes were ruined because an actor would start off on the left foot instead of the right.

  Caroline and Jackie were in attendance. Jackie seemed somewhat surprised when Caroline asked the president whether he had any microphones in the Oval Office. Reagan denied it, but Caroline said she thought she had detected one on a previous visit.

  I asked the president about his ranch and whether he was able to get there often. Reagan brightened at the mention of the subject and spoke for about fifteen minutes about how he'd had to give up his old ranch when he was elected governor of California because the taxes on it were half of his salary. Since then, he'd found new property in a mountainous area that he referred to as goat country. Mrs. Reagan said it was full of trees and pastures, terrific for riding.

  I have remained a close friend of Nancy Reagan. She was a dedicated ally in lining up support when we both fought in vain during George W. Bush's administration to restore funding for embryonic stem cell research. (Nancy, of course, was motivated partly by her husband's tragic affliction with Alzheimer's disease.) She said, "Give me the names of people you want me to call." I gave her the names, and she called every one of them. She called back and said, "Give me some more names."

  On January 21, 1981, Joan and I finally accepted the inevitable and divorced. It was amicable, and we agreed to share the duties of raising the children. Joan moved into the apartment in Boston; I maintained residence in the McLean house.

  I faced a reelection bid for the Senate in 1982, and while I did not feel that my seat was in serious trouble, I always took elections seriously. I was mindful that there might be political fallout from my run, and loss, for the nomination in 1980 and that outstanding senators and good friends--John Culver, Birch Bayh, and Frank Church--had just lost their reelections when Reagan swept in to victory. It was also the first time I would be running as an unmarried man. My team produced a number of TV ads for the 1982 election. I trusted the voters of Massachusetts to respond to messages of hope, frankness, and humanity. One ad featured Luella Hennessey Donovan, the beloved nurse and governess from my childhood, who described how I had slept in a chair beside Teddy's hospital bed while he was recuperating from his leg amputation. Another featured Frank Manning, an eighty-three-year-old advocate for senior citizens, who avowed, "He's not a plaster saint. He's not without his faults. But we wouldn't want a plaster saint.... We want an average human being who has feelings and likes people and who is interested in their welfare."

  Even these mild excursions into persuasion caused me some personal discomfort. With them, and also with the tireless organizing of a first-time campaign manager named Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, I won my fourth reelection to the Senate that year, defeating the Republican businessman Ray Shamie with 60 percent of the vote.

  In the waning months of 1983, I delivered two speeches that have remained dear to me. The circumstances and the audiences for the talks were about as divergent as it was possible to get. The first was to an audience of students and faculty at a famous evangelical college in Virginia. The second was to a far smaller gathering of family and friends at a memorial mass in Washington. And yet on a deeper level they shared a great deal. What unified the two talks was the presence in them of my late brother John F. Kennedy.

  I had not eulogized Jack on any of the anniversaries since his death on November 22, 1963, though I quoted him and invoked his vision in nearly every commemorative speech I gave. For several years, the risk of being overcome with emotion dissuaded me. Then, as I began to seriously be mentioned as a presidential candidate, and in fact moved actively into that arena, I held back out of concern that any tribute I paid my brother be misconstrued as a play for voters' sympathies. But in 1983 I was not an active candidate. Moreover, the escalating demolition by the Reagan administration of my brother's accomplishments, and its tacit repudiation of Jack's historic vision, compelled me to remind Americans of the principles Jack had stood for, and how deeply imperiled those principles were.

  I sifted through my mail folder on a late summer day in 1983 and found myself staring, with great amusement, at an envelope with an instantly familiar return address. I opened it and withdrew a promotional invitation designed to look like a passport. It was a membership card to the Liberty Baptist College in Lynchburg, Virginia, home base of the Reverend Jerry Falwell, who routinely used me as a whipping boy for his homilies on godless liberalism and immorality. The pitch was sweetened with an invitation for me to join up and help fight "ultraliberals such as Ted Kennedy."

  The mailing had reached me via a computer error so sublimely improbable that as a practicing Christian, I could hardly help wondering whether it was divinely inspired. I passed it along to a reporter friend who wrote a whimsical item about it. The item came to the attention of Cal Thomas, then a vice president of Falwell's Moral Majority. Thomas wrote me an equally whimsical invitation to come and visit the campus sometime. I wrote him back, cordially but not at all whimsically, that I'd be delighted to come; and that I wanted to speak as well. Thomas forwarded my suggestion to Falwell.

  Thus it was that on the evening of October 3, 1983, I stood behind a microphone in the auditorium of Liberty Baptist College and made ready to speak to five thousand expectant young evangelicals and their teachers. Falwell himself looked on with the tightly composed smile of a genial host. It was easy to imagine that a fractious hour lay ahead. Boos, hisses, people filing out of the hall--any of this would have played into popular stereotype. But as I looked into the young faces, I
saw no hatred, no defiance--only the opaque but attentive stares of intelligent young people that are well known to any college professor at the outset of a lecture.

  I began with a gentle joke: "They seem to think that it's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than for a Kennedy to come to the campus of Liberty Baptist College." This received a gratifying ripple of laughter. I built on it: "In honor of our meeting, I have asked Dr. Falwell, as your chancellor, to permit all the students an extra hour next Saturday night before curfew. And in return, I have promised to watch The Old-Time Gospel Hour next Sunday morning." More laughter, and I sensed some relaxation in the auditorium, certainly in myself. I moved ahead into the heart of my message.

  I'd come, I told them, to discuss my beliefs about faith and country, tolerance and truth in America. I knew we had certain disagreements; but I hoped that tonight and in the years ahead, we would always respect the right of others to differ, and never lose sight of our own fallibility, that we would view ourselves with a sense of perspective and a sense of humor.

  I mentioned the bane of intolerance, citing Dr. Falwell himself as a victim of it for advocating the ecumenical church. Then I moved quickly to the more pressing question of whether and how religion should influence government. "A generation ago, a presidential candidate had to prove his independence of undue religious influence in public life, and he had to do so partly at the insistence of evangelical Protestants. John Kennedy said at that time, 'I believe in an America where there is no religious bloc voting of any kind.'" I contrasted Jack's stance with that of one of the students' idols. "Only twenty years later, another candidate was appealing to an evangelical meeting as a religious bloc. Ronald Reagan said to fifteen thousand evangelicals at the Roundtable in Dallas, 'I know that you can't endorse me. I want you to know I endorse you and what you are doing.'"

  To many, I said, that pledge was a sign of a dangerous breakdown in the separation of church and state. Our challenge was to recall the origin of the principle, to define its purpose, and refine its application to the politics of the present. I recounted our nation's long history of religious intolerance: "In colonial Maryland, Catholics paid a double land tax, and in Pennsylvania they had to list their names on a public roll--an ominous precursor of the first Nazi laws against the Jews."

  The real transgression occurs when religion wants government to tell citizens how to live uniquely personal parts of their lives. In cases such as Prohibition and abortion, the proper role of religion is to appeal to the conscience of the individual, not the coercive power of the state.

  "But there are other questions which are inherently public in nature, which we must decide together as a nation, and where religion and religious values can and should speak to our common conscience.... The issue of nuclear war is a compelling example. To take a stand... when a question is both properly public and truly moral is to stand in a long and honored tradition." I cited the evangelists of the 1800s who were in the forefront of the abolitionist movement; the Reverend William Sloane Coffin, who challenged the morality of the war in Vietnam; Pope John XXIII, who renewed the Gospel's call to social justice.

  "And Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was the greatest prophet of this century, awakened our nation and its conscience to the evil of racial segregation."

  I was gratified to note that the students and faculty had begun interrupting my speech--not with jeers but with applause.

  The end of my speech was approaching, and I drew once again upon the words of Jack. I cited a talk he had given in November 1963 to the Protestant Council of New York City to reaffirm what he regarded as some fundamental truths. "On that occasion, John Kennedy said, 'The family of man is not limited to a single race or religion, to a single city, or country... the family of man is nearly three billion strong. Most of its members are not white and most of them are not Christian.' And as President Kennedy reflected on that reality, he restated an ideal for which he had lived his life--that 'the members of this family should be at peace with one another.'

  "That ideal," I concluded, "shines across all the generations of our history... as the Apostle Paul wrote long ago in Romans, 'If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.' I believe it is possible. As fellow citizens, let us live peaceably with each other; as fellow human beings, let us strive to live peaceably with men and women everywhere. Let that be our purpose and our prayer, yours and mine--for ourselves, for our country, and for all the world."

  In the months and years that followed, Jerry Falwell's public references to me softened. For what that said about living peaceably with each other, I've always felt grateful.

  The second meaningful talk of that autumn, my twentieth anniversary eulogy of Jack, came in Washington after I had spent a quiet evening at the Cape house with my mother and Jackie. We flew together to Washington and were driven to Holy Trinity, where my brother had worshipped on the morning of his inauguration. President and Mrs. Reagan sat in the front pew at the mass.

  I began with some memories of Jack from my childhood: "Walking along the beach at home, he said to me when I was very young, 'On a clear day you can see all the way to Ireland.'" I recalled the gentle, natural ways in which he would look after Rosemary--always including her in the sailing expeditions with the rest of us. "Compassion was at the center of his soul," I said, "but he never wore it on his sleeve."

  I evoked his wit, which I said "marks our love for him with laughter." I recalled how after he'd talked Bobby into accepting the attorney general post, he made a simple request: "Please, Bobby, just comb your hair."

  I summed up, as succinctly as I could, the list of his great achievements: championing the American landing on the moon; building the political foundations of the Civil Rights Act; standing firm in Berlin and during the Cuban Missile Crisis; creating the Alliance for Progress and the Peace Corps; bringing us, in his last months, the test ban treaty and the beginning of an end to the cold war.

  Let me acknowledge here that a loyal and loving brother cannot provide a dispassionate view of John Kennedy's presidency. Much has been written about his personal life. A lot of it is bullshit. All of it is beyond the scope of my direct experience.

  There were conversational boundaries in our family and we respected them. For example, I had no idea of how serious Jack's health problems were while he was alive. It would never have occurred to us to discuss such private things with each other.

  Historians will come to their own judgments about President Kennedy. Here is how I choose to remember him:

  He was an heir to wealth who felt the anguish of the poor. He was an orator of excellence who spoke for the voiceless.

  He was a son of Harvard who reached out to the sons and daughters of Appalachia.

  He was a man of special grace who had a special care for the retarded and handicapped.

  He was a hero of war who fought hardest for peace.

  He said and proved in word and deed that one man can make a difference.

  I did not want to see a second Reagan administration, yet I could find no Democratic figure on the horizon who convinced me that he or she was capable of unseating the force of nature who was our president. And so in 1982 I asked my aide Larry Horowitz to explore the feasibility of another run. My explorations did not last long. The decisive forces were my three children. Actually they were no longer "children" now, but young adults--Kara was twenty-two, Teddy not quite twenty-one, and Patrick fifteen. And yet of course they were still my children.

  Over the late summer and early autumn of 1982, I sounded them out in several searching conversations about their feelings on another presidential campaign. I will never forget this series of talks with them. What they had to say made all the difference.

  Our first occurred as we sailed to Nantucket from Hyannis Port on September 26, Teddy's twenty-first birthday. The water was quiet and peaceful, and the sun shone on their faces. Teddy spoke up first. He had reservations, he admitted. He felt that in my 1980 run
I had stood for and expressed all the things I believed in, and that now my place was in the Senate. Then he got to the heart of the matter: another campaign would put the family through a great deal of turmoil. He did not say so specifically, but I sensed that the turmoil would center on my safety. Of course, he said, as Kara and Patrick nodded, if I made the decision to run, all of them would support me. But--did it really make sense?

  We all kept on probing the topic, in a relaxed way, for more than an hour, as the boat cruised gently toward Nantucket. Kara was somewhat more open-minded to the prospect than Teddy, but Patrick agreed rather strongly with his brother. I thanked all of them at the end, and asked them to give it some more thought.

  I learned a good deal more about the depth of Patrick's feelings when the two of us went to the Cape house by ourselves for one of those delicious late fall weekends, of the kind that Bobby and I spent together so many years ago, walking on the beach and building campfires and sleeping in the chilly garage. My son and I enjoyed a good meal and some talk about what was happening at his school, and then it was late and I decided to turn in. I said good night to Patrick and went to my father's room to sleep. I was dozing off when I became aware of a presence in the room. Patrick had come in silently, and when he knew I'd seen him, he sat on a chair, but remained quiet. It was easy to see that he was troubled.

  "Are you concerned about the future?" I asked him. He nodded, and murmured that he was. He really did not want me to run, he said, and his voice grew husky. If I were elected president, he said, I would not have as much time to spend with him as he wanted--as it was, he didn't see enough of me. It would create an absence in his life that would be hard to fill. He became rather teary-eyed, very sweet about it, and then went to bed.

  On the last week of my Senate reelection campaign, Patrick and I were driving over from Hyannis to Oyster Harbor. I asked him whether he had changed his mind at all. He said he had not.