It wasn’t until July 15, 1979, though, that Ted was sure that President Carter’s presidency should be challenged. That was the evening Jimmy Carter—with his approval ratings way down because of the country’s fatigue over the energy crisis, long gas lines, and other problems, including the intensifying concerns over the Iran hostage crisis—gave his so-called “malaise” speech. Though he never actually used the word “malaise” in the speech, it is thusly known because of the suggestion Carter made that Americans were the cause at the heart of their own problems because they’d lost confidence in themselves and their country. The speech was viewed by many as a moral indictment, and it outraged many Democrats because of its perceived pessimistic bent and critique of consumerism. Or, as Ted put it, “It was a message contrary to—and in conflict with—all the ideals of the Democratic Party I cherished. I tried to imagine President Kennedy or Bobby Kennedy ever abandoning their optimism in the face of adversity and giving vent to sentiments remotely this melancholy.”
By August, Governor Ronald Reagan of California had begun to edge out Jimmy Carter in important popularity polls. It seemed to Ted as if his Democratic Party was in serious trouble. Those same polls suggested that Ted might actually have a chance against Reagan, should they both run. “I began to think I had no choice,” Ted would later recall. “I began to think that I had a responsibility to run. It started to make sense to me, again.”
“S.O.S.! The Elephant Is Chasing Amy Carter!”
On May 19, 1979, Ethel Kennedy hosted her twenty-first annual Hickory Hill Pet Show to benefit one of her favorite charities, Runaway House. The annual event, held on the grounds of the estate, was always well attended by celebrities and the public. Hundreds of people would park as far away as downtown McLean, about three miles from the estate, and be bused onto the property. There would always be horses and other large animals, as well as a petting zoo with goats and chickens. Many people would bring their dogs to the fair as well, to show them off and enter them in different competitions. It was a gala affair, a circuslike atmosphere that even had a ringmaster, usually the columnist Art Buchwald, resplendent in red jacket and black bowler hat, walking around with a microphone and interviewing the people who had brought their pets to enter them in events. That year, some of the Washington Redskins were in attendance to play ball with the fans. Meanwhile, representatives from different foreign embassies were recruited to prepare foods from their respective countries. It was an event the Kennedys looked forward to every year, and one that Ethel took great pride in presenting. The young actor Gary Coleman was one of the celebrity guests that year. Jackie Kennedy Onassis was also present, with her children, all surrounded by Secret Service agents, as were Ted and his family and most of the other Kennedys. Ethel had even invited President Jimmy Carter and First Lady Rosalynn, as well as their eleven-year-old daughter, Amy. However, the Carters planned to be at Camp David that weekend, but said Amy would love to attend the Pet Show. So they sent her to Hickory Hill, along with a team of Secret Service agents. There were likely three thousand people on the premises.
The highlight of the extravaganza was to be the appearance of a six-thousand-pound elephant named Suzy. “I think it’s the biggest elephant in the world,” Ethel enthused after she managed to secure the animal for the show. She was very excited.
All was going well with the day, until suddenly… not so well. As Noelle Bombardier roamed the property making sure everything was in order, someone summoned her on her walkie-talkie—“ S.O.S. S.O.S. The elephant is chasing Amy Carter! S.O.S. S.O.S. The elephant is chasing Amy Carter!” Bombardier happened to be in the area where the incident was occurring and turned around to see the enormous mammal pursuing poor little red-haired Amy while everyone around her cleared away. Before Bombardier had a chance to react, one of the Secret Service agents scooped up the frightened girl just as the charging elephant came within twenty feet of her. He then tossed her right over a fence, where another agent was waiting. Though it was all over quickly, it was quite frightening just the same. Because she had some minor scrapes and abrasions, Amy had to be taken to the hospital.
Afterward, Noelle Bombardier ran over to Ethel Kennedy, who was clearly mortified. “We have to get back to the house and call the First Lady before she hears about this from someone else,” Noelle told Ethel, who wholeheartedly agreed. However, when they got back to the house, Ethel didn’t want to talk to Rosalynn Carter. “What do I say to her?” she asked her assistant. “You tell her. I can’t! It’s too embarrassing!”
Bombardier got on the phone with the First Lady as Ethel stood next to her. “Well, Mrs. Carter,” she began, “you see, we have an elephant here who, I guess, must have loved little Amy because she… well… she got a little too close to her.”
Rosalynn Carter was instantly upset and wanted to speak to Ethel. However, Ethel stood next to Noelle shaking her head to indicate that she definitely didn’t want to talk to her. “But you really don’t have time to talk to Mrs. Kennedy,” said Noelle to the First Lady. “You should call the Secret Service at the hospital right away to make sure your daughter is okay.” She then hung up. Fifteen minutes later, Mrs. Carter called back and this time demanded to speak to Ethel. Ethel had no choice but to come to the phone. “I am just so sorry,” she told the First Lady. “I don’t know what to say! Nothing like this has ever happened before!” Rosalynn apparently told Ethel that Amy was fine, but was still crying because she’d been so scared. It was an embarrassing phone call for Ethel, to say the least. She hung up with the First Lady, turned to Noelle, and said, “I want you to get that damn elephant off my property, like yesterday!”—which is what Noelle did.
That evening, Ted Kennedy and Jackie Kennedy Onassis were in the main house with Ethel and several friends and relatives, talking about the day’s unbelievable event. “I just don’t understand,” Jackie said, “why, with so many thousands of people here, why in the world that elephant went after Amy Carter?”
“Me neither,” Ethel said, mystified. “I can’t figure it out.”
“Well, isn’t it obvious?” Ted said, a mischievous glint in his eye. Everyone turned to him for an explanation. “Obviously,” he concluded, “the elephant must have smelled peanuts on the kid.”
“Oh, Teddy!” Jackie exclaimed. Obviously, Ted was alluding to Jimmy Carter’s famous reputation as a former peanut farmer. “That’s not funny!”
Everyone laughed, though, because it was pretty funny.
The Joan Factor
Perhaps it was easy to understand Ted Kennedy’s concern, and that of most of his family, when it came to what some advisers began referring to as “the Joan Factor.” The situation with Joan Kennedy could pose some potentially lethal problems to Ted’s campaign, should he decide to run. Still, wasn’t this a matter for Ted to take up with Joan privately, since it had to do with their marriage? Some may have thought so, but that wasn’t the way it unfolded. In the summer of 1979, Ted called a meeting of psychiatrists and doctors—some of whom had treated Joan in the past and some who had not—to confer with him, Joan, Jean, Ethel, Eunice, and his aide Richard Burke, to decide how to handle the problem at hand—namely Joan. It was decided to have the conference in a hotel in Crystal City, Virginia, territory deemed “neutral” and thus a safe zone to pose some difficult questions, such as: Was Joan up to the challenge and rigors of a political campaign? If so, how would the Kennedy spin doctors be able to explain some of the particulars relating to her private life?
By this time, Joan’s face was appearing constantly on the covers of women’s magazines such as Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal, Redbook, and McCall’s, all with very personal interviews discussing her battle with alcoholism. Indeed, by the end of the decade, Joan’s drinking problem was well known to anyone who cared to read about it. The avalanche of press had begun to roll back in February 1976, when Joan checked into the Smithers Rehabilitation Center in New York City for alcohol abuse. Coincidentally, a freelance writer had been in tre
atment at the same time as Joan. He sidled up to her one day, gained her trust, and from that moment on took copious notes about her confessions during group therapy. He then sold Joan’s warts-and-all story to the National Enquirer. More damage was done when other newspapers, including the Washington Evening Star, published reports based on the Enquirer’s exposé, infuriating the Kennedy family, particularly Eunice, who wrote an angry letter to the newspaper for having “violated every canon of honorable journalism.” It was quite a missive. “You who sit in splendid judgment of us all, whose lives can be saved or broken at your whim,” she wrote, “have turned thumbs down on a gallant and admirable woman. There’s no triumph here for you. Only deep shame.”
About a year earlier, Joan moved out of the home she shared with Ted and the children and took an apartment in Boston. Most of the Kennedys were baffled by her decision. How could she leave her husband and children to fend for themselves? That was certainly not the Kennedy way. Rose told Joan that she’d wanted to take off many a time when she was married to Joseph, “but if we all did exactly as we pleased, what kind of world would this be?” With the new living arrangement, Joan Kennedy would see her children on weekends and on special occasions, while “the help” took care of them and Ted in her absence. All of it promised to be difficult to explain to Ted’s constituents—thus the meeting.
Joan wasn’t told of the confab until the last possible moment for fear that she would become so nervous about it she wouldn’t show up. In a sense, it was handled as if it were an intervention. After Joan appeared at the hotel with her children—nineteen-year-old Kara, eighteen-year-old Ted Jr., and twelve-year-old Patrick—she was quickly whisked away to a conference room. Once there, she was taken aback to see the other Kennedys present, along with the team of doctors.
During the meeting, Ethel made it clear that she felt Joan had “licked” her alcoholism. She didn’t really understand it as a disease but rather thought of it as an emotional problem that could be taken care of with therapy. Eunice had a better understanding of the situation and felt strongly that Joan had a long way to go. The two women butted heads about it for a while, until Ethel finally suggested that Joan stay with her at Hickory Hill and that between the two of them they’d figure out a solution to the problem. Joan was against that idea, though. “I’m not a child,” she protested.
“Well, I want to be president,” Ted finally said, cutting to the chase. “I think the timing is right. I can do this. I believe I can win. People are sick of Carter. The energy crisis, the economy. People need a change, and that’s me.” However, he also said that if his aspirations would in any way hurt Joan, then “forget it. It’s not worth it. I won’t do it. I will only proceed if I have the full support of everyone in this room,” he said, “including my wife.”
Joan’s children also spoke up, all agreeing that the only way they would go along with their father’s ambition to be president would be if their mother was for it as well.
Joan then looked at Ted and said that she too wanted the presidency for him and that she would do whatever she had to do to help him reach that goal. “I think you’d make a great president,” Joan told Ted in front of the observers. “But I need more time to work on myself, I really do.”
After some discussion, the decision was made that if Ted should in fact run, they would keep Joan’s involvement in the campaign to a bare minimum. She would hold a single press conference at her home—which they would schedule for December 1979. It would be an event that Joan and her therapists could prepare for in earnest. Then, if that went well, she might make appearances with Ted on the campaign trail.
“Okay, kiddo, then it’s settled,” Ethel said. “I, for one, am looking forward to us being in the White House. And I think Ted can do this country a lot of good. Oh, I’m so proud of you, Teddy,” she exclaimed, jumping up to embrace him. “Isn’t this just great?”
“It sure is, Ethie,” Ted said, embracing Ethel. “It sure is.”
Eunice wasn’t so sure. Not only was she worried about Joan, but she was also savvy enough to know that America was going to have a lot of questions about what was going on with her marriage to Ted. “Sarge and I see a lot of roadblocks down the line,” she warned everyone. “The way the climate is now after Watergate and”—she paused—“Chappaquiddick,” she said, after a beat, “people are really looking at the character of their candidates and their wives. I think this is going to be a big problem.”
Jean had to agree with Eunice. “We’re going to have our work cut out for us to try to explain away all of… this.”
Ted nodded. “It’s not going to be easy,” he said. Then, looking at Joan, he asked, “Are you up for it, Joansie?”
Joan answered Ted with total silence. She must have known in that moment, though, that her options were limited. “She already felt such tremendous guilt for having presented so many problems to the family as a result of her personal problems,” noted her former assistant, Marcia Chellis. “How could she now deny them their last chance at the presidency? Besides that—as she would later tell it—she so believed that Ted Kennedy could make a difference in this country, she didn’t want to be the reason he could not run for office.”
“Yes, of course I want to try,” Joan Kennedy said at the meeting. “More than that, I will do it. You’ll see,” she told Ted. “You’ll be proud of me.” He smiled at her. “That’s my Joansie,” he said, patting her on the shoulder. Everyone left feeling somewhat encouraged.
The Roger Mudd Interview
Before Senator Ted Kennedy even had an opportunity to officially announce his campaign, there was a serious public relations imbroglio concerning a televised interview he would do with CBS’s Roger Mudd. Ted gave the interview to Mudd from his summer home on Squaw Island for a CBS special broadcast. However, after it was over, the CBS crew was concerned that they’d gotten nothing of substance from the senator. He had been evasive and even seemed somewhat unprepared. When Mudd asked for another interview, Ted reluctantly agreed to it. It was during that second interview, then, that Mudd asked the big, headline-making questions relating to Chappaquiddick. Ted felt cornered, as he later recalled it, because he never expected those, claiming his agreement with Mudd had specified no questions about Chappaquiddick.
After the two interviews were completed, Ted was unhappy enough about the results that he telephoned Roger Mudd to request a third interview. In that third interview, which took place at Ted’s office in Boston, Mudd pointedly asked Ted about the state of his marriage to Joan. “Well, I think it’s a—we’ve had some difficult times,” Ted said, seeming unable to find the right words. “But I think we’ll have… we’ve—I think, been able to make some very good progress and it’s—I would say it’s—it’s—it’s—I’m delighted that we’re able to share the time and relationship that we—that we do share.” He could not have answered the question more disastrously. When asked if he and Joan were separated, his response was, “Well, I don’t know whether there’s a single word that should—have a description for it.” Eventually, Mudd asked Ted the most obvious of questions: Why did he want to be president? Again, Ted faltered; his halting answer was almost unintelligible. First, he rambled on about the country’s “natural resources” and “greatest political system in the world” and then mentioned something about inflation. He also touched on unemployment and education and, in the process of trying to hit every talking point, basically gave an answer that—at least in a single viewing—didn’t make much sense. Today, many historians point to that single televised moment as the one that would end up costing Ted Kennedy the presidency—and he hadn’t even announced his candidacy yet.
As might be expected, Ted was quite angry about the entire Roger Mudd affair and felt that the interview, when finally broadcast on November 4, 1979, had been edited to make him look much worse than actually had been the case. In fact, though, Ted had ample time to prepare, at the very least, for the third interview, which he himself had requested. It still se
ems inconceivable all these years later that he would not have had an answer at the ready for the obvious question about the reasons behind his presidential ambitions. Ted insisted that he had good reason to be thrown by the question since he had not yet announced his candidacy. To follow that logic, though, is to also believe that a candidate doesn’t think about his reasons for running for the presidency until the day he makes the official announcement—which was obviously (one hoped) not the case in this instance. The Kennedy family was for the most part mystified as to why Ted had fumbled the answer. Of course, he was well prepared—Kennedys were always well prepared when it came to big PR moments. He most certainly had compelling answers to the questions. He just didn’t give them. It was as if he had purposely sabotaged his chances to occupy the White House before he’d even made his campaign official. In the end, though, the family was certainly not going to support Roger Mudd in the controversy. They would be there for Teddy. That’s just the way it had to be. It could be said that Ethel Kennedy spoke for the whole family when she told one reporter—off the record, of course—“That Roger Mudd is a dirty, rotten so-and-so. If he, in any way, has hurt Teddy, I’ll go after him myself!”
Ted: “The Dream Never Dies”
After Camelot: A Personal History of the Kennedy Family--1968 to the Present Page 29