CHAPTER TWENTY
1988-1990
As 1988 dawned and the Reagan administration entered its final year, I looked forward to a fascinating fall election season. Reagan's vice president, George H. W. Bush, was viewed as an early favorite in the crowded Republican primaries that also featured Congressman Jack Kemp of New York, Senator Bob Dole of Kansas, and former cabinet members Alexander Haig and Donald Rumsfeld. The Democratic primary field crackled with talent: Congressman Dick Gephardt of Missouri; Senator Paul Simon and the Reverend Jesse Jackson of Illinois; Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts; Senators Al Gore of Tennessee and Joe Biden of Delaware; former senator Gary Hart of Colorado; and former governor Bruce Babbitt of Arizona. Hopes ran high among Democrats that one of these men would lead the nation past eight years of "Reaganomics" that had tripled the national debt, from $900 billion when he took office to more than $2.8 trillion at the end of his term.
I faced a reelection test of my own that year. But even as I prepared for it with the diligence that any campaign for the Senate deserves, my highest hopes were keyed to a race that involved neither the presidency nor the Congress, but a relatively obscure state-level district in Rhode Island, and a fellow just barely old enough to vote, let alone stand for office. In April, my son Patrick had decided to toss his hat into the political ring.
He was a sophomore at Providence College that spring. He would not turn twenty-one until July. Yet his call to politics was serious and mature, and his passion for it ran deep. And that passion was his own. Patrick was not a carbon copy of me, in his views or in his style. Though our beliefs are similar on most issues, I've never tried to tell him how to think. Nor has he needed me to. Patrick lived politics his whole young life. His friendly face beneath his shock of red hair instantly draws people to him. Patrick returns the warmth. Then too, he had and maintains a zest for campaigning, despite the fact that he had grown up reserved and rather shy. He quickly learned to love getting out there. He knew that people liked to see their representatives; needed to see them out there, working hard.
Patrick gave his political impulses a test run in early March, when he ran for and was elected a Rhode Island delegate to the Democratic convention, committed to Michael Dukakis. He liked the feel of that, and set his sights on the Rhode Island House of Representatives. A few months later, he threw himself into the fray like a veteran. Since no Republican was running, the Democratic primary would produce the overall winner. His opponent was the incumbent, Jack Skeffington, a veteran of the state's ward politics who, despite his good nature, was none too pleased to be going up against a youngster whom he considered no more than an upstart with a famous name who ought to be waiting his turn. Skeffington's fellow Rhode Island Democrats, an understandably close-knit group, felt the same way. And so my son found his welcome to electoral politics delivered with a bare knuckle or two.
Patrick fought back with energy and good cheer. He campaigned hard and shrewdly, but fairly, against Skeffington and his supporters. Patrick argued that Skeffington had grown out of touch with the people he represented. Still underweight and a little weakened from recent surgery on a benign spinal tumor, and packing an inhalator to combat his chronic asthma, Patrick bounded about the district, practicing retail politics in his neat blue blazer and white shirt with endless handshakes and knocks on doors. His strategy worked--reinforced somewhat by many voters' perception that Skeffington's people were coming down too hard on the young man. Patrick later admitted that he'd been anxious and nervous through much of the campaign. Yet he won in September with 1,324 votes, against 1,009 for his rival. He was off on a political career that six years later would take him to the United States House of Representatives.
One incident that has become part of our family lore is the one we call the "go back the way you came" story. When Patrick first became interested in running, I took him to meet the legendary pol John Pastore. John was eighty-one then and retired from political life. He'd served Rhode Island as both governor and senator, the first Italian American from the state to have held either office. He was a great Democrat. I remember those big soulful dark eyes of his, and the little mustache that he always kept trimmed. My brother Jack had thought the world of him and believed him the most electable figure in the history of Rhode Island. John had a great heart, and the people loved him.
Patrick and I drove to Pastore's house one day in the early spring. It was in a neighborhood that John had never left. He was a fellow who literally never forgot where he came from. No one else was at home, so it was just the retired senator, entertaining Patrick and me. John served us cookies and tea and talked politics. We were there for almost an hour. When we finally said goodbye and returned to the car, it was getting dark and we weren't sure how to get back to where we were going. Patrick got out, went back, and rang the bell. I could see him talking with Pastore, who was gesturing while Patrick nodded. Patrick returned and got back in the car, but didn't say anything. I asked, "What did he say?" And Patrick, in a perfect imitation of John Pastore, barked, "'Go back the way you came, Patrick, go back the way you came!'"
As I've noted, my son was challenging an incumbent, and within the close-knit Rhode Island Democratic establishment it was a rarity for anyone to support a challenger. Not long after his announcement, Patrick hosted a big kickoff breakfast, where lots of politicians made lots of speeches. It had gone on for quite a while, and it was time to wind it up. Half the room had emptied and the rest were walking out.
Then Patrick spotted Senator Pell.
Claiborne Pell was one of the most splendid and civilized public servants I had ever been privileged to call a colleague. ("He was a gentleman and a gentle man," I said at his funeral in January 2009, after he died at age ninety.) He counted a political lineage that stretched well back into the nineteenth century. He'd served on a convoy in the treacherous North Atlantic in World War II after receiving a master's degree in history at Columbia University. Claiborne's self-effacing wit and his humane vision carried him through a thirty-six-year Senate career distinguished by his creation of the Pell grants for college students in 1973, his sponsorship of legislation for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Endowment for the Humanities, and his effective support for the environmentally critical United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
I watched as Patrick walked over to Claiborne and asked him whether he would speak for just a minute. I thought: poor Claiborne! What an impossible situation for any politician. People want to go. They are going. And now he's supposed to keep their attention.
I should never have worried. The movement toward the doors ceased as Claiborne moved to the podium. He gave a talk I'll never forget. It was breathtakingly short, but he hit it out of the park. In his quiet voice, he said, "We're going to end, now, for this morning, but before we do I want to say why I'm here to support Patrick Kennedy. I believe that he shares the values of President Kennedy. And every night since we've lost President Kennedy, I've knelt down on my knees and prayed that this nation would live up to the promise of John Kennedy. I believe that Patrick Kennedy will, and that's why I support him."
His election victory made me feel so terribly proud of my son. After all these years, I finally understood how my dad must have felt.
I had won reelection and was in Hawaii with my sisters for a vacation that spanned the 1989 New Year when the representative-elect telephoned me. He wanted me present for his inauguration. He had earlier felt that I shouldn't be there, that he should be sworn in on his own, and I had accepted his judgment. I had seen my own father step into the background for his sons, and I was certainly prepared to do the same for mine. But if my son wanted me to be there after all, I was going to come through for him. So I flew fourteen hours from Honolulu to Providence for the swearing in. I arrived at his apartment late at night. It was cold and dark, and I was exhausted. Patrick greeted me with some interesting news. He said that he was so happy to see me, but his people thought it was best if I didn't go down for the swearing in. I said, "You must be kidding." He wasn't.
I didn't really mind. I was just so proud of him and so happy.
Patrick thus became the second member of the emerging generation of Kennedys to gain political office. Joseph Kennedy II, Bobby's eldest son, had been elected to Congress from Massachusetts the previous year, and would serve until 1999. Kathleen Townsend, Bobby's firstborn, would be elected lieutenant governor of Maryland in 1995. But Patrick became the youngest officeholder of us all.
Not all of the 1988 elections had gone so well. Incumbent vice president George H. W. Bush had defeated Michael Dukakis, the governor of Massachusetts, which meant another four years of Republican control of the executive branch.
I enjoyed a warm relationship with President Bush, and whenever the talk was about foreign policy, especially Russia, we had productive conversations. On domestic policy, however, he told me, "Relax." He had no plans for new social programs.
Nevertheless, my colleagues and I were able to get some things through Congress. On July 26, 1990, President Bush signed into law the Americans with Disabilities Act, which I'd co-advocated for many years and cosponsored with Senator Bob Dole. It brought some forty-three million disabled Americans into the mainstream via special services and protections, and has been called the most sweeping civil rights act since the original back in 1964.
At first, the administration had resisted our efforts. When I started discussing the legislation with John Sununu, Bush's chief of staff, he wanted to know how we were going to deal with a person in a wheelchair on a ski slope, or a blind person in a bookstore. He was looking for problems and putting up a lot of roadblocks. He was always available to talk to, but progress was slow.
Finally, after much negotiating, all of the important issues had been resolved. Key members attended a meeting in a Republican Senate conference room, with Dole presiding, to review everything--one last massage. Sununu was present, and once again, he became obstructive and said something aggressive to a Senate aide, Bobby Silverstein. I'd had it with Sununu's bullying and slammed my hand down on the table. I told him that if he had a problem, he could deal with me. I didn't want him yelling at our staff. At one point, Sununu said that all of the staff should leave so that the principals could finish negotiating. I said, fine, then he should leave, because he was staff. That seemed to quiet things down.
Everyone stayed and the rest of the meeting moved along smoothly.
Around this time, I had the privilege of meeting three great men. Our conversations weren't long, but their influences on me were profound.
In May 1987, at the Vatican, I was received by His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, in his "private workroom." He was sitting in a hard wooden chair near a plain wooden desk. I had just visited Poland, so I told him about an extraordinary religious experience I'd had in Gdansk with Lech Walesa. The pope said he'd been following Poland very closely and had been hearing many things from friends, not all of it good. He said he was concerned about the social and economic conditions, that young people might lose hope. "It's not good that they don't have a real sense of their future." Walesa provided great symbolism, he said. That Walesa continued to live in Poland could be a powerful example for people.
In February 1990, during a dinner at Katharine Graham's home, I met Vaclav Havel, the playwright and former dissident leader who, despite years of imprisonment and government intimidation, had led the 1989 Velvet Revolution against Czechoslovakia's communist regime. He had recently ascended to the presidency of his country and was hailed as a hero on his visit to Washington.
At the dinner table, he told me that when he was in prison, he was permitted to write for only one hour. Every three months, he was permitted a new pencil. He could write one letter, which could express no philosophy or poetry. It had to be factual.
When he mentioned that he hadn't been able to see much of America, because he was in his car constantly, I suggested that he visit the Lincoln Memorial. To my delight, he agreed, and together we made a late-night visit to the memorial, from which I read him the inscriptions on the wall from Lincoln's second inaugural and the Gettysburg Address. He said, "I am not able to understand the language, but I understand the poetry."
That same month, on February 15, I had my first conversation with Nelson Mandela, on the phone. He had been freed four days earlier, after twenty-seven years of imprisonment. While in South Africa in 1985, I had gone to Soweto and visited Bishop Desmond Tutu and Mandela's wife, Winnie. Mandela told me that he knew I'd been outside his prison on that day, and that it had given his friends hope and renewed power.
I invited him to visit the Kennedy Library, and four months later, on June 25, he attended a lunch in his honor, where I could not help but be impressed by his seriousness and honesty. He had not yet been elected president, but he expressed optimism about the integrity of South Africa's leader, F. W. de Klerk, and his intent to bring about substantive change.
I asked him what he thought was the most important thing the United States could do. He said it was very simple: jobs for the sixteen thousand exiled political activists who were returning to the country. Those people would need housing and job opportunities in order to be a source of stability for South Africa's future.
As inspiring as these men were, it would be a woman who changed the course of my life.