Ted Kennedy

• 1. Introduction

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  Edward Moore Kennedy had just lost the fight for his party's presidential nomination. On the 12th of August 1980 he stepped to the podium at Madison Square Garden. His closing words stayed with the hall: "the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die." The delegates answered with wild applause that lasted half an hour.

  It was the most famous speech of his career, and a beaten candidate gave it. Kennedy carried one of the best-known names in American politics. He would not become president. He would remain in public life for decades more.

  How did a man who never won the White House become the Senate's celebrated liberal voice? What did one July night on a small island in 1969 cost him? And what kind of cause could outlast a lost campaign?

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• 2. The Youngest Son

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  St. Margaret's Hospital in the Dorchester section of Boston is where Edward Moore Kennedy was born on the 22nd of February 1932. He was the youngest of nine children of Joseph Patrick Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald, a couple whose families were prominent in Irish-American Boston. After their marriage they ranked among the wealthiest families in the country.

  His brother John asked to be the baby's godfather, and the parents agreed. John also wanted the boy named George Washington Kennedy, because the birth fell on Washington's 200th birthday. The parents declined. They named the child after their father's assistant and longtime friend.

  Childhood meant constant moving. The family shuttled among Bronxville in New York, Hyannis Port, Palm Beach, and the Court of St. James's in London. His formal schooling began at Gibbs School in Kensington. By the age of eleven he had attended ten schools, and the disruption hurt his grades. At seven he received First Communion from Pope Pius XII in the Vatican.

  His parents were affectionate toward the youngest child, yet they also compared him unfavorably with his older brothers. Between the ages of eight and sixteen he lived through his sister Rosemary's failed lobotomy. He also lost two siblings. Joseph Jr. died in an airplane explosion, and Kathleen died in an airplane crash. His maternal grandfather, John F. Fitzgerald, had been mayor of Boston and a congressman, and he became an early political influence.

  At Milton Academy in Massachusetts he earned B and C grades. In 1950 he finished 36th in a graduating class of 56. Football was his strength. The headmaster later said he was "absolutely fearless... he would have tackled an express train to New York if you asked... he loved contact sports". He also joined the tennis team and the drama, debate, and glee clubs.

  Harvard followed, as it had for his father and brothers, and it began badly. In his first semester, Kennedy and his classmates arranged to copy answers from another student during a science final. By May 1951 he was anxious about keeping his athletic eligibility, so he had a classmate take his place at a Spanish exam. The trick was discovered, and both students were expelled. They were told they could apply to return in a year or two if they behaved.

  Instead, in June 1951, Kennedy enlisted in the Army. He had signed for an optional four-year term, but his father's intervention cut it to the two-year minimum. After basic training at Fort Dix in New Jersey he asked for Army Intelligence training at Fort Holabird in Maryland. He was dropped from it after a few weeks, without explanation. Military Police training at Camp Gordon in Georgia came next.

  In June 1952 he joined the honor guard at SHAPE headquarters in Paris. His father's political connections kept him out of the Korean War. On weekends he traveled widely through Europe and climbed the Matterhorn in the Pennine Alps. After 21 months he was discharged in March 1953 as a private first class.

  He re-entered Harvard that summer and improved his study habits. He joined The Owl final club in 1954, and was also chosen for the Hasty Pudding Club and the Pi Eta fraternity. Lisle Blackbourn, head coach of the Green Bay Packers, asked whether he wanted to play professional football. Kennedy said he planned to attend law school and "go into another contact sport, politics."

  On the 19th of November 1955, in snow at the Yale Bowl, he caught a pass for Harvard's only touchdown. Yale won 21-7, and Harvard finished the season 3-4-1. He graduated in 1956 at age 24 with a degree in history and government. His grades were barely in the top half of his class.

  Those grades kept him out of Harvard Law School, so he followed his brother Robert to the University of Virginia School of Law. His admission was controversial. Faculty and alumni felt his cheating at Harvard clashed with the university's honor code, and it took a full faculty vote to let him in. He studied, in his words, "four times as hard and four times as long" as the other students, and he earned mostly C grades. Even so, he won the William Minor Lile Moot Court Competition and became head of the Student Legal Forum. A summer at The Hague Academy of International Law rounded out his training. A pair of charges, reckless driving and driving without a license, curtailed his habits behind the wheel.

  He graduated from law school in 1959. One job had already shown his real talent. In 1958 he was named manager of John's Senate re-election campaign. His knack for connecting with ordinary voters on the street helped produce a record-setting victory margin. That margin gave credibility to John's presidential aspirations.

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• 3. A Brother's Seat

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  Joan Bennett was a senior at Manhattanville College when Kennedy met her in October 1957. They were introduced after a speech dedicating a gymnasium his family had donated. She had worked as a model and won beauty contests, but she knew little about politics. After the engagement she grew nervous about marrying someone she hardly knew. Joe Kennedy insisted the wedding go ahead. Cardinal Francis Spellman married the couple on the 29th of November 1958 at St. Joseph's Church in Bronxville, New York. They had three children: Kara, Edward Jr., and Patrick.

  In 1960 John announced his run for president, and Ted took charge of the campaign in the western states. He learned to fly and barnstormed the region, winning over delegates by trying ski jumping and bronc riding. Seven weeks in Wisconsin helped John win the first contested primary of the season. A similar stretch in Wyoming paid off at the Democratic National Convention, where that state's unanimous delegate vote put John over the top.

  A president-elect has to leave his Senate seat, and Ted was too young to take it. He could not serve until his thirtieth birthday on the 22nd of February 1962. John asked Massachusetts governor Foster Furcolo to appoint the family friend Ben Smith as a placeholder, which kept the seat open. He first wanted to stay out west. He said, "The disadvantage of my position is being constantly compared with two brothers of such superior ability." His brothers did not want him to run right away, but he coveted a seat of his own, and his father overruled them.

  In February 1961 he started work as an assistant district attorney in Suffolk County, for a nominal salary of one dollar. He also took overseas trips billed as fact-finding tours. He toured nine nations in Latin America in 1961. In Boston Globe columns afterward, he warned that the region might turn to communism. He said the United States needed to reach out more effectively.

  The 1962 primary tested his name. State Attorney General Edward J. McCormack Jr. had support from many liberals and intellectuals who thought Kennedy inexperienced. In a televised debate McCormack said, "The office of United States Senator should be merited, and not inherited." He added that if his opponent were named Edward Moore rather than Edward Moore Kennedy, the candidacy "would be a joke." Voters found McCormack overbearing. Kennedy won the September primary by two to one, then beat Republican George Cabot Lodge II in November with 55 percent of the vote. He was sworn in on the 7th of November 1962.

  On the 22nd of November 1963, Kennedy was presiding over the Senate, a chore given to junior members. An aide rushed in to say that President John F. Kennedy had been shot. Robert soon told him the president was dead. Ted and his sister Eunice flew to Hyannis Port to break the news to their father, who had suffered a stroke two years earlier.

  The next year brought another brush with death. On the 19th of June 1964, Kennedy was a passenger on a private Aero Commander 680 flying through bad weather from Washington to Massachusetts. It crashed into an apple orchard in Southampton while approaching Barnes Municipal Airport in Westfield. The pilot and Kennedy's aide Edward Moss died. Senator Birch Bayh pulled Kennedy from the wreckage. He spent months recovering from a back injury, a punctured lung, broken ribs, and internal bleeding, and he lived with chronic back pain afterward.

  The hospital months changed his priorities. He met with academics and studied issues closely, and the experience triggered a lifelong interest in how health care is provided. Joan campaigned in his place that fall, and he won re-election by three to one. He returned to the Senate in January 1965 walking with a cane.

  Back at work, he built a stronger legislative staff. He took on President Johnson and nearly amended the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to ban the poll tax at the state and local levels. He also helped push through the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. It ended a quota system based on national origin. He had a hand in creating the National Teachers Corps too.

  On Vietnam he began with "no reservations" about the growing American role. By a January 1968 trip to the country he was disillusioned, and he suggested telling South Vietnam, "Shape up or we're going to ship out." Within months, a different loss would reshape his life again.

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• 4. Chappaquiddick and After

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  Ted was in San Francisco on the 4th of June 1968 when his brother Robert won the crucial California primary. After midnight Robert was shot in Los Angeles, and he died the next day. Of all the Kennedys, Ted had been closest to Robert. Aide Frank Mankiewicz saw Ted at the hospital. "I have never, ever, nor do I expect ever, to see a face more in grief," he said.

  At the funeral in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Ted said Robert "need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life." He asked that Robert be remembered simply as "a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it." Robert, he said, "saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."

  That August, at the chaotic Democratic National Convention, Chicago mayor Richard J. Daley and other party factions urged the 36-year-old to make himself available for a draft. He refused. He believed he was being treated as a stand-in for his brother and was not ready. He also declined to be considered for vice president. He became a surrogate father to his brothers' children. In January 1969 he beat Louisiana senator Russell B. Long 31-26 to become Senate majority whip, the youngest person ever to hold the job.

  He seemed conflicted about where this was heading. Time magazine reported that he had "a fatalistic, almost doomed feeling about the prospect" of running for president. Death threats followed him for much of his career.

  On the night of the 18th of July 1969, Kennedy hosted a party on Chappaquiddick Island. The guests were the Boiler Room Girls, young women who had worked on Robert's campaign. He left with 28-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne. Driving a 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88, he tried to cross the Dike Bridge, which had no guardrail. He lost control, and the car crashed into the Poucha Pond inlet, a tidal channel. Kennedy escaped the overturned car and, by his own account, dove below the surface seven times trying to reach Kopechne. Then he swam ashore and left. He did not report the accident until the next morning, after her body had been found. His cousin Joe Gargan said he and friend Paul Markham came to the scene and urged Kennedy to report it.

  A week later Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and received a two-month suspended sentence. That night, in a national broadcast, he said, "I regard as indefensible the fact that I did not report the accident to the police immediately." He denied drunk driving and denied any immoral conduct. He asked Massachusetts voters whether he should resign. Favorable messages arrived, and on the 30th of July he announced that he would stay and run again.

  An inquest in Edgartown in January 1970 was held in secret at the request of his lawyers. Judge James A. Boyle concluded that parts of Kennedy's story were untrue and that negligent driving "appears to have contributed" to Kopechne's death. A grand jury investigated in April 1970 but returned no indictment. Kennedy called the conclusions "not justified."

  He still won re-election in November 1970 with 62 percent, though with about 500,000 fewer votes than in 1964. In January 1971 he lost the whip's job to Robert Byrd of West Virginia, 31-24, probably because of the scandal. He later told Byrd the defeat freed him to concentrate on issues and committee work.

  The presidency drifted further away. Polls in 1971 suggested he could win the 1972 nomination, and a Gallup Poll in November still had him first with 28 percent. In May he decided against running, saying he needed "breathing time" and that "it feels wrong in my gut." In June 1972 anti-McGovern forces tried to draft him, and he declined. At the convention, George McGovern repeatedly asked him to be his running mate. Kennedy refused each time, even after McGovern's first choice, Thomas Eagleton, stepped down.

  Family troubles piled up. In 1973 his 12-year-old son Edward Jr. was diagnosed with bone cancer. The boy's leg was amputated, and he went through a long experimental drug treatment that lasted two years. His son's return to skiing half a year later drew attention from doctors and the press. Patrick suffered severe asthma attacks. By then the marriage was in trouble over Ted's infidelity and Joan's growing alcoholism. She entered treatment facilities several times and was arrested for drunk driving after a traffic accident.

  Chappaquiddick also kept resurfacing. The Boston Globe, The New York Times Magazine, and Time all reexamined it and raised doubts about his version. In 1977 the Times called it Kennedy's Watergate. In September 1974 he announced that for family reasons he would not run in 1976, calling his decision "firm, final, and unconditional."

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• 5. The Cause of His Life

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  In late 1968 Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, invited Kennedy to join a new Committee for National Health Insurance. Reuther died in May 1970. That same month Senator Ralph Yarborough, who chaired both the full Labor and Public Welfare Committee and its health subcommittee, lost his primary. The two events thrust Kennedy into leadership on the issue.

  In August 1970 he introduced a bipartisan bill for single-payer national health insurance. It had no cost sharing, and payroll taxes and general federal revenue would pay for it. He began a decade as chairman of the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research. Hearings on national health insurance in 1971 produced no bill. The chairmen of the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance committees, Wilbur Mills and Russell Long, would not back one.

  Kennedy kept winning smaller fights. He sponsored the limited Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973. With Senator Jacob Javits, he played a leading role in the National Cancer Act of 1971. In March 1977 his subcommittee hearings exposed extensive scientific misconduct at contract research organizations, including Industrial Bio-Test Laboratories.

  President Nixon floated plans of his own, one in February 1971 and a broader one in February 1974. In April 1974 Kennedy and Mills introduced a near-universal bill. Its benefits matched the expanded Nixon plan, but employers and employees had to take part, paying through payroll taxes. Labor, consumer, and senior citizen groups criticized both plans because of their heavy cost sharing.

  Jimmy Carter, as a candidate, had proposed reform with key features of the Kennedy bill. In December 1977, as president, he told Kennedy the bill must keep a large role for private insurers. It also had to minimize federal spending and phase in slowly, to protect his goal of a balanced budget. Kennedy and labor made the changes. Then, in July 1978, Kennedy broke with Carter, who would not commit to one bill with a fixed phase-in schedule.

  In a December 1978 speech at the Democratic midterm convention, Kennedy said that "sometimes a party must sail against the wind." Health care, he argued, should be "a basic right for all, not just an expensive privilege for the few." In May 1979 he proposed a new bipartisan universal bill. It offered competing regulated private plans, with an employer mandate and an individual mandate. It also added prescription drug coverage to Medicare. Carter offered a narrower plan a month later. Neither went anywhere, and the failure completed the breach between the two men. In 1982 Carter wrote that Kennedy "ironically" thwarted his efforts. In 2009 Kennedy wrote that Carter "was a difficult man to convince - of anything."

  He later called universal care the "cause of my life," yet his biggest victories came in pieces. Working with Republican Orrin Hatch, he helped pass COBRA, which extended employer-based health benefits after leaving a job. He considered the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 one of his most important successes. It took prolonged negotiations in 1989 with Bush chief of staff John H. Sununu and Attorney General Richard Thornburgh. His sister Rosemary's condition and his son's lost leg made the bill personal. In the late 1980s he and Hatch fought Senator Jesse Helms over AIDS funding. They wanted treatment for low-income patients. The fight ended in the Ryan White Care Act.

  The Clinton plan of 1993 hurt. Kennedy supported it but had little part in shaping it, since First Lady Hillary Clinton and others ran the effort. It failed badly and damaged the prospects for such legislation for years. He then abandoned his old all-at-once strategy and tried incremental steps. With Republican senator Nancy Kassebaum he passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act in 1996. It set new standards for insurance portability and the confidentiality of records. The same year his Mental Health Parity Act made insurers treat mental health payments like other payments when limits were reached.

  In 1997 he was the prime mover behind the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Higher tobacco taxes paid for the largest expansion of taxpayer-funded health coverage for children since Medicaid began in the 1960s. Hatch and Hillary Clinton also played major roles.

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• 6. Challenging Carter

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  "If Kennedy runs, I'll whip his ass," President Carter said publicly in the summer of 1979. He spoke despite a 28 percent approval rating. A midsummer 1978 poll had shown Democrats preferring Kennedy to Carter by 5 to 3, and labor unions pressed Kennedy to run. So did party officials who feared that Carter's unpopularity could cost heavily in the 1980 congressional elections. Kennedy decided in August 1979, when polls showed him ahead by 2 to 1 and Carter's approval had slipped to 19 percent.

  He announced on the 7th of November 1979 at Boston's Faneuil Hall. The launch was already damaged. A few days earlier, CBS News reporter Roger Mudd had asked him, "Why do you want to be President?" His answer rambled. Columnists Ellen Goodman and Anthony Lewis took it as proof he did not want the job. Walter Mondale knew him from the Senate. He said Kennedy avoided a topic by "using words, but they didn't come together somehow." Chris Whipple of Life was present at the interview. He wondered whether the answer was an act of political self-destruction and wrote, "His heart just wasn't in it."

  Events beyond his control made it worse. The Iranian hostage crisis began on the 4th of November, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan began on the 27th of December. Voters rallied around the president, who stayed at the White House in what became known as a Rose Garden strategy. Kennedy's staff was disorganized, and he was at first an ineffective campaigner. Chappaquiddick also mattered more than his team expected, as columns and editorials attacked his answers on the subject.

  In the January 1980 Iowa caucuses, Carter beat him 59 to 31 percent. Fundraising fell and the campaign had to shrink, but Kennedy stayed defiant: "Now we'll see who is going to whip whose what." He still lost three New England contests. Then he found a clearer message. At Georgetown University he said, "I believe we must not permit the dream of social progress to be shattered by those whose premises have failed."

  Doubts about his character held back voters who were disillusioned with Carter. At a St. Patrick's Day parade in Chicago, Kennedy wore a bullet-proof vest because of assassination threats, and hecklers shouted, "Where's Mary Jo?" In the Illinois primary on the 18th of March, Catholic voters did not come to him, and Carter won 155 of 169 delegates. Kennedy prepared to withdraw.

  Then came a reversal. Some Jewish voters were unhappy over a United Nations vote against Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Kennedy won New York on the 25th of March, 59 to 41 percent. Carter's answer was an ad campaign attacking Kennedy's character without naming Chappaquiddick. Kennedy still took a narrow win in Pennsylvania in April. Carter won 11 of 12 primaries in May. On the 3rd of June, Kennedy took California, New Jersey, and three smaller states out of eight contests. Across the whole season he won 10 primaries to Carter's 24.

  Carter had the delegates he needed, yet Kennedy carried on to the August convention in New York. He hoped to pass a rule freeing delegates from their primary pledges and opening the convention. That attempt failed on the first night, and he withdrew. On the final night he arrived late, after Carter's acceptance speech. He shook the president's hand, but did not raise Carter's arm in the traditional show of unity.

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• 7. Abroad and Against the Tide

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  "Ulster is becoming Britain's Vietnam," Kennedy said in October 1971, in his first speech about the Troubles in Northern Ireland. He called for British troops to leave and for a united Ireland. He added that Ulster Unionists who could not accept this "should be given a decent opportunity to go back to Britain," a position he backed away from within a few years. British and Ulster unionist critics attacked him sharply. He formed a lasting political relationship with John Hume, founder of the Social Democratic and Labour Party. In 1982 he created the Friends of Ireland with Senator Daniel Moynihan and House Speaker Tip O'Neill to support peace and reconciliation.

  Other crises drew him abroad. In December 1971 he denounced the Nixon administration's support for Pakistan. He attacked its silence on "the brutal and systematic repression of East Bengal by the Pakistani army". He traveled to India and wrote a report on the 10 million Bengali refugees. In February 1972 he flew to Bangladesh and spoke at the University of Dhaka, where a killing rampage had begun a year earlier.

  In 1974 he went to the Soviet Union, met leader Leonid Brezhnev, and argued for a full nuclear test ban and easier emigration. He also met Soviet dissidents and secured an exit visa for the cellist Mstislav Rostropovich. In December 1977 he visited China on a goodwill mission and met Deng Xiaoping. He eventually gained permission for several mainland Chinese nationals to leave. In January 1978 he visited Hiroshima and spoke at Hiroshima University about nuclear disarmament.

  At home, the fiercest anger came over school busing. Kennedy had first opposed busing children across racial lines but came to support it as it became a focus of civil rights efforts. In 1974 federal judge W. Arthur Garrity ordered Boston to integrate its schools by busing. In September Kennedy made a surprise appearance at an anti-busing rally in City Hall Plaza. He wanted to urge peaceful dialogue. The mostly white crowd yelled insults about his children and threw tomatoes and eggs as he retreated into the John F. Kennedy Federal Building, and someone broke one of its glass walls.

  The 1980 election gave Republicans the presidency and the Senate, and Kennedy found himself in the minority for the first time. He chose to be ranking member of the Labor and Public Welfare Committee instead of the Judiciary Committee. He later called that one of the most important decisions of his career. To compensate, he worked long hours and created hearing-like public forums where he could invite experts. He built ties with select Republican senators to protect the Voting Rights Act, AIDS treatment funding, and equal funding for women's sports under Title IX. He was often nearly the only effective Democrat battling Reagan.

  He also fought Reagan's foreign policy. He opposed intervention in the Salvadoran Civil War and support for the Contras in Nicaragua. He also opposed weapons systems like the B-1 bomber, the MX missile, and the Strategic Defense Initiative. He became the Senate's leading advocate for a nuclear freeze. A 1983 KGB memo from chairman Viktor Chebrikov to Yuri Andropov claims Kennedy sent word through his friend, former senator John V. Tunney, offering help with American television appearances and noting a possible 1988 presidential run. Tunney and a Kennedy spokesperson denied it. Reagan negotiator Max Kampelman said the senator never acted without informing the proper American agency. Kenneth Adelman said the administration knew of such contacts and did not mind.

  In 1985 he made a tiring and dangerous trip to South Africa. He defied both the apartheid government and militant AZAPO demonstrators. He spent a night in Bishop Desmond Tutu's home in Soweto. He also visited Winnie Mandela, wife of imprisoned leader Nelson Mandela. Back home he led the push for sanctions. With Senator Lowell Weicker, he got the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 through the Senate and over Reagan's veto. Despite their differences, he and Reagan got along personally. In 1986, with the administration's approval, Kennedy went to the Soviet Union as a go-between with Mikhail Gorbachev on arms control. He helped win the release of Soviet Jewish refuseniks, including Anatoly Shcharansky.

  The biggest battle came in July 1987, when Reagan nominated Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Kennedy feared Bork would dismantle civil rights law he had helped build. His staff had researched Bork's record. Within an hour of the nomination Kennedy was on the Senate floor in opposition. "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions," he said. Blacks, he added, "would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids." Bork supporters called the speech slanderous. Bork himself said, "There was not a line in that speech that was accurate."

  The administration was unprepared, though, and some Democrats froze. Opponents gained time to build their case. At the Judiciary Committee hearings in September 1987, Kennedy pressed Bork forcefully on civil rights, privacy, and women's rights, and Bork's own demeanor hurt him. The nomination lost in committee and in the full Senate. The fight changed Washington, since controversial nominees now face all-out campaigns against them.

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• 8. Reputation and Recovery

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  "I know this decision means I may never be president. But the pursuit of the presidency is not my life. Public service is." Kennedy said this in December 1985 as he declined to run in 1988. Family worries and personal troubles shaped the choice. His weight swung wildly and he drank heavily, though not when it would interfere with Senate duties. Later he acknowledged that drinking "may have been somewhat of a factor or force" in difficult times. Twice in 1985 he and Senator Chris Dodd were in drunken incidents at Washington restaurants. One involved a waitress who accused the pair of sexual assault. In 1987 he and a young lobbyist were surprised in a restaurant back room partly undressed.

  His first marriage had already ended. He and Joan separated in 1978, and announced a divorce in January 1981. It was granted in 1982 with a reported settlement of $4 million.

  In late November 1989 he traveled to see the newly fallen Berlin Wall. He spoke at John-F.-Kennedy-Platz, where his brother gave the "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech in 1963. "Emotionally, I just wish my brother could have seen it," he said.

  Then his private life took over his public image. In February 1990, Michael Kelly's long profile in GQ, "Ted Kennedy on the Rocks," portrayed him as "an aging Irish boyo clutching a bottle and diddling a blonde." Brother-in-law Stephen Edward Smith, a trusted family troubleshooter, died of cancer in August 1990, and Kennedy was emotionally bereft.

  In March 1991, over Easter weekend at the family estate in Palm Beach, Kennedy went to a local bar late at night. His son Patrick and nephew William Kennedy Smith went along. Smith and a woman named Patricia Bowman went to the beach. He said they had consensual sex, and she said it was rape. Police investigated late, Kennedy sources fed the press damaging information about Bowman, and several mainstream papers broke an unwritten rule by printing her name. It became a media frenzy. Kennedy was not directly implicated, but he became a late-night punchline. Time said he was seen as a "Palm Beach boozer, lout and tabloid grotesque." Newsweek called him "the living symbol of the family flaws."

  The timing could not have been worse. When Clarence Thomas faced Senate hearings in September 1991, Kennedy pressed him on Roe v. Wade. Then Anita Hill brought sexual harassment charges. Kennedy, hamstrung by his reputation, said almost nothing until the third day. Biographer Adam Clymer rated his silence the worst moment of his Senate career. Writer Anna Quindlen said, "Kennedy let us down because he had to; he was muzzled by the facts of his life." The day before the vote he gave an impassioned speech, saying that Hill's treatment was "shameful," and voted no. Thomas was confirmed 52-48, one of the narrowest margins ever for a successful nominee.

  Kennedy's approval fell to 22 percent in a Gallup Poll. A Boston Herald and WCVB-TV poll found that 62 percent of Massachusetts residents thought he should not run again. It had him losing to Governor William Weld by 25 points. Yet on the 17th of June 1991 he had seen Victoria Anne Reggie at a dinner party. She was a Washington lawyer and a divorced mother of two, and the daughter of an old family ally, Louisiana judge Edmund Reggie. By September they were serious. In late October, at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, he said, "I recognize my own shortcomings - the faults in the conduct of my private life. I realize that I alone am responsible for them." In December 1991 his testimony at the nationally televised Smith trial seemed relaxed and forthcoming, and Smith was acquitted. Kennedy and Reggie became engaged in March 1992 and married on the 3rd of July 1992 at his home in McLean, Virginia. She was credited with stabilizing his life.

  The Senate work resumed. Under President Clinton he floor-managed the National and Community Service Trust Act of 1993, which created AmeriCorps. He backed NAFTA despite reservations. His strong recommendation of former staffer Stephen Breyer helped win Breyer a Supreme Court seat in 1994. That year he also became the first senator with a World Wide Web home page. He built it with the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. It countered the image of an old, out-of-touch senator.

  His first serious challenger came in 1994, the young, well-funded Mitt Romney. By mid-September the polls showed an even race. Kennedy ran short of money and took out a second mortgage on his Virginia home. He answered with attack ads on Romney's shifting views and the treatment of workers at a plant owned by Bain Capital. Vicki proved a strong asset. After a widely watched debate in late October, Kennedy won 58 percent to 41 percent, the closest re-election of his career. His mother Rose died in January 1995, and afterward he intensified his Catholic faith, often attending Mass several times a week.

  In 1995 the Republican Revolution sent legislation from Newt Gingrich's House of Representatives to fulfill the Contract with America. Kennedy rallied dispirited Democrats, and by early 1996 most of the Contract had failed there. In 1996 he won an increase in the minimum wage, a favorite issue, and there was no other increase for ten years. During the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal he tried to cheer the president and persuaded him to add Greg Craig, a former Kennedy staffer, to his defense team. After the 1999 impeachment he voted to acquit on both charges. He said House Republicans had used the power "recklessly and without regard for the Constitution."

  By the end, Kennedy and his staff had written more than 300 bills that became law. In the 2000s he led several immigration reform efforts that failed, yet he also helped pass the No Child Left Behind Act. He ranks fifth in United States history for continuous Senate service, and he was the second-most-senior senator when he died. He died of a brain tumor, a glioblastoma, at his home in Hyannis Port in August 2009, at age 77. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. One national service law he helped pass, the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, carries his name.

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