Killing Reagan (16 page)

Jimmy Carter walks downstairs from the second-floor residence. His wife, Rosalynn, a woman known for her frosty demeanor, is on her way home from Austin, Texas, where she was supposed to spend the day campaigning on her husband's behalf. It was shortly after midnight when Jimmy Carter asked his wife to come back to Washington. This would not be a day for campaigning.

Morose, the president steps into the Oval Office at 6:08 a.m. He sits at his desk in this great room and places phone calls to the First Lady and Secretary of Defense Harold Brown. A news camera and microphone are brought into the room. The president straightens his tie. His speech is laid before him on the famous
Resolute
desk.
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Finally, at 7:00 a.m., Carter looks into the camera. He wants to appear in command, but his eyes betray him, showing exhaustion. The president will speak for eight minutes. Afterward, he will receive condolences from former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, who will offer to explain the purpose behind the failed rescue mission to the major television networks on Carter's behalf.

Jimmy Carter never imagined such a moment when he was governor of Georgia. Then, he was a solitary man with huge ambitions, launching a long-shot campaign in 1974 eventually to become president of the United States. Carter has come a long way from his small hometown of Plains, Georgia, but now it is all crashing down.

Carter speaks like a naval officer instead of a politician as he unemotionally explains his tactics to the nation, hoping his words will save his reelection campaign.

“I canceled a carefully planned operation which was under way in Iran to position our rescue team for later withdrawal of American hostages, who have been held captive there since November 4,” he begins.

“Our rescue team knew, and I knew, that the operation was certain to be difficult and it was certain to be dangerous. We were all convinced that if and when the rescue operation had been commenced that it had an excellent chance of success. They were all volunteers; they were all highly trained. I met with their leaders before they went on this operation. They knew then what hopes of mine and of all Americans they carried with them,” Carter explains.

“It was my decision to attempt the rescue operation. It was my decision to cancel it when problems developed in the placement of our rescue team for a future rescue operation.

“The responsibility is fully my own.”

Carter exhales. It has been a brutal morning. And he fears the worst is yet to come.

Out of respect for the fifty-two captives, Carter has done little campaigning for reelection. He believes this “Rose Garden strategy” of remaining in the White House to deal with the crisis makes him look more presidential—and that it will ultimately win him another term.

That strategy is doomed to fail. And so is Jimmy Carter's presidency.

After his nationwide address on the Iranian hostage-rescue disaster, Carter's job approval rating plunges to 28 percent.

Ronald Reagan takes notice.

*   *   *

Ten months before the failed rescue attempt, Jimmy Carter is responding to the news that Sen. Ted Kennedy plans to run against him for president. “I'll whip his ass,” Jimmy Carter tells a group of Democratic members of Congress.

The two men are sworn enemies and will remain that way the rest of their lives. Kennedy, the blue-blooded youngest brother of the assassinated John and Robert Kennedy, is a forty-seven-year-old senator from Massachusetts. He's a man of many pleasures, drink and women being chief among them. Kennedy is the sentimental favorite among many Democrats who have bestowed sainthood upon his dead brothers.

But Teddy Kennedy is no saint, as the events of a fateful summer night one decade ago clearly showed.

It was 11:15 p.m. on July 18, 1969. The senator was attending a party on Chappaquiddick Island, a short ferry ride from the main hamlet on Martha's Vineyard, Edgartown. Kennedy was restless and decided to leave the party with an attractive young campaign worker, twenty-eight-year-old Mary Jo Kopechne. The fresh-faced Mary Jo was infatuated with Kennedy, and he knew this as he led her to a 1967 Oldsmobile Delmont 88. Kennedy had been drinking but nevertheless got behind the wheel while Mary Jo, a former member of the Robert Kennedy 1968 presidential campaign, sat in the front passenger seat. Strangely, she'd left her purse and her hotel room key behind, as if expecting to return to the party later that night.

Kennedy and Mary Jo drove into the dark. Few people live on Chappaquiddick Island. First, the two made a stop on Cemetery Road, an out-of-the-way location. Suddenly, a police car approached, so Kennedy started up the Olds again.

Later, Ted Kennedy will tell investigators that he was driving Mary Jo Kopechne to the local ferry so she could make the last crossing to Edgartown. But that was a lie; they were driving in the opposite direction from the ferry. Kennedy turned down a dirt road and onto a small wooden bridge that crossed a canal. There were no guardrails, and the car was traveling twenty miles per hour when it suddenly slid off the bridge and into the water. The Oldsmobile flipped upside down in the black current, disorienting Kennedy and Mary Jo. The senator quickly got free of the vehicle and then kicked hard for the surface. In the darkness, he did not see or hear Mary Jo Kopechne.

Kennedy panicked. Not only had he driven a car off a bridge in the dead of night, in the company of a woman who was not his wife, but that woman may also have drowned.

Soaking wet, Kennedy walked up the road until he came to the body of water separating Chappaquiddick from the main part of Martha's Vineyard. He dove into the water and swam five hundred feet to Edgartown. Incredibly, once on land, Kennedy returned to his hotel room, changed into dry clothes, and went to bed. He did not inform police about the accident for nine more hours. When he finally did talk to the authorities, he told them he'd called Mary Jo Kopechne's name many times and made an effort to swim down and find her in the submerged vehicle. Few believed his story.
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Soon, fishermen spotted the wreck, and rescue divers pulled Mary Jo Kopechne's body from the car. Quickly, investigators deduced that she'd initially survived the wreck, finding an air pocket inside the vehicle
.
Judging from the position of her body, police believed she'd remained alive for some time. Edgartown Rescue Squad diver John Farrar, who pulled Mary Jo's body from the vehicle, told friends that Mary Jo suffocated rather than drowned. The car's doors were all locked, but the windows were either open or shattered, leaving investigators to wonder how the six-foot-two Kennedy could successfully escape while the five-foot-two Mary Jo remained in the vehicle.

In another incredible occurrence, there was no autopsy, in part because the Kopechne family opposed it. Almost immediately, the young woman, whose family lived outside Scranton, Pennsylvania, became the subject of rumor and innuendo.
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One week after Mary Jo Kopechne's death, Sen. Ted Kennedy learned that he would get off easy. An openly sympathetic judge, James Boyle, quickly wrapped up the case. Kennedy pled guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, and Boyle gave him a suspended sentence, saying, “You will continue to be punished far beyond anything this court can impose.”

Now, more than ten years later, Boyle's words ring true. “Chappaquiddick,” as the incident has become known, dogs Edward Kennedy as he challenges Jimmy Carter for the presidency. Two months after announcing his candidacy, CBS news interviewer Roger Mudd brings up that ill-fated night during a televised interview. Mudd also asks about the state of Kennedy's marriage.

Ill at ease, the senator fumbles for words. At one point, Mudd appears to accuse him of lying. Kennedy will later state that Mudd duped him into speaking about matters for which he was not prepared.

Making the situation even worse, the interview airs on November 4, 1979, the same day that fifty-two Americans are taken hostage in Iran. Immediately, the nation rallies around their president rather than the callow Kennedy. In primary after primary during the early months of 1980, Jimmy Carter is true to his word, whipping Kennedy's ass again and again, winning thirty-seven primaries to Kennedy's eleven.
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In the mind of Ted Kennedy, Jimmy Carter is a sanctimonious, weak man. “He loved to give the appearance of listening,” Kennedy will one day write of visiting the Carter White House as a senator. “You'd arrive about 6 or 6:30, and the first thing you'd be reminded of, in case you needed reminding, was that he and Rosalynn had removed all liquor from the White House. No liquor was ever served during Jimmy Carter's term. He wanted no luxuries nor any sign of worldly living.”

Kennedy also seethes about what he believes to be Carter's growing conservatism, thinking it an affront to the democratic ideals for which his brothers fought so hard. “Jimmy Carter,” Kennedy will write, “held an inherently different view of America from mine.”

So it is that, despite the lingering stain of Chappaquiddick and the many primary defeats, Ted Kennedy vows to continue his fight against Jimmy Carter all the way to the Democratic National Convention at New York's Madison Square Garden on August 11. In the same manner in which Ronald Reagan sought to unseat President Gerald Ford with a last-minute bid four years ago, Ted Kennedy and his staff now hatch a plan to take down Carter.

Polls support this plan. When asked, Democratic voters said they'd prefer Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter if those two candidates faced off for the presidency. Those same polls, however, show Ted Kennedy defeating Ronald Reagan.

On June 5, 1980, six weeks after Carter's televised national address about the failed hostage rescue, he and Ted Kennedy meet in the White House. Kennedy is giving Carter one last chance to avoid the sort of bruising convention that Ford endured—and that ultimately led to his defeat in the general election. All Kennedy wants is the chance to debate Jimmy Carter on national television, allowing voters to decide who should lead the country. The campaign has been a long one for Kennedy, taking him through forty states in nine months. He estimates that he has flown a hundred thousand miles in that time. He is not yet ready to concede the nomination, particularly against an opponent he despises.

“We were not victorious,” Kennedy will write of his mind-set going into the meeting; “nor were we defeated.”

Kennedy and Carter meet in the Oval Office, at 4:35 in the afternoon. The senator will remember the meeting as lasting fifteen minutes, when in fact they speak for forty. The president is secure in the knowledge that he has more than enough delegates to win the nomination. Kennedy knows this but is hatching an audacious scheme to steal those delegates and make them his own. Kennedy's plan is to force a shift in convention rules that will allow delegates the freedom to vote for anyone they want, rather than the candidate to which their state's primary results bind them.

By the time the meeting is done, Carter has made his intentions clear: there will be no debate.

*   *   *

Two months later, the end finally arrives for Ted Kennedy. His scheme hasn't worked. His campaign staff works the convention floor in a frenzy, determined to find some last-minute way to avoid defeat. But it is not to be. Kennedy has lost his bid for the presidency.

Unbowed, Kennedy gives a concession speech that sounds more like a call to arms
.
“The commitment I seek is not to outworn ideas, but to old values that will never wear out. Programs may sometimes become obsolete but the idea of fairness always endures,” Kennedy tells the convention. “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.”

Kennedy is lucid and focused. Many will say it is the finest speech he has ever delivered.

*   *   *

Two nights later, as the convention closes, Ted Kennedy has scotch on his breath as Jimmy Carter invites him onto the dais in a display of party unity. Rosalynn Carter stands at her husband's side, looking every bit the “Steel Magnolia” who has had so much influence in the White House. Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill is on the crowded stage, as are a host of Democratic Party big shots.

But it is the body language between Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter that the crowd watches closely. Kennedy wears a pin-striped suit and has a look on his face that his staff calls “the smirk.” The senator strides purposely to the lectern, making no attempt to heal any lingering wounds from the campaign. He shakes Carter's hand in the most perfunctory manner possible, then immediately walks to the side of the stage, where he can look out over the Massachusetts delegation. As they roar their approval, Kennedy thrusts a triumphant fist into the air.

Unbeknownst to Kennedy, Jimmy Carter follows him. He, too, puts up a victor's fist for the Massachusetts contingent, hoping for a side-by-side display of party unity with his opponent. But as Carter's fist goes up, Kennedy's goes down. There will be no partnership in this campaign.
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