Ted Kennedy, in short, was achingly vulnerable in 1994. As late as September his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, a Mormon venture capitalist running for elective office for the first time, and Kennedy were in a dead heat in the polls. But Romney had never before had "the deep frisk," which is the political strategist John Sasso's way of saying that he had never been pawed over by the press. In due course the deep frisk turned up workers who had been hurt by Romney's venture capitalism. And Kennedy, in a family first, attacked Romney in negative ads. In the event, Kennedy won by a misleadingly swollen margin of 17 percent.
BILL Weld, through all this, was engaging in a meaningless (and mean) re-election campaign. He had popularity to burn in 1994. Elected narrowly in 1990 against John Silber, the president of Boston University, a Democrat who gave the inconvenient impression of being only fitfully sane, Weld had worn well in office. He did not take himself seriously. He was known to lift the convivial glass. Rich, well-born, married to a descendant of Theodore Roosevelt, a WASP in one of the most Catholic states in the country, Weld got credit for being, despite everything, a
regular guy. Hell, he hunted boar. But instead of using his political capital to take on Ted Kennedy, Weld chose to run up the score against state representative Mark Roosevelt, who carried only two of the Commonwealth's 351 cities and towns.
Had Weld run against Kennedy and won, as polls suggest he would have, he might well have been a presidential candidate in this year's Republican primaries. Beating Kennedy would have trumped any complaints the Republican right has against Weld. Against
old Bob Dole, Weld would have shone as the fresh face of 1996, the opportunity candidate, the tax-cutting candidate, a self-confessed "filthy supply-sider."