Does Ted Kennedy run in 1972, or avoid a kamikaze mission and wait for 1976?
RB,
That's a real tough one, but I think LBJ's comment regarding Chappaquiddick can give us some guidance.
"Never would've happened if Bobby was there.", remember?
Bobby was the brains of the outfit and, with him gone, Ted has more than enough hubris to run in '72 and not enough political savvy to know not enough to run in '72. Ted will run in '72 and he'll be stomped because Dick Nixon will make damn sure he gets stomped.
Nixon was the sitting president in '72 and nobody, especially a
Kennedy and a member of the family who stole the election from him in '60, is going to take the White House away from him. Period.
Nixon and his Plumbers, aptly named because plumbing is the most Stoogely of professions, did whatever they deemed necessary in '72. They hit every Democratic primary candidate good, bad, or middling. Muskie got it right out of the gate. Humphrey got it. Jackson, McCarthy, Sanford, and Lindsay got it too. Even Chisholm got it and she didn't have a chance in hell of winning the nomination. McGovern had been getting it early too and, once he emerged from the convention, he got it even more. Eagleton got it so bad he was run right off the ticket.
People forget this but Nixon and his gang were so determined and so paranoid they burgled the Watergate DNC office nearly a month
before the DNC convention.
Ted would have been smeared by Nixon in '72. Nixon had been to China, he was going to end the war, the country was tired of social upheaval of the 60s, all the indications are there even before you add dirty tricks to the equation.
Bobby would have known not to run and would have advised Ted not to do the same. Bobby was gone though and Ted was going to run right into a buzzsaw.
'76 is a harder call, but I still think Ted will lose the nomination. After Watergate, Hays, Podell, the economy, and all the rest the public was fed up with incumbents in
both parties. That's one reason Carter won the nomination, he positioned himself as an outsider.
Carter also won because his campaign understood the new primary system better than any of the other Democratic candidates and their campaigns. Would Ted have people around who understood the new system or would he have the same people who been working for Kennedys since the 1960s?
I think Ted gets the nod in '72 and loses big time to Nixon. He then starts the primary trail in '76, with anything used against him in '72 however accurate washed away by the fact that Nixon used it, only to lose to Carter or a Carter-like figure.
Bill