Donald Riegle Oral History (7/8/2008)

This is an interview with Senator Don Riegle, on July 8, 2008, in Washington, D.C.

You were describing how Ted Kennedy has developed over the years.

I'll tell a recent story about his 75th birthday party, if I have the right number, which Vicki [Reggie Kennedy] put together. There was a costume party. I don't know if anybody else has talked to you about it, about who came dressed as what, but Ted was dressed like an English lord, in an incredible outfit, and Barbara Mikulski came as someone out of Hairspray, with a huge beehive hairdo that went up a foot and a half. It was hysterically funny. It was a wonderful evening. It was not his last birthday party; it was the one before that.

Ted has a way of calling on people when he wants them to do something. He wants them to do things at a moment of his choosing, without necessarily any warning or preparation. So we were all there and we were dressed, and it turned out that Greg Craig and I both had come as Nathan Detroit, from the show Guys and Dolls. We were both decked out in these Nathan Detroit costumes, and we were talking and kibitzing during dinner. Everybody was talking, and there were six or eight tables and so forth.

All of a sudden Ted yelled out in the din, "Okay, Riegle, let's hear from you. You go ahead and speak first," meaning, talk about him and his birthday and so on. I was absolutely, for the moment, struck dumb. I had nothing prepared to say, and I hadn't thought about saying anything. I'd already had a glass of wine on the way in the door, probably on an empty stomach. I was talking to Greg Craig, and we were standing there kidding. Ted said, "Okay, you go first." So everybody quieted down, and I was standing there thinking, What do I say?

I used the analogy of Ted as a gigantic tree, like a giant oak tree that has grown up, with a sweep at the top, under which the whole family gathers, and not just his actual family but his extended family—his staff, people devoted to him, and so forth. Over the years, he has become massive, solid, like an oak tree, of a huge size and dimension. If you were to go out and measure the world's biggest trees, this would fall into that category in terms of, over the years, his work and travails and circumstances. His having had to surmount everything has caused him to become, in my mind, like a giant tree, under which everybody is able to gather, not only the people he would have invited to his birthday parties, but principally his family, his causes, his purposes, and so forth.

When you think of the youngest child in a family like that, with so many distinguished people, there has been so much adversity, so much heartache, and so much tragedy, but he has continued to grow and to fulfill that role, and he has created a great, sweeping canopy—canopy is not the right word, but it's the right picture—under which Caroline [Kennedy Schlossberg] can find a place, Vicki's kids can find a place, his children from the first marriage can find a place, and Eunice [Kennedy Shriver] can find a place.

It's more than being the patriarch of the family, because he's kind of the matriarch as well as the patriarch. He is the surviving figure who helps look after everybody else, the leader figure within the family. Because he's so strong and so vital, it was so interesting to have an event come along like this illness, where he needs the tending and he needs the care, whereas before, he has been the caregiver. It's a very emotional thought to me.

It must be difficult for him too.

In one of the early pictures from the hospital in Boston, when the whole family was gathered around him—there's an insatiable interest and curiosity and love, and there are lots of reasons why there needs to be a photograph that the public sees—his eyes were so sad. That's what I noticed. He was being very brave about it and he was smiling, but you could see a profound sadness in his eyes, and I don't think it was sadness for himself. I think he feels an enormous responsibility for the family and for everybody within the family. I think it was anything but a selfish sadness.

You knew him before Vicki. That was a big event in his life.

A huge event. I first met Ted— maybe I should give you the first bookend. There is no backend bookend. I hope there won't be one for a long time. We first met because we shared an honor back in the late 1960s. We were each chosen as one of the Ten Outstanding Young Men, by the U.S. Jaycees, at a time when that was a big deal. They had an annual event in which they honored ten outstanding young men in the country. They had a big ceremony each year, and this one was in Minneapolis. Hubert Humphrey was the speaker, and there was a huge gathering of people from around the country.

Ted and I met each other there. I've told Ted this story. I was elected to Congress when I was 28. I'm now 70. So there's a difference in our ages of about six years. I was in my second year in Congress, I guess, when this happened. Each one of the ten of us spoke for three or four minutes. There was a tight limitation because we all had to be introduced, and then ten people had to speak, and then Humphrey had to speak, so this thing could have gone on all night long. Of course I didn't know Ted. I was a Republican at that time. I realized that Ted was going to give a great speech, so I thought, I need to give a great speech, and in fact I want to give a better speech. I don't want my speech to be less effective than his. I knew that that was a very high hurdle to jump.

I was in my hotel room by myself. It was 11:00 or 12:00 at night, and this event was to happen the next day. I had my four minutes written out and I thought, This is so sad and pathetic. I can't get up and say this. I have to say something that's galvanizing and powerful that will move the audience. I have to give the best set of remarks I've ever given up to this point, maybe the best I'll ever give, even if it's four minutes. So I stayed up all night long, and I went to bed at about 6:00 am, after God knows how many cups of coffee and Coca-Cola and so forth. I was working my way through this. By the time I was done, I felt like I had something pretty special.

I don't recall where I was in the order of the speakers or where Ted was in the ten, but I know I was ahead of him. I got up there and gave the speech, and it was probably the best one I've ever given. It hit all the right notes. I made references to the Kennedy family, and I used quotes and so forth. Ted, of course, couldn't do anything at this point, because he was in the wings and his was all written. He couldn't start improvising at that point, but he had listened to everybody ahead of him, just as I had listened to everyone ahead of me. We were the only two from the Congress.

Once I said mine, it was like, if one guy jumps 20 feet on the long jump, then can you jump 21 feet? I think he knew that he had to say something worthwhile. I delivered my speech and got a great crowd response, and I think he knew that he wouldn't be able to uncork one quite like that because he was scripted, and it was too late to do much with it. Years later he mentioned this to me. His recollection was so vivid, I think, it was like the event had happened the day before. It's a story of how you meet somebody and how the relationship gets off on its own footing.

When I eventually changed parties in 1973, after six years as a Republican in the House, and became a Democrat, and then was elected to the Senate, we then became colleagues in the same place and in the same party. Our personal relationship began to grow, and over time it became very important to both of us.

Did he ever tell you what he thought of your speech?

We were at another birthday event one night. My wife Lori [Hansen Riegle] would be a better witness than I on this. This was back in the days when, if you were having a birthday event with a small group, you started with a glass of wine, and then you had a second glass of wine, and by the time dinner came, everybody was in a very mellow mood. I remember that because another one of his great pals, Tim Hanan, got up on the table and walked on top of it. This was down at the Hay-Adams Hotel, across from the White House. It was a festive evening. John Culver, if his memory is working, could probably relate this evening as well as anybody, because he's a good storyteller.

My wife Lori reminded me that Ted, in the middle of this, went back to the TOYM [Ten Outstanding Young Men] thing. Of course, in a kidding way he has ragged me for what I said then, but clearly he remembers it. That event has always been a special reference point, because first of all, it was an honor we shared. That's when we met. Our lives changed a lot after that. We both went through personal life changes in terms of divorcing and remarrying. A lot was coming down the pike in terms of developing a close, personal friendship.

One of the interesting things was I didn't think that [Jimmy] Carter would be reelected, nor did I think he deserved to be reelected, so I was a supporter of Ted's effort to get nominated in 1980. Prior to that time, I remember being home in McLean. Ted called on the phone. He had never called me on the phone before, so getting a personal phone call was unusual at that time because I had come to the Senate in 1976, so I hadn't been there very long.

He was calling to say that he was thinking about getting into the Presidential race, and he wanted me to go call on some of the fellow Senators and sound them out on the idea. I was a bit dumbfounded, because we knew each other and liked each other, but we didn't have a close relationship at that time, so the fact that he was asking me to do this was a surprise to me. I didn't feel that I was the best person to do it, because I hadn't been in the Senate very long.

I remember asking, "Who in particular would you like me to go see?" One of the names I remember, because I was so dumbfounded, was Scoop [Henry] Jackson. I thought, Wait a minute. Scoop Jackson? In his eyes, who am I? I had just walked in the door. I came in on a pumpkin wagon from Michigan, like, yesterday. There was a long history there because Scoop Jackson had helped Jack Kennedy way back in time.

I thought—and I've never talked about this with Ted—Wouldn't Jackson think it was a little strange if somebody other than Ted came to see him? But I didn't say that to Ted. My thought was, If he has thought about this and has asked me to do it, then I'm going to do it. So I called on four or five of the people he had mentioned. I remember that Quentin Burdick was another one. Then I wrote up a little squib on what had transpired in each meeting and what each one said. I can't remember what they said and such, but I remember him asking for this to be done and me setting out to do it.

Would this have been in—was Carter—

Carter was elected in '76, so he was running for reelection in '80.

Right. So Carter was already President when Ted asked you to do these soundings.

Yes. I don't think it was earlier than that. It wouldn't have been in '76, because I wasn't in the Senate yet. So it must have been in '80. It was, in essence, a challenge raised to a sitting President. Whether he just wanted to get some initial soundings without having to do it personally, I don't know. But anyway, I was flattered that he asked. I didn't feel well equipped to do it, because I hadn't been around long, and these older Senators were pretty heavy-duty figures.

What was Scoop Jackson's reaction?

I don't remember anybody responding harshly or unfavorably. That's different from carrying away a recollection that anybody said, "Yes, I hope he'll do this," and so forth. I would remember if anybody had been starkly negative, but I don't recall that. I don't recall a huge burst of enthusiasm either. Everybody was respectful, everybody was interested, and everybody was helpful in terms of what they had to say. I wrote it all down and fed it back in. So that sticks out in my mind because it was so unanticipated.

Had you developed a relationship with him by the time Bobby [Kennedy] was shot?

No. When I first got to the Senate, I went on the Labor and Human Resources Committee, so we got to know each other better there. But I think that each human relationship is different. We all have them, and they all develop in whatever ways they develop and so forth. I've thought about the relationship I have with Ted today and how it developed over a period of time, because a lot of it developed in the Senate.

The Senate is such a small group of people, especially the Democratic group and the people within the Democratic group who are like-minded. The number of people who are outspoken advocates for working people and civil rights issues and things of that kind is a smaller group yet. I think that Ted and I always resonated on that level. As he got to know me a little better as a guy from Michigan, from that part of the country, that part of the electorate, and that part of the Democratic base, a guy concerned with working-class issues, I think he saw me as an authentic voice—not that it was everything it should have been. I think he knew that I was speaking what I felt and what I thought reflected my constituency and priorities and so forth.

Ted and I shared values, shared priorities, and shared a sense of urgency about human issues. Not enough people in the Senate have those concerns. The number of people who feel a sense of social outrage, who will talk about it and express it, and who will get up and lead the charge on it is quite small. Those people tend to find each other through the process, and Ted and I sat close to one another on the floor. He sat one row back and a couple of seats down, so we were in the same vicinity. Separately we would often, without coordination, get up and talk about things that were important to both of us.

Phil Hart had died by then.

Yes. Phil Hart was dying of cancer in 1976, and he did not run for reelection, so I was the nominee of the Democratic Party to take Phil's seat. Phil died a couple of days before I was scheduled to be sworn in, and because it created an odd vacancy days before I was to be sworn in, Governor [William] Milliken had the good grace to appoint me to the seat. That gave me a bit of an edge and seniority coming into the Senate.

Ted and I share many of the same personality quirks in terms of our general nature, which is important to our friendship. We care pretty much about the same things, and we have a very strong sense of wanting to speak out and advocate for certain things that aren't talked about enough, whether it's healthcare or what happens to workers.

You discovered this in the course of your work together as Senators on the same committee?

Yes, and some of it when we had occasion to work together, but as much or more because we were in a small setting and we ended up saying much the same things, each in our own way. That creates a bond. I hadn't thought about it before, but I think that because of the way the Senate works, if you're there long enough—I was there for 18 years—like-minded people find each other one way or another. It's everything from sense of humor to personal style and personality to what matters to you. I mean, what are you willing to bet your job on? What are you willing to do up front?

Stand up for.

In that sense, Ted and I were naturally in alignment. It wasn't a conscious thing. He was coming from his history and his experience and his view, and I was coming from my own, but the fact is, we were both, more often than not, driving in the same direction, for the same reasons, and with the same sense of moral force, outrage, concern, or passion. In the kidding vein, because I gave a fair number of speeches on the floor that were strongly felt and strongly delivered, one of Ted's affectionate nicknames for me was "mad dog." Mad dog Riegle was giving one of his impassioned speeches about working people or about the lack of healthcare or whatever. I always took it as a compliment.

Did you have a name for his mad dog speeches? Didn't he give some?

Oh, yes. He could get as florid and as loud as anybody, probably more so than anybody else on the Democratic side that I can remember during my time there. Maybe that was truer of him and me than anybody else. I remember a time when David Pryor was fired up and gave a great speech on senior citizens having to eat out of garbage cans, which was a rhetorical flourish that came to him. Howard Metzenbaum could get fired up. Most people in the Senate are more measured when they speak. They don't tend to fire up with a lot of fervor and passion and emotion that is based on how strongly they feel about an issue. One of the things that we had in common and that drew us together over time was that we both felt strongly about certain issues, and we could get up and talk about them spontaneously.

Talk a little bit about friendships in the Senate and about the different ways that Senators interact, because they're not all the same. The cordiality may be there.

Each one is different.

What does it take to go from cordiality and acquaintanceship into the deep friendships?

That's a wonderful question, to which there are probably a million answers. Each relationship is different. First of all, the people who come to the Senate are different, and the Senate experience is so fragmented because you are constantly busy on so many fronts. In my case, I was serving on four major committees, notwithstanding the problems of my state, but everybody does that. Everybody's time is fractured into so many small pieces, so you have to have the time and the opportunity to find each other, unless you're on the same committee and you sit beside each other.

For example, I sat next to Paul Sarbanes on the Banking Committee for 18 years, and I sat next to Jim Sasser on the Senate floor for 18 years. I got to know both of those guys very well. That's an interest of mine anyway, knowing people well when I have the chance to. It takes a long time. I mean, cracking the safe on Paul Sarbanes was not easy. I did it because I loved Paul and because I had the opportunity and the time. We ended up having a wonderful relationship that has endured since the Senate, but it didn't happen in a hurry.

In the Senate, a lot of the relationships are like trains passing in the night. There is the cordiality of people riding the elevator together and coming over on the subway car together, but in terms of getting to a deeper level, it's a good question. I saw it happen when people took foreign trips together. People who took foreign trips together had a chance to bond in a different way, because they were together during their work time, nonwork time, meals together, the time on a flight, and so on. Normally wives went along, so that was an important facilitator as well.

I got to know Dale Bumpers, for example, quite well because we took a trip to China together. That was a transforming event in terms of our personal relationship, which grew over time and continues to this day as a very close, personal relationship. If we had not taken that trip together, and a subsequent trip together, because of the random nature of who took the trip, we would not have been able to bond in the same way. So I think that these international trips, in the Senate particularly—and it's true in the House as well—are important.

You're much busier in the Senate than you are in the House. You have more responsibilities because you are asked to do more things. You're divvying the same amount of work among 100 people that the House divides among 435, so you're automatically busier because you have a whole state to keep track of. And if it's not Delaware—if it's Michigan or California, for example—then you have the enormous task of trying to stay on top of your state's needs, apart from committee work and votes and everything else that goes with the job.

Did you ever go on a trip with Ted?

No, we never did, which is interesting. We spent a lot of time together in personal, informal occasions, but no, we never took a trip together. I wish we had. I would have loved to have done that. Other than that, I think your committee assignments determine who you spend a lot of time with. Who you sit next to obviously has something to do with it. Then it's so much a matter of personality and the degree to which people do or don't fit together, even with respect to Ted's hideaway.

Ted's hideaway became a gathering spot for the people he wanted to have there. You don't just show up. You have to be invited. In a sense, he did and does to this day create a subgroup of people he wants to have around him in the more informal moments of the Senate, although Senate work is always happening in informal settings, as you well know. I remember, after leaving the Senate, Ted inviting me back to the hideaway a couple of times. It's where I first met John Edwards, for example. It was interesting to me because I could see that Ted had taken an interest in Edwards. Inviting him up to the hideaway was a rite of passage, but it also said to me that Ted saw something in this guy that he liked or felt good about, or else Edwards never would have been invited up there, not more than once.

How important is the cloakroom to distilling relationships?

The cloakroom is important. Unfortunately, the nature of the job has changed, especially the task of raising money. I'll tell you a story about Barbara Boxer, who is a good friend. After I left the Senate, I was invited back up there one night to have dinner with Frank Lautenberg, also a good friend. I had arrived early, but they were delayed. He thought he was going to leave at 6:00, but it got to be 7:00 and so forth. While I was waiting for the session to end, Frank and I were planning to leave together. He was going to drive, but there was this delay.

Barbara Boxer, who has the hellish task of representing California—and therefore of raising the money to run successfully, as all Senators today do—has an office adjacent to the Hill, where they have to do the fundraising phone calls, where they're dialing for dollars hour after hour because there's no other way to get the money. In the midst of the vote, I was sitting there and Barbara came running in late, during the 15-minute voting period, and she had to quickly find out what the vote was, because, as she explained, she was over making these fundraising telephone calls. She'd been driven back over, ran up the steps, came in the cloakroom, got the information she needed, stuck her head through the door, voted, took a couple breaths of air, maybe had a glass of water, and then went right back out, down the stairs to the car, and back over to the little office where she had to make fundraising phone calls.

The importance of the story is that type of situation changes the nature of what goes on in the cloakroom. There was a time, when I first got there, when it was a different pace. There wasn't an excessive requirement to, among other things, constantly raise funds, which permitted people to sit around the cloakroom. There was a certain group that did and a certain group that didn't. The people who sat around the cloakroom and talked tended to be more convivial, friendlier, more jocular, and more inclined to make small talk and have relationships, as opposed to people who were less interested in having relationships. You get that whole spectrum in the Senate. There are people who don't want a lot of relationships for whatever reasons, and there are people who value and enjoy relationships and view them as a systemic part of the job, part of the privilege of the job as well as the work of the job.

I saw the cloakroom change. Eighteen years is long enough to start to see it. Plus we had a big generational rollover. When I came in 1976, the people there were some of the giants of the Senate, such as [Jacob] Javits, Ed Brooke, [Barry] Goldwater, and [Edmund] Muskie. There was an army of people, and they all moved on. It was a huge generational washout and rollover of people. There have been two or three rollovers since that time. There was a group that came in: David Boren, [William] Bradley, myself, and Gary Hart. That whole group left.

But Harry Byrd and Herman Talmadge and that group who had been around in the Senate for decades before that, I got there when that group was still largely intact, and I saw that group melt down and go away. Then I saw a new group come in, and I saw that group melt down and go away, and there have probably been at least one or two since that time. Ted has lived through that whole period. He, Bob Byrd, Daniel Inouye—and Pat Leahy now, because he got there at such a young age and has stayed so long—are the anomalies.

I think that a serious student of the Senate would be able to describe these changes. They were quite significant over that period of time. If you take just the time that I'm aware of, from 1976 to the present time, there were huge changes in the Senate. I think that anyone who has any frame of reference over that period would say that, including Ted. It was a different place. I mean, you commonly hear people say, "It's not as much fun to be there anymore." In the cloakroom, there was a conviviality and a comity that has been breaking down slowly.

There was a dramatic illustration of this when the Republican leader, Bill Frist, from Tennessee, the doctor, went up to South Dakota to campaign against the Democratic leader Tom Daschle. I mean, Danny Inouye, going all the way back, used to go up to Alaska to campaign for Ted Stevens, which is the reverse, but that was way back when there was a different ethos. In the meantime, with the [Newton] Gingrich era and with Frist going after Daschle, there has been a change in terms of those interpersonal relationships in the Senate.

I think of when [Robert] Dole and Alan Simpson were there. George Mitchell was pretty businesslike, but not to the point of being rigid and stiff and austere. There was a wonderful friendliness and ease across the party lines and between the leaders. I was able to witness that and be there for part of it, but a host of things have served to change and harden that. Today, for many, I think it's quite a different experience. I feel very privileged to have been there at that time. To the extent that Ted contributes to this oral history, if it's not just about him but about the Senate too, these are changes he has seen, has lived through, and probably can describe quite well if he has the energy and the interest to do it.

What changes have you seen in him over that period?

Ted's wisdom, his work ethic, how hard he works, the briefing books, the intensity that he brings to the issues, the quality of the staff, the fact that he's always had exceptional staff. I mean, you don't find a weak link in the Kennedy staff. There is no such thing. It doesn't happen. So the operational standard is very high. It has been maintained, in my observation, from the time I arrived right up until today. There's a standard of excellence in terms of the seriousness of the work focus, and Ted drives that. He sets that standard, and he sets it higher than anybody else I know in the Senate. It's reinforced by an army of highly competent staff people who come and go but who, when they're there, bring excellence and, I think, commitment. Then there's Ted's ability to find ways to develop bipartisan initiatives.

That's a constant.

Yes. Whether it's with Dan Quayle, with Nancy Kassebaum, with Orrin Hatch, or with whomever, he has always found a way. It's partly his Irish nature, it's partly his goodness of heart, and it's partly that his personality is a wonderful asset.

Of course the Republicans have demonized him for so long that anybody far away wouldn't know that he's as wonderful a person as he is. The Republicans who serve with him, the ones who aren't complete shits, know it because they've had a chance to see it. Unless they're crazed ideologues who want to think of him as a demonized figure, they've figured out that it's all nonsense. I think that's why his stature has become so universally recognized by anybody who knows anything about the Senate. When they say, "He may well be the most influential Senator ever in the history of the institution," I think that's true, because he's given so much to the place. He's done so much, he's helped shape the place, and he's helped make it work in an organic way.

Has he slowed down? I mean before the sickness.

Not appreciably, not to my eye. I don't know that he has worked fewer hours or that he has worked everybody less hard than he did before.

He loves his time with the dogs. I'll tell you a wonderful, funny story. I went down to the Senate gym one time. This was after I left the Senate and had a hip replacement. When I could, I would go up there and get into the hot tub, which former Senators were permitted to do, in order to soak this hip and thereby speed up the healing process. When the women Senators began to accumulate, they wanted their own gym facilities, and now they have their own gym facilities, and the men have their own gym facilities.

On the men's side, the tradition is that men walk around naked. Some don't, but most do and most did. That's an aspect of the men's gym, and it's important to the story. I often say—we'll expunge this—that if you haven't seen the late Pat [Daniel Patrick] Moynihan or Howell Heflin naked in the gym—and they can say the same thing about me—it is a revelatory experience, and quite stunning. [laughter]

You never see them the same way again.

No. I mean, they look so different when they're all gussied up. I guess that's true of all of us. In any event, Ted was down in the gym, and this was on a day, I think, when the Senate was not in session, so he brought the dogs down. So Splash and Sunny, or whatever their names are, were down there. They're Portuguese water dogs, and Ted was in the swimming pool, stark naked, and he had the dogs in there with him, and he had a tennis ball. The dogs would get out, he would throw the ball across the pool, and the dogs would run around the pool and dive in. They would come swimming like crazy, one ahead of the other, to get the ball and so forth.

It was absolute mayhem. I mean, it was a scene out of a movie that would take Steven Spielberg to imagine and create. Of course there were two or three attendants down there, and they were watching this. The water was flying, and the dogs were jumping, and Ted was exuberant, and the ball was flying. He said, "Riegle, get in here! You have to be part of this." So I went over and got into the pool, and I was in the middle of this. It was very funny, but there were no other members down there right then, because that might have been a little sensitive. Some people might have thought it was great to have dogs in the pool, but other people might have thought, What the hell are these dogs doing in the Senate swimming pool?

Finally, after about 20 minutes of this, Ted lumbered out, the dogs got out, and a calm came back. Suddenly it was placid in there. It was like the scene never happened. Adjacent to the swimming pool was the hot tub, so I went back over to the hot tub and I got back into it in order to put some more heat on this hip. In came Senator John Warner, stark naked. Warner is an interesting figure too, as we all are. He's a very proper guy, and he's a devoted swimmer. He liked to swim in the pool, and he had a little set of goggles and a rubber cap that he kept on a shelf. It was all calm and peaceful.

He picked up his goggles and put them on, and he walked over to the steps and stepped down into the pool at one end. He began swimming back and forth, and I was watching him. You can stand up in the pool. It's not that deep. You can have your feet on the bottom and your head above the water. He suddenly stood up and put his goggles up. He started going like this [makes a motion], and he obviously had gotten a dog hair in his teeth. [laughter] He had no idea what it was. Of course I knew what it was. It was hysterically funny. It was so funny, I couldn't stand it. But you would have had to see the scene unfold to appreciate the moment.

You mentioned that Vicki was a huge change, and she was. I don't think there's anybody in the Senate who loves Ted more than I do. I mean, there may be. There may be people who think they do, maybe so, but it would be hard to care more about him than I do. I think that Vicki's coming along and his deciding to get married again was an absolutely critical period. Before that—and I wouldn't want this to show up—I think Ted was always serious about his work, but in terms of the nonwork part, I think he was ricocheting around in different ways. He and Chris [Dodd] were close, both were Irish bachelors at that time, and Chris had some loose ends, and I think that was trouble. There were incidents that people talked about and wrote about, about too much craziness in the off hours and the hijinks and so forth. I can see how that can happen to anybody, given the pressures and the vicissitudes and what goes on in depth.

But I think that there was a critical point where it was essential that the pattern change. I think that Ted finding Vicki and Vicki finding Ted and them deciding to make a life together was critically important. It became a huge stabilizing element. I think it has been profoundly meaningful and relevant in every possible way, and it was a huge blessing, a true blessing. We're seeing it borne out now, but I think we saw that from the first day. It would be hard to overestimate the importance of that occurring the way it did when it did.

During that period when he was ricocheting around, I don't think his work in the Senate was affected much.

I don't think so. He could stay up all night and drink too much and get up at 8:00 in the morning and focus and work like a goddamn dog. That was part of the amazing nature of Ted.

But there was nobody at home to talk to.

Or whoever was at home, it was a different conversation.

Yes, a very different conversation.

As such a close friend, were you able to talk to him during those years about concerns you had over how he was conducting his off-Senate life?

Without being specific about it, yes.

Was he receptive when you would raise concerns?

I thought so. If you care about somebody and you become alarmed—it was interesting because, remember, I came from the Republican side, so I still had friendships and I still picked up a certain amount of intelligence. I had caught wind that the Republicans felt that maybe they'd found a way to go after Ted. I would not want to report this, but you asked the question. I felt that it was a clear and present danger, so yes, we talked about it. I decided to do that. You don't necessarily get that from each other. I mean, I think there's a tendency for everybody to give everybody else enough room, and talking to others can easily be thought of as a trespass, so we talked about that.

Did you have a sense that other people had talked to him as well?

I don't know. Maybe some did, but I don't know. I don't know of other Senators who did, but that doesn't mean that there weren't others.

The fact that you could do that is evidence of your very close friendship with him.

Thank you for saying so.

I think it would require somebody who felt that friendship with him to talk with him about his situation.

That's right, but I think that's what a real friendship is.

That's what makes this interview so interesting, because the Senate is not a conducive institution for those close, personal relationships to develop, in part, as you say, because of the nature of the pressures and the fragmentation that goes on in the Senate.

And the competition. I mean, it's everything, yes.

It's everything, and the dialing for dollars and the distractions and the time commitments. So how do such close relationships form?

It's a good question, and I don't think there's a uniform answer. It's almost a metaphysical thing. Each one is a one-off. I think about how Ted and I were able to reach a point where we understood each other and how we were able to share things in a way that we didn't feel like anything else was getting in the way. It's very hard to figure that out.

Part of it was that, in certain ways, we're alike. I don't know all of my ancestry, but I know that some of it's Irish and some of it's Scottish, so there's some of the blarney that comes down that track, and some of it landed in me. On some level, I think Ted and I just understood each other. I think he would come to measure things over a long period of time—what's the real McCoy, or what's authentic and genuine? And the same thing is in me, what I would think of to come to the conclusion that something is real and genuine. I think we had enough time and enough instances where, in our individual ways, we were able to develop that comfort level with each other.

It's interesting, Ted loves his birthday parties. They're very important to him. I think it's that he was the last in line. For a lot of reasons his birthday events have been important, and he has had a lot of wonderful little birthday gatherings. We've been very fortunate, Lori and I, to go to a number of those in the last few years. There's a little ring of people he has invited to these parties, and we felt very privileged to be included. I mentioned that Tim Hanan and his wife had been there. Even when they were very small gatherings, Tim has inevitably been there. There's a reason for that. I don't quite know what the reason is and what the history is, but for Ted to feel strongly enough about the relationship to have Tim there is important. You should find out why.

The same thing with Culver. We know more about the Culver history because of their Harvard history, and we know about the John Tunney history because of their University of Virginia history. He also developed that kind of affection for Jim Sasser. That has its own elements and its own story. Those have been pretty small gatherings. The gatherings get bigger, but I think that when the gatherings get smaller, you should go talk to those people for sure and plumb those relationships.

John Tunney gave us a good amount of time.

Yes, John loves Ted and vice versa, and he's great. John Culver is wonderfully intelligent and funny, and you ought to wring every drop out of him because he is a great storyteller.

Maybe I'll have to go back for a third one.

Well, if you didn't get it all, go back again.

I have a feeling in so many of these interviews that I'll never get it all.

No, you won't get it all, but it's like taffy: you have to keep pulling it, and you'll probably get more each time. He's also crazy about Eunice. He's very solicitous about her—Jean [Kennedy Smith] too, but it seems like Eunice is extra special to him. I don't know why. As time passed, I got to know Eunice better—her quick mind and depth. Some people say she may have been the most talented of the Kennedy children—but at the time faced more traditional barriers than her brothers. I have heard others say she would have made a great president. I agree.

Do any staff members ever make the transition to very close, personal friends?

I've seen some at the bigger birthday events. Nick [Bancroft] Littlefield is a good singer. He married Al [Allard] Lowenstein's former wife. When it goes out to the next ring, to the staff, Nick is normally there. I know Ted's very fond of Greg Craig. Greg, by the way—and he will probably never tell you this unless you know it already—wrote a wonderful letter, a brilliant letter, to Ted urging him to endorse [Barack] Obama. I mean, I'd sent Ted a letter saying the same thing, but I felt like mine was written by a grade-school writer after I saw Greg Craig's, because his was so beautifully crafted. I think he has that feeling about Greg, and there are a couple of other people too.

Ted often will ask people to perform, especially when he's having a great time at an event and he's having some wine and he's feeling ebullient. He'll often ask Nick Littlefield to sing. At his last birthday party, he brought down a great Irish tenor, and this guy sang these wonderfully moving, sad, and evocative Irish songs. It was incredible. It was one of those moments where you wondered if maybe something was coming, such as the medical challenge, because it was so magical an evening and it was so filled with that Irish atmosphere—the whole mix, from happiness to sadness to blissfulness and so forth.

But it's in Ted's nature to say, "Okay, Nick, come on. I want you to sing" such and such. Of course Nick will say, "Oh no, Ted." "Come on, Nick. You do it." So Nick got up and he sang two or three songs that Ted loves. I think Nick knows that if he's coming to a birthday party and if it's going to have that element to it, he'll have to perform. I mean, he's not there just to take it all in. He's there to be part of the entertainment and part of the program.

He's been known to sing to other Senators.

Well, he sang very well that night, as I recall. And Ted has a neighbor, a very interesting guy. He was a Republican, and I think he's Greek-American. He plays the piano, and he's very good. I don't know if you've bumped into this guy, but he's in the neighborhood. He's probably a guy you ought to talk to because they've developed a relationship.

He's in Kennedy's neighborhood?

Yes, he lives two or three doors away, and they've developed a good relationship. I've now met them and seen them, and he's been woven into the fabric of the fun and the singing and the conviviality of the birthday events. I can't remember his name.

It has to be incredibly difficult to be a Kennedy and to have the kind of prominence he has. There aren't many peers who can also be friends, who aren't, in some ways, competitors or allies or opponents, who don't have something else to break through. Staff members, after all, start in subordinate positions, so it's very hard to make that transition. I would think that not many people would be able to break through to that level.

It is inherently hard, and there's the question of time.

Friendships take time.

They take time, and when you think of Ted's family responsibilities, I mean, tragedy after tragedy has happened: young John [Kennedy Jr.], both of his brothers, his other brothers and sisters, all of the events down through time, Patrick's issues, Teddy Jr.'s issues, Kara's issues, Joan's issues, and Ted's own challenges. You take the whole package. I don't know anybody else who could survive, rise, grow, and become better, stronger, and more valuable, in a broader way, through this succession of horrific events, events that would so jade most people or so knock most people down that they could not get up or they could not become bigger and stronger and like a giant. He's a very amazing guy.

I've put this question to him. I'm not going to say how it went. But one of the things that struck me at the beginning of the project was he must have enormous inner strength to be able to survive, to not become somebody else, to not drop out but to keep going.

Right.

We've had interesting conversations about that.

The amazing thing about it is that this was to become his fate. When you think about being the last and youngest of the children, with all of these spectacular people ahead of you in line, in age, in accomplishment, in activity, and you're bringing up the rear, I mean, by virtue of the fact that you're the last one.

And one more.

Yes, and one more, exactly.

There's a story about that.

He has become not only the inheritor but, in effect, the patriarch and the matriarch of the family. His mother lived to a ripe old age, and his father, of course, lived to quite an advanced age, but he had a very sad end to his life. With all of these events, and with Ted growing and getting stronger and having more of an impact on more people in a wonderful way, it's a story you have to look at and think about it in order to begin to fathom how anybody could make his way through all of this and get better as the events unfolded. It's an amazing story.

That's why it breaks my heart to think that there might not be a longer stretch of time ahead of him. There deserves to be and I want there to be and I hope and pray there will be. There's no way we can know, as we sit here now, what's ahead, but if anybody deserves a longer life, he's earned the right to it by all the good work he has done for so many people, both within his family circle and beyond.

I remember that we rode together on an airplane to New York once. This was many years ago, and it was long before I knew Ted well, but we happened to get on the same plane, and we were chatting a little bit, and we were sitting in different places. There's no place anywhere in the world that Ted can go where he's anonymous. It's true for Madonna [Ciccone], and it's true for Ted. I mean, he can't go anywhere and not be recognized. People come up to him.

On that plane flight, there was a guy I took to be a Russian. He had a problem that he needed to talk about. He saw Ted Kennedy, and this was his chance to talk about whatever his problem was and to explain or get help or get his point of view across. I was sitting a few rows away. This guy came over, and there was no way Ted could escape. He's always polite; it's his nature to be polite. But there was no way that he wouldn't be set upon by this complete stranger who had an intense need to tell his story. I've seen more benign things like that, such as when Ted walks, on a nice day, from the Senate steps back to the [Richard] Russell Building, and families are there, and they ask him to stop and take pictures with the kids, which he invariably does. He's always gracious about it. But there's no place that Ted can go and not be recognized.

My wife and I just took a two-week vacation in Tuscany, and we made arrangements to stay in a beautiful house. We had gone to see Ted a year before and we said, "We're getting a terrific house over there, and it has a guest house. It's nicer than anything Bill Gates could even aspire to. We happened to find this. If you can possibly get away, you ought to come over and rent a car. You don't have to spend any time with us, per se. I mean, it would be fun to go out to dinner and whatever. But the point is, come and use it if it makes any sense and if you can get away." This house is in a little rural area west of Siena, in Tuscany, if you know that region. I want to say the name right, because the name Reggie is in the middle of the name of this little walled community that's about seven or eight miles away from this incredible house. I think it's called San Rigione or something.

San Gimignano?

It's a little different from that: Monteriggioni. Anyway, it's a beautifully walled thing, and it has pillars that come up all around. My wife and I had gone to dinner there a year ago, and we walked into the restaurant. Right inside the door is a wonderful framed picture of Vicki and Ted having dinner at this restaurant. We felt at the time that this was a sign. We picked this one restaurant in the whole of Italy to eat, and here was a lovely framed picture of Ted and Vicki in the same place before us. Of course the proprietor wanted to get the picture nicely framed and so forth. I get emotional about this. So we went back there this year. Lori sent Vicki a very nice e-mail saying that when we were there, the restaurant happened to be closed, but we looked through the window and saw their picture.

I've lost the point of my story here, but I guess it was the hope and feeling that now that he and Vicki have found each other and life has sorted itself out, I hope that Ted will get a great stretch run. Not that he would ever give up his work, because it would be very hard for him to leave the Senate, but sooner or later we all leave the Senate in one way or another. Nobody stays forever. But I'd like Ted to have a wonderful period of time to do things like they did on that trip, in that picture. Also, wherever he goes, it's not as if he can go as a stranger and just show up and everybody will look the other way. I mean, he's going to attract attention. But I want Ted and Vicki to be able to have more of that. I hope and pray it's in the cards. We'll have to see.

What effect did your leaving the Senate have on your relationship with him?

We have a lovely photograph in our home here in Washington. I don't know when it was taken, but it was taken at some event, and it's of Ted, Vicki, Lori, and me. We all get along very well together. It's a wonderful photograph. I think it must have been at an event for Ted because he would have gotten the photograph, inscribed it, and then sent it. There probably would have been a number of photographs going to a number of people, but this was a picture from when I was leaving the Senate. It has a wonderful inscription on it. I forget how it starts, but it's something like, "You should feel great about your great service to the country in the Senate. You'll be greatly missed here in the Senate, but no more so than by me." Words to that effect.

I don't miss many people in the Senate. I mean, I do and I don't. Ted I miss. In a sense I feel bad not having been there since 1994 to help. I would have liked to split my life in half. I would have liked to have been free of the Senate in order to help get our two young children through college, to do a variety of other family things that I had to attend to, and also to be back there slugging it out on the same things, fighting for the things that Ted has been fighting for, being there as a friend, being there as a pal. Part of me feels guilty and bad about that.

That is one of the reasons why I think our relationship has remained strong and constant, because we don't have to see each other every day in order to have the same feeling that we had then, have now, and will have in the future. That's a very precious thing to me. There's almost nothing I can think of that I wouldn't do to try to help Ted. Whatever it was, I wouldn't have to be asked. I would be there, whatever it was. He's a special guy.

We're very fond of him.

Very special.

He's much sweeter and more vulnerable than I think most people realize. With all of these caricatures that get created and so on, most people do not know the real Ted Kennedy. There's too much that gets in the way: the title, the work requirements, and so forth. That's why I mentioned to you that so much about Ted is young at heart and will always be young at heart for as long as he lives. He has a youthful, wonderful part to his spirit. He's animated and has a great sense of humor and a love of life. That's why, in that photograph in the hospital room, to see the sadness in his eyes—if you go back and look at that photograph, you'll see what I'm talking about.

The one in the corner room?

Yes, and Vicki is on a chair, and he's smiling, but everything is smiling except his eyes. You don't normally see Ted with sad eyes. I could see what I thought was him feeling the weight of maybe not being able to continue as the big, strong force breaking the way for everybody, of not being the family protector and family strength, not just for the family but for what the family stands for: its values and its ethos and so forth. I mean, I think he feels that responsibility so much to each of the people in the family circle, whom he loves so much, that the notion of not being there for them, that would be the hardest thing for him.

Well, he's not giving up.

No, he's not giving up, and he would never give up. Events happen, and he's a realist. You push it away and you fight against it, but that doesn't mean that you don't have to take account of what's happening, of what your mind tells you. So I think that's difficult. I think he's so much the defender and protector of everybody, and he wants to stay in that role, and people need him, and he knows that people need him. That's a reason to stick around.

That picture was taken before they got to work on gathering—

A diagnosis.

And getting the treatment, doing a treatment plan, looking all over the world, getting the best, and making a decision about how they would fight this. At that moment, none of that had happened.

That's interesting.

There was a piece in the Globe about his organizing for the healthcare and all of this. He may have glimpsed the thing that makes him very sad, but it's the same person.

The lion at work.

Yes, and helping Teddy when Teddy had troubles. He's going to fight this. He is getting the best possible treatment and Lord knows what kind of experiments.

Yes, and thank God it has happened now and not 10 years ago.

Yes, that is an important point. And also making his move. He can't be in the Senate, but he can start working on things. I've paid a lot of attention to that, saying, "Why didn't I expect this?" because it's just the sort of thing he would do.

Right, exactly.

The picture was taken before he had the plan both for the medical care and for looking forward in terms of how to handle everything. You're right; they caught him at a time of naked emotion.

I think that Vicki is a tremendous resource to him.

Oh, God, yes!

And she's a positive thinker too, but it's very tough on her.

And you're seeing it in spades right now. Boy, right from the moment that she signed on, it has been a whole different trajectory.

It was such an unexpected shock.

Well, I think that's part of it.

There were no symptoms of anything.

Right.

He felt fine, and he was doing things. There is a certain shock that takes a long time to—

Exactly, especially when you've been as strong and as vital as he has been his whole life, and he's come through these other things too. Not everybody is like Frank Lautenberg, getting remarried at 83 or whatever he is. He's off the end of the spectrum in terms of a specimen. But I think that Ted, in his mid-70s, may have realized that he had a serious problem even before they told him what it was. I could be mistaken about that. Who knows? We'll never know. I think there's a reason to feel that he may have feared the worst. I may be dead wrong about that.

But I think that the sense of responsibility he carries, that he attaches to himself, is so considerable that even the thought that something might be wrong, that he might not be able to continue as the leader of the family—I mean, think of all the people who rely on him right now. He probably feels like, I can't leave now. I'm needed. I have to be here. There are too many things I have to attend to here, too many people who matter to me and who need me. That notion of having to leave his duty station, I think, would be especially difficult for Ted.

It might be. I have no basis for this, but it occurs to me, about the legacy projects that he's doing in Boston with the Greenway—

I am not familiar with them in detail.

This has been in play. The oral history project is one of these things, thinking about his legacy. People must advise him. It has just occurred to me, when he and Vicki talked to me about the decision to do an oral history—this was in 2004—they made that decision, and they were thinking of writing a memo. He has to do something for his legacy, and they came down on the oral history, maybe the book or the memoir later, and he's working on that now. So the oral history is a project. He's not finished. Right after this, I got the word that he doesn't want to drop this project.

Right.

He wants to get back to the Senate. I've been thinking about his term in the Senate and about the plans he's making. He's always saying, "Don't count on it. I'm not leaving the Senate. Don't let anybody think that because I'm doing this oral history project." He said this in the caucus room when he announced the project. "I intend to serve the people of Massachusetts," and so on. He has personal projects outside the work of the Senate, in Massachusetts, that he wants to work on. He's going there. He has meetings regularly. Where do we stand on this? Where do we stand on the Greenway? Maybe he has even thought that this term in the Senate is the last one he wants to serve. I don't know. I was thinking of that.

It's a good question.

But he's thought about the oral history. He's thought about the Greenway. He's thought about the Center for the Study of the United States Senate, out there at Columbia Point, which they're raising money for. He's thinking about where his papers will be, how they're going to be processed and stuff like that. So this is not a person who cannot affirm mortality.

Those are very important points. I guess it would be toughest for Ted to leave behind the people who need him. He has a coterie, starting with his kids, Vicki, Vicki's kids, and his sisters. His sense of responsibility to the people in the family circle whom he loves the most is so powerful and so profound. I think it has grown as his brothers have fallen away and other things. That ferocious determination to be there to help them and to be their rock, to get them through their trials and tribulations, I think, is a huge part of what fuels him. At the end of the day, the notion that he might not be there to help them is probably the biggest burden he carries in his mind.

Emotionally.

You've known him since the late '60s, and he's been in this position as the head of the family since 1968.

Right.

Have you seen the sense of obligation and responsibility deepen or change or intensify over the years?

Yes, I think so. He has been tested so many times in so many different ways. There have been so many tragic events, so many funerals he's had to go to. I remember when he asked me to come over and sit with him to help figure out how to get on top of the race against [Mitt] Romney. Judge [Edmund] Reggie was there, and one of Bobby's sons was there, Michael [Kennedy], of whom he was so particularly fond, the one who was killed in a skiing accident. He was such a great kid.

Even if young John Kennedy hadn't gone down in the plane crash—or Kara with her lung cancer problem, or Teddy losing his leg, or Patrick with his issues—if you take just what has happened to Bobby's kids, Ted has had to be, in each and every instance, the leader. He had to rise to the occasion of speaking at the events, of consoling everybody, of circling the wagons, and so forth. I think if someone were to do a timeline of these tragedies as they've occurred, it's staggering what has happened. The idea that anybody could deal with all of that and continue to carry all of the other responsibilities, as well as be the family steward, the family leader, it's so far off the charts, it's epic. I'm not well-enough read to know, of figures in the history of novels, who has had to confront as many things as he has.

Chappaquiddick falls into that category because that's a particular kind of situation that goes away but that never quite goes away. It comes back at different times and so forth. I can only try to imagine what that succession of events, along with the death of young John Kennedy, must have felt like. If you look at that one painting that Ted did that's hanging on the wall, he did it after that. It's a very somber picture of the water and, like, a breakwater. It's different from the other paintings he did. He did that one, I believe, after that.

The breakwater at Hyannis Port?

Yes, the original painting. I'll give you a description of it, and let me do it with a contrast. You know the beautiful picture of the boat, with the blue hull and the sky and so forth? Well, when he painted that, he had some copies made, and he signed them and sent them out to a number of people at Christmas time. We were lucky enough to receive one, and the painting is in our house. But the next one he sent, I'm almost certain, was painted after the plane crash of his nephew. It's a very somber, gray picture.

The original painting hangs in his office, down at the end. It's in the last office, where his original oil paintings are hanging on the wall. It's very stark, all gray, and it shows the ocean and a breakwater. There's a thing that comes out this way and a thing that comes across this way, and it's very ominous and very dark. It's a gloomy picture, and he obviously painted it at that time. That's one of the reasons why I think it's important that you go capture what's on the walls, because it's a way to get an inside look at Ted that you can't get any other way.

When you think of these events coming along on a timeline, and you say, "Most people couldn't cope with that succession of events," he has not just coped with them; he has led the efforts to surmount the events. He has had to put his arms around everybody. He has had to be the principal speaker at the funeral services. He has had to talk to everybody after the funeral services, and he has consoled everybody and has continued to console everybody.

Who else in the family circle today can anybody go to and get that kind of help? Ted is it. Eunice isn't capable of doing that now. Who else is there? All roads lead to Ted, and he feels that. That's what fate has brought him. That has been his responsibility, and he's had to do all of it. His ability to handle all of that, to work his way through it while maintaining his equilibrium and while growing as a Senator, all the while being happy and having a relationship with Vicki and looking after all the kids, all the nieces and nephews, and taking care of the dogs and writing the books, it's a remarkable human story.

He hasn't lost his sense of fun.

No, and that may be what has enabled him to get through it all, the fact that he has a big dose of that in his personality. He has been able to create enough balance in terms of laughter and humor and friends and music and art and whatever to keep his equilibrium. But boy, I don't know anybody who has come close to having so many things this hard to deal with, or doing it in a public setting where you have to perform. He not only had to deal with it himself, but he had to present himself to the world as the face of the family. People lose track of it because there have been so many events, but unless you add them up and list them on a piece of paper, you might say to yourself, "There can't have been that many things," when in fact there are that many.

And the work.

Yes. But he's quite a guy.

Maybe we can come back again and talk about Kennedy in action, with healthcare, and about your work, what you were doing and what he was doing. You mentioned a moment ago the scare about his '94 Senate election.

Have you talked with Judge Reggie yet?

We have.

If you talk with him again, ask him about that, because he's a wonderfully good political thinker. I got a sense of his skill sets when we sat around and figured out how we were going to get that race turned around and get Romney going in reverse.

So I think there's more to talk about.

But that's the work stuff.

And my memory isn't as clear on that.

You don't have to recount it. It's what you remember.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you. Great to see you both.