Good Ted Bad Ted The Two Faces of Edward M. Kennedy

A look at the paradoxes surrounding the life of Ted Kennedy discusses his childhood with a demanding father, Chappaquiddick, his political career, his marriage, and his drinking and womanizing

Vacillating between sympathy and rebuke, this gossipy biography portrays Senator Edward Kennedy as "the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of American politics." "Good Ted" is a fighter for the underprivileged, a "superb legislator" and caring father. "Bad Ted" is the liar of Chappaquiddick, the alcoholic and loutish sexual swinger. David, a journalist and author of five books on the Kennedys, limns Ted as "a victim of the family mystique," unsuited for the role of patriarch which his father Joseph forced upon him after his brothers' deaths. He treads familiar ground in chapters on Chappaquiddick, nephew William Smith's acquittal on rape charges, the senator's sexual conquests and first wife Joan's emotional deterioration and recovery. David divulges that John Hinckley initially stalked Senator Kennedy for three months before he shot President Reagan. We also learn that Nixon, fearful of the prospect of facing Kennedy in the 1972 presidential campaign, launched a covert operation with aides John Ehrlichman and H. R. Haldeman to dig up dirt on Kennedy. Photos. Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Tabloid-style gossip about the senior senator from Massachusetts. David (coauthor, Bobby Kennedy, 1986, etc.) has been a Kennedy watcher for 30 years, but his breathless tone here suggests that he's only just discovered that controversial family. While the Kennedys are known for embodying achievement, charm, herculean power, and greed, very little of this is conveyed in David's one- sentence paragraphs as they dart from crisis to quarrel to bottle to bed. David jumps immediately into his subject's head (`` `What the hell is that guy jabbering about?' Ted Kennedy wondered as he listened to the announcer's frenetic shouting, mingled with snatches of prayer, on the car radio''). After some disjointed scene-setting, we learn that Robert Kennedy has just been shot, making Ted the Kennedy heir apparent. This sort of swirling melodrama goes on throughout, leveling events so that details like the African mahogany selected for RFK's coffin bulks as large as the slain senator's evolution from Redbaiter to fierce liberal. Minutiae abounds--which hotel, what island, which celebrity, what boat--although there are excursions into deeper history, such as the first arrival on American soil of a Kennedy, ``a brawny lad named Patrick, who stepped off a packet boat in 1849 with a suitcase tied with a rope and about a hundred dollars in his pocket.'' Given the value of a hundred dollars at that time, one wonders why Patrick so rigidly rationed his food as to be ``close to starvation''--but rather than explain, David instead gives us what everyone knows--from excessive drinking to Chappaquiddick. We also learn a lot about Jackie O. and Onassis, but nothing new about the senator and how he has earned the respect of fellow legislators of both political parties. Good subject, bad treatment. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Known as the "Dean of America's Kennedy Writers," David has written about Joan: The Reluctant Kennedy ( LJ 9/1/74), Ethel: The Story of Ethel Kennedy ( LJ 5/1/71), and Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Folk Hero (Dodd, 1986). While his Ted Kennedy: Triumphs and Tragedies ( LJ 8/72) is not mentioned in the introduction, this new study is clearly David's update to that book. Here, David depicts the senator as the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde of American politics. While his writing is gossipy and admiring in tone, David does provide an interesting analysis of Kennedy's political life along with some pop psychology interpretations of his moral lapses. David particularly blames Joseph Kennedy Sr. for his sons' sexual promiscuity. The senior Kennedy was frequently away from home during their formative years and in over 200 letters to Ted and his brothers never mentions moral precepts. While David provides numerous examples of Ted's sexual escapades, he does not dwell on them. In any case, since turning 60 and marrying Vicki Reggie, Kennedy seems to be cleaning up his act. For public libraries.
- Gary Barber, SUNY at Fredonia Lib.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.