Going for the Jugular

This was Eddie McCormack's own bailiwick, and he meant to make the most of it. Plastered with cosmetics for television, he reminded the audience in the South Boston High School auditorium that he had gone to that very school and married a girl from that neighborhood. Then he launched into an attack that for sustained violence was remarkable even in Massachusetts' butt-and-gouge political history.

Standing only a few feet away was McCormack's rival for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senator--Teddy Kennedy, now rigid with shock and suppressed anger.

"What are your qualifications?" cried McCormack, in the opening statement of the TV debate. "You graduated from law school three years ago. You never worked for a living. You have never run or held an elective office. You are running on a slogan--you can do more for Massachusetts. This is the most insulting slogan I have seen in Massachusetts politics because it means vote for this man because he has influence, he has connections, he has relations. This is a slogan that insults the President of the United States." The onslaught continued: "I listened to my opponent the other night, and he said, 'I want to serve because I care.' You didn't care very much, Ted, when you could have voted between 1953 and 1960 on 16 occasions and you only voted three times. Do you really care about civil rights? While I was fighting to eliminate the 'black belts' and the ghettos, you were attending a school that is almost totally segregated, at the University of Virginia.

"I say we need a Senator with a conscience--not with connections. We need a Senator with experience--not arrogance.

The office of United States Senator should be merited--and not inherited." Sufficient Overkill. As McCormack spoke, Kennedy twice opened his mouth as though to break in, both times thought better of it. When at last it came his turn to talk, Teddy doggedly declined to answer Eddie's attack. Instead, he stuck to a solemn discussion of his position on issues--state, national and international --that he had outlined in his opening statement: "Decisions made in the United States Senate will indicate whether the free world or the Communist world will prevail. And if America is to make progress, Massachusetts must make progress." Under questioning from a panel of newsmen, the two got down to disagreement on some specific issues. McCormack said he favored an immediate tax cut "because I don't believe this country is moving as it should." Kennedy noted that he was plumping for such programs as aid to education (although not, like McCormack, for aid to parochial schools), job retraining and financial assistance to Massachusetts' fishing industry. He did not, therefore, think it "appropriate" that he should "also advocate at this time a tax cut." McCormack, obviously trying to woo the ban-the-bomb supporters of Independent Stuart Hughes (see following story), stated: "We should stop production of nuclear weapons. We have sufficient over kill now." Kennedy won applause, even from the pro-McCormack audience, by saying: "I don't think in 1962 we can afford any kind of stepping-back from our strong position of military posture." Time and time again, McCormack returned to the attack. "The thing that fascinates me," he said sarcastically, "is Ted dy's constant reference to his trips. He made two European trips. He visited eleven countries in 24 days. In Latin America he visited nine countries in 27 days. In Africa he spent 15 days visiting nine African countries. Well, certainly spending one or two days might not make you or I experts, but he picks things up more quickly than perhaps I would." Ted dy still refused to fire back. In his closing speech, Kennedy quietly noted that it was even then close to 3 a.m. in Berlin, that the cold war convoys would soon be starting down the Autobahn. Then his voice broke with the choked-back emotion of the evening. Said he: "The great problems of this election are the questions of peace and whether Massachusetts will move forward or not. We should not have any talk about personalities or families. I feel that we should be talking about the people's destiny in Massachusetts."

Sympathy Vote? But McCormack was implacable. Said he in his closing speech: "I worked my way up the political ladder. I'm not starting at the top. And I ask, since the question of names and families has been injected, if his name was Edward Moore--with his qualifications, with your qualifications, Teddy--if it was Edward Moore your candidacy would be a joke.

Nobody's laughing, because his name is not Edward Moore--it is Edward Moore Kennedy." Inevitably, in the debate's aftermath, everyone was arguing about who had helped himself the most. Since Kennedy had easily won the endorsement of the Democratic convention in June, McCormack had to use bold tactics in the primary fight. There were those who insisted that Eddie, by dramatizing Teddy's lack of experience in public office and by repeatedly hitting Teddy on the big-brother issue, had taken a stride toward victory in the Sept. 18 primary. There were others who believed that McCormack, by the very virulence of his attack, had turned over a large sympathy vote to, of all people, a Kennedy.

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