A Talk with Kennedy

As he celebrates his 39th birthday this week, Edward M. Kennedy enjoys a unique political vista: theoretically at least, he could be running for President in the elections of 1992, when he will be merely a mellow 60.

Many professionals in both parties, however, suspect that Kennedy will try much earlier, even as early as next year. Kennedy has repeated that his only ambition now is to serve the full six years of his new Senate term. But political plans are never absolute. Despite the tragedy at Chappaquiddick Island 19 months ago, despite the embarrassing loss of his job a month ago as Senate whip, Kennedy's potential Democratic opponents will fix him with an apprehensive eye all the way through the 1972 convention. So will Richard Nixon. A Gallup poll released in January showed Muskie and Nixon running even with 44% of the vote each; but Kennedy, despite his setbacks, still drew 38% against Nixon's 47%.

No Promise. Kennedy, who looked lean and a bit haunted after Chappaquiddick, has put on weight and regained his sense of humor. In an interview with TIME Correspondent Hays Gorey, he mused about his personal and political life: "In the recent past I suppose I've had more than my share of tragedy and disappointment. The pendulum swings wide, and when it does, you develop an ability to live with these changes." Kennedy dismissed the widely published rumor that he had promised his 80-year-old mother, Rose, to run for President during her lifetime. Nor does Kennedy credit the theory, held by some of his close friends, that he has subconsciously tried to escape the possibility of the presidency, partly because of the fate of his brothers. The episode at Chappaquiddick, according to this elaborate speculation, was a subconscious effort to destroy his own presidential chances. So, too, in a lesser way, was his defeat for Senate whip.

Says Kennedy: "You take life in short bursts. Right now I look forward to the next few years in the Senate. I have important work to do." Not entirely by coincidence, that work is tailored to make Kennedy look like a candidate. Without his demanding whip's duties, he says. "I will be able to get around the country more." He is pushing a national health insurance program broader than the President's; he plans further attacks on the Administration's war policies, demanding a fixed date for U.S. withdrawal. His many other concerns--help for American Indians and Alaskan natives, aid to the aged, equal employment opportunities--combined with the continuing potential of the Kennedy mystique, will do little to end speculation. "Let's face it," says one of President Nixon's political intimates. "If Muskie stumbles, the Democrats aren't going to turn to McGovern or Hughes or Bayh or Jackson."

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