This article was commissioned by The New Republic. The owner of that publication refused to print it. We asked to see it because both its author and Michael Kinsley, the editor who commissioned it, are former editors of this magazine. We decided to publish it, not because we support or oppose Kennedy, but because we think the article has important and wise things to say about women and their relationship to him.
— The Washington Monthly’s Editors, 1980
Philandering, like heavy drinking, traditionally has been one of those activities that the boys in the press keep mum about when reporting on the boys on the Hill, or the boy in the White House, or any boy for that matter. The rationales for this silence are curiously contradictory. First of all, there is the code of the winking, chuckling fraternity of J.P. Donleavy’s naughty fellas, the motto of which is “Boys will be boys.” Secondly, there is the fastidious gentlemen’s code that holds that the private lives of politicians should be off limits, that what counts are the serious matters, such as a man’s position on issues, and that only a very sleazy and trivial reporter would lower himself to write about that sort of dirt. And third, there is the tacit agreement among the sophisticated people of the press to protect the great mass of unsophisticated voters whose simple lives and naive, puritanical beliefs would render them incapable of treating such information properly. They would be excessively shocked, they would overreact, and the political process would be distorted by irrelevancies.
Things have changed slightly in recent years. Jack Kennedy’s philandering was known to members of the press, but carefully kept secret by them. It was passed on to the public only as an aura of dashing charisma. In contrast, the philandering of his brother Edward seems to have been quietly taken for granted as a matter of indifference. Even Kennedy himself hardly bothers to deny it, and the press, while refraining from directly addressing the subject (except for Chappaquiddick), doesn’t suppress it either. The press just treats it in a way that assumes it is so, and at the same time implies that it is of no importance. This new, half-hearted discretion is, I would guess, partly the result of confusion brought about by the collision of two opposed systems of values: the old codes, weakened but still inhibiting, and the new permissiveness of the 1960s and 1970s, which includes a “non-judgmental” attitude toward the sex lives of others.
Of the three reasons for journalistic restraint in such matters, protection of privacy is the only valid principle. But it is a powerful one. The private life of any person should not be exposed against his or her will except for the most compelling reasons. I do not think that the voters need to be shielded by the press from information that they may interpret in a way the press disapproves of, but in the case of a typical legislator, I would not write about his private life because I believe that his entitlement to privacy outweighs the need to know.
But the case of a presidential candidate is an altogether different matter. First, as is now widely accepted, the character of a president has enormous significance because of his great personal power and the sensitive ways in which he can use it. Secondly, a presidential candidate is asking for a much greater mandate from the citizenry, and so he must tolerate a much greater sacrifice of his privacy. Therefore, I believe that despite our distaste for going into this sort of thing, our reluctance to judge others, and the importance of the principle of privacy, Ted Kennedy’s reputation as a philanderer should be publicly discussed as a legitimate issue in the campaign.
A Pattern of Dalliance
All this presupposes, of course, that philandering is a pathological type of behavior. Here, I think, the age of the person and the style of philandering are important. Within the world of politics and journalism, Kennedy’s womanizing is widely known—to the many women who have been approached themselves, for example, and to reporters and others who have been around Kennedy and have seen the pattern in action. While I was talking to people for this article, it seemed as if almost everybody in that world had another anecdote to offer. There is a pattern to these anecdotes. The type of womanizing that Kennedy is associated with is a series of short involvements—if they can be called that—after which he drops the lady. Sometimes he hasn’t even met the woman previously. She has been picked out by one of his cohorts as the type of woman who appeals to him and asked if she would like to have a “date” with the senator. The idea evidently is lunch and a dalliance, over and out, on with the pressing schedule. The picture does not exclude longer relationships, but the short-term pattern evidently is a deep part of Kennedy’s nature, as well as an image that Kennedy seems in some way to enjoy, as though he believes that it adds to his attractiveness. In the eyes of some, perhaps it does.
To me, however, it is a far from attractive image. It is, at best, a sad and dreary one. If a boy of 20 were observed skipping compulsively from girl to girl, one would merely assume that there was something unresolved in his attitude toward women and that he would soon grow out of it and learn to develop more stable relationships. But if a man of middle age acts in this way, and over a long period of time, over decades, then the behavior becomes quite unsettling. What it suggests is a severe case of arrested development, a kind of narcissistic intemperance, a huge, babyish ego that must constantly be fed. It suggests: if he is immature in this area, mightn’t he be in others? It bothers me because I associate this type of behavior with misogyny. I don’t believe men who really like women carry on in this way. Certainly, it suggests an old-fashioned, male chauvinist, exploitative view of women as primarily objects of pleasure. It gives me the creeps: the constant pursuit (although the image is almost passive, in a way) of semi-covert, just barely personal, and ultimately discardable encounters is a creepy way to act.
And whatever else it is, the compulsion is self-destructive because of the element of headstrong foolhardiness illustrated by the Chappaquiddick incident. Finally, success in this kind of activity must depend a lot of the time upon a sense of inadequacy in the women involved—a desire to upgrade themselves by association with a powerful male. So there are two pathologies here, each feeding on the other. The result for many of the women must be a sense of further degradation. Kennedy must know that many of these women sleep with him only because he is “Kennedy.” He ought to be aware of how degrading this is to him. What is it in a man that would want to regularly bring this about?
Private Lies, Public Deception
As with many of the things that can be wrong with human beings, if a person who behaved this way were a banker, or a musician, or a building contractor, one would merely wonder about the causes, perhaps feel sorry for him, and, if there were other good things about him, try to overlook the aberration and appreciate the rest. But when the strong possibility arises that such a man might become president, then this trait suddenly becomes an important, unavoidable aspect of one’s estimation of him. It is not a reason to reject him out-of-hand. He may have enough to offer that one decides that it is worth the risk. Or one might decide that the alternative candidates are, for various reasons, worse risks. But, it seems to me, one must take it into account. It seems to me a ridiculous sort of respectability to say that it is beneath one’s dignity to take such a thing into account. It seems to me a very thoughtless sort of open-mindedness to claim that only a prejudiced person would take it into account.
If the subject of Kennedy’s philandering gains widespread attention, there are a lot of voters who will be concerned from a moral point of view. They will be bothered because such behavior is adultery. I have side-stepped the moral aspect of the issue because, for me, it depends on whatever understanding Kennedy has reached with his wife, and we don’t know anything about that. We know that Joan Kennedy has been troubled, but there are many reasons why a person becomes troubled. The intricacies of a relationship between a man and a woman can be so subtle that only the couple themselves could hope to understand them. But if there are people who take a less reserved view than I, or a less tolerant one, if there are voters for whom adultery is sin, period, they have as much of a right to react as I do. I don’t think I should refrain from broaching the issue from my own point of view just because others are likely to take the sort of stern, rigid moral point of view that I happen to disagree with.
There is another issue here, one of deception. Privacy is important, but usually when reporters shield certain aspects of a politician’s private life from the public, they are protecting not his privacy but his hypocrisy. Few politicians object to published descriptions, however intimate, of their regular family life. The Kennedys, of course, have made great political capital out of precisely this sort of intrusion into their private lives. A politician may reach a sophisticated understanding with his wife, but he never attempts to do so with the voters. Instead, he contrives—with the cooperation of the press—to mislead voters on a matter that might affect the way they vote. As with the problem of immaturity, a politician’s willingness to deceive in this matter does not encourage one about his honesty in others.
Power and Machismo
The variety of possible reactions to the issue of Kennedy’s philandering—when and if it becomes an issue—is as great as the range of personal values; and that range, we all know, is, at this point in history, enormous. Feminists are no exception. I was interested in the reactions of feminists because this type of behavior is so classically degrading to women, because it points to the nexus of power and machismo that feminists usually pounce upon, and because, at the very least, it suggests there will be no women in positions of true power in a Kennedy administration. I don’t believe that this type of behavior comports with the respect necessary to work comfortably and constructively with a woman in other than a vastly subordinate or very distant position. I quickly found out, however, that feminists are just as disparate in their attitudes toward what looks to me like stereotypically sexist behavior as is the public at large. My question, in a small, informal survey, was this: “What effect, if any, does Edward Kennedy’s reputation as a philanderer have upon your estimation of him as a presidential candidate? The only common factors in the answers were, first, that most of my interviewees hadn’t thought about the issue clearly (they were, in other words, thinking on their feet); and, second, that I had thrown them a hot potato, a question that had to be answered very cautiously and, in most cases, anonymously (with the result that I made the whole survey anonymous). Otherwise, the answers I got covered the full range of possibilities. Some women said things like: “His reputation doesn’t bother me at all. If Kennedy likes sex, that’s fine with me. I don’t care what kind it is or how he goes about it.” Others said the opposite: “It bothers me a great deal. It cannot be neglected. It suggests that he has no regard for women and that the only reason he will act on our behalf is if it is politically expedient.”
Bible Belt vs. New York
I found the wariness that underlay all the answers very understandable, for I feel it myself. Using my own feelings as a guide, I suspect it derives from an inhibition against making a judgment that smacks either of moral righteousness or moral turpitude. In the Bible Belt, it would take courage to say that philandering is of no importance. But in New York, the danger lies in saying that it matters. Whichever stand one takes, a public statement lies prey to attack from one flank or the other. Those who thought that the issue was important also seemed to hold back out of the time-honored feeling that it is unfair, or indecent, or tawdry, or inflammatory to raise such a matter in the political realm. From some—they were all professionals—I even got the feeling that they didn’t want to jeopardize their hard-won status as “one of the boys.” To do so by openly declaring that the philandering issue bothered them would make them look foolish; it would make them look like silly, unworldly women.
Those who thought the question of philandering is irrelevant tended to be women who were deeply involved in the political aspects of the feminist cause. For them, the important matter was getting feminist positions into the party platform, or getting the ERA passed, and so forth. They felt that in judging a politician, they should look at his record on feminist issues. Kennedy’s record, from a feminist point of view, is quite good. The attitude of most “politically minded feminists” I talked to was that they could not afford to consider such subtleties as what Kennedy’s personal habits may reflect about the depth of his commitment to women’s rights. As they pointed out, no one in the presidential line-up could be described as passionately committed to the feminist cause.
Those who thought the issue was significant tended to be involved in the philosophical side of feminism. To represent this group, I will record one comment that captured many facets of the general reaction: “It makes me very wary,” said a woman who is a well-known writer on feminist issues. “The fact that it has been overlooked must be a sign of how much we want to believe in him. It’s the sort of philandering that concerns me: if they were long, deeply involved affairs, I would react differently. This sort suggests that he does not respect women. It suggests that he is immature. I have figured one thing out. I’ve figured out that I don’t think Carter is so terrible. After all, he didn’t bomb Nicaragua, if you know what I mean. I recently had dinner with some big Harvard types, and they were raving about what a great guy Kennedy is. I just sat there. I couldn’t get up the nerve to say that I didn’t like him because he screwed around. But now that you bring it up, I think my decision about Carter was made on just this point.” This interview was atypical in the clear decision against Kennedy and for Carter. Most others in this group said that while philandering was definitely a minus, they were considering supporting Kennedy in view of his assets and in view of the competition. Fear of damaging a candidate who might, on balance, be the one they favored was a big factor in the reluctance to come out publicly and strongly about their distaste for Kennedy’s sexual reputation.
At this point, there is no way of telling whether the matter of Kennedy’s philandering will turn into an issue with a specifically feminist cast, because so few feminists have thought it through yet. I wonder, however, if many women won’t follow the last train of thought recorded above when they do get down to thinking about it. Like just about every other group that is left of center, feminists have, in this first flush of the campaign, a strong attraction to the idea of a Kennedy presidency. But there is an impulsiveness in that reaction that cannot be sustained throughout the long campaign. It’s an impulsiveness that has as much to do with frustration and disappointment with Carter as it does with Kennedy’s appeal. This impulsiveness has a very thoughtless, escapist side to it, an element of attraction to what is glittering and glamorous, what is showy, to something that is surrounded with pleasant, vague memories and the magical possibility that the past can be recaptured.
Kennedy’s philandering is a latent issue right now, something that lies beneath the surface of people’s minds. But I believe that when the hard thinking starts, it will come to the surface, because the inhibitions against considering it belong to codes that are on the wane, while the reasons for considering it are compelling. Things have changed since Jack Kennedy’s day. People have thought a lot about attitudes toward women and their implications, and people have thought about character and power. How critical the issue will become is another matter altogether. If it does become a big issue, it certainly won’t be because of its feminist significance alone. The feminist vote is not very large, and very few feminists vote strictly according to feminist concerns, particularly subtle concerns like this one.
The Larger Doubt
If Ted Kennedy’s philandering becomes a political issue, my guess is that it will be because of the way it connects to a larger package of doubt. Right now, along with impulsive attraction, latent doubt seems to be a major characteristic of the public attitude toward Kennedy—latent doubt surrounded by a thick, hazy glare of hope. How strange it is that, despite all that has been written about this man and despite all of his exposure to the public eye, he is still so unclear to so many of us. Could that be because he actually is a rather unclear, unformed person? This is the aspect of the philandering that concerns me the most—the immaturity of it.
For years, we have been close to certain that one day Edward Kennedy would run for president. But as long as this was just a possibility, there has been a kind of abeyance of judgment. We have maintained a blurriness of our own, within which we have kept alive the possibility that the great aborted promise of John and Robert Kennedy will some day be realized fully. It is as though, despite all our scrutiny of Edward Kennedy on one level, on another we’ve averted our eyes, saving our hope, putting off the moment of judgment, saying to ourselves: when he runs for president, then we’ll see, then we’ll take a really close look. Well, now he is actually running for president, and though this is hardly a surprise, the actuality has a very different feeling from the prospect. As the abstract haze of hope begins to thin in the atmosphere of a concrete candidacy, we find ourselves squinting at the particular human being inside that haze. Who is he?
