Ted Kennedy, Feminist Icon?

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

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That fall, Kennedy sat in silence as Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas, nominated by the first President Bush for the Supreme Court, of sexual harassment. Ted’s political allies were furious that his private life made it impossible for him to speak with any moral authority about matters of sexual equality. He faced a clear choice: He could continue his promiscuous behavior and become a political dinosaur. Or he could do what the times demanded: Change his attitude and behavior toward women, and risk the intimacy that comes from commitment to one person in an equal partnership.

In June 1991, Teddy was invited to a dinner party, and, he wrote, “found myself looking into the beautiful hazel eyes of Victoria Reggie.” With his reputation in tatters, he might have viewed Reggie, a family friend, as a port in a storm. But an accomplished lawyer in her own right, Vicki wasn’t about to be used as a political prop. “What’s wrong? Couldn’t get a date?” she teased him. When he asked her out for dinner the next night, she agreed. But then she had doubts. “Did I just say yes? Have I lost my mind?”

The last section of True Compass is called “Renewal.” It describes Ted and Vicki’s romance. She was not awed and intimidated by Teddy or the other Kennedys. She entered the marriage with open eyes. Her father, one of Teddy’s best friends, joked to her that she would come fourth in his list of priorities, after the Senate, his boat, and his dogs.

Vicki developed into a full political partner in Teddy’s quest for political survival in 1994, challenging the job-creation claims of his opponent, Mitt Romney. She good-naturedly listened to voters who bluntly told her she was “not as pretty as the first Mrs. Kennedy.” “Vicki loved that story and used it to tease me to no end about the sacrifices she made for me,” Ted writes in True Compass.

Ted may owe to Vicki in more ways than one the emotional intelligence that permeates True Compass. It seems clear that she had a role in editing the book, in packaging the official Kennedy story for posterity. Where Teddy might have let his memoir bog down in discussions of policy or legislative history, I suspect she helped steer it toward reflections on his emotions and his most important relationships. (From the 1,000 pages of notes and journal entries that Kennedy kept over his 49-year career, I bet there is at least one more wonky book to come.)

Marriage counselors say that, at best, we receive in our marriages what we failed to receive from our parents. Teddy, whose father told him he should never cry, deny pain, or quit, developed his emotional intelligence in a way that his brothers never got a chance to develop because of his partnership with Vicki. He learned that it was not a sign of weakness to remain faithful to one woman. And that it was OK to cry, to acknowledge pain, and sometimes, even, to let go.