Even in a family sadly experienced in public mourning, the sight of Victoria Reggie Kennedy standing by her husband’s casket at the John F. Kennedy Library, greeting a seemingly endless number of well wishers, or leading a group of prominent political figures in honoring Ted Kennedy’s memory at a service Friday night, seemed to have special meaning. They were, in a sense, the public affirmation of the role the dark-haired Louisiana lawyer who became Kennedy’s second wife had come to play in his life.
Friends of Kennedy say it was Vicki who rescued him from his famously self-destructive habits when they were married 17 years ago, becoming both confidante, protector and adviser. As Kennedy battled with the brain cancer that would ultimately kill him, she organized his treatment and managed his time, and after he died she planned how he would be remembered and who would be attending. “It was as if the good Lord had sent her,” former Sen. John Warner, a close friend of Kennedy’s, said in an interview with POLITICO.
Vicki Kennedy played a far more active part in her husband’s career than the wives of John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy — Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and Ethel Skakel Kennedy, whose grief over their slain husbands embedded them in the national consciousness. And as a widow she is likely to live a different kind of life — though how she will define it is not clear.
Her very public moments this week left some wondering whether Vicki Kennedy will remain on the national stage, pushing her husband’s issues—including the one he never saw to fruition, health care reform. But it is at least as likely that she will revert back to the life she had before she met Kennedy, this time as a 55-year-old working mother with two grown children, Curran Raclin and Caroline Raclin, now in their twenties.
Kennedy has told friends she isn’t interested in filling her late husband’s Senate seat either temporarily—if state lawmakers revert back to an old system that would allow the governor to fill the vacancy—or in the long-term, by running in a special election. “All this stuff about her going to the Senate is completely wrong,” Bob Shrum, the longtime Kennedy speechwriter and adviser, said in an interview.
But that hasn’t stopped the pundits—and even some Kennedy aides— from chattering about the possibility. Appearing on ABC News on Thursday, Cokie Roberts called Kennedy a “political person” and said she wouldn’t be surprised if she did in fact make a run for the Senate. “She knows politics. She knows substance. It’s normal for someone who’s been that involved to want to stay involved,” Roberts said.
A former longtime Kennedy aide agrees: “She’s the logical choice to keep the seat. She’s a very sharp lawyer, she knows the issues well, and she could carry the torch for Teddy on the health care issue. She would complete his mission.”
But friends say they take Vicki Kennedy at her word. “I believe her when she says she has no interest in public office,” said Pam Covington, a friend of Kennedy’s for close to two decades. “I’ve never heard her even hint at that.
“I don’t know what’s in her heart of hearts that she’s not talking about,” Covington added. “But my guess is that she is happy to carry on Teddy’s legacy in other ways.”
Rep. Ed Markey, the Massachusetts Democrat and a longtime Kennedy friend, said he can see Vicki continuing to be an advocate for the passage of health care reform. “It’s something that is central to his legacy and I think that she will work to see that legacy completed,” Markey said.
As many have noted in recent days that legacy was sometimes challenged by issues in Ted Kennedy’s personal life. He divorced his first wife in 1982 and his name quickly became shorthand for comedians’ jokes about politicians behaving badly. In the months leading up to his testimony at the rape trial of his nephew William Kennedy Smith, the senator began dating Vicki after she invited him to party celebrating her parents’ 40th wedding anniversary. (The two families had been longtime friends: Vicki’s father Edmund, a judge, supported John F. Kennedy for Vice President in 1956 and Vicki’s mother Doris was the only delegate from Louisiana to vote for Ted Kennedy for president in 1980.)
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