This WaPo printed version of a Lifetime movie only lacks background music:
The Steadfast Wind In the Senator’s Sails – With Wife Vicki Beside Him, Ted Kennedy Will Set His Course Through Rough Waters
Awww… that’s so sweet! But that wind still doesn’t power a wind farm, one of many hypocrisy’s of Kennedy’s long – too long – career. The point of the article seems to be to set his wife up to take his seat when he leaves office:
By all accounts, she is Ted Kennedy’s principal handler, closest political adviser and now his primary caregiver, juggling his large extended family and his political network… Vicki Reggie, a Washington lawyer… Like her husband, Vicki Reggie grew up in a large and very political family. Her father, Edmund, a retired Louisiana judge and lawyer, helped deliver his state for vice presidential candidate John F. Kennedy at the 1956 Democratic convention and developed a close social relationship with the family. … she was a successful banking lawyer and partner in her firm … they went from their honeymoon straight to the Democratic convention, where Vicki’s first act as a political spouse was to greet 500 people at a party the couple hosted for the Massachusetts delegation. She gave up practicing law by 1997, reportedly to ensure that she would never be faced with any conflicts of interest, and advocates for many of the social issues her husband champions, particularly gun control. Washington friend Pam Covington surmised that Vicki’s “upbringing made the transition easy — she’s from a close family herself, she’s political, she shares his faith.” Friends describe Vicki as a well-informed mother hen, the premier “go-to” in any crisis. … She helps prep him for talk shows, works on his speeches and played a pivotal role in his decision to endorse Barack Obama, whom she’s been helping court Catholic votes. Her political skills and grace are such that there has been quiet speculation that she could succeed her husband in the Senate one day.
I’m sick of these political families. It’s been sarcastically noted, “Why not just go the whole nine yards and convert it into a peerage?” The trouble is, between incumbency, connections, and name recognition, they’re nearly de facto peerages now; you practically need explosives to pry their cheeks from the seat of power. Do the subjects of the “People’s Socialist Republic of Massachusetts” really want to keep the Kennedys in power or are they just not being offered any other choices?
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