Crown prince, continued

by Ian Donnis

Q: With Patrick Kennedy at the helm of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the House Democrats have built a large financial advantage over their Republican counterparts. Will the Democrats retake the majority in the House this fall?

It's good to be a Kennedy The political significance of his family's money is that it allows Kennedy to take risks that others of lesser means are not able to do. For example, in the closing days of his 1994 bid for Congress, voters were moving to his Republican opponent in large numbers. Since Kennedy's campaign was running out of money, Patrick borrowed more than $100,000 from his personal funds to launch a last-minute air [broadcast] assault and hire a consultant who specialized in get-out-the-vote efforts. The same was true in 1988 during his first bid for the state legislature, when nearly all of his $93,000 expenditure was financed by personal funds. Money also allowed Kennedy and his family to hire private investigators during Patrick's first General Assembly run, the Palm Beach rape trial [of cousin William Kennedy Smith], and his initial congressional campaign. The ability to draw on major financial resources gave Kennedy strategic leeway to take advantage of opportunities as they came along and reposition himself at key points in his career. For example, early in Kennedy's General Assembly service, he painted himself as a political outsider who was reform oriented and wanted to take on the establishment. However, after friends captured control of top State House positions, he trumpeted his leadership endorsements and connections to get things done for the state. On the gambling issue, he opposed expansion while in the Assembly but later became a vocal proponent of a new casino for the Narragansett Indians and accepted thousands of dollars in pro-gambling contributions. He went from opposing capital punishment in 1988 to supporting it in 1994. On abortion, he switched from a general pro-choice voting record to favoring a ban on partial-birth abortions. In terms of national politics, Kennedy alternated between a public feud with Vice-President Gore in 1998 when [mentor Richard] Gephardt was considering a presidential run to a 1999 rally at which Gore extolled Kennedy's virtues. He fought bitterly with Senator [John] Chafee, but wrote a glowing tribute to him after the senator died in 1999. Without the same degree of fame and financial resources, ordinary politicians are not able to re-create themselves when political conditions change. Instead, they are stuck with whatever public image they have had over the years. During his time in Rhode Island, Patrick Kennedy worked tirelessly to cultivate media coverage and the support of powerful journalists. In preparation for an interview at his house by columnist [M. Charles] Bakst of the Providence Journal, Kennedy aide [Tony] Marcella made sure a framed copy of the front page story announcing Patrick's 1988 victory autographed by the newspaperman was hanging on the wall. Later, when another reporter visited the house, the memento was nowhere to be seen. The endless media curiosity about the Kennedys, of course, does not always work to the family's advantage. Much like a royal family, the Kennedys are under the media microscope for good and for ill. They can attract positive coverage when they want, but are also the object of unflattering tabloid coverage. Indeed, as the media have grown more tabloid oriented, Kennedys have not enjoyed such good coverage. -- From Patrick Kennedy: The Rise to Power, by Darrell M. West, with permission from the author

A: The House Democrats are very well positioned to do well in the 2000 election. For the first time in recent memory they actually have more cash on hand than the Republicans. I can't remember the last time that was the case. And Patrick Kennedy obviously deserves a lot of credit for using his star power to raise money for Democrats across the country. My sense is Democrats have a pretty good shot of getting the House back. They only need a net change of six or seven seats and they'll be back in the majority. Dick Gephardt will be Speaker, and Democrats will be chairing the major committees.

Q: Patrick Kennedy was 31 when he was chosen as chairman of the DCCC -- an unusually young age for such a prominent position. Why did he get the post, and how would you rate his performance in aspects other than fundraising?

A: Patrick's top political mentor has been Dick Gephardt, and Gephardt is the individual who appoints the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Gephardt understood that money would be crucial for Democrats to be able to get their message out, and so he chose Patrick, I believe, because he knew they'd be able to raise a lot of money. . . . Patrick and Gephardt have a close working relationship, so there would not be factional disputes, which sometimes have been a problem for House Democrats in the past, where you have the Democratic leader and the DCCC chair wanting to target the resources in different ways.

I think Kennedy has done a pretty good job as chair of the DCCC. The major task beyond fundraising has been, or is, candidate recruitment. The goal is really to get the strongest possible challengers. Patrick has been very good at recruiting strong challengers, at persuading some House members who were thinking about running for other offices to stay in the House, so they could hold those seats. He has enlisted everyone, from the president on down, to make calls to individuals who were wavering in terms of whether they wanted to run for the House this year. So I think on the dimensions of fundraising and candidate recruitment he has performed very well.

Q: A lot of Americans, even those who don't follow politics, have the sense that our political system is poisoned by the influence of money. Why isn't it a political liability for someone like Patrick Kennedy to have such a prominent role in campaign fundraising?

A: Money is always controversial, and Democrats have made extensive use of soft-money contributions to build their war chest. It hasn't become a political negative just because the public is so cynical about all kinds of politicians, and they see both Republicans and Democrats relying on fundraising practices that citizens don't particularly like, [so] it essentially neutralizes that issue as a controversy. If everybody is doing it, citizens don't really have any single individual or single party they can blame for the problem.

Q: What were the most surprising things you learned while researching your book on Patrick Kennedy?

A: One surprising thing was how complicated his relationship with his father is. The public image is one big happy family. And when Patrick was growing up, his father was gone a lot, traveling around the country on various liberal causes. The thing that I discovered in the course of doing my interviews was that his father is really a tough taskmaster. When Patrick first ran for the [Rhode Island] General Assembly in 1988, Ted would often call campaign staffers first thing in the morning and say, "Okay, how many doors did Patrick knock on last night?" and whatever number they would give, Ted would always say, "He's not working hard enough. Make him knock on more doors tonight." And I think that kinds of illustrates the fact that Ted really wants Patrick to succeed, has really pushed him.

Of course, one of the nice things about Patrick entering Congress is, I think, he has now developed a much closer relationship with his father than previously was the case -- just because they're both physically in the same place. They try to have lunch or breakfast together once a week, trade political intelligence, but it's an interesting relationship in a lot of respects.

I think one of the most interesting sections of the book is the description of the General Assembly and how it has changed over the course of the past 10 years. I interviewed a number of people who served in the General Assembly and watched the General Assembly, and it's actually impressive how the Assembly has gone from a top-down body, where the leaders really exercised almost complete control, to now more of an institution that has gone through a cycle of political reform and the influence is a little more politically diffuse.

In the book, I tell stories about different deals that were cut between legislators, the impact of the banking crisis on the political process, and I really tried to give people a sense of Rhode Island politics, so they can understand what Patrick was dealing with and the challenges that he confronted as he developed his political career.

Q: You catalogue five political crises that Patrick Kennedy has faced in his political career and indicate that, for some politicians, any one of these would have been politically lethal. How is it that Kennedy emerged stronger after each of those?

A: Patrick has displayed a surprising dexterity in dealing with problems, from his own high-school drug use to the Palm Beach rape trial of his cousin to his own campaign fundraising problems coming out of the 1996 elections. What impressed me was that any one of these crises could have done him in, and with a typical politician sometimes it takes only one of those events to end a political career. I think when you go back and look at how Patrick responded to each one of them, he was very adept about responding to the crisis, sometimes going on attack and making his critics the issue, as opposed to his own behavior.

And he is actually well positioned, because scandal politics are now the norm in American politics, and he has developed a lot of experience that has taught him how to survive political scandals.

Q: Your book describes Patrick Kennedy as being somewhat reticent and inarticulate. How did he prove to be so politically shrewd?

A: Patrick is not the most intelligent person in the world and hardly the most articulate, but he's politically sophisticated, and a lot of people over the years have underestimated him, because the superficial impression they have of him is not very positive, and he beats them. He really understands how the political process works. Of course, he's had the advantage of drawing on his father's experience and his cousin Joe Kennedy's experiences, and those things have given him a sure-footedness in dealing with politics that contributed to his extraordinary political success in a very short period of time.

Q: How does Kennedy square his stance as a passionate defender of society's have-nots with his rightward movement on issues like the death penalty and his support for dubious military programs like the B- 2 bomber?

A: In 1994, Kennedy was very worried about being portrayed as an ultra-liberal, and he took steps -- basically following the Clinton model of moving to the center on a few issues, the death penalty being one of the most noteworthy. And in doing so, he was able to protect himself politically and then survive the Gingrich revolution, where for a time people thought Republicans really were going to take over government and be in power for a very long period of time. The thing that interests me about his political choices is there's a very interesting blend of clear principle and political pragmatism. It sometimes allows him to surprise his opponents with unconventional moves.

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Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis[a]phx.com.