Collision Course
Journalist Jon Ward tells the story of
how and why the Democratic Party cracked up in the late 1970s through the lens
of the Carter-Kennedy fight for the 1980 presidential nomination. The peanut
farmer from Georgia and the son of privilege from Massachusetts were on a
collision course that began in the early 1970s. Each had an intense dislike of
the other at first site.
Ward argues that Kennedy Camelot era
ended with the first political defeat of a Kennedy in 1980. Here I beg to
differ. Camelot died when Kennedy drove his car off a bridge in 1970 in Chappaquiddick,
Massachusetts killing Mary Jo Kopechne. As
an aside although Ward is technically correct in placing Kopechne from Wilkes
Barre, Pennsylvania but she, in fact, grew up in the suburban New Jersey town
of Berkeley Heights since infancy.
The author is very good at describing the
give and take of the 1980 campaign. He is especially good at describing the
famous Roger Mudd interview of Kennedy where Kennedy couldn’t explain why was
challenging the president of his own party and stuttered throughout most of the
interview. I have my own experience with Kennedy in 1980 at a rally in Los
Angeles. After Kennedy finished speaking he asked for questions and he just
happened to call on. With all of the TV lights on me I asked him what he
proposed to do about increasing capital formation. It was not a question he
expected from this very liberal audience. After hemming and hawing he brought
up the Republican sponsored 10-5-3 depreciation program. Kennedy blew it.
My main quibble of the book is that Ward
defines the Kennedy-Carter clash in breaking the Democratic Party. To me that
was a proxy war for the real problem. Simply put under the weight of
stagflation followed by very high inflation, the Democratic nostrums stopped
working coupled with the appearance the Democratic Party became the party of
retreat abroad opened the way for the candidacy of Ronald Reagan. Reagan’s
sunny optimism became the antidote for the failed Democratic policies of the
1970s.
I enjoyed reading Ward’s book. It
brought back many memories and he put us in the room where the Carter and
Kennedy strategies were made in the face of a very fluid political environment.
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