Senator Kennedy

The CRIMSON cannot join those newspapers across the state who today are expressing hope for Edward M. Kennedy's emergence as a worthy United States Senator.

When Ted Kennedy, lacking conspicuous qualifications, secured himself the Democratic nomination, he took on certain obligations. In the ensuing campaign he disregarded all of them. The refusal to debate with his Republican and Independent opponents might have been excusable if the candidate chose some other forum to set forth and defend his program. But Ted's candidacy served no expository function; he did not present the New Frontier goals to the voters of Massachusetts. Lacking imagination, humility and conviction, the youngest Kennedy substituted a smile, a slogan, and a great deal of money. The best that can be said in his defense is: smart politics. But only if one plays at thinking like a Kennedy advisor, can one excuse Teddy's surliness on the grounds that "he had nothing to gain..."

It might be argued that our objections, coming on the day of his victory, are in poor taste. But taste, good or bad, has been made laughably irrelevant by the candidate's own arrogance. There appears no reason to believe that Ted Kennedy will respond to the obligations of victory in the election any more than he accepted the obligations of victory in the primary. We would like, of course, to be proven wrong here.

We would like to see a thoughtful, independent voice in the Senate; a man capable not only of supporting, but developing and expanding the positive aspects of the Administration's program; a senator who sees not only the deals he can swing for his state, but the relationship between his state's needs and those of the nation; a representative who comprehends the magnitude of the civil rights, civil liberties and unemployment problems facing America.

Perhaps Benjamin Smith's successor should not be singled out today as a special case. The level of political debate all over this country is disturbingly low. Yet when a former Massachusetts Senator, John F. Kennedy, ran for the Presidency against a man named Nixon, he did transcend the smile-slogan level. He did present a program and an articulate, progressive vision for this country. His younger brother, however, instead of transcending swamp-politics mired in it, and finally has come to epitomize it.

With regret, we review the Massachusetts campaign and find no reason to believe Ted Kennedy will outgrow his restrictive opportunism. A few "right votes" in the Senate will not justify the abuses he has already perpetrated. To believe that they will is, in effect, to accept Teddy's campaign as a legitimate exercise in democracy. We cannot, and thus it is with the severest pessimism that we now regard his ascendancy.