When Wesley Cwieka thinks back to the image of "Jackie Kennedy and her husband," the memory triggers a smile. "There was a future there," the jewelry store clerk in Chicopee, Mass., recalls. "They did good for the people." Then she pauses: "We didn't know anything about their private lives, so it was OK."
Cwieka knows a lot more about the private life of Jackie's brother-in-law, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy -- maybe too much. The media portray him as a heavy drinker, she says. "They show him running after women. And you go home and think about it. Why does he do it? Why couldn't he be better? He was supposed to show an example."
As Ted Kennedy competes this fall for his sixth full term in Washington, Mitt Romney, the rich, attractive Republican candidate, is only one of his opponents. The senator is also struggling against the Kennedy name and legend, a legacy reflected in the troubling questions asked by voters like Cwieka. And if that weren't enough, Kennedy is running against his own former self, the jaunty youth who somehow became a beefy, graying 62-year-old with years of hard living in his face. With the exception of matriarch Rose, 104, "No one has ever seen the Kennedys grow old," says Mark Jurkowitz, executive editor of Boston Magazine. "This is our first one."
Washington's curse. In some ways, Republican Romney, 47, surrounded by his large and telegenic family, looks more like a Kennedy than the real thing. But that's not the only irony in this race. When he first won his seat 32 years ago, Kennedy was widely regarded as a lightweight trading on his brother's fame. Today he is one of the most influential and effective members of the Senate -- a fact that will be underlined this week when President Clinton travels to Massachusetts to sign a major education bill sponsored by Kennedy.
But this year, "politician" is a curse word, and experience and seniority are negatives. The place that haunts Kennedy even more than Chappaquiddick is Washington. Just when he thought he would be entering a revered old age -- an age his three brothers never reached -- Ted Kennedy is desperately trying to convince voters that his life's work has been worth it. Between campaign stops last week, he said plaintively, "I know how to do my job. I can do it well." Then he offered a story about a toxic-waste dump he helped clean up in Woburn. It took 16 years, Kennedy said, but when the job was finished, no one picked up the story because there was no scandal: "The message that sends back to politicians is that you don't have to be serious, you just have to be in it for the quick hit."
Kennedy's first challenge is demographics. Twelve years have passed since he last ran a full-dress campaign. A generation has passed since Camelot. A 26-year-old, selling athletic shoes in a Chicopee mall, was asked his view of John F. Kennedy. His reply: "That was a great movie." Many younger voters reject party labels and loyalty, and almost half the electorate is registered independent. Like the state's popular Republican governor, William Weld, these voters also reject the idealistic faith in government that the Kennedys have always stood for. "I grew up during Watergate," says social worker Tanya Bart, 29, "and I'm pretty skeptical about politicians."
The sluggish economy has not helped the senator's cause. In Chicopee alone, Westover Air Force Base has downsized, Uniroyal tire has left, brick mill buildings stand empty along Front Street. Two years ago, Clinton and the Democrats ran on a promise to change things, and as Kennedy admits, "People don't see change coming to their lives." Adds Michael Albano, president of the Springfield City Council: "Who else is there to blame? When a baseball team is going bad, you fire the manager."
What hurts Kennedy even more is the perception that he is a liberal who cares more about the poor than about the middle class, more about welfare than about wages, an image reinforced by years of ridicule from radio commentator Rush Limbaugh and a chorus of conservative critics and TV comedians. Saleswoman Terry Kosiba sees the effect on her mother, a Limbaugh "addict" who has turned against Kennedy: "For people like my mother, the words come out of Rush's mouth and right into her brain."
Like Bill Clinton, Kennedy views Limbaugh and other right- wing talk show hosts as a major problem for the Democrats. "There is a real disconnect between the way people get information and the way politicians think they get information," he said last week. "The talk shows have changed the political landscape, and I'm not sure we as politicians really understand it."
Settling down, shaping up. Three weeks ago, Kennedy looked and sounded shaky, launching an attack on Romney's Mormon religion that backfired badly. But now he's fighting back. "I'm realistic enough to know that questions have been raised about my life and lifestyle in the past," he says. The answer he offers: his new wife, Vicki, an energetic campaigner who symbolizes his argument that he has settled down and shaped up. "Hopefully, that's the way people will see me," he says.
Incumbency, of course, still has its advantages. Kennedy retains a vast network of old friends and constituents across the state, and as he works his way through a crowd outside a center for the disabled in Chicopee, the murmurs exchanged with voters provide a soothing lubricant: "Good to see you again .... You're Tom O'Brien's mother .... I think you know my brother-in-law ...." Past favors pay off, too; witness the prison guard, eating pizza with his family, who has backed Kennedy ever since the senator helped his mother untangle a problem with the Veterans Administration 20 years ago. "How do you knock that?" the guard says.
Now part of Kennedy's task is to convince skeptical working- class voters that he truly shares their interests. Recently, he has run commercials attacking Romney for investing in a union- busting company in Indiana, and the message has resonated with voters like Dennis Manley, a retired rubber worker in Chicopee. "That Romney," says Manley, "he looks like a Sneaky Pete behind the scenes."
But the heart of Kennedy's campaign is the idea that government can still do good things for people -- and that he can still make sure Massachusetts gets its share. At the center for the disabled, he talks about helping the disadvantaged: "This is what it's all about when we're at our best." At a plant making computer disk drives, he urges executives to apply for help through the Export-Import Bank and reminds them that if they do business in Singapore, he knows that country's president. In a sense, Kennedy is counting on the voters' being hypocritical: avowing their hatred of government while at the same time wanting government help. "Folks are starting to realize, `Gee, we really do need his clout,'" says Michael Bissonnette, a Democratic candidate for the state Senate. "A lot of money, a lot of jobs are at stake for Massachusetts." And Edward McCormack, the man Kennedy defeated in 1962, predicts that when they get inside the voting booth, enough people will say to themselves, "I owe him," and send their senator back to Washington.
