Who many of you recognize and i just wanted to say that we have hundreds of these programs on our web site a their youtube annel. You can look at the ones we have got already. Tonight we are going to be discussing catching the wind . . . An interesting analysiof the kennedy wave scene in three parts and also how it crashed, a very interesting and i take it from what i read this is the first lume of the 2volume ted kennedyiography through 1975. Welcome kneelin thank you very muchor joining us. Its great that you switched your career to writing these great fees. The first question i have is inert knowledge and at the end you mentioned the book started off as an idea to write a book about political morality. Did your publisher then say theres not enough material out there to make the book on political morality . He would definitely say that its interesting the origins of this book i was coming off of a ee of walt disney so this seems very much when i propose my next bk toike publisher which was knopf and iave becomeeally intrigued by the american soul, which i had already thought, and this is going back some years now and it took me 10 years to writehis book so we are going back more than a decade actually and i was intrigued by the idea tt the american soul was not quite as bright as wd all like to think back then. Now itSecond Nature to us but it wasnt quite Second Nature to us 10 years ago. I propose the booknd worked a proposal for the book. I called it a biography. Its almost an encyclopedic story and narrative. We like to think of ourselves of the most idealistic exceptional country the city on the hill and all that stuff than i thought theres this other story that we dont like to met and yet in many ways it did as much to shape what this country is or perhaps even more what this country is than the idealistic vision. Initially knopf was very receptive and i will say even in retrospect i thought this would be a very powerful and important book. But knopf after their initial enthusiasm for the book my interviewer came to mean he said you know nobody wants to read about how bad they are. And i kind of joked with him and half jokingly i said no, nobody wants to read about how bad they are but they love to read about how bad other people are. And the people are likely to want to read about how bad other people are. Thats what reality tv is all about. I wasnt able to proceed without book but i started thinking about another question and they should say george most biographies of i assume and i cant speak for them but i assumed assume they begin with the subject of the book. If youre writing about ted kennedy you begin with ted kennedy but im going to write a book about ted kennedy and i never saw any of my books that way. I always look at my looks with a question and then i found an individual who would allow me to explore that question and choose life can serve as a metaphor for the examination of that question so i was coming off of this biography and i got to thinking about an allied question and one which may be the central question of american politics over the last 50 years which is what happened to american liberalism and the notion of morality that we will discuss in the next hour. It was then that i thought a lens for this examination might the ted kennedy and when i went to crown publishing after leaving knopf partly because they wouldnt allow me to her write the book i went to crown and the editor there said what about ted kennedy . And that sparked me to this idea that i could write a story of american liberalism to the life of ted kennedy. It was a longwinded answer but thats how i got there. Thats a great answer and it also illuminates wide your book is laid out the way it is and why you ended the way you do. Its a great explanation of how you got to this book and makes it clear. For those of you havent read the book you will figure it out when you read it. Youd deftly have an arc and very few people that write up biography would end the way you ended the first volume but well get to that but i thought it was really powerful. One of the things you say about the whole Kennedy Family upfront which some people obviously agree with another once dont is that they inspired people to bring out their best the angels of our nature as is said and of course some of the speeches are inspiring but theres also a real problem with the Kennedy Family. Many problems with the Kennedy Family. Just the whole history and how tragic that history is on top of Everything Else but just the way they live their lives and exactly in line with the better angels of some of the rest of us. But still its dedicated to certain ideas and you show how a lot of that was done some for clinical reasons and i find that combination is very good for politics. Lets talk about it doesnt seem to have a mixture here at all but a mixture of real ideas real history and the usual politics because one of the things that i recall in stories about how the things we take for granted were created people talk about not watching it be created because its like watching sausage being created and there are plenty of examples of that. Including Martin Luther king and his being of politician on the poll tax amendment. We will go back to ted kennedy but i thought it was very interesting. Did you find out anything else about how the Civil Rights Era of came because i was one of the big things. Well kennedy because john kennedy introduced the Civil Rights Act in 1963 which ultimately became the civil right act of 1964 passed by Lyndon Johnson. He took a wouldnt say leading role initially in civil rights legislation his maiden speech although really wasnt his maiden speech as senate was in defense of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 but when you talk about the politics of civil rights regarding the kennedys and i think thats what you were alluding to hear george. John kennedy was a pragmatist. He was basically an idealist and he had no overwhelming desire to pass legislation when he was elected president and entered the presidency. That actually came to him and they came to him after George Wallace barred the door at the university of alabama and it was that night in fact that john kennedy gives the speech that basically introduces the Civil Rights Act which becomes the Civil Rights Act of 1964 talk about clinical things in politicians particularly today being political not only before the war but political after the war. In this case and ted kennedy said this in the speech that i just alluded to he said my brother was the first, forget exactly right versus its the first to raise the moral issue here among president s and he is accurate their knees also accurate that john kennedy at that point, a man who was devoutly political in his entire career. He was not a great idealist. He was essentially a pragmatist. That night he became an idealist in 1963. He realized and he said you know theres a great deal to gain from this politically. The democrats are trying to win the south and it was necessary to win the presidency is as kennedy had done in 1960 race but kennedy felt this was a time when you put politics aside because there was a moral issue. When john kennedy and Robert Kennedy also had no great affinity for the Civil Rights Movement and in fact anyone who knows his career knows theres a great deal of tension between Robert Kennedy in the Civil Rights Movement and in the civil rights march of 1963 the president and Robert Kennedy neither one of them wanted anything to do with civil rights leaders back then and eventually Robert Kennedy did meet with them. There was attention because Robert Kennedy again had no great feeling for the Civil Rights Movement. Ted kennedy was somewhat of an outlier in this because his brothers told him did not attend the march. Do not attend the march and ted was a little afraid of attending the march because he was afraid he might he come a target. His brothers were considered dedicated his Civil Rights Movement that ted did attempt that margin he said it had an enormous impact on women in some ways ted kennedy became the most adamant of civil rights advocates in the Kennedy Family and not for political reasons. I dont want to just stick with robert here except the driver had no great affinity for the Civil Rights Movement as attorney general. Once john kennedy died as i think everyone realizes and of course people dont know the kennedy history anymore. Robert kennedys life was transformed. He was a man transformed by his brothers death and he felt at that point that he had to pick up the legacy that his brother had just begun and part of that was the Civil Rights Movement. Robert kennedy again there was no political benefit in a country which was white and increasingly conservative or Robert Kennedy picked up that mantle and he fought for civil rights as strongly for that brief fiveyear period is any individual in american politics in the became as we all know probably the leading figure, the right figure in the senate in the Civil Rights Movement. When he died ted kennedy and he used this term in a speech he gave in worchester massachusetts after bobbys death im going to pick up the ball and standard speech and he became adamantly dedicated to civil rights. The thing i want to exercise here is that for all three brothers alternately the attraction to civil rights was a moral one and not a political one. Its strange and its hard for us to conceive of that in todays political world. Family dynamics are really amazing and you go back to teddys childhood in the second but i want to make sure i didnt forget one thing and people know about his father joe kennedy and we wont go into his whole history but he had an obvious political path that he had interests in the presidency himself but in 1957 the saturday evening post joe kennedy said he wanted john in the white house, bobby is the a tourney general and teddy is a senator that was 1957. By 1962 the time youre describing 63 and 64 that was true. Thats quite a prediction for a father to make and to make it come true. He made it come true. It wasnt so much a prediction as a succession. This was the way it was going to be. He had set this up. In fact in some way Joseph Kennedy dedicated his life to the success of his sons and when joe jr. Died as we all know john filled the world with what john kennedy jr. Was supposed to play and then it was John Kennedys turn but i have a title and a chapter called succession which is the idea of how the Kennedy Family was going to move through the ranks of american politics and the things that joe was denied because he had president ial aspirations himself which he could never realize i will add parenthetically that Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940s talked about those president ial aspirations in one of the reasons he sent joe kennedy to become the ambassador to england was joe kennedy would try to fight for the presidency but not so much fear that he would take it from them but he felt that joe kennedy would be a fascist. Joe kennedys instincts were basically fetishistic and that concerned roosevelt and its very interesting its the bulwarks of american liberalism after kennedy had his own proclip of these. Thats very interesting interesting thing about Family Dynamics and other books go into detail about that as well. The fact that joe kennedy loves his son so much and wanted them to succeed so much that he didnt care if he were at doctor or a lawyer. I think you should go into politics and i think you should read fascist and he didnt really say that but if you disagree with me that wont get in my way. It is what you should do when you are president. Its the outcome you are looking for, not the actual idea. His sons all opposed him ideologically and to joe kennedys credit and there is not a lot to put to his credit i would say but to his credit in terms of his childrearing he inculcated in those boys enormous independence including independence from him and he was nothing but in a political sense a danger to his sons political careers though in an economical and financial sent to a sort of a pain by financing their campaigns. The suns struggled to. Distance and to say im not like i father. I think one of the contributions to their liberalism was that very concept of saying i am not my father. Kennedy at one point when he was quite young took his father to task for his antisemitism and you dont think of the kennedy boy standing up to their father. In fact ted kennedy never did. He did but he followed his political career but never went face to face her toetotoe with his father when he did that and Robert Kennedy as a boy to do that. There was a way in which the boys created space and distance between themselves and their father partly to advance their political careers because the Democratic Party at that time there was no advantage to being the son of Joseph Kennedy ideologically speaking and financially speaking so there was that kind of dynamic. Lets focus on ted as we should and go back to his childhood a little bit. Before we go there want you to tell the story about his first communion because its like you know how could you lose an election in the senate and i had my first communion with the pope. With the pope, thats right. Thats why im joe kennedy was the ambassador to Great Britain and they were probably americas most notable catholic family and with the investiture of the new pope they went to the vatican and little ted kennedy, little ted kennedy celebrated his first communion with the pope at the vatican and later the pope went to visit, shouldnt say later the pope had visited the kennedys and bronxville when they lived in bronxville nor what new york is part of the tour that the cardinal had made in the United States and a visit to Franklin Roosevelt which had been arranged by Joseph Kennedy so the cardinal who became the pope visited the kennedys and bronxville and celebrated communion with ted kennedy and the vatican. We wont go into the details but the network that the Kennedy Family had to the father is in many different areas and responsible for the masses massachusetts political successes they have. There would be no successes were it not for joe kennedys ted kennedy enters the senate when hes barely 30 years old barely old enough to be a senator with no political experience whatsoever grade he had been the assistant d. A. In suffolk county. We know how we came about it manipulation and the machinations of joe kennedy who said to his older sons to john and bobby you have gotten yours announced teddy stern. And teddy stern was to be the senator for massachusetts. What a way to start your political career. The other thing i think people dont focus on the smudges John Fitzgerald honey fitz says he was called the maternal grandfather was also a boston politician and it changed the way he did politics. Lets talk about that because its very interesting. John fitzgerald was a congressman and the mayor of boston and when you look at ted kennedy and we always talk about kennedy, Kennedy Kennedy but as i point out in the book ted was much more fitzgerald in many ways than he was a kennedy. By that i mean his grandfather honey fitz as he was called was very, very different kind of character both morally and aesthetically from the Kennedy Family. He was boisterous come he was loud and a glad hander all of those things on the aesthetic side and on the moral side he was a person who cared very deeply for ordinary people and who empathize deeply and when ted was young and in many ways the kennedy side of ted was a very harsh side. I can go one at some greater length about that but i will just said this before i get back to honey fitz because you have to understand the Kennedy Fitzgerald side most kennedys often portrayed that doting sometimes mother and what a great mother she was. Joe kennedy was the ice and rose was to fire up the family. A complete mischaracterization of that family. Rose kennedy was selfcentered and completely and just sit aesthetics of the family and how everyone looked rather then in any kind of maternal warmth that she was would give. She was in many ways to her youngest son ted and abusive mother because poor ted would the shunted from one school to another so that he couldnt make friends. He was a one point shuddered into a school and he was four years younger than everybody else in the last but rose didnt care because rose was interested in where she was going to be in if she was in palm beach she would take ted the palm beach and if she was in hyannis she would take ted to hyannis and that she was in europe which he very often was she would send ted to boarding school. Ted kind of had a childhood that was extremely lonely and abusive not only in many ways to his mothers indifference but also abusive by the classmates in his schools because he was a little boy and girl to be an handsome and athletic guy but with a little kid is nicknamed was biscuits. He ate too much and he was a pudgy little kid and other kids at school made fun of him for it i want to ship over to the other side because he frequently sundays in boston with his grandfather fitzgerald who would take him on the a tour of the citys and