Good Ted, Bad Ted: The Two Faces of Edward M. Kennedy
by By David, Lester
Category: Biography & Autobiography , General

Good Ted: a devoted father to his own sons and guardian to his brothers' thirteen children; an able legislator who has been described by colleagues as the best senator of his generation.Bad Ted: the world's oldest teenager. As his political star ascended, he was exposed as a relentless womanizer and drinker with no regard for public opinion.Good Ted, Bad Ted puts this paradoxical Kennedy in perspective and answers the question: How can the two Teds coexist in the same individual? Filled with startling new information, this book reveals:John Hinckley, the man who shot President Reagan, initially chose Senator Kennedy as his target. He waited in Kennedy's office reception room for three hours with a loaded .22 caliber Saturday Night Special in his pocket. Had the Senator not been late, he would surely have been the third Kennedy to be assassinated.Nixon was so terrified of facing Kennedy in the 1972 presidential election that he had his two top aides, John Ehrlichman and H.R. Haldeman, set up a team to ferret out any information they could get on Ted. This pre-Watergate plot was financed by $100,000 from CREEP, the Committee to Re-Elect the President. Even Secretary of State Henry Kissinger rushed to Nixon with a "hot rumor" that proved wrong.Only three years after Chappaquiddick, Ted was a strong contender for the Democratic nomination for President, leading in the polls by a wide margin and placing fourth in the Gallop Pall as "the most admired American." Readers will now know the real reason why he was not nominated. It was not because of Chappaquiddick.Ted's attempt to dissuade Aristotle Onassis from marrying Jackie Kennedy, fearing that the marriage would harm the Kennedy clan.Ted was roaring drunk at the White House, and so were many New Frontiersmen, the evening after JFK was buried.A year-by-year rundown of Ted's women starting in 1969 and continuing to 1991.The Kennedy money is drying up. Once one of America's great fortunes, larger than the Rockefellers', it is dwindling fast. Now, it barely qualifies for Forbes magazine's Four Hundred. If nothing is done to augment the principal, the fortune will be tapped out soon after the turn of the century.Ted's marriage in 1992 to Victoria Reggie and the very positive influence she has had on his life, both personal and political.