POLITICAL BRIEFS: Bow to Ed, IOU for Ted

No one in or out of politics knows Edward Kennedy's mind better than California's shock-haired Junior Senator John Tunney. He roomed with Ted at law school, and he is the closest friend Ted has in Washington. Thus Tunney's endorsement of Maine's Senator Edmund Muskie was the clearest signal yet that Kennedy is serious about not running in the Democratic primaries.

But whom does the signal serve? The endorsement was immensely important to Front Runner Muskie, who can now lay claim to the support of the many party sheiks who had been waiting to see what Kennedy's plans were. As one highly placed Democrat sees it, however, the chief beneficiary of Tunney's endorsement will not be Ed but Ted. In this view, Kennedy has coldly concluded that Nixon cannot be beaten in 1972. Therefore he chooses to leave the field to Muskie, who now has the nomination all but locked up.

Tunney's move, this theory continues, was thus calculated not only to help Muskie but also to impress a grateful party with the fact that Kennedy was doing what he could to promote unity and minimize the chances of a truly damaging, down to the-wire nomination battle. Ted will then wait until 1976 to cash in the lOUs that his old roommate picked up for him last week.