Joe Klein: How Ted Kennedy Found Himself

He seemed a ghost the day I met him. It was Memorial Day, 1970. He was dressed in a black suit, white shirt, black tie. He was still wearing a back brace from the Chappaquiddick accident and he moved stiffly, like a robot cartoon of a politician. He didn't smile, seemed grim even when shaking hands with the civilians; his demeanor was all the more striking because we were at a classic grip-and-grin event, the annual Greek picnic in Lowell, Mass. All sorts of politicians were there, including two who would run for President themselves — Michael Dukakis and Paul Tsongas. The pols gadded about with antic smiles and jackets hooked over their shoulders, ties loosened, sleeves rolled up, trying to look like Kennedys, trying to look ... like him. His family defined political style and vigor for a generation of politicians. But at that moment, and for years after, Ted Kennedy seem to writhe in the public eye. (See photos: "The Lion of the Senate: Edward Kennedy, 1932-2009")

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He was scared catatonic, of course. Scared of death, obviously. There was no reason to believe, in a nation of nutballs, that he would be allowed to continue, unshot. But he was frightened of more profound things as well — overwhelmed by his own humanity in the face of his brothers' immortality, convinced that he'd never measure up, that Joe and Jack and Bobby had been the best of the Kennedys. He was the baby; his political career — the premature ascension to the Senate at the age of 30 — was a family conceit, the closest thing to a regency appointment the Senate had ever seen. He was not only the baby, but also the screwup — cheating on his Spanish test in college, boozing and womanizing well beyond the requisite Kennedy-legacy level, and then Chappaquiddick — and even after Chappaquiddick, after he had somehow allowed a young woman to die, they still wanted him to run for President. There was no way to convince them that he was a hollow shell of the dream. (See a Kennedy family photo album.)

I spent a fair amount of time with him in the 1970s, and most of the circumstances involved pain or awkwardness. I watched him work a supermarket in New Bedford when he ran for re-election in 1976. He accompanied a woman who was shopping for her family. It was total agony. He simply had no idea what to say or do. "So, uh, your family, ah, likes ... meat?" he asked. "Oh, yes, Senator," the woman replied, and that was that. No question about the high price of chuck. He stared at her, unable to figure out what came next. Contrary to received wisdom about him, contrary to the joyous Irish bull he later became, he seemed to have no political instincts at all in those days. He went down to Alabama to share a July 4 county-fair stage with George Wallace, another political hologram by then, and Kennedy got smoked. Wallace rose from his wheelchair — a clever series of braces and handles — like the Lord had saved him that very minute, and gave a percussive trumpet solo of a speech, rapid and dexterous and witty. Kennedy read from a text. I was beginning to feel sorry for the guy.

And no more so than the day we walked through Boston's City Hall Plaza together and got pelted with tomatoes thrown by some of his most loyal and mythic constituents — the aggrieved Celts of South Boston, whose children were about to be bused into a black neighborhood. Afterward, in his office, he offered me a towel to wipe the tomato off my ruined khaki suit and disappeared. But we talked again about that day soon after, and memorably so, since neither of us was sober. It was at a cocktail reception at Ethel Kennedy's home, for recipients of the Robert F. Kennedy journalism awards, one of whom happened to be me. In celebration, before the ceremony, a Kennedy who shall remain nameless took me down to the barn for an intense herbal experience. When I returned to the house, there was Teddy — and it was immediately apparent that he was as shiffazed as I was stoned. We greeted each other like old comrades in arms, sat in a corner and talked about how he wasn't angry about the tomatoes, about how sad and unfair it was that the Irish of Southie and the blacks of Roxbury had to endure busing while the rich kids out in the suburbs got off the hook. It was the first actual conversation we'd ever had. A picture was taken of him handing me the award, which has somehow, sadly, been lost. We were both smiling.

See TIME's complete Ted Kennedy coverage.

See pictures of Eunice Kennedy Shriver.