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Ted Kennedy, on the other hand, has always seemed at home in the Senate. He has shown an unusual capacity for combining independence of action with respect for his elders. Whether making a losing fight for draft reform or leading a successful floor revolt against an important House bill on redistricting, a measure that carried the blessing of a House-Senate conference committee, Kennedy was always sufficiently tactful to make a minimum of enemies. He worked hard and effectively to increase aid to South Vietnamese refugees. He was a leader in liberalizing the basic U.S. immigration law. In 1965 he blundered badly by pushing a minor Kennedy crony for a federal judgeship, but when his error became apparent even to him, he saved the Senate the embarrassment of voting on the nomination by asking the White House to shelve it.
As it was, his campaign to depose Long could not have failed to advance his fortunes. Defeat would have cost Kennedy nothing within the Senate because the fight was brief and relatively free of rancor. Nationally, defeat could have still benefited Kennedy within the moderate-to-liberal constituency that is his natural home. Regardless of the outcome, challenge to a Senate autocrat could only be regarded as a sign of courage. To those who came out of 1968 itching for political reform, Kennedy demonstrated the will to achieve it.
In response to the renewed White House talk that followed his victory, Kennedy made all the noises of ritualistic noncandidacy. "I want to give my full attention to the Senate," he told a TIME correspondent. "You go on, and you see what happens. I am not planning four years or eight years or twelve years in the future. I am planning to serve my party and my country now, to the best of my ability, in the United States Senate."
Of course. But how he serves there, and how the Democratic majority fares, can have important effects on both his own and his party's prospects. There will probably be no shortage of tests. Senate Democrats from the center leftward will be pushing for many of the domestic proposals emphasized in the party platform, notably antipoverty efforts, aid to education, health programs and other goals ringed with dollar signs. Lyndon Johnson's budget for fiscal 1970 is expected to include a $1.5 billion increase in education aid. Some of the liberals want much more; many conservatives will fight for much less. What to do about the Office of Economic Opportunity, which many Republicans would like to dismantle, is another certain subject of conflict.