It started as a sentimental, if some what political journey. Alaska's Indians and Eskimos, neglected in their isolation, had been a goal on Robert Kennedy's poverty itinerary that he did not live to make. Picking up his brother's trail last week, Senator Edward Kennedy undertook a threeday, 3,600-mile tour of remote Alaskan villages that took him to the shores of the Arctic Ocean. But before the trip was half over, Ted Kennedy was reminded once again of the complexity of Robert's legacy. Besides having inherited the constituency of the poor*, he is also heir to the charges of ruthless political ambition that always bedeviled Robert — accusations that Ted was able to avoid as long as he was only the kid brother.
Revolt. For the first day and a half, it seemed like the typical congressional trip for Kennedy's Senate Subcommitteeon Indian Education. That tour was frankly set up, as such excursions are, to generate publicity for legislation — in this case, to improve educational and anti-poverty programs for Eskimos and Indians. On the second day, however, Kennedy was faced with a mutiny by the three Republican Senators on his committee. They abruptly abandoned the trip, charging that it was "a stage-managed scenario" to boost Kennedy's presidential prospects. Hollywood's Senator George Murphy, who used to get star billing himself, took a look at the mob of cameramen focusing in on the Kennedy face and decided that the occasion "was turning into a kind of Roman circus." Said a Republican Committee aide of Murphy's pique: "He was just tired of a one-man show."
The immediate cause of the blowup was the disclosure of a 43-page confidential staff memorandum advising Kennedy to focus television coverage "on native poverty contrasted with the affluence of Government installations" in Alaska. The memo suggested that the word "colonialism" would describe the situation.
Kennedy defended the memo as routine for such a tour and said that the three Republicans, Murphy, Henry Bellmon of Oklahoma and William Saxbe of Ohio, had been sent copies. But the three said they had not received them before they left on the trip. Although committee staffs habitually do spadework prior to such tours, the Kennedy staff went further into detail than most and was blunter than it might have been in laying down conclusions and stage directions before the trip even began. Senator Ted Stevens and Representative Howard W. Pollock, Alaska Republicans, stuck with the tour and somewhat blunted the G.O.P. charges against Kennedy. Asked about alleged G.O.P. Policy Committee pressure on him to quit also, Stevens said angrily: "This fact-finding investigation is good for my state. I'm not going to criticize any aspect of it."