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But some politicians think that a backlash of sympathy might develop for Kennedy. Says a leading House Republican: "Half the women in this country don't believe it ever happened, and the other half are dying to forgive him for it." According to an informal survey by TIME'S bureau chiefs across the nation, Chappaquiddick would not cut so deeply as an issue in a Kennedy run against Nixon as is commonly believed (see box, opposite). That could change if voters found themselves in the booths next November, forced to make a decisive judgment about the case. For the episode does indeed raise a serious question about Kennedy's potential behavior in the White House. One of the "boiler room" girls who attended the party that night has long been a Kennedy partisan. But she muses: "He's seen two brothers killed, and the Chappaquiddick thing has happened. How stable can anybody be in light of all that?"
Kennedy has been profoundly affected by Chappaquiddick. Some who know him believe that he is a wiser leader because of it. California Democratic Leader Jess Unruh declares: "That terrible incident was an ordeal that made a hell of a better man out of Ted. Everything had been so easy for him. He was almost insufferable in 1969 when he won the job as Senate whip . . . Then came Chappaquiddick and he lost his whip job, too. Those experiences humbled him. That's on the private side. On the public side there is no doubt it has cost him votes." Mike Feldman, a former aide to John Kennedy, frequently plays tennis with Ted; he notices one small change: "Teddy bends over backward to be fair, is scrupulous about the calls, always giving the advantage to his opponent—and I haven't seen that in any other Kennedy."
For months after Chappaquiddick he was painfully withdrawn, but that period seems long since ended. Now he jokes easily. Recently, on a flight between Chicago and Salt Lake City, he was confronted in the aisle by a woman carrying a baby. Kennedy grinned and told the reporters with him, "Hey, get this." He elaborately faked kissing the baby, with a loud smooch an inch from the infant's cheek. Then he collapsed laughing in his seat.
After Bobby's death and again after Chappaquiddick, there was talk of his drinking heavily. Today, except at an occasional private party when he will have several Scotches, he drinks only a Dubonnet before lunch or a Cutty Sark Scotch or two before dinner. On the road he prefers a bottle of Heineken's beer. He smokes long, thin Filipino cigars and now, at 6 ft. 2 in. and 210 Ibs., is winning his constant battle against overweight.
If he was inclined for a time to moody fatalism, his nearly hyperthyroid present political pace and his family life leave little time for brooding. The Kennedys' $750,000 gray-shingled house and five acres in McLean, Va., overlook the Potomac River. Despite the back injury from his near-fatal 1964 air crash, he plays tennis frequently, at his own court or at Ethel's home at Hickory Hill, often coaching his two eldest children. He swims once or twice a week in the Senate gym, skis with the family on winter vacations and occasionally hazards a game of touch football.
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