Jimmy says the race is over. No, it is not, says Teddy
A the long, black Lincoln Continenal pulled up to the West Wing of the White House last week, presidential staff members gathered on the lawn and crowded onto the balconies of the adjacent old Executive Office Building. The occasion had all the drama of a summit conference, and, in a sense, that is what it was: Senator Edward Kennedy, wearing a diplomat's dark blue suit, had come calling on President Jimmy Carter. For the first time in their bitter, seven-month contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, the candidates were meeting face to face.
By the rules of political tradition —and common sense—the purpose of Kennedy's visit should have been peacemaking. The President, though battered by the deepening recession, had won 24 primaries to Kennedy's ten. Carter had collected 1,964 delegates, 298 more than he needs for a first-ballot nomination at the Democratic National Convention in August and 725 more than Kennedy's total. The latest Gallup poll showed that 60% of the Democrats, however reluctantly, preferred Carter to Kennedy as their nominee for President. But when the Senator emerged 54 minutes later from the Oval Office, he declared with a broad smile that the struggle was not over. "I have every intention of continuing in this campaign as a candidate," he said. "I am planning to be the nominee."
At a brief meeting with reporters in the White House, Carter added to the air of unreality by insisting that his tense meeting with Kennedy had been a step toward "unity." But even the President seemed puzzled by Kennedy's behavior. Said Carter: "I am convinced that I will be nominated, and he is not convinced of that fact yet." Then, with a note of wonderment in his voice, the President added: "I pointed out to him, and he agreed, that the primary season is now over."
It had, in fact, ended two days earlier on "Super Tuesday," when 696 delegates, 20% of the total, were chosen at primaries in eight states. Ironically for Kennedy, it turned out to be the best week of his campaign. He won five of the contests, including two of the three most important, in California and New Jersey; Carter carried the third big state, Ohio. In all, Kennedy won 53% of the delegates at stake. Yet even as Carter suffered his worst defeats of the campaign, he still picked up 321 delegates, far more than he needed to sew up the nomination.
In anticipation of that victory, Carter last month ordered aides to stop speaking disparagingly of Kennedy and to take conciliatory steps that might make the Senator an ally in the campaign against Ronald Reagan. Thus there was no response when Kennedy attacked Carter as a "clone of Ronald Reagan" and said that the Administration's economic policies were "alien to everything the Democratic Party stands for." Rosalynn Carter's anger vibrated through the White House corridors when Joan Kennedy archly told a reporter that she was better equipped than Rosalynn for life in the White House because she was a "sophisticated lady" and held a master's degree in education. But in obedience to the presidential edict, the slur went unanswered.