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(Ted and Joan Kennedy - Election Night 1962 - battling the stigma of nepotism)

Going a back a ways today. The legacy of Ted Kennedy, who left us this year, has been remembered of late as a staunch supporter of Universal Health Care - his tireless arguments in favor of reform of our shattered Healthcare system and the uphill battle he encountered for so many years in the process. But we don't spend much time on the early days of Ted Kennedy, the candidate for Senate. His opponent George Cabot Lodge, son of the former running mate to Richard Nixon in 1960. Ted Kennedy had to weather the baggage of being the brother of the President, How would that impact his ability to be an effective member of the Senate, even as a Junior Senator. The questions were frequently asked, even on this episode of Meet The Press.

Ted Kennedy: “Mister Spivak, I want to make my position extremely clear that my decisions in the United States Senate will be based upon my own belief of what I think is in the best interests of the state, the best interests of the nation, and in the dictates of my conscience. I have disagreed with the President before. I imagine I’ll disagree with him in the future. But upon this will be made my determinations about the questions effecting both the state and the nation.”

On October 28, 1962, with the Cuban Missile Crisis on everyone's minds, the Senate seat race in Massachusetts took a serious backseat to the events 90 miles south of the mainland.

But even so, 1962 would be the beginning of the Ted Kennedy years.

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(Governor Alfred E. Driscoll (R) - His legacy: The New Jersey Turnpike)

The world of politics seems to be one endless procession of bright lights, sterling hopefuls and utter flame-outs.

During the 1948 Presidential campaign, the name Alfred E. Driscoll was bandied about as a possible vice-Presidential running mate with Thomas E. Dewey on the Republican ticket. It surfaced again in 1952. But neither panned out and New Jersey Governor Driscoll quietly faded from the public scene after leaving office in 1954. His legacy, it would appear, are a number of bridges along with championing the cause of the New Jersey Turnpike.

At the time though, (1948) eyes were trained on him as serious Capitol Hill material, as is evidenced by this rather lively discussion on an early incarnation of Meet The Press regarding the postmortem on the 1948 election and the disastrous defeat for the Republican party.

Lawrence Spivak: “Fortunately, I have before me Governor, Clarence Buddington Kelland’s quotation on the campaign. Mister Davis, a moment ago asked you about it and I’d like to read it to you and see if you agree or disagree with what he said. He said ‘Dewey’s campaign was smug, arrogant, stupid and supercilious. No issues were stated or faced.’ You think that was true of the Republican campaign, that they failed to state their issues or face them?”

Governor Driscoll: “ Well I would like to enter an emphatic denial on the first part of . . that statement. I think that the Republican party did fail for reasons that are now apparent, which were perhaps not apparent at that time. To adequately state and fight the issues.”

Although it's clear Driscoll wasn't up for exchanging fistfuls of mud with the panel, his answers give some indication where the Republican party's troubles lay in 1948. And one could say the same for the election of 2008, sixty years later.

Some things don't change.

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(Sen. John Sparkman - D-Alabama - I know what you're thinking!)

Before Blue Dogs arrived on the political scene, we had Dixiecrats. That bunch of Southern Senators who always seemed to break with the rest of their party and go off on tangents, mostly about Civil Rights legislation at the time.

One such Dixiecrat Senator was John_Sparkman who was vehemently opposed to the re-election of Harry Truman during the 1948 election based on his proposed Civil Rights Bills, pending in the Senate.

Here he is, explaining his position, during the Sunday interview program "Chicago University Roundtable" from June 13, 1948 - the subject was "The Southern Democrats and the Convention".

Sen.Sparkman: “In our primary that was held May 4th, with runoff on June 1st, we selected delegates to the Democratic Convention to be held in Philadelphia. All of those delegate, every one without exception, is pledged against Truman. Furthermore, we named our Democratic electors who are to cast Alabama’s vote in the Electoral College in November . . .in December – elected in November. Every one of those electors, there are eleven of them, made a pledge to the people of Alabama prior to that election that, if chosen as an elector, each one of them pledged that he would not, under any condition, vote for President Truman.”

Talk about inspiring Party Unity. The irony to all this, is Sparkman wound up being Adlai Stevenson's Vice-Presidential running mate in 1952.

Somehow, it now makes sense why Stevenson didn't win in 1952.

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(The Shoes of Billy Sol Estes - no doubt the Alligator had other plans.)

(Note: A repost from 2009 because Corruption, Fraud and Bribery are just so damned timeless)

What had to be one of the biggest scandals of the 1960's centered around one Billy Sol Estes whose influence and fraud wandered through many high places in Washington, allegedly all the way up to the office of Lyndon Johnson. Estes was the subject of a Senate Sub-committee investigation on political corruption which led to a startling number of discoveries and an even more startling number of "suicides" in the process. Although Estes was convicted of fraud and corruption charges and sentenced to prison, his conviction was overturned by a Supreme Court decision that ruled the massive amount of publicity the investigation garnered made a fair trial impossible.

Still, the allegations were serious enough about LBJ to force Kennedy to consider dropping him as running mate in 1964. And he probably would have, had fate not intervened.

On July 2, 1962, at the height of the investigation, ABC's long-running Sunday talk show Issues and Answers featured a dialogue between Texas Attorney General Will Wilson and Senator Edmund Muskie, who was a member of the Senate Subcommittee investigating the Estes scandal.

(Sen. Sam Irvin (left) - Bill Sol Estes (right))