Kennedy Emerging as Superpower in the Senate : An Agenda of New Social Programs Keeps Him Driving

His hair is all gray now, turning to silver, befitting a quarter of a century in the U.S. Senate.

Yet Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) is hardly ready for a rocking chair. Since retreating from the presidential arena, he has lost none of his zest for political combat.

In fact, friends and foes agree, Kennedy has found his calling as a superpower in the Senate, where he is using his energy and influence to advance a more liberal agenda in the waning days of the Reagan Administration. The result has been a recent cascade of legislation with Kennedy’s stamp that, in its sweep and volume, impresses even his conservative opponents.

“And the best is yet to come,” Kennedy said in an interview as he reeled off a fresh list of bills he is promoting that would benefit Americans from the cradle to old age.

Out of Limelight

No longer does Kennedy bear the burden of being the national leader of the Democratic Party’s liberal wing. That has shifted to the Rev. Jesse Jackson. So, at 56, Kennedy has decided to make the Senate his workshop and national platform.

And he seems to rest easy in the role. “Life’s treating me pretty well,” Kennedy said with twinkling eyes.

After playing a bit part in this year’s Democratic National Convention, the heir to America’s best-known political legacy can poke fun at himself.

Reminding an interviewer that he went to Rhode Island recently to campaign for his younger son, Patrick, who is running for the state Legislature, Kennedy laughed and said: “What a comedown! Eight years ago I was a presidential contender, and now I am pushing doorbells in Providence.”

In the Senate, however, Kennedy is no joke. At a frenetic pace, he is using his position as chairman of the Labor and Human Resources Committee to move legislation on health, education, child care, the minimum wage and other social issues.

Labor, Social Causes

This year, for example, Kennedy led the floor battle for a bill authorizing $1 billion for AIDS education and treatment. He played a pivotal role in the fight for advance notice of plant closings and major layoffs. He pushed through legislation to prohibit employers’ routine use of the polygraph on workers. He championed a civil rights bill that became law over President Reagan’s veto.

He was the guiding force behind the opposition to Robert H. Bork’s nomination to the Supreme Court. He is the natural champion of blacks, Latinos, women and the working poor.

“I think he’s a super senator,” said Evelyn du Brow, dean of Washington’s labor lobbyists, who has watched Kennedy since he came to the Senate in 1962. “He has been a tiger on our issues.”

It is not that Kennedy always gets his way. His effort last spring to give illegal aliens more time to apply for amnesty was spurned by the Senate, even after he made an emotional plea that ended: “How do you think it feels to slam the door of America on a hundred thousand fingers? Does that make America America?”

Couldn’t Stop Rehnquist

His campaign against the nomination of William H. Rehnquist to be chief justice also failed, although 33 senators voted against confirmation (the largest negative vote ever cast on any sitting justice named to the top job).

Although Kennedy concentrates on domestic issues in the Senate, he has also established a unique relationship with leaders of the Soviet Union and gets a steady flow of information from top aides of Kremlin chief Mikhail S. Gorbachev. He was the one senator outside the leadership whom Gorbachev invited to a state dinner for Reagan during the summit in Washington last December. Top Soviet officials sometimes drop in for quiet dinners at his suburban Virginia home.

A bulky man who always seems to be bursting out of his dark, pinstripe suits, Kennedy chewed on an unlit cigar as he responded to questions in his Senate office. Once criticized as the prince of knee-jerk liberals, the youngest Kennedy brother over the years has become far less of a purist.

In the 1960s and 1970s, his voting record frequently made 100% on the scale of the liberal Americans for Democratic Action. Now, however, it has slipped to as low as 75%, and his ratings from conservative groups, once zero, have risen as high as 10%.

‘Cost-Effective’ Programs

More than before, Kennedy is concerned about legislation that carries a low price tag or has a high pay-off for a relatively small investment--the so-called cost-effective liberalism.

“The bottom line is getting things done,” Kennedy said, even if it means horse-trading with the Republican right or working with Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S. C.) on criminal law revisions to fashion a better deal than he could get by staying aloof from the process.

Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), a dedicated conservative who once described some Kennedy legislation as “socialism in embryo,” has found it possible to co-sponsor legislation with him.

“Behind the scenes, we’ve become very good friends,” Hatch said, “but I’ve found that he’s tough in the clinches.”

Although Kennedy sometimes finds it effective to use quiet persuasion and compromise, on other occasions he wields a steel shillelagh. “When there are matters of principle of overriding importance, you have to go back to the barricades,” Kennedy told Boston Business magazine.

It was his slashing style of oratory that riled Bork, who accused the Massachusetts senator of “reckless disregard for the facts and outright falsehoods.” To Kennedy, however, the Bork battle was “nothing personal.”

Chronic Back Pain

At times, the work is painful. Kennedy’s back, broken in more than two dozen places in a plane crash in 1975, bothers him when he stands for long periods. Although he never complains about it, he said in reply to questions that he had had a recurrence of “some spasms” this year.

“Obviously, standing is rather difficult,” he said, “but I’m doing my exercises, watching my weight.”

During the first six years of the Reagan Administration, when Republicans controlled the Senate, Kennedy said, his objective was to limit the damage to social programs enacted in the 1960s under Democratic presidents.

When the Democrats regained a majority in the Senate in 1986, he had his choice of chairmanships--the Labor and Human Resources Committee and the Judiciary Committee, which he had headed before 1981. He chose Labor and Human Resources because of its jurisdiction over social programs.

“Some people have done exceedingly well in the Reagan years,” Kennedy explained, “but too many have been left out and left behind.”

Medical Coverage Bill

Now he is pushing bills to require employers to provide all workers with minimum medical insurance coverage--including the 24 million people already on payrolls who have no such protection. Another bill would subsidize both education and day care for children 4 and 5 years old. His most ambitious proposal, known as “lifecare,” would cover nursing home care and other benefits for older people at an estimated cost to the government of $18 billion a year.

Encouraged by former Chief Justice Warren E. Burger, Kennedy has sponsored a bill to form a Literacy Corps that would give credits to college students who taught others how to read and write. Still another Kennedy plan, which he developed from playing electronic football through a central computer in Kansas City, would provide schools in poor communities with access to the best-qualified teachers via satellite television.

When he is not busy in the Senate, Kennedy, now divorced, spends time with his three politically minded children. Kara, 28, and Teddy Jr., 26--are helping to manage their father’s reelection campaign. Patrick, almost 21, is challenging an incumbent legislator from Providence, where he attends Providence College.

Comment From Colleague

Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who is particularly close to Kennedy, said his colleagues view him with respect.

“They see him as someone who cares deeply, to sustain his interest for so long,” Dodd said. “If he walked away and said his family has given enough for this generation, no one would fault him, but he has a sense of accomplishment and joy. He has a real joy in life.”

What makes Kennedy keep up this hectic pace? Walter Sheridan, a hard-nosed investigator who has worked with and for members of the Kennedy family since the mid-1950s, said:

“It’s the nature of the man and the nature of the Kennedys. They’re activists. They can’t stand to be idle. They have an enormous sense that one man can make a difference. A very dedicated bunch of people.”