Nov 28, 2007 11:33 am US/Eastern
Keller: What Kennedy Should Answer In His Book
BOSTON (WBZ) ―
Ted Kennedy may be the only politician in America right now whose public and private life could command an $8 million book deal.
The news that a Kennedy memoir is in the works is touching off a coast-to-coast guessing game about things he will - or won't - reveal.
Here's a list of questions I'd like answered and it doesn't include the one most people might expect.
No more Chappaquiddick, please, we all know what happened there, and if you aren't satisfied by now with his answers, you'll never be.
Instead, here are four questions for Ted that I think might prove much more interesting.
1. After 45 years in the Senate, why do you keep on doing it?
Hours of grinding duty on the Senate floor, dragging around a painful back that never fully recovered from a near-fatal 1964 plane crash. Say what you will about Ted, he could be living the easy life of a millionaire year round. What drives him to keep on keeping on?
2. How do you keep forming bi-partisan friendships when it seems like a dying art?
Ted can be harshly partisan at times. Just ask any conservative Supreme Court nominee. But he keeps forging relationships across the aisle that pay off when Massachusetts interests are at stake. Younger legislators could learn a lot from how Ted gets it done.
3. What gives with your strident opposition to that wind farm off Cape Cod?
Normally, Ted is a friend to green projects that could create union jobs and ease the cost of living for working people, but not so for the wind farm off his Hyannisport backyard. His efforts to kill that project have been a dark, puzzling episode in his career that warrants further explanation.
And a final question we'd like to see Ted answer in his memoir…
4. What happens to us when you leave office?
No one thinks John Kerry can pick up the slack, and make no mistake, Ted's contacts and skill are crucial to the federal funding our research-based industries feed on. Yes, it'll be interesting to read Kennedy's take on his past, even more so to get some insight from him about our own future.
What questions would you like to see Ted Kennedy answer in his book?
Drop me an e-mail
(© MMVIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
