May 5, 2009Ted Kennedy’s wife, Vicki, and his nephew, former congressman Joe Kennedy, are getting set for a bruising battle over who will succeed the ailing senator, according to a new book excerpted in the new issue of Vanity Fair magazine.
“Vicki is seen by all as an interloper and she is deeply resented by Ted’s children and many of the newphews,” Edward Klein writes in his new book, “Ted Kennedy: The Dream That Never Died,” due in stores next month.
“Joe, who sees himself as the only serious heir apparent, particularly loathes her control over his uncle and hence the family. Joe inherited his father’s ruthless gene. He is nothing if not aggressive. And anybody who tries to get between him and Ted’s Senate chair is in for a fight.”
The excerpt, which appears in the June issue of Vanity Fair, covers the 12 months since Kennedy, 77, was diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.
Klein, a former Newsweek and New York Times [
NYT] editor, is the author of four other salacious Kennedy books, including “The Kennedy Curse” and “Just Jackie,” which were not exactly kind to the famous clan.
The Ted tome contains some new details about the day the senator was rushed to the hospital with what turned out to be a malignant brain tumor. According to Klein, Kennedy was stricken as he played with his dogs, Sunny and Splash, on the beach in Hyannisport.
“According to one family friend he fell in the sand and realized he could not move.”
The senator’s sad diagnosis - a malignant glioma in the left parietal lobe - set off a series of events that roiled America’s once-royal family, Klein says.
As Ted began to seek a successor, a rivalry developed between his wife, his nephew and his niece, Caroline Kennedy. It was Ted who insisted that Caroline make a bid for the seat Hillary Clinton would vacate so there would be “a Kennedy in the Senate” after he was gone.
But her disastrous campaign and New York Gov. David Paterson’s public reluctance to appoint the Camelot princess to succeed Clinton, humiliated and infuriated Caroline.
So much so that her three children sat her down and told her they didn’t like what politics was doing to their mother. She withdrew her candidacy that night, Klein said.
Klein also contends that Kennedy’s grim diagnosis has driven him back to a bad habit: drinking. Subsequently, he claims, Vicki and her father hatched a scheme to relocate the senator and his beloved sailboat Mya to Florida for the winter to get him away from enabler pals.
Vicki’s father, Edmund Reggie, had a friend who was trying to sell an estate on Biscayne Bay in Miami and that’s where Ted and Vicki spent the winter, Klein says.
The author also contends that Kennedy “had been drinking the night before” his seizure at President Obama’s inauguration.
The senior senator’s staff did not return an e-mail seeking comment.
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http://news.bostonherald.com/track/inside_track/view/2009_05_05_Ted_Kennedy/
