Ann Coulter used Twitter to do some serious “whataboutism.” She references something that came to light after the fall of the USSR — which involved a letter Ted Kennedy wrote to the leadership of the USSR in 1983 (before Gorbachev took over). While she’s correct about a thing that happened in history, ironically she utterly misses the significance of that event — which points up the incredible risks incurred by politicians who recklessly approach our enemies, and are risking doing something that might be truly personally compromising.
For a little context — this was a very scary time. The USSR was suffering because their long-time leader died, only to be replaced by another who who would die suddenly. They were embroiled in an endless war in Afghanistan, during which we were arming the opposition. And, the American President was deploying new classes of weaponry in Europe, including the kinds of medium range missiles we’d removed after the Cuban Missile Crisis, as well as battlefield nuclear weapons known as neutron bombs.
I was in a college seminar and my professor wondered about our perspectives about the Cold War. I said that it seemed we were heading towards a serious showdown, perhaps even a hot war. This really shook him. Fortunately, I was proven wrong — in contrast to a conversation I had a year and a half earlier when I shook my high school social studies teacher with my (correct) prediction that Israel would invade Lebanon (after the PLO had killed an Israeli Ambassador in London). Anyway — it was a really hairy time — and millions of people were marching in the US and in Europe to protest the increasing arms race and tensions. As with Trump, people around the world were scared in large part by the recklessly bellicose American President, Ronald Reagan.
So, Ted Kennedy wanted to dial down the confrontation, and create some rapprochement with the new Soviet leadership. In that context, he approached them about getting the new leader on US television in exchange for their expressed support for getting a Democrat in the White House — perhaps Kennedy himself. He wrote a letter to the new leader (the former head of the KGB) — this letter became public a decade letter when a KGB memo was uncovered by historians who suddenly had access after the USSR fell. Bill Clinton was President then.
There’s a really interesting coda to the story, though. In every election before 1984, Ted Kennedy was always the one being discussed by the Great Mentioners when the discussion turned to Democratic candidates for President. From 1972 to 1980, when he finally ran, Kennedy cast the biggest shadow. This was true, even though his actions after the bridge accident at Chappaquidick had probably made him unelectable.
In the years following this letter to the USSR, Kennedy no longer expressed the old level of interest in the Presidency. He deferred to others. Walter Mondale, Mike Dukakis, and then the various candidates who competed in 1992. He didn’t challenge in 2000 either.
What changed? Maybe it was the loss in 1980. Maybe it was the debilitating pain he’d experienced since surviving a plane accident in 1964. But, maybe, the letter had something to do with it — the letter he wrote to Chairman Andropov and the ill-considered suggestion of cooperation.
That letter opened Kennedy up to blackmail by Soviet leaders, who could threaten to destroy his candidacy and his career by leaking the contents. They could also hold it over his head if he ever did become President. It could also have been used by Democratic primary opponents or by Republicans in a general election race to torpedo a Kennedy campaign.
That’s why it was such a poor choice to make the offer — to make the approach. That’s true, even though the Soviets never acted on it. Imagine the position that Trump has been put in because he and his team did work out some mutual assistance deal with the Russian leadership. When Ann Coulter brings up the Kennedy matter to do her whataboutism to defend the Trump team, she’s actually making the case for the seriousness of the issue. Ted Kennedy was almost assumed to be a President in waiting for a decade. And, then he wasn’t. In retrospect, that was a good thing, because Ted Kennedy had inadvertently compromised himself.
This is why, regardless of everything else that is unprecedentedly horrible about having Trump as President, it’s so important that the GOP act to remove Trump from office. He cannot represent the country’s interests effectively so long as Putin holds a sword of Damocles over his head. Trump must go.