His nickname within the family was “Boy Scout.” Ted Sorensen, Senator Kennedy’s closest aide, advised Wofford at their first meeting not to become too closely associated with Shriver, because the insiders thought of him as the “house Communist.” As always, it was said partly in jest, but the attitude was daunting to Wofford. Those closest to Senator Kennedy were driving hard to reach the average voter in the fifty-first percentile of victory. If they thought of Sargent Shriver—the highly successful manager of patriarch Joseph Kennedy’s Chicago Merchandise Mart, himself the scion of a
...more
