The Kennedy connection: John Kerry makes Teddy look good.

Senator John Forbes Kerry has an obsession with the Kennedys. John Fitzgerald Kennedy is, in many ways, his lifelong model. Kerry's signature Naval service, his first race for public office--all were modeled on the late President. But the JFK mimicry is not the problem. What is likely to cause problems for a possible President Kerry is the extent to which he has mimicked another Kennedy--youngest brother Ted, his fellow Massachusetts senator and warrior for the Left--in his views, his votes, and his choice of starters.

By now the nearly indistinguishable voting records of the two senators are well known. Last year the two men voted the same way 93 percent of the time, reports the Congressional Quarterly. In four of the last six years, they voted the same way 100 percent of the time on important issues.

Donna Brazile, Al Gore's campaign manager in 2000, has called Kerry "far more liberal" than Gore. In fact, as the Republicans have gleefully noted, Kerry's voting record, as tallied by National Journal and others, actually makes Ted Kennedy the more conservative senator from Massachusetts.

It was Ted Kennedy who tossed John Kerry a life preserver when his Presidential campaign appeared to be on its last legs last winter. Teddy provided a direct blood infusion, in the form of sending his 49-year old chief of staff Mary Beth Cahill to take over the running of Kerry's campaign.

All you need to know about Cahill's politics is her list of earlier employers. She broke into Washington in 1980 by working for Barney Frank in his first campaign for Congress. She has run campaigns for Senator Pat Leahy (Dick Cheney's dear friend!) and for Representative Ed Markey (leader of the nuclear-freeze movement and other sideshows). Cahill also worked for Senator Claiborne Pell, another high-visibility New England liberal Democrat. Cahill then spent five years running Emily's List, the political action committee that funnels money to left wing female Democratic candidates, and made it into a force to be reckoned with in national politics.

Last winter, Cahill took over a campaign buffeted by feuding factions. Just as Kerry never seems quite able to decide which side of an issue he's on, he's never been able to make up his mind from which set of aides to accept advice. Cahill arrived to impose some order on his campaign, and imported other Ted Kennedy acolytes like Stephanie Cutter (now Kerry's director of communications) to carry this out.

As for Ted himself, he did campaign for Kerry during the Iowa caucuses, but as Kerry rose in the polls, Ted appeared to back off. Kerry has always had a habit of lifting other pols' lines--during the primary season he, shall we say, borrowed, Dick Gephardt's line about holding George W. Bush to one term, "like father, like son." He so liked Howard Dean's declaration that Harry Truman was the first Democrat for universal health care, that he repeated it practically word for word.