From The Big Dig: Mitt & Ted

Healthcare is the problem American politics cannot solve. It’s the subject of screaming matches at town halls, the cause of the longest government shutdown in U. S. history, the justification for political assassination in cold blood. Mitt & Ted, a Healthcare story, the new season from The Big Dig, looks at how Mitt Romney and Ted Kennedy began their political journeys on opposite sides of the issue—and they ended once again on opposite sides—but for a brief period in the middle they worked together to pass a groundbreaking law: one that promised to finally transform the politics of American healthcare. So what brought this odd couple together, and what ultimately pulled Mitt and Ted apart? Here's a preview of Mitt & Ted. Find Mitt & Ted from The Big Dig https://apple.co/4d1lyaV wherever you get podcasts. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:58Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 2:24Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 2:27Speaker 03

  Hey, Revisionist History listeners. Ben here. When I started working on our Staten Island series, I had three guiding lights. Robert Caro's The Power Broker, Mike Nichols' Working Girl, and WGBH's The Big Dig, my favorite podcast. The Big Dig is hosted by the journalist Ian Kos. Each season, Ian does a deep, deep dive into some story from Massachusetts history that has surprising national implications. In this season, they're looking at the history of the Massachusetts battle over a historic healthcare reform that set the stage for everything that was to follow with Obamacare. Like every season of The Big Dig, he's got

• 3:08Speaker 03

  amazing archival tape, incredible characters and interviews, all knit together with Ian's fantastic writing and music. And, okay, maybe I'm biased because I'm from Massachusetts, but these seasons are works of art, and they will change how you think about politics well outside the Great Bay State. Today, we've got the first episode for you. It begins during the Watergate scandal with a worried Richard Nixon, a grieving Ted Kennedy, and a slim window of opportunity when the entire history of our country almost took a different turn. You can find the rest of the series over at The Big Dig wherever you get your podcasts.

• 3:53Speaker 00

  Part one, My Greatest Regret.

• 4:24Speaker 04

  I think it started when his son got cancer. And that was, that was really a turning point, I think.

• 4:39Speaker 00

  In late 1973, Senator Ted Kennedy was faced with what he later called "the hardest thing I ever had to do," telling his son he had bone cancer, that it was serious, that they would have to amputate his leg. Ted Jr. was 12 years old, and for a time, the child was quiet. He put a towel over his face so no one could see him, while his father, who was usually so full of life, so full of energy, simply held the kid in his arms and said over and over again that everything would be okay. Eventually, the phone in the hospital room rang. It was the President of the United States, Richard Nixon. The

• 5:24Speaker 00

  senator picked up, then handed the phone to his son so the president could wish him well before the operation.

• 5:34Speaker 00

  At 8:30 the following morning, the doctor removed Ted Jr.'s leg. It also happened to be the day that Bobby Kennedy's oldest daughter was getting married, and Ted, as the last of the Kennedy brothers still alive, had to be there to walk his niece down the aisle. Just think about that, leaving your son's hospital bed to go walk your murdered brother's daughter down the aisle at her wedding. Ted went straight from the hospital to the church and back to the hospital. He never changed his suit.

• 6:17Speaker 00

  A few months later, in early 1974, Ted Jr. began his chemotherapy treatment at Boston Children's Hospital. He was not out of the woods yet.

• 6:27Speaker 04

  And he had to have experimental treatment every three weeks for three days. And the Senate flew up for every one of those treatments, stayed in the hospital with him.

• 6:39Speaker 00

  Barbara Suleotis ran Kennedy's Boston office, so she would see the senator on these trips as he anxiously watched his son, Teddy Jr., suffer through nausea, fever, terrible pain, waiting to see if the treatment would work. This was on an experimental research basis.

• 6:56Speaker 05

  This is experimental research basis.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  Ted Kennedy himself described this period in an oral history interview a few years before he died. And he remembered how, at first, this experimental treatment was completely free.

• 7:08Speaker 05

  Well, it's an experiment. It's paid for by the company.

• 7:12Speaker 00

  But then, a few months in, the clinical experiment ended. The good news was that the results were extremely promising, a 90% survival rate for a condition that used to have more like a 20% survival rate. Truly the difference between life and death.

• 7:28Speaker 05

  So that was enormously encouraging. So they had--

• 7:30Speaker 00

  The bad news was that families would now have to pay for it.

• 7:33Speaker 05

  And it's $2,700 a treatment. That's what it can cost. None of the insurance would cover it, except mine.

• 7:44Speaker 00

  In this hospital, Teddy Jr. was one of the lucky ones. His father had US government health insurance, the kind all congresspeople get. So Teddy Jr. could keep coming back every three weeks, receiving the shots, waiting for this new wonder drug to do its work. Ted Sr. would wait there, too.

• 8:03Speaker 04

  And when Teddy was sleeping, he would walk the car and talk to parents who couldn't pay for the treatments. Some had to mortgage their houses, basically go bankrupt because they had no health insurance.

• 8:21Speaker 00

  These families Kennedy met would tally up all their savings, all their assets, to see if they could cover even just a few more months of treatment, hoping that would be enough to save their child's life.

• 8:35Speaker 04

  And they would ask him, what if we can only do one treatment, you know, would that help their kid? Because they couldn't afford it. And he said, and that's what he said, this shouldn't not be happening in this country.

• 8:54Speaker 00

  Walking the corridors of that cancer ward, Ted Kennedy fully embraced what became the cause of his life: universal health insurance. He knew it was a complicated and divisive issue. He wasn't naive, but he couldn't possibly know just how hard it would be, how long he would have to fight.

• 9:13Speaker 06

  The issue before the American people isn't can we afford national health insurance? Is can we afford not to have it?

• 9:19Speaker 00

  Through the 70s, the 80s, the 90s, the 2000s.

• 9:23Speaker 06

  Comprehensive, universal for every child in America and every adult, too.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  On the Senate floor, on convention stages, in forums, in town halls around the country, Kennedy voiced the outrage he felt in that hospital ward.

• 9:36Speaker 06

  It is a national disgrace.

• 9:38Speaker 00

  This was the issue Kennedy just kept coming back to again and again over his nearly 50-year career in the US Senate. Because even for one of the greatest dealmakers that chamber has ever known, this was the issue that just kept on eluding him.

• 9:55Speaker 06

  The cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die.

• 10:11Speaker 00

  Something I've come to appreciate about politics in America is that there are windows of opportunity in which major change can happen. I'm talking about change on the scale of a Social Security Act or Civil Rights Act, laws that redefine what it means to be a citizen of the nation. These windows of opportunity are like celestial events, far beyond the control of any one individual, even an individual as powerful as Ted Kennedy. They're the rare moments when public sentiment, political power, pent-up frustration, that perfect mix of personalities and incentives, all these things click into alignment to open up a door.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  And when the door opens, everyone has to be ready to rush through it. But the tragic irony of Kennedy's nearly 40-year health care crusade is that his first and best opportunity to make it happen came too soon, before he was ready. This opening came without warning, even as his son was lying in that cancer ward in 1974. And it came from Nixon himself. Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States.

• 11:36Speaker 00

  When Richard Nixon rose to give his State of the Union address in January of 1974, he was speaking as a man desperate to change the subject, anything but Watergate. And the subject he chose was health care.

• 11:50Speaker 06

  Turning now to the rest of the agenda for 1974, the time is at hand this year to bring comprehensive, high-quality health care within the reach of every American.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  He didn't want to call it national health insurance. We had to call it universal health care. Stuart Altman was a staffer in the Nixon administration, and he basically wrote the president's plan specifically for this speech. I never had so much power. And it was around Christmas time, because I remember saying to others, including my wife, "Don't count on me for Christmas." The final plan included measures that today would seem wildly progressive, especially for a Republican president, like a mandate on all employers to either provide health insurance to their workers or pay a penalty. Again, that's a government mandate on businesses to provide health insurance.

• 12:43Speaker 00

  That is what Nixon himself proposed in 1974. A real, serious national health reform plan.

• 12:51Speaker 06

  That will assure comprehensive health insurance protection to millions of Americans who cannot now obtain it or afford it.

• 12:57Speaker 00

  See, you might think Ted Kennedy would be over the moon. I mean, a Republican president talking about universal health care. But for Kennedy at that time, Nixon's plan did not go far enough. And when you watch the footage of the 1974 State of the Union, there's a moment where you can see this tension play out.

• 13:15Speaker 06

  And doing it as well as I possibly can.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  Right as Nixon makes his case for universal health care, the camera cuts to Ted Kennedy out in the chamber. He's leaning back comfortably with a wide checkered tie and that strong Kennedy chin jutting straight out. His eyes are locked on Nixon. But when the congresspeople around him burst out in applause, he just sits there, because laced into Nixon's grand vision was a not-so-subtle critique.

• 13:44Speaker 06

  Now, I recognize that other plans have been put forward.

• 13:49Speaker 00

  You should know that even before his son's cancer, Kennedy was already a leading voice on health issues. And just the year before, he had put forward his own sweeping health reform bill. It would have created a true national health insurance system, European-style, run by the government, what gets called "single payer" or Medicare for All.

• 14:09Speaker 06

  And that would put our whole health care system under the heavy hand of the federal government.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  Nixon was clearly not ready to go that far. But in 1974, desperate for anything that could change the course of his doomed presidency, he was willing to go pretty far, farther than many of his own advisers wanted him to go and farther than any other Republican president in recent memory.

• 14:32Speaker 06

  But my colleagues, this I believe.

• 14:34Speaker 00

  In the closing lines of his speech, Nixon explicitly asked the Congress to work with him, to put the chaos of Watergate aside and do something together that they could never do on their own. In that moment, the celestial alignment I talked about started to come into view, that narrow path forward. The question was, would Kennedy join Nixon on that path?

• 15:00Speaker 06

  And in the support of the American people, we can and we will make the year 1974 a year of unprecedented progress and a new prosperity without war in the United States of America.

• 15:19Speaker 00

  After the break, health care reform goes underground.

• 15:38Speaker 00

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• 16:15Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 16:58Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 17:41Malcolm Gladwell?

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• 18:49Speaker 00

  Kennedy saw Nixon's bill as a half-measure, at best, a tweak to the system that rewarded the private insurance companies. At worst, Nixon's bill was a threat, something that could suck energy away from true, meaningful reform. Senator, what does this mean for your bill?

• 19:05Speaker 05

  Well, first of all, we have to understand that--

• 19:08Speaker 00

  So politically speaking, Kennedy had plenty of reasons to deny Nixon's invitation and stick with his own bill.

• 19:14Speaker 05

  I believe that the statements that the president--

• 19:17Speaker 00

  But then, in April, so a couple months after the State of the Union, Ted Kennedy surprised everyone. He linked up with the most powerful congressman in the House, the chair of the Ways and Means Committee, and together they said, "We're willing to work with Nixon's plan." And they announced, "We would like to work with the administration and the president to pass this legislation right away."

• 19:42Speaker 05

  That we're going to build upon the existing strengths of our system.

• 19:45Speaker 00

  Which just sent signals all over the place. Front pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post. We're going to have national-- Health insurance. It seemed like a done deal at that point. Slowly. The issue of national health has been before this country for many years, almost since the turn of the century. That spring, Kennedy himself told reporters, "A new spirit of compromise is in the air." Wow. You know, President, the most powerful senator, all agree. And now all we have to do is find the cure. But the challenge wasn't just Kennedy and Nixon themselves. It was also their more hardline allies, who didn't want them talking in the first place.

• 20:28Speaker 00

  On the right, the pressure came from Nixon's own cabinet, who, again, were not on board with the plan he had just proposed to Congress. And they were all screaming at him. "We just read this thing. This is socialism. What have you done?" Meanwhile, on the left, the pressure came primarily from organized labor. From the unions and from liberal groups saying, "What are you doing?" Remember, Nixon was wounded at this point. Impeachment hearings were about to begin. He was fighting for his political survival. And you want to throw this guy a line? You want to work with his plan?

• 21:06Speaker 00

  With all this pressure building, Kennedy decided to call a meeting with leaders from the United Auto Workers and AFL-CIO to try and bring them along. The tricky part of this is that for many working people, getting health insurance was a big part of the reason to join a union and support your union. So for the big labor groups, any kind of health reform was bound to be a sensitive issue.

• 21:32Speaker 00

  Now, those labor leaders were in Kennedy's office, a whole group of them, and they were furious. The way they saw it, Democrats would probably win a landslide in that year's midterms. They could soon have big majorities in both houses. Nixon could be gone entirely, and that would be the time to pursue true reform. Not this hodgepodge compromise Nixon was offering.

• 21:57Speaker 00

  Kennedy began fuming, and he grabbed a copy of the Congressional Directory and just started reading out the names of all the senators who would never support anything like a single-payer plan, asking again and again, "What are you going to do about him? And him? And him?"

• 22:15Speaker 00

  Finally, one of the top lobbyists in the room hurled back an almost unthinkable insult, which was also a threat. He said to Ted Kennedy, "You are, quote, 'a traitor to labor for even entertaining a deal with Nixon.'"

• 22:31Speaker 00

  At that, Kennedy stood and opened the door for his guest to leave, saying, "Well, you're just going to have to call me a traitor."

• 22:44Speaker 00

  What Kennedy understood was that desperation, Nixon's desperation, could be the key ingredient for dealmaking. It forced him to do something rather than nothing. But the negotiations would have to go underground. So we formed a secret work group.

• 23:06Speaker 00

  One day in June of 1974, Stuart Altman took a short cab ride to the corner of Third Street and A Street, St. Mark's Episcopal Church. He paused for a moment to glance around and make sure no one was on the street who might recognize him. Then he stepped through a side door of the church and down a steep flight of stairs to a room known as the pub. They actually, at night, serve beer. Remember, Altman was one of Nixon's health aides, and there waiting for him in the empty pub was a top health aide for Ted Kennedy. Given the level of tension between these two men and the forces pulling them apart, this was like sending a secret envoy to the Soviet Union, top secret.

• 23:50Speaker 00

  We met in the basement to not have all these people down our throats. So the two aides got to work, trying to hone in on that acceptable balance of government control and free competition. To see if we could find common ground. But outside that church basement, the time for a deal was running out. Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President? Watergate was now a national obsession. Formal impeachment hearings were underway in the House and broadcast straight into American living rooms.

• 24:24Speaker 06

  Those who wanted seats had waited through the night on--

• 24:26Speaker 00

  The story was everywhere, all consuming.

• 24:29Speaker 06

  And so there is tonight a real persistent and substantial question of whether the President can, in fact, carry out his responsibilities.

• 24:45Speaker 00

  Somehow, the secret church meetings continued through June and into July, with the two sides inching ever closer together on a health care bill. Even as Ted Jr. received his cancer treatment and began to recover, even as Nixon's Oval Office tapes were handed over to prosecutors down at St. Mark's, they were talking about payroll taxes and insurance rules. Because Altman and others could still see the historic opportunity, the narrow opening before them. You're never going to see anything more liberal than this. This is the best health insurance plan you're ever going to get. I said, "We got to get this done."

• 25:35Speaker 00

  As late as July 8, 1974, one month before Nixon's resignation, Kennedy was still on the phone with Nixon's Health Secretary, who was still telling him, "A deal is possible. If you get it to his desk, Nixon will sign it." But soon after that call, Kennedy sat down with his top aide, the one in those basement negotiations, and they truly took stock. It was a tough situation. Kennedy was looking at how much ground he had given up already, how far there was still to go, and how fiercely his own allies were trying to pull him back. He said to his aide, "They're ready to crucify me out there."

• 26:18Speaker 00

  For Kennedy, it ended quietly. There simply was no next meeting, no next phone call. He just let it go.

• 26:30Speaker 06

  Good evening. This is the 37th time I have spoken to you from this office.

• 26:37Speaker 00

  On August 8, Nixon addressed the nation directly. This was more than two years after a group of burglars was arrested at the Watergate Hotel, and finally, the never-ending drama was over. Nixon was resigning.

• 26:52Speaker 06

  As I recall, the high hopes for America with which we began this second term, I feel a great sadness that I will not be here in this office, working on your behalf, to achieve those hopes in the next two and a half years. May God's grace be with you in all the days ahead.

• 27:21Speaker 00

  That day in August of 74, a doorway closed, and it stayed closed for a long time. Health insurance went kaput. It just disappeared.

• 27:39Speaker 00

  How did Ted Kennedy reflect back on the summer of 1974? I got to meet him, and he said several times, "I thought we were going to do it, Stuart. I thought we were going to make it. I'm-- we should have done it. We should have got it done."

• 28:03Speaker 00

  Many years later, in a speech, Kennedy said, "To every cause, there is a moment." But how can you know it's the moment when you're in it? How could Kennedy have known that he would never again get an opportunity this good, a chance to pass something so ambitious? How could he have known that after Watergate, trust in government would only fall, that the appetite for new government programs would only shrink, and that with time, bipartisanship itself would only get weaker? How could Kennedy have known he would spend the next 30 years fighting tooth and nail to get even close to what Nixon was offering?

• 28:47Speaker 00

  Of course, he couldn't.

• 28:51Speaker 00

  Kennedy would say many times that failing to seize that opportunity with Nixon was the greatest regret of his political life.

• 28:59Speaker 04

  Several years later, he said, "We should have jumped on that."

• 29:03Speaker 00

  He told Barbara Suleodis the same thing. It haunted him.

• 29:08Speaker 04

  He just regretted that he couldn't get it done.

• 29:15Speaker 00

  But Ted Kennedy, over his long career in politics, would get another shot at his dream, a moment when the planets once again aligned, when an unlikely partner once again-- reached out and when Kennedy would once again have to choose whether to make a deal.

• 29:42Speaker 00

  My name is Ian Cosse, and in the new season of the Big Dig podcast, we tell the story of that second shot, the one Kennedy would not miss, the one that would transform American healthcare forever. And no, I'm not talking about Obamacare, at least not quite yet. I'm talking about a little statewide healthcare bill here in Massachusetts that was the template and inspiration for Obamacare. To me, this is one of the great undertold stories in our healthcare debate today. I mean, where did the actual ideas in the Affordable Care Act come from? Why was that the moment they exploded onto the national stage? And why did they become so deeply, deeply divisive?

• 30:26Speaker 00

  Follow those questions far enough, and you will find yourself, like me, in Massachusetts.

• 30:41Speaker 00

  In part two, Ted Kennedy meets his new negotiating partner, and not on the best of terms.

• 30:47Speaker 06

  Senator Kennedy, my impression has been that you have followed a campaign of trying to divert the voters' attention from the issues at hand and instead making personal attacks on me.

• 30:55Speaker 00

  His name is Mitt Romney.

• 30:57Speaker 06

  When will this end? Now, let me stop.

• 31:02Speaker 00

  To hear that story, search for The Big Dig wherever you listen. The new season is called Mitt and Ted.

• 31:53Speaker 00

  The Big Dig is produced by Isabel Hibbard and myself, Ian Cosse. It's edited by Lacey Roberts. The editorial supervisor is Azita Garamani, with support from Ryan Alderman. The executive producer is Devon Maverick Roberts. If you want to hear the other seasons of this podcast, produced by the same team, just search for The Big Dig wherever you listen, and you should see, at the very least, seasons one, two, and three, as well as four. Archival sound for this episode came from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, as well as the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. The artwork is by Bill Miller. Our closing song is "Things Will Be Different" by The Shods. The Big Dig is a production of GBH

• 32:38Speaker 00

  News and distributed by PRX.

• 33:05Malcolm Gladwell?

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