article_snippet: Back in 1983, Sen. Edward Kennedy tried to set up a personal diplomatic channel with the Soviet Union -- effectively sidestepping President Ronald Reagan.
article_snippet: Working through proxies, Sen. Edward Kennedy suggested that Sen. Edward Kennedy visit Moscow to meet with the communist leadership and offered to help the communist leadership make the communist leadership case to the American people as to why the communist leadership preferred dialogue over confrontation.
article_snippet: One might argue that the senator was motivated by high ideals: the senator had a clear record of campaigning to reduce Cold War tensions and thought President Ronald Reagan was mishandling the Soviets.
article_snippet: On more than one occasion, Kennedy politicized foreign policy while in the Senate.
article_snippet: In my book on the 1980 Democratic presidential primaries, I note that Kennedy opposed Jimmy Carter's hard-line stance on the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan -- a position that was well-intentioned, prophetic and somewhat advantageous to Kennedy's campaign for the Democratic nomination.
article_snippet: The extreme lengths that Kennedy and Richard Nixon went to behind the scenes underlines the point that foreign policy has always been a deeply partisan matter that can often end in a challenge to executive authority.