Get Ready for KKT

As she has assailed a lack of discipline and "moral collapse," Townsend has often sounded like that liberal bete noire William J. Bennett-a fact with which she is obviously uncomfortable. "Before you dismiss [character education] as a William Bennettesque ploy . . .," she once felt compelled to say. Being a Kennedy, evidently, means never having to eat at the same table as the Right.

When Bill Clinton was elected president, Townsend went to work in the Justice Department, as a mid-level employee, but in 1994 she got the call from Parris Glendening to be his running mate in Maryland. Her job, mainly, was to attract black support and raise money. Her magnetic cousin John held three fundraisers for the ticket. KKT was, for the most part, confined to the sidelines, still a hazardous speaker and a clumsy campaigner. The Democrats won in a squeaker, amid (credible) Republican cries of voter fraud. KKT became instantly the most famous lieutenant governor in the country.

Over the next four years, Townsend developed into, if not quite a swan, a perfectly presentable politician. Off came her heavy glasses; in went contact lenses. She acquired a smart hairstyle and stylish clothes. She seems to have received some speech training. She submitted to this makeover not because she suffered from insecurities, but because her appearance had become a distraction-women, in particular, had tended to be cutting about her. Even spruced up, however, Townsend had a bit of trouble gaining respect: Many snickered at her as a "lightweight," an "airhead," a "scatterbrain." Some in the legislature named her "The Space Cadet." Her defenders, however, say that her enthusiasm and guilelessness must not be mistaken for ditziness-she is a gregarious and open woman with a serious mind.

In the 1998 reelection campaign, Townsend was no longer a bit player, but the leading lady: Glendening leaned on her heavily. She smoothed over relations with the White House when the governor had the bad taste to criticize Clinton for perjury and degeneracy. The ticket also played the race card in a gross and scandalous manner, portraying the Republican nominee as all but a cross-burner. The Democrats won again, this time by a comfortable margin, with no need of cheating.

KKT is the ultimate "goo goo," or good-government, type. She is the kind of person who is forever calling on others to be "involved." (Scarcely can she speak a sentence without using the word two or three times.) She has a missionary's zeal about government and citizenship.

She is a fervent proponent of voluntarism and "community service." Almost daily she recycles that quotation falsely attributed to Tocqueville, about how America is great because it is good. While a proud, and often a sharply partisan, Democrat, she does not regard herself as ideological, but rather as "results-driven." She is pro- choice on abortion and in favor of capital punishment.

Assigned the role of Maryland anti-crime czar, she has been notably hardline. She has championed something called the Police Corps, patterned after the Peace Corps and ROTC: In return for scholarships, students pledge to serve four years as policemen. She is as likely to emphasize the necessity of punishment as the sadness of "root causes." As an anti-drug warrior, she is implacable, clearly motivated by her brothers' (well-publicized) struggles with addiction.