Things We Don't Need in Virginia

Oh, great. Look what the University of Virginia will have available....

The Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia is to announce plans today to record an oral history of the life and career of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, a six-year, multimillion-dollar project that is the center's first effort to chronicle the history of a sitting senator.

Kennedy, who suggested the project and will raise money to cover its $3.5 million cost, will sit for 75 hours of talks with the center, which also plans to interview more than 100 of the veteran senator's former and current staff members, colleagues from both sides of the aisle, family, and other notable figures who have known him.

While the center has completed an oral history of President Jimmy Carter and is completing similar projects for presidents George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Bill Clinton, it has never made a senator the subject of a historical study. Kennedy will be able to provide insights into the presidency of his brother, John F. Kennedy.

Although the senator, who earned his law degree at the University of Virginia, will raise money to fund the project, he will not control who is interviewed or what questions are asked, said Stephen Knott, associate professor at the Miller Center.

Historians said they could not recall a case in which such an exhaustive project was undertaken for a senator, especially a sitting senator.

''This is very unusual. Even an important senator or president will write a memoir or do some interviews with a ghost writer, and that is basically it," said historian Michael R. Beschloss. But the oral history project Kennedy will participate in ''is just the way an historian would like to see it done -- without fear or favor," he said.

Kennedy said the project does not presage the close of his 42-year Senate career. He intends to run for a ninth term in 2006, he said.

More good news at the end there. Look, maybe Kennedy will raise the money to pay for the project in full, but I tend to doubt it. Besides, couldn't he raise $3.5 million to make the bridges in Virginia safer?

Oh, yeah, like you weren't thinking the same thing.