Joining Mr Kennedy was Menzies Campbell, Mr Dewar's university friend, and the Lib Dems' foreign affairs spokesman, who walked beside former Tory minister and Tory MSP for the Lothians region, Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, another of Mr Dewar's lifelong friends.
After earlier securing the go-ahead from the European Union, on condition the combined group sells its Dewar's and Ainslie scotch brands, this week the group won approval from the US authorities, though it too demanded concessions - the sale of Dewar's and of Bombay gin.
The money Mr Dewar's department now gets from Westminster will be 97% of the Scottish parliament's budget.
This, however, may turn out to be the least of Mr Dewar's headaches.
As leader of the opposition, it is his job to show up what he considers the incompetence of Mr Dewar's government.
In contrast, the Labour group has become increasingly fractious and rebellious, a discord which is in danger of intensifying with Mr Dewar's incapacity.
Yet Mr Dewar's scheme is full of difficulties: who decides, for instance, that a landowner is bad, rather than just not very good?
But the coalition-saving deal coincided with a personal scandal surrounding one of Mr Dewar's political advisers, which promptly displaced it from the local headlines.
Nato Secretary General Lord Robertson and Douglas Alexander, MP for Paisley South and the son of Mr Dewar's close friend the Rev Douglas Alexander were also there.
Also present were Mr Dewar's official spokesman David Whitton, the Trade Minister Helen Liddell, Labour MP Tam Dalyell and High Court judge and former Lord Advocate Lord Hardie.
In fact, Mr Reid will still have a couple of junior ministers to boss around, even after July 1st when Mr Dewar's administration formally takes charge of domestic Scottish matters.
And yet, despite Mr Dewar's optimism, the fact remains that three-fifths of Scottish voters are, at the moment, opposed to Labour's plans, if those preferring independence are added to those wanting no change.
MSPs who had debated the bill in three parliamentary committees ignored Mr Dewar's demand to junk the bill, voting to carry on with it and let the executive worry about alternative means of debt recovery.
This issue, despite the 24-page coalition agreement negotiated between Mr Dewar and Jim Wallace, the Scottish Lib Dem leader (and Mr Dewar's deputy in the new government), still has the potential to sink the joint administration.
But the Parliament itself is so young, and the constitution so untested, that when Mr Salmond fires his big guns at Mr Dewar's government, he is in danger of knocking holes in the reputation of the legislature itself.
Some Liberal Democrats say that if the fees are not abolished, their party will have no choice but to save face by quitting Mr Dewar's coalition and forcing Labour to govern as a minority, as it already does in Wales.
The danger of this happening will become acute on December 21st, when a Scottish businessman, Andrew Cubie, is due, at Mr Dewar's request, to publish a report about the future of university tuition fees, a subject which accident as much as design has elevated into a difference of high principle between Labour and the Lib Dems.
The Scottish Parliament's inaugural First Minister, Donald Dewar, is among the university's alumni, as are other top Scottish politicians, such as Winnie Ewing, John Smith, Liam Fox and Charles Kennedy.
Some Labour politicians, most notably Donald Dewar, the party's chief whip, are still arguing for this approach.
Jim Martin, chauffeur to Scotland's First Minister Donald Dewar and other Scottish ministers, received an MBE for his services to the Scottish Executive.
Even if such a wording were possible (which it is not, given the nature of Britain's constitution), Mr Dewar still has problems with writing the rules by which the parliament can use its intended power to vary basic-rate income tax by up to 3p.
When an acclaimed climber, Jamie Matthewson, is killed near his home, his estranged childhood friend, Rob Dewar, heads immediately for north Wales to visit Matthewson's widow, Ruth.
So Mr Dewar promptly announced he was handing the whole caboodle to the Parliament's standards committee for an inquiry.
Indeed, given the murky gender politics that Labour's candidate-selection process is liable to throw up, Mr Dewar may find that his choice of site for the new parliament is more laden with historical allusion than he imagined.
They have continued - with the latest story telling of open hostility at the party conference in Bournemouth with Dr Reid accusing Mr Dewar of "betrayal" over his call for a public inquiry into his son Kevin's involvement in the lobbygate affair.
Not surprisingly, Donald Dewar, the Scottish secretary, who up to now had seemed a safe bet as Scotland's prime minister in the parliament which he masterminded, is rattled.
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