“It can, however, be argued strongly that what happened on that fateful night ensured that Ted Kennedy would never be President of the US. Chappaquiddick hovered over the remainder of his career like a thunder cloud.”
Fr Kevin Hegarty EARLY in the 1960’s President John F. Kennedy announced that the US would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. In July 1969, as astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin prepared to make landfall on the moon, the late President’s brother, Ted, was embroiled in a horrifying drama.
On July 18 he had taken part in a regatta off Martha’s Vineyard, one of a group of Massachusetts islands. At the end of the competition he adjourned to nearby Chappaquiddick Island for a party arranged by a cousin in a remote cottage. Among the guests were a number of young women who had worked on Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign. The purpose of the party was to thank them for their contribution.
Near midnight Kennedy left the cottage with one of the women, Mary Jo Kopechne, to take her to the Edgartown ferry so she could return to her hotel. Kennedy, however missed the main road, drove down a narrow dirt track and tumbled into 10 feet of water.
Kennedy managed to escape from the car and declared afterwards that he made several attempts to rescue Kopechne. He then returned to the cottage and sought help from his cousin and her friend. Ten hours elapsed, however, before he reported the accident to the police.
There was an aura of a cover-up in the response of the authorities. The suspicion lingers, like a limpet on a rock, that the Kennedy family used its influence to ensure that Ted was not indicted.
The inquiry was held in private. The judge ruled that Kennedy, “was probably guilty of criminal conduct” but the matter was not taken any further.
Kennedy later sought to explain his conduct in a television speech, described by one of his biographers, Joe McGinnis, as “perhaps the most wretched public address ever given by a prominent political figure!”
Should such a tragedy occur today it would probably end the political career of the politician involved. Much questioning of politicians has become more intensive. The public demand for accountability is greater. Deference has been shown the door.
It can, however, be argued strongly that what happened on that fateful night ensured that Ted Kennedy would never be President of the US. Chappaquiddick hovered over the remainder of his career like a thunder cloud, always ready to erupt, when it was reported that he was considering a presidential run. By 1985 Kennedy recognised this when he stated that, “the pursuit of the presidency is not my life. Public service is.”
He disproved, however, F Scott Fitzgerald’s aphorism that there are no second acts in American lives. His friend, Jack Newfield, a journalist, has written that his career became, “an atonement for one night of indefensible behaviour”.
Was it right that he got a second chance? The stronger public requirement for political accountability is one of the positive developments of recent years. I believe, however, that, when the pursuit of accountability becomes relentless, it can lose sight of the ideal of forgiveness and the possibility of rehabilitation.
Nothing can fully salve the pain of the Kopechne family about the tragic death of Mary Jo, or justify the moral failure of Ted Kennedy’s response to the accident. Yet, over the decades that followed Chappaquiddick, he made an immense contribution to the betterment of American society,. In the words of President Obama, he became, “the greatest legislator of our time”, playing a part in the enactment of almost a thousand laws.
Kennedy understood that a democratic nation is at its best when it actualises its ideals in active concern for the deprived, the excluded, the vulnerable and the dispossessed. He helped enact a raft of civil rights legislation. Health care, education, immigration reform, homosexual legal reform and safety at work were high on his list of priorities.
Kennedy’s commitment in these areas was remarkable for a man born into wealth. Yet deeply embedded in the Kennedy psyche is an understanding of the pain of exclusion. The family had to fight its way to prominence in the adversarial landscape of white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Boston. Throughout the 19th century and for part of the 20th, Roman Catholics experienced the disdain of the world.
The first Roman Catholic to fight a U.S. Presidential campaign, Alfred E. Smith, in 1928, saw his campaign collapse under the weight of racial and religious bigotry.
The Kennedys made that momentous journey from the coffin ships of the 1800’s to the White House in 1960. The central impulse of Ted Kennedy’s political career was to pave the way for others who were similarly excluded. It is significant that his last major political act was to endorse Barack Obama for the US Presidency, thus helping the first African-American attain the office.
Ted Kennedy lived a life of glamour and tragedy. Despite his personal failings it is fair to conclude that in his 77 years he, in the words of WB Yeats, “something to perfection brought”.
