Edward Kennedy

“He often felt inferior to his two politically ambitious brothers and once lamented ‘the disadvantage of my position is being constantly compared with two brothers of such superior ability’.”


Edwin McGreal

CHAPPAQUIDDICK. It is the asterisk that will follow all of the late Ted Kennedy’s fine achievements.
While Kennedy will be rightly praised for his excellent contribution as a US senator for 47 years, for his prowess as a legislator, as an orator and, in Ireland, for his huge input to the peace process, the incident on Chappaquiddick Island in 1969 casts a long shadow and severely limited his hopes of becoming US President.
He left a party on the island with Mary Jo Kopechne, a campaign secretary during his late brother Robert’s presidential campaign the year before. Driving away his car went off a bridge and into a pond. He swam to safety but failed to report the incident to police until the following morning at which stage Ms Kopechne’s body was found in the submerged car.
Allegations that he had been involved in immoral conduct and under the influence of alcohol abounded, all rejected by Ted Kennedy.
He admitted his failure to contact the police was ‘indefensible’ and wondered ‘whether some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys’.
It was yet another unfortunate twist in an incredibly devastating family history. That Chappaquiddick was of Ted’s own doing is granted but tragedy was never far away from the children of Joseph and Rose Kennedy. It defined their lives.
Of the nine children only former US Ambassador to Ireland, Jean Kennedy Smith is still alive. Ted Kennedy died of cancer, his sisters Patricia and, just fourteen days before Ted, Eunice died in old age.
It was, however, the death of Presidential candidate Robert, whom Ted was extremely close to, in 1968 that left the youngest Kennedy particularly devastated. A Kennedy aide said after seeing Ted at the hospital where Robert lay mortally wounded that ‘I have never, ever, nor do I expect ever, to see a face more in grief’.
Ted’s moving eulogy to Robert at one of his family’s darkest days is, conversely, considered one of his finest hours.
“My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life; to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.
“Those of us who loved him and who take him to his rest today, pray that what he was to us and what he wished for others will some day come to pass for all the world. As he said many times, in many parts of this nation, to those he touched and who sought to touch him: ‘Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not’.”
It was a magnificent oration.
Ted baulked at taking over from Robert as the Democratic nominee for President. In fact he often felt inferior to his two politically ambitious brothers. An average student, Ted was expelled from Harvard in 1951 for getting a friend to sit his Spanish exam for him and once lamented ‘the disadvantage of my position is being constantly compared with two brothers of such superior ability’.
In time he would move from the shadow of his brothers and forge an excellent reputation in his own right. As a legislator he was out on his own, authoring more than 2,500 pieces of legislation, a champion of civil rights and the health and economic wellbeing of the American people.
It is through his sustained efforts in Northern Ireland that we, as a nation, owe him greatest thanks. With many Irish-Americans somewhat alarmingly receptive towards militant republicanism, Ted Kennedy aligned himself with John Hume and sought constitutional reform. He was a major player in the 70s, 80s and 90s as incremental steps were taken.
Crucially he took a leap of faith by advising US President Bill Clinton to grant Gerry Adams a US Visa. It enraged the British but Adams credited the move as breaking forward an IRA ceasefire by at least a year. It was a bold move by all parties concerned but Ted Kennedy deserves special credit.