Last survivor of Camelot shadowed by dark clouds
Related Articles
Wednesday May 21 2008
HE MAY be the last surviving champion of Camelot, America's most glittering political dynasty, but along the way Senator Kennedy has rubbed shoulders with fortune and misfortune in equal measure.
He spent much of his early political career trying to escape from the dark shadows of Chappaquiddick, a scandal that would have finished a lesser man.
The fact that he survived to become one of only six men in American history to have served 40 years in the upper house of the US legislature says much about his pedigree.
But there were always those brooding dark clouds over the political landscape. The press never allowed the spectre of those hugely damning events at Cape Cod fade from the memory for long.
Removing the stain of the "Chappaquiddick affair" took all the energy that America's first family of politics could summon.
Ironically it was in Cape Cod, near the Kennedy family compound where Mr Kennedy was taken ill, that the then 37-year-old Kennedy drove his car off a bridge after a late night party in July 1969. His companion Mary Jo Kopechne drowned because, critics maintain, Mr Kennedy panicked and left her in the sinking car.
He pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and received a two-year suspended sentence.
Fecklessness
Nor was it the first sign of fecklessness. "Ted'', the youngest of the nine Kennedy children, was expelled from Harvard University in 1951 for cheating in a Spanish exam.
That did not prevent his election in 1962 to the seat in the Senate vacated by his brother John when he became president.
But Chappaquiddick stalked his life, almost certainly deterring him from running for president in either 1972 or 1976.
His run for White House in 1980 was marred not only by a revival of questions about Chappaquiddick but also by his failure fully to explain why he wanted the job.
There was a sense that he felt his status as a Kennedy, the last surviving of four brothers, including President John Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1963, and Robert Kennedy, who was assassinated in 1968, was qualification enough.
Known by his pet name "Teddy," he is a liberal icon, but also is known as a consummate dealmaker, able to reach across party lines to get things done.
He endorsed Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination this year. Many saw this as a passing of the torch to the future generation.
He is the father of US Representive Patrick Kennedy of Rhode Island and has two other children from his marriage to Joan Bennett Kennedy. He took on the role of surrogate father to his slain brothers' 13 children. He married Victoria Reggie in 1992.
One of his more famous statements came in his eulogy to his brother Robert. "My brother should 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."
- Dean Gray
