Edward Moore Kennedy (1932 -

2009)
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Foi o último da dinastia dos irmãos Kennedy e, ao longo de quase cinco

décadas, marcou a política norte-americana ao defender inúmeras causas
sociais e ajudar a aprovar leis que afectam todos os americanos. Foi também
um dos mais brilhantes, competenetes e hábeis oradores do Senado,
conseguindo negociar muitas das suas iniciativas com senadores republicanos
e vê-las aprovadas. O segredo do sucesso - trabalhar cooperativamente com os
conservadores – valeu-lhe a alcunha de Leão Liberal do Senado.

Em Junho de 1964, He spent six months in hospital, totally immobilised, but

refused to abandon his political career and in 1964 won re-election to the
Senate with an unprecedented 74 per cent of the votes. almost killed in 1964,
in a plane crash that left him with permanent back and neck problems.

sustained six spinal fractures and two broken ribs. He spent six months in
hospital and never wholly shook off the effects of the injuries

Há 40 anos, a sua vida deu uma reviravolta com um acidente que o perseguiria
sempre: em Julho de 1969,

Edward Moore Kennedy nasceu em Boston, a 22 de Fevereiro de 1932, e foi o

mais novo de nove irmãos. A sua família

Quando lhe foi diagnosticado um Glioblastoma – a forma mais mortal de cancro

no cérero - Ted manteve-se na política

Kennedy: morte encerra 47 anos de vitórias e polémicas

A morte do senador Edward M. Kennedy, aos 77 anos, por um câncer no
cérebro, no fim da noite de ontem (horário local), interrompeu uma legendária
carreira política de quase cinco décadas nos Estados Unidos. Representando o
Estado de Massachusetts desde 1962, Kennedy batalhou por avanços em
causas liberais, apesar das tragédias pessoais e controvérsias nas quais esteve
envolvido. Os discursos apaixonados do membro do Partido Democrata
resultaram em seguidores e o marcaram como um dos melhores oradores do
Senado norte-americano.
Uma importante força na aprovação de leis marcantes relativas aos direitos
civis, ao sistema de saúde, à educação e ao combate à pobreza, Kennedy era
conhecido como excelente negociador, capaz de trabalhar com habilidade por
todo o espectro político a fim de aprovar os projetos em que acreditava. Entre
1967 e 1971, ocupou o posto de auxiliar da maioria no Senado, encarregando-
se de garantir o quórum da situação e negociar com os colegas. Em seguida,
integrou uma série de poderosos comitês da Casa.
Como membro de uma das famílias mais admiradas e monitoradas dos EUA,
Ted Kennedy recebeu tanto a simpatia do público quando o irmão, o presidente
John F. Kennedy, foi assassinado em 1963, quanto críticas após bater o carro
em Chappaquiddick, Massachusetts, em um acidente que resultou na morte da
passageira de seu veículo. Ele concorreu à presidência em 1980, mas perdeu
as primárias democratas para Jimmy Carter.
Nas mais de quatro décadas em que ocupou um assento no Senado, Kennedy
ajudou a reduzir a idade mínima para o voto de 21 anos para 18 anos,
estabeleceu o programa "Meals on Wheels", que entrega refeições para
pessoas em dificuldades, e lutou por financiamentos estudantis mais
vantajosos e pelo aumento do salário mínimo.
"Há uma lista enorme de coisas que não estariam lá se não fosse por ele",
notou Adam Clymer, ex-chefe de sucursal em Washington do jornal "The New
York Times", autor de uma biografia sobre Ted Kennedy. "Eu defendo que ele é
o maior senador desde Henry Clay", apontou, referindo-se a um senador
atuante na primeira metade do século 19, conhecido como "O Grande
Pacificador".
Esporte de contato
Nascido em Boston, em 22 de fevereiro de 1932, Ted Kennedy foi o mais jovem
de nove crianças. Criado em Bronxville, Nova York, frequentou a Universidade
Harvard, onde jogou no time de futebol americano e chegou a ser suspenso por
colar no exame de espanhol. Serviu no Exército por dois anos, entre 1951 e
1953, antes de voltar a Harvard, onde se graduou em 1956. Mais tarde,
Kennedy obteve o diploma de Direito pela Universidade da Virginia, em 1959.
Recebeu inclusive uma proposta para integrar o time profissional Green Bay
Packers após a faculdade, mas optou por outra vida, afirmando que planejava
"ir para outro esporte de contato: a política".
Ao completar 30 anos, a idade mínima para um senador nos EUA, Kennedy
assumiu a vaga deixada dois anos antes por seu irmão, John F. Kennedy,
quando este se tornou presidente. Da década de 1960 em diante, lutou por
algumas causas caras aos irmãos e por outras que se tornaram suas marcas: a
melhoria no sistema de saúde, na questão dos direitos civis, educação e
melhorias para os norte-americanos de baixa renda.
Kennedy ajudou a aprovar leis voltadas para os deficientes, a melhoria na
nutrição de mulheres e crianças e lutou por igualdade de oportunidades para
ambos os sexos. "Não houve ninguém mais compromissado ou valioso para a
agenda do comitê de direitos civis que Ted Kennedy", resumiu Hilary Shelton,
diretora do escritório de Washington da Associação Nacional para o Avanço das
Pessoas Negras.
''Leão Liberal''
Os avanços renderam ao político o apelido de "Leão Liberal". Os sucessos de
Kennedy estavam geralmente relacionados à competência dele em trabalhar
cooperativamente com seus colegas conservadores. Em 2001, Kennedy teve
papel crucial na aprovação da lei chamada "No Child Left Behind Act", durante
o governo de George W. Bush. A importante lei para o setor de educação
estabelece testes para se comprovar o desempenho dos alunos, e foi uma das
que rapidamente provocou controvérsias entre professores e sindicatos.
"Este foi um compromisso estabelecido entre um Congresso dominado pelos
democratas e um presidente republicano", lembrou Paul Peterson, professor de
Educação da Universidade Harvard. "Alguém tinha que estabelecer esse
compromisso, e o senador Kennedy teve um papel importante nisso."
Pessoa Pública
A vida pessoal de Ted Kennedy nunca esteve distante dos holofotes,
particularmente após os assassinatos de seus irmãos John F. Kennedy, em
1963, e Robert, um ex-procurador-geral e senador, em 1968. Nesse intervalo,
Ted Kennedy teve uma fratura na coluna, durante um acidente de
avião que matou o piloto e um de seus assessores. No mais complexo
acidente de sua carreira, conduzia um carro que caiu de uma ponte em
Chappaquiddick, em julho de 1969. O acidente matou a passageira, Mary
Jo Kopechne, e também todas as possibilidades de o político concorrer à
presidência, segundo analistas.
Kennedy também foi duramente criticado por seu silêncio incomum durante as
audiências de confirmação para a Suprema Corte do juiz Clarence Thomas,
anteriormente acusado de abuso sexual pela professora de Direito Anita Hill,
em 1991. Mais cedo naquele ano, Kennedy havia ido a um bar em Palm Beach
com seu filho e um primo, este posteriormente inocentado em um processo por
estupro. Kennedy teve que testemunhar no caso e isso provavelmente o
colocou em uma saia-justa para levantar o tema durante as audiências.
Ted Kennedy primeiro casou com Joan Bennett, em 1958. Com ela, teve três
crianças, antes de se divorciar em 1981. Mais tarde, ele se uniu com a
advogada Vicki Reggie, em 1992. Ao longo de seus triunfos políticos e
tragédias pessoais, os discursos de Kennedy durante convenções, campanhas
e no Senado definiram sua visão sobre liberalismo e inspiraram muitos
seguidores. Em 1968, Kennedy se encarregou do discurso em homenagem a
Robert, após a morte do irmão.
Hoje, entre os que lamentaram o falecimento estavam os ex-presidentes
Ronald Reagan e George W. Bush, além do atual, Barack Obama. O líder da
maioria no Senado, Harry Reid, classificou Kennedy como "o patriarca" do
partido. "O rugir do Leão Liberal pode ter se calado, mas seu sonho nunca
morrerá." Com informações da Dow Jones.

28 de agosto de 2009, 09:27 | Online

Nixon espionou Ted Kennedy em busca de provas de traição
Ex-presidente contratava agentes secretos para tornar públicos possíveis
escândalos do senador
WASHINGTON - Gravações divulgadas pela Casa Branca ao longo dos anos
revelam que o ex-presidente dos EUA Richard Nixon contratou agentes do
serviço secreto americano para espionar o senador Edward Kennedy antes das
eleições de 1972. Kennedy morreu na terça-feira, 25, aos 77 anos, em
decorrência de um câncer cerebral.
Nixon considerava o ex-senador uma ameaça tão grande que tentou flagrar
Kennedy traindo sua esposa na época, Joan Kennedy. "Você tem alguém do
serviço secreto que pode conseguir para mim?", perguntou o ex-presidente a
John Ehrlichman, um de seus homens de confiança, que respondeu
afirmativamente. "Coloque um... não, coloque dois agentes para espioná-lo.
Isso poderia ser muito útil", disse Nixon.
A preocupação do ex-presidente era flagrar Kennedy com outra mulher que
não fosse sua esposa. Nixon investiu na ideia após o acidente de
Chappaquiddick, quando o ex-senador dirigia o carro que caiu em um canal e
matou a ex-secretária de seu irmão Mary Jo Kopechne, com quem foi acusado
de ter "conduta imoral", sugerindo que traía Joan.
Os agentes contratados por Nixon espionaram Kennedy até no Havaí, enquanto
estava de férias. "Ele faz alguma coisa?", perguntou Nixon a seus homens.
"Não, ele está limpo. Foi para o Havaí por conta própria. Está na cabana de um
rapaz e está se comportando muito bem", respondeu Ehrlichamn. Toda essa
espionagem durou até o escândalo de Watergate, que levou Nixon à renúncia.
Segundo Luke Nichter, funcionário da Casa Branca responsável pelas
gravações de Nixon e atualmente professor-assistente de História em uma
universidade do Texas, o ex-presidente "nunca esqueceu sua derrota
humilhante para John F. Kennedy nas eleições presidenciais de 1960. Nixon
não queria simplesmente vencer Ted Kennedy, ele queria destruí-lo". De
acordo com Nichter, as gravações mostram que Nixon não queria deixar
nenhuma chance para Kennedy, que disputaria as eleições de 1972 pelo
Partido Democrata, o que não foi possível por conta do acidente em
Chappaquiddick.
O ex-funcionário da Casa Branca exibe e analisa as gravações em seu site
Nixontapes.org. O material revela um dos maiores casos de intriga nos
bastidores da política dos EUA.

26 de agosto de 2009, 10:00 | Online

Câncer põe fim a trajetória do 'último Kennedy'
Senador democrata Ted Kennedy morre aos 77 anos após luta contra o câncer
cerebral
WASHINGTON - Edward Kennedy, o último sobrevivente dos três irmãos da
dinastia que deixaram um legado histórico nas últimas décadas da política
americana, morreu de câncer aos 77 anos na terça-feira, 25. Com uma carreira
de quase meio século no Senado, Ted Kennedy foi uma voz dominante nas
discussões sobre saúde pública, direitos civis, guerra e paz, entre outros
assuntos. Para o público dos EUA, porém, ele ficou mais conhecido como o
último sobrevivente de uma família de políticos progressistas.
Como segundo senador mais antigo dos EUA e um dos maiores ícones liberais
do Partido Democrata, Ted Kennedy participou da elaboração de políticas "que
afetaram virtualmente todo homem, mulher e criança" do país, segundo
definição da revista americana Times, em 2006. Por duas vezes, em 1972 e
1976, Ted Kennedy se negou a concorrer a presidência, apesar do clamor do
Partido Democrata. Ele alegava razões familiares para não se candidatar,
lembrando o assassinato de seus dois irmãos, John e Robert Kennedy.
Ted Kennedy nasceu em Boston, na costa leste americana, em 1932, o mais
novo de uma rica família de origem irlandesa com um pé na política. Seu pai,
Joseph P. Kennedy, foi embaixador americano na Grã-Bretanha antes da
Segunda Guerra Mundial. Ted frequentou escolas privadas e foi admitido na
prestigiada universidade de Harvard em 1950 - de onde foi expulso um ano
depois por tentar burlar as regras durante uma prova de línguas. Foi
readmitido e finalmente se graduou em Direito em 1956.
Em 1960, quando o então senador John F. Kennedy foi eleito presidente dos
Estados Unidos, Edward era demasiado jovem para se candidatar à cadeira do
irmão pelo estado de Massachusetts. Uma brecha na Constituição permitiu que
a família conseguisse suspender até 1962 a realização de uma nova eleição,
possibilitando o primeiro mandato de Edward Kennedy na câmara baixa
americana. A medida suscitou acusações de que o caçula dos Kennedy tivesse
ganhado de bandeja a sua vaga. Mas as dúvidas sobre seu mérito próprio
nesse quesito seriam dirimidas pelas sete reeleições consecutivas, que
tornaram Edward Kennedy um dos três senadores com mais tempo de casa no
Congresso americano.

Tragédia
Foi um dramático evento pessoal - condizente com o histórico de tragédias que
marcaram a família Kennedy - que reduziu as ambições de Ted Kennedy em
relação ao posto mais alto da política americana, no momento em que ele se
tornara o Kennedy mais proeminente.
Cerca de um ano após a morte de Robert Kennedy, em julho de 1969, o
senador Ted estava em uma festa na ilha de Chappaquiddick com um grupo
que incluía seis mulheres que haviam trabalhado na campanha de seu irmão. A
determinada altura, Kennedy deixou a festa para supostamente levar a ex-
secretária de seu irmão, Mary Jo Kopechene, para pegar o barco de volta para
o continente. No meio do caminho, o carro bateu e caiu na água.
Kennedy conseguiu escapar e nadar para a borda, e retornou ao seu hotel sem
dar parte do acidente. Só no dia seguinte pescadores encontraram o carro
submergido, com o corpo de Mary Jo Kopechene ainda dentro. No inquérito
subsequente, houve evidências de que a mulher tivesse permanecido viva por
muitas horas dentro de uma bolha de ar, e de que pudesse ter escapado
tivesse o senador pedido ajuda a tempo. Kennedy assumiu a culpa por deixar a
cena do crime, alegando que estava em choque. Foi condenado a dois meses
de prisão condicional. Questionamentos mais sérios sobre a conduta de Ted
Kennedy e a veracidade de sua versão nunca foram levados adiante.
Em 1980, quando finalmente aceitou concorrer à Presidência, foi derrotado por
Jimmy Carter nas prévias do Partido Democrata. Acredita-se que a derrota
tenha sido profundamente influenciada pelo incidente em Chappaquiddick. Mas
uma campanha má gerenciada e uma entrevista sem brilho na televisão
encerraram as ambições do pré-candidato. Ele se recusou a admitir a derrota e
gerou na convenção democrata daquele ano uma notória divisão partidária.
A mal-sucedida investida presidencial fez Ted Kennedy voltar ao Senado como
um defensor das causas liberais. Apesar do seu histórico católico, ele abraçou
a causa feminista pelo direito ao aborto. Também compôs um grupo de
senadores que defendeu o casamento entre pessoas do mesmo sexo, uma
ideia cujo marco teórico foi desenvolvido em caráter pioneiro no seu Estado
natal, Massachusetts. Ted Kennedy defendeu os direitos dos imigrantes nos
EUA e o controle sobre a posse de armas.

Política externa
Segundo a BBC, seu impacto na política externa americana foi menos
frequente. Nas poucas vezes em que se pronunciou - e se fez ouvir - ele liderou
os esforços dentro do Congresso americano para proibir a venda de armas para
o regime de Augusto Pinochet no Chile e para impor sanções à África do Sul da
era do Apartheid, denunciou a guerra do Vietnã e trabalhou pela paz na Irlanda
do Norte. Em 2002, ele votou contra a guerra do Iraque - atitude que
descreveu depois como "o meu melhor voto em 44 anos no Senado
americano".
Em 2006 a revista Times considerou-o como um dos "dez melhores senadores
americanos" pelo que chamou de "histórico titânico de legislação, que afeta as
vidas de praticamente todo homem, mulher e criança no país".
Mais recentemente, Edward Kennedy foi uma das vozes mais influentes, sendo
um dos primeiro a apoiar a candidatura de Barack Obama à Presidência,
afirmando que o atual presidente ofereceria ao país uma chance de
"reconciliação racial".
Para muitos observadores, se falhou em cumprir as expectativas políticas
colocadas pela sua condição de membro de sua dinastia familiar, Edward
Kennedy deixou em quase meio século de legislação um legado mais
consistente e significativo que seus irmãos.
Desde maio do ano passado, quando foi diagnosticado com um tumor cerebral
maligno, o senador vinha lutando contra o câncer. ma das manifestações
dramáticas da sua luta se deu no início deste ano, durante o almoço de posse
de Obama, quando ele teve uma convulsão e foi levado de maca para um
hospital.

Quatro momentos na vida de Ted Kennedy

1. "Não espero jamais ver novamente um rosto em dor tão profunda", contou
ao Boston Globe Frank Mankiewicz. Era o rosto do jovem senador Edward M.
Kennedy na manhã de 5 de junho de 1968. A morte por assassinato de seu
irmão Robert, candidato à presidência, havia sido anunciada à família havia
minutos. Mankiewicz, filho do roteirista do filme Cidadão Kane, era secretário
de imprensa de Bobby. Aos 36 anos, Ted tinha agora a obrigação de assumir o
comando do clã.
O enterro demorou para acontecer. Da Califórnia, onde o candidato foi abatido,
o corpo foi levado de avião para Nova York. Expuseram-no ao público na
Catedral de St. Patrick por dois dias. Na noite do dia 7, véspera da viagem de
trem a Washington que levaria o caixão para sua missa final e o cemitério, Ted
passou a madrugada dirigindo pelas ruas de Manhattan. Ao seu lado estava o
deputado democrata John Culver, um velho e fiel amigo da família. O jovem
senador permaneceu as horas todas ao volante em silêncio, girando, girando.
Na Catedral de Washington, no dia 8, à missa fúnebre, Ted Kennedy subiu para
ler a despedida da família ao irmão. "Meu irmão não deve ser idealizado, sua
figura aumentada na morte além do que foi em vida", ele disse. "Deve ser
lembrado apenas como um homem bom e decente, que viu o que era errado e
tentou consertá-lo, viu sofrimento e tentou saná-lo, viu guerra e tentou pará-
la." Engasgou apenas no final do discurso, um discurso feito com voz serena,
atenta. Até então, ele era o irmão caçula de dois grandes oradores, John e
Robert. Os EUA reconheceram em Ted um Kennedy naquele momento.
2. A festa era em homenagem à memória de Bobby, pouco mais de um ano
após seu assassinato. Presentes várias moças, quase todas jovens, quase
todas bonitas - gente das boas famílias da Nova Inglaterra. Ted era a estrela. O
cenário, uma ilhota com nome indígena - Chappaquiddick, 'ilha descolada de
outras'. Anos mais tarde, testemunhas lembrariam que álcool foi servido com
fartura. Ted estava animado. Ia bem numa competição de regata, seu esporte
favorito, era bem cotado para sair candidato à Presidência no futuro próximo.
Mary Jo Kopechne queria sair mais cedo - era quase meia-noite. Ted ofereceu-
lhe uma carona de presto e pegou com seu motorista as chaves. Dispensou-o.
Queria ir sozinho. Talvez porque tenha errado o caminho, talvez porque os dois
tivessem mudado de ideia a respeito de para onde ir, Ted foi dar em uma
ponte sem mureta ou cerca que protegesse. O carro mergulhou na água, Ted
escapou. Mary Jo, não.
Ele só procurou a polícia no dia seguinte.
Condenado, perdoado, inocentado. Sempre negou que estivesse embriagado.
Toda a influência da família foi investida no fim de seus problemas com a
Justiça. A morte de Mary Jo, no entanto, e seu estranho comportamento nos
dias seguintes, se firmariam como uma nódoa que impediria para o resto da
vida suas chances de chegar à Casa Branca.
Ted era casado. Também seu casamento não duraria muito mais.
3. Foi em 1972 que Ted fez seu primeiro discurso no Senado contra Londres.
Defendia os católicos irlandeses, republicanos - ele, um Kennedy, um católico
de origem irlandesa, irmão de um presidente da primeira república moderna.
Uma longa relação entre o senador e políticos norte-irlandeses teve início ali.
Não perdia jamais a oportunidade de provocar: quando Margaret Thatcher
aparecia nos EUA, Kennedy vestia gravata verde, símbolo irlandês.
Foi em 1994 que ele teve oportunidade de fazer a diferença. Gerry Adams,
líder do partido Sinn Féin, ligado ao grupo terrorista IRA, queria viajar aos EUA.
John Major, o conservador premiê britânico, era contra. Por tradição, a Casa
Branca negaria o visto. Mas Kennedy foi ao telefone. Bill Clinton era um
presidente jovem, com pouco tempo no poder, ainda hesitante na política
internacional. Não foi na primeira conversa, nem na segunda - mas o velho
político, já veterano, já chamado 'o leão do Senado', o convenceu. Adams foi
aos EUA.
Demorou sete meses desde as conversas em Washington: o IRA anunciou o
cessar-fogo. Não foram negociações simples, mas com o intermédio de Clinton,
a paz veio. "Vejam quão longe vocês chegaram", disse em discurso aos
nacionalistas da Irlanda em 1998. "Vocês são descendentes dos pioneiros que
ajudaram a construir a América e, agora, são os pioneiros que construirão o
futuro desta ilha."
Presente no momento certo, foi seu olhar que percebeu a oportunidade para a
negociação de uma paz que por tanto tempo pareceu impossível.
4. Os analistas tinham poucas dúvidas: Hillary Clinton seria a primeira
presidente mulher dos Estados Unidos. O poder dos Clinton sobre a máquina
do Partido Democrata garantiria sua vitória nas primárias e, dada a
impopularidade de George W. Bush, o candidato republicano tinha poucas
chances.
Aí Ted Kennedy fez diferente. Num momento chave, início da campanha,
quando Barack Obama acusava fragilidade, anunciou seu apoio. Os irmãos,
John e Bobby, haviam juntos promovido o fim do racismo legal nos EUA dos
anos 1960. Agora, Kennedy transformava uma aposta naquela que seria sua
última grande jogada política. Promover um homem negro para a presidência.
Uns sugeriram que era por defesa. Sem herdeiros claros, uma presidência
Hillary representava que uma nova família assumiria o posto dos Kennedy na
política americana. Ted dizia que não. Explicava que via em Obama, pela
primeira vez desde aquele distante 1968 do assassinato, alguém com peso e
talento para representar o discurso de seus irmãos. Talvez. Naquele momento,
seu apoio pareceu aos eleitores um passar da tocha, um ciclo que se fechava.
E Obama foi eleito presidente.

PÚBLICO
Edward Kennedy (1932-2009)
Um senador como nenhum outro
27.08.2009 - 08h54 Joe Holley, exclusivo PÚBLICO/The Washington Post
Edward M. Kennedy, democrata do Massachusetts, era o último sobrevivente
de uma família privilegiada e carismática que nos anos 1960 dominou a
política americana e atraiu a atenção do mundo. Como trágico herdeiro dos
feitos alcançados pelos dois irmãos mais velhos - o Presidente John F. Kennedy
e o senador Robert F. Kennedy, ambos assassinados - Edward Kennedy tornou-
se no patriarca do seu clã e numa figura destacada no Senado dos Estados
Unidos a um nível que nenhum dos seus irmãos tinha atingido.
Serviu no Senado em cinco das mais dramáticas décadas da história da nação.
Tornou-se num congressista cujos feitos legislativos, autoridade política e
talento para as amizades por todo o espectro político convidavam a
comparações favoráveis com Daniel Webster, Henry Clay e uma mão-cheia de
outros homens da elite política. Mas também foi assolado por fragilidades
pessoais e infortúnios familiares que encheram os tablóides.
Durante anos, muitos membros do Partido Democrata consideraram a sua
presidência uma inevitabilidade. Em 1968 emergiu a campanha Projecto Ted,
apenas alguns meses depois da morte de Robert, mas ele objectou, dando-se
conta que não estava preparado para ser Presidente.
Observadores políticos consideravam-no o candidato a bater em 1972, mas
essa possibilidade desapareceu numa noite de Julho de 1969, quando o
senador conduziu o seu Oldsmobile para fora de uma ponte na ilha de
Chappaquiddick, e uma jovem mulher que seguia com ele, Mary Jo Kopechne,
se afogou.
A tragédia teve um efeito corrosivo na imagem de Kennedy e desgastou a sua
posição nacional. Projectou uma imagem triste quando desafiou o Presidente
Jimmy Carter para a reeleição, em 1980. Mas o momento da sua saída do palco
presidencial foi assinalado por um marco de oratória quando, falando na
convenção democrata, invocou os irmãos e prometeu: "Para todos cujos
problemas têm sido as nossas preocupações, o trabalho vai continuar. A causa
persiste, a esperança ainda vive e o sonho nunca vai morrer."
Saúde: a sua causa maior
Em vez de Presidente, Kennedy tornou-se numa presença maior do Senado,
onde tinha chegado em 1962 com a ajuda da sua família politicamente bem
relacionada. Era um legislador reservado e eficiente, mesmo nos anos da
ascendência dos republicanos. Quando a maioria dos democratas tentava fugir
ao rótulo de "liberal", o senador do Massachusetts usava-o com orgulho.
Kennedy esteve no centro dos assuntos mais importantes que a nação
enfrentou e fez muito para ajudar a moldá-los. Defensor dos pobres e dos que
se encontram em desvantagem política, marcou os padrões do seu partido no
que respeita aos cuidados de saúde, à educação, aos direitos cívicos. O
senador também se destacou como pacifista: transformou-se num opositor
feroz à guerra do Vietname e manifestou-se contra a guerra no Iraque desde o
primeiro momento.
Apesar de ser pintado pelos republicanos como a face - rubicunda e
avermelhada - do liberalismo gastador, era considerado um dos membros mais
populares do Senado, à direita e à esquerda. Mantinha fortes amizades nas
hostes republicanas. Colaborou com o ex-Presidente George W. Bush nas
reformas educativas e com o candidato republicano John McCain em torno das
reformas na imigração. A perene simpatia e o seu voluntarismo em trabalhar
com a oposição estiveram no cerne da sua habilidade legislativa.
Kennedy transformou a reforma do sistema de saúde na missão da sua vida.
Graças às leis que promoveu, milhões puderam ter acesso a cuidados médicos,
tendo canalizado milhões de dólares para a investigação médica. Era um
defensor acérrimo da assistência médica universal e dos avanços laboratoriais
contra doenças como a sida. A reforma do serviço de saúde é "um assunto
fulcral na sociedade [norte-americana]", disse aos seus colegas senadores num
debate de 1994. "Vocês realmente importam-se com os nossos cidadãos?",
perguntou à sua audiência.
Essa foi, aliás, uma pergunta que repetiu ao longo da sua carreira. Anos a fio,
teve que lutar contra as críticas dos republicanos e de um punhado de
senadores democratas que insistiam que a proposta de Kennedy em prol de
um serviço universal de saúde iria "socializar" a prática da medicina e fazer
com o sistema começasse a padecer de "esclerose burocrática", enredada na
sua própria ineficiência e nos seus incomportáveis custos.
O tumor
Em Maio de 2008 foi-lhe diagnosticado um tumor no cérebro. Ironicamente, no
Verão desse ano o Senado ia fazer passar uma lei que previa cortes nos
pagamentos aos médicos que atendessem pessoas abrangidas pelo seguro
público Medicare. Disposto a lutar pela sua causa, Edward Kennedy levantou-se
da sua cama de hospital e dirigiu-se ao Senado para votar contra esta medida.
Perante a sua coragem, vários senadores admitiram ter mudado a orientação
de voto.
A família mais próxima do senador já tinha sido tocada pelo cancro: o seu filho,
Edward Kennedy Jr., perdeu uma perna por doença oncológica, aos 12 anos,
em 1973, e a sua filha, Kara Anne Kennedy, foi diagnosticada com um cancro
no pulmão, em 2003.
Para além da saúde, a sua marca fica associada à causa da imigração. Em
1965 ajudou a fazer aprovar o chamado Hart-Celler Act, uma legislação
revolucionária que aboliu as quotas de imigração e pôs fim ao embargo que
impedia a entrada de asiáticos no país, em vigor desde 1924.
Foi igualmente uma das vozes mais activas do Senado em termos de direitos
civis e na integração de mulheres e de pessoas com deficiência no mundo
laboral. Lutou igualmente pelo aumento do salário mínimo e, a nível educativo,
pugnou pela possibilidade de os estudantes universitários poderem pedir
empréstimos para pagar os estudos e pela igualdade entre mulheres e homens
no acesso a bolsas de estudo para atletas.
Expulso de Harvard
Mais conhecido por "Teddy", o benjamim da família foi inicialmente eleito para
o Senado americano quando tinha 30 anos. Apesar da sua reputação de
imaturo e irresponsável, desde cedo assumiu a vontade de participar nos
assuntos políticos. A sua determinação aumentou após a morte dos irmãos.
O seu irmão mais velho, Joseph - que teria provavelmente feito uma carreira
brilhante na política - morreu na explosão de um avião quando servia na II
Guerra Mundial. Os irmãos John e Robert foram o alvo de dois assassínios que
chocaram a América. Ambos morreram na casa dos 40. Sobrou, assim, para o
irmão mais novo, e o único vivo, a tarefa de perpetuar a herança patriarcal da
família.
Edward Moore Kennedy nasceu em Brookline, no estado de Massachusetts, a
22 de Fevereiro de 1932. Foi o nono e último filho de Joseph P. e Rose
Fitzgerald Kennedy. O seu avô materno, John F. "Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald, era por
essa altura o presidente da câmara de Boston e o seu avô paterno também já
estava na vida política, representando o Massachusetts.
O patriarca do clã fez fortuna no ramo imobiliário, na banca, em Wall Street e
em Hollywood. Parte da sua riqueza chegou-lhe igualmente da venda de
bebidas alcoólicas durante a Lei Seca. A mãe, uma católica devota de origem
irlandesa, desde cedo se movimentou nas esferas políticas, em torno da figura
de um pai autarca. Décadas mais tarde, esta participação activa na vida
política foi-lhe de grande utilidade aquando das campanhas políticas dos seus
filhos.
Com a mãe, Ted Kennedy aprendeu os valores sólidos do credo familiar
católico irlandês, com o pai aprendeu que não poderia nunca baixar os braços.
"Não queremos aqui perdedores. Nesta família queremos vencedores", repetia
Joseph aos seus filhos.
À medida que crescia, foi estudando numa série de colégios privados antes de
entrar para a Academia Milton, em Boston, em 1946. Nunca se distinguiu pelos
estudos, mas antes por ser extremamente popular, um excepcional atleta e um
bom orador. De Milton seguiu para Harvard, mas os seus dias como
universitário não duraram. Ted acabou por ser expulso, em 1951, em conjunto
com outro aluno a quem tinha pedido para fazer o exame de Espanhol por ele.
Depois deste falhanço, alistou-se no Exército, onde serviu durante dois anos,
na Europa, durante a Guerra da Coreia, antes de passar à reserva, em 1953.
Depois da guerra acabou por voltar para Harvard, onde conciliou os estudos
com a sua paixão pelo futebol americano. Licenciou-se em História e Governo,
em 1956, e terminou a especialização em Direito em 1959 na Universidade da
Virgínia.
Entrou na vida política em 1958, dirigindo com sucesso a campanha do irmão
John para a reeleição senatorial. Anos mais tarde, depois de JFK já estar na
Casa Branca, começou a apostar na sua própria carreira política. Acabado de
cumprir 30 anos, o mais novo dos Kennedy anunciou a sua candidatura ao
Senado. Não só venceu o seu rival partidário nas primárias, como ainda bateu
o seu rival republicano, acabando por prestar juramento em Janeiro de 1963.
Neste processo, Edward escapou à morte por pouco. Quando voava para
Springfield, Massachussets, para assumir o lugar de democrata no Senado, o
avião em que voava despenhou-se sobre um pomar. O piloto sofreu morte
imediata e Edward teve que ser desencarcerado. O primeiro médico que o
observou disse que provavelmente ficaria paralisado para o resto da vida. Mas
poucos dias depois, os médicos declararam que não sofrera danos irreparáveis.
Estava já no Senado quando, a 22 de Novembro de 1963, foi informado, em
plena sessão, que o seu irmão tinha sido assassinado em Dallas. O assassínio
de JFK deu a Edward uma reeleição quase automática no Senado, apesar de
não se ter destacado na sua primeira legislatura.
A situação começou a mudar em 1966, quando Edward se começou a
aperceber das dificuldades que alguns habitantes de bairros sociais de Boston
tinham para chegar até ao hospital. Nesse mesmo ano lançou a primeira pedra
de um projecto de centros de saúde comunitários. Em 1995 já existiam nos
EUA mais de 800 centros em zonas urbanas e rurais, servindo 9 milhões de
pessoas.
Esperanças tolhidas
No dia 15 de Março de 1968, o seu irmão Robert anunciou a sua candidatura à
presidência. Edward, temendo pela sua segurança e também porque
considerava que seria preferível esperar pelas eleições seguintes, tinha-o
desaconselhado a tal. No dia 6 de Junho de 1968, Sirhan B. Sirhan, um
palestiniano cristão enraivecido pelo apoio de Robert a Israel, dispara-lhe um
tiro à queima-roupa na cabeça, no Hotel Ambassador, em Los Angeles.
Após este segundo assassínio, Edward retirou-se temporariamente da vida
pública. Passou várias semanas a velejar sozinho, ao largo de Cape Cod.
Chegou a ponderar abandonar a política. Acabou, porém, por regressar ao
Senado em Agosto de 1968, fazendo do fim da guerra do Vietname a sua
prioridade máxima. Durante os anos seguintes, fez diversos discursos
inflamados contra o conflito.
No dia 18 de Julho de 1969, Edward escapou com vida a um segundo acidente
quase mortal. No final de uma festa política em Chappaquiddick, uma pequena
ilha ao largo de Martha's Vineyard, o carro em que seguiam Edward e uma
acompanhante, a professora e especialista política Mary Jo Kopechne, caiu de
uma pequena ponte de madeira. Ela morreu afogada. Ele sobreviveu e teve
que enfrentar as especulações sobre o seu relacionamento com Mary Jo e a
eventualidade de estar drogado e/ou embriagado. O facto de só ter
comunicado o acidente nove horas depois de ele ter acontecido só o
prejudicou. Acabou por se declarar culpado perante a acusação de abandono
do local do acidente, tendo sido condenado a uma pena suspensa de dois
meses de prisão e à inibição de conduzir durante um ano.
O episódio pôs fim às ambições presidenciais de Edward. Já só no final da
década de 1970, dez anos depois do incidente de Chappaquiddick, é que os
democratas voltaram a pensar em Edward para a presidência, desafiando-o a
derrotar Jimmy Carter nas primárias. Mas a sua candidatura não foi longe. O
modo evasivo e murmurado com que respondeu à pergunta - "Por que é que
quer ser Presidente?" -, durante uma entrevista à CBS, em Novembro de 1979,
acabou por destruir as suas hipóteses. Carter venceu as primárias, mas perdeu
as eleições para o republicano Ronald Reagan.
Com a presidência arredada do horizonte, Kennedy dedicou-se mais ao
Senado, rodeando-se de uma equipa eficiente e competente, à qual chegou a
pagar suplementos salariais do próprio bolso para evitar perdê-la.
O senador e a sua mulher Joan Bennett Kennedy, que lutara durante anos
contra o alcoolismo, acabaram por se divorciar em 1982, após 24 anos de
casamento. Apesar do matrimónio falhado, Edward sempre foi uma figura
presente junto dos seus três filhos, e também das dezenas de sobrinhos e
sobrinhas.
Em 1992, voltou a casar-se, com a advogada Victoria Anne Reggie,
pertencente a uma família de políticos da Virgínia. Deixa-a viúva e deixa sem
pai os seus três filhos biológicos e dois enteados. Também deixa dois netos.
No ano passado, durante a batalha pela candidatura democrata às
presidenciais, escolheu apoiar Barack Obama, em vez da sua amiga Hillary
Clinton, declarando ser tempo de uma "nova geração de líderes" na América.
Fez campanha pelo actual Presidente até que o seu estado de saúde piorou,
em Maio.
Três meses depois, Kennedy ainda se levantou da cama do hospital e voou
para a convenção democrata, em Denver. Aplaudido até chegar ao pódio,
emocionou as 200 mil pessoas presentes ao anunciar, numa voz ainda firme,
uma nova era de esperança. "É isto que fazemos: escalamos montanhas;
chegamos à Lua", disse então.

EUA perdem um dos seus mais portentosos políticos

Morreu o leão liberal do Senado dos Estados Unidos
27.08.2009 - 08h50 Rita Siza, Washington
As bandeiras americanas ondulam a meia haste por todos os Estados Unidos
em homenagem a Edward Kennedy, o "leão liberal do Senado", que sucumbiu
a um cancro cerebral aos 77 anos de idade. "Um líder extraordinário e o maior
senador de todos os tempos", disse ontem o Presidente, Barack Obama, que
interrompeu as férias para comentar a perda do seu amigo e aliado político.
"Para a sua família, ele era o guardião; para a América, ele era o defensor do
sonho", resumiu o Presidente, sublinhando que as ideias e ideais de Kennedy
"estão estampadas em centenas de leis e reflectem-se em milhões de vidas:
seniores que conhecem uma nova dignidade, famílias a quem foi dada uma
nova oportunidade, crianças que gozam da promessa da educação e todos
aqueles que podem perseguir os seus sonhos numa América mais justa",
declarou Obama. "Incluindo eu próprio."
Exactamente há um ano, Edward - Ted - Kennedy estava no palco da
Convenção Nacional Democrata em Denver, elogiando o então candidato
Obama e antecipando a sua vitória nas presidenciais. Na dura luta pela
nomeação democrata, o apoio de Kennedy fora instrumental e decisivo, no
momento mais crítico do duelo entre Obama e Hillary Clinton.
"Nada, nada me impediria de estar presente nesta reunião tão especial",
bradara um já debilitado Kennedy em Denver, três meses depois de lhe ter
sido diagnosticado um tumor na cabeça, um inoperável e incurável glioma
maligno no lóbulo parietal esquerdo do cérebro.
Mas Kennedy - cuja vida ficou marcada por devastadoras tragédias privadas e
impressionantes vitórias públicas - já não estará presente na votação da
proposta de reforma do sistema de saúde, a principal causa da sua intervenção
política de 46 anos no Senado, ao serviço do seu estado natal do
Massachusetts.
Com a mesma inteligência e paixão com que os seus malogrados irmãos John e
Robert se bateram pelo fim da segregação racial e por direitos civis para todos
os americanos, Edward, o "herdeiro de Camelot", devotou o seu combate à
eliminação da pobreza, iliteracia e marginalização e à cobertura universal dos
cuidados médicos.
Ainda é o seu nome que figura no topo do rascunho da reforma que o
Presidente classificou como a sua principal prioridade legislativa e que o
Congresso está a negociar. O debate caiu num impasse que parece difícil de
resolver - e, como admitiam ontem democratas e republicanos, esse facto
deve-se em parte à ausência de Kennedy.
A sua morte poderá influenciar o tom do debate à volta do tema, que no último
mês se tornou progressivamente mais tóxico e poderá agora tornar-se mais
tranquilo e racional, mas dificilmente contribuirá para atenuar as resistências
dentro da sua própria bancada democrata ou superar a profunda divisão face
aos adversários republicanos. Consciente do seu papel, Ted Kennedy fez uma
derradeira tentativa para assegurar que o seu voto garantiria a maioria
necessária para aprovar a reforma: na semana passada, escreveu ao
governador do Massachusetts, Deval Patrick, sugerindo a nomeação
extraordinária de um substituto que ocupasse o seu lugar nos cinco meses que
demora a eleição de um novo senador.

O fim de uma linhagem

Com Edward Kennedy, os Estados Unidos perdem um dos seus mais
portentosos políticos, uma figura (como dizem os americanos) "maior do que a
vida", uma verdadeira celebridade. No Senado, nenhum outro nome concita o
mesmo respeito, influência e autoridade. Mas a sua morte poderá colocar um
ponto final numa linhagem de Kennedy cuja acção empolgou a população e
transformou irreversivelmente o país.
O apelido, que nos últimos 50 anos foi sinónimo de Partido Democrata, já não
tem o peso de outrora, como ficou demonstrado com as derrotas e falhanços
da "nova geração" (ver texto na p. 6).
O vigoroso endosso de Kennedy a Obama em 2008 pode, assim, ser
interpretado como uma simbólica passagem de testemunho: foi o actual
Presidente que Ted escolheu como o seu herdeiro político. "A tocha volta a
passar de mãos para uma nova geração de americanos. O trabalho começa de
novo, a esperança volta a levantar-se, o sonho prossegue", sublinhou Kennedy
nesse discurso da Convenção Democrata de Denver, uma intervenção de dez
minutos que constará como a sua última declaração política de relevo.
"Não buscamos apenas a vitória para o nosso partido, queremos a renovação
do nosso país", explicou o veterano, que via no jovem Obama o político capaz
de prosseguir o legado Kennedy e de reenquadrar ideologicamente o seu
partido no sentido liberal mais tradicional, de que Ted era o expoente máximo.
"Esta é uma época de esperança, de justiça, igualdade e prosperidade - para
todos e não só para alguns", exclamou o optimista, vindo de um meio
privilegiado, que sempre se bateu pelos desfavorecidos, discriminados,
excluídos e injustiçados da sociedade americana - soldados e veteranos de
guerra, negros, hispânicos, reformados, mulheres, crianças, idosos,
homossexuais, imigrantes. "Essa é a causa da minha vida."

'Ted' Kennedy morre aos 77 anos

Morreu o Kennedy que mais fez a diferença
Ted Kennedy, último sobrevivente da era de ouro do clã Kennedy, morreu
ontem à noite, aos 77 anos, depois de um longa batalha contra um cancro no
cérebro. O senador do Massachussets é recordado como um dos políticos mais
influentes dos últimos 50 anos nos EUA.
Edward ocupou a cadeira do Senado deixada vaga pelo seu irmão John
Kennedy quando este correu para a Presidência, em 1962. Desde então, foi
reeleito sete vezes e fez da educação, da saúde e da luta pela paz batalhas
pessoais.
O assassínio do presidente John Kennedy, em 1963, e do irmão Robert, em
1968, durante a corrida para a Casa Branca, fizeram de Edward o herdeiro da
família.
Há quarenta anos, na América todos acreditavam que seria o próximo Kennedy
na Casa Branca. Mas em 1969, o reputação de Edward ficou manchada pelo
escândalo de Chappaquiddick, quando teve um acidente de carro numa ponte.
Ele nadou para a margem e sobreviveu, mas a mulher que o acompanhava
não.
Dez anos depois, a memória desse incidente condenou ao fracasso a sua
candidatura presidencial. Mas esse falhanço fez dele um dos mais importantes
senadores dos EUA.
Em 2006, a revista TIME elegeu-o como um dos 10 Melhores Senadores
considerando que ele ajudou a passar “legislação que afectou virtualmente
vida de todos os homens, mulheres e crianças.” Ontem, a mesma publicação
escrevia no título do seu obituário que Teddy foi “o Kennedy que mais fez
diferença”.
Ted, idealista, ficou conhecido como o “leão liberal” – o que corresponde à
esquerda nos EUA. Hoje o líder da maioria democrata na câmara alta, Harry
Reid, disse que “o poderoso rugido do leão calou-se, mas o seu sonho nunca
vai morrer”.
O Presidente Barack Obama disse em comunicado: “Um importante capítulo da
nossa história chegou ao fim. O nosso país perdeu um grande líder, que pegou
no testemunho dos seus irmãos e tornou-se no maior senador dos EUA de
todos os tempos”.

Edward Kennedy
Last of the Kennedy brothers, whose hopes of becoming US president were
dashed by scandal and turmoil in his private life
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 26 August 2009 07.33 BST
Edward Kennedy – the last survivor of the three Kennedy brothers who left an
indelible political mark on their age – has died at the age of 77. Though the
manifest flaws in his character cost him the American presidency in 1980, time
and circumstance ensured that his eventual contribution to his compatriots'
welfare could well prove to be his enduring legacy, eclipsing the memory of his
turbulent private life and the scandal surrounding the death of Mary Jo
Kopechne at Chappaquiddick in 1969.
His death marks the end of five decades in which the brothers had symbolised
the progressive impulses of the Democratic party. He was first elected to
Congress by Massachusetts voters in 1962, and eventually achieved the
second-longest Senate term in US history. This enabled him to create an
unrivalled legislative record, dealing with such concerns as healthcare,
education and training, safety at work and a wide range of other social
concerns. His remarkable capacity for work and his pragmatism in securing a
consensus among his colleagues won him wide respect from both parties.
Kennedy family tree
In May 2008 Kennedy collapsed at his home and was found to have a
malignant brain tumour. He underwent immediate surgery, followed by
radiation treatment and chemotherapy. To the astonishment of delegates, he
made an appearance at the Democratic convention in Denver, Colorado, in
August to express his strong support for Barack Obama as the party's
presidential nominee, having endorsed his candidacy the previous January at a
crucial stage in the campaign.
With the scar from his surgery clearly evident, and with many delegates in
tears, Kennedy mounted the podium to produce an echo of the remarkable
speech he had made at the 1980 New York convention, when his campaign
against President Jimmy Carter for the Democratic nomination collapsed. In a
strong voice, he told the audience in Denver that "this November, the torch will
be passed to a new generation of Americans. The work begins anew, the hope
rises again and the dream lives on." It was a tacit acknowledgment that his
own part in the process was drawing to a close.
Edward Moore Kennedy, widely known as Ted, was the youngest of Joseph and
Rose Kennedy's nine children, a factor that was important in the development
of his complex and contradictory personality. At his birth, his nearest sibling,
Jean, was four and his eldest brother, Joseph, was nearly 17. The boy turned
out to be a good-natured child who, with the increasing absence of his father
and brothers, was treated with the utmost indulgence by his mother and
sisters. He commented in later life that those early years had passed "having a
whole army of mothers around me".
When he was six, his father's appointment as ambassador to Britain brought a
traumatic change to this secure and sheltered domestic scene. After the move
to London, the child never seemed to be allowed to establish himself
anywhere. By the end of the second world war, when he was 13, he had
attended 10 different schools. He privately acknowledged that the
emotional effect of this disruption was to leave him with virtually no
recollection of his life between the ages of seven and 18. His aviator brother
Joe was killed in action in France in 1944, and Edward became increasingly
conscious of the heightened expectations his parents had of their remaining
sons.
The family's history since it fled the Irish famine in 1848 had been one
of relentless material and political advance. Grandfather Patrick Kennedy, a
Boston saloon keeper, had been elected to the Massachusetts state legislature
at the early age of 27. From that vantage point, he shrewdly harnessed his new
influence in the struggle against the dominant Yankee establishment. His
mastery of wheeling and dealing soon gave him political control of the
impoverished Irish area of east Boston. With the power to deliver the voters of
this fiefdom to Boston's Democratic party machine, Patrick's advance was
spectacular.
He became a state senator and then moved into a variety of appointed offices
in the city at what was then the enormous salary of $5,000 a year. From
there he advanced steadily up the party ladder and was soon accepted as one
of Boston's most powerful figures. Within a decade, using bribery, dead
men's votes, intimidation and any other weapon that came to hand,
the Irish factions gained control of Boston. They have never lost it.
In spite of this political success, Patrick realised that a social gulf remained. He
decided to send his son Joseph – Edward's father – to the Boston Latin school,
attended by most of the children of the city's elite families. Young Joseph was
not academically successful there, but his talent as a baseball player led to a
number of useful friendships. When his attempt to replicate this process at
Harvard University failed, his father used his political clout by securing him a
place in the college basketball team.
The pattern of the Kennedy clan had thus been established – to win any
struggle it undertook without bothering too much about the means.
This pattern was heightened when Joseph Kennedy, in a series of extremely
risky deals, bludgeoned his way into the tightly controlled Boston banking
community and then, as a figure of growing consequence, married Rose
Fitzgerald, the mayor of Boston's daughter.
His bride was as steeped in local politics as her new husband, having often
acted as her father's hostess and grown accustomed to the pressures and
accommodations his position entailed. This was the atmosphere in which their
rapidly growing family was raised. Both parents stressed to their children the
importance of winning. Merely to try their best was not enough.
It was an affluent life, though the source of Joseph's fortune has never been
wholly clear. While some of it was acquired through bootlegging during
prohibition in the 1930s, other elements came more legitimately from
the film industry and complex stock market manipulations. It meant the
family was never concerned about its material wellbeing. It had three large
homes and the children benefited from trust funds established by their father
that would reach $10m apiece in his lifetime.
This wealth also enabled Joseph to buy as much political influence from the
Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration as he wanted (including the London
ambassadorship). The effect on his youngest son of growing up in this amoral
climate soon became apparent. Like his brothers, Edward had inherited his
father's sporting prowess. By the time he began at Harvard in 1950, he was
more than six feet tall, weighed 15 stone and had become a notable player of
American football.
He was keen to join the university team but was hampered by a poor record in
his studies. Unlike other US universities, Harvard made sporting advancement
dependent on a sound academic performance. Faced with a Spanish
examination he was sure he would fail, Kennedy paid a more adept friend
to take it for him. To the chagrin of his family, the plot was discovered and
he was expelled, though the incident was covered up for more than a
decade.
With his exemption from military service now void, he was conscripted into the
army from 1951 to 1953. The family appeared to regard his brief service
career as a form of punishment and made no effort to ease his lot. He
never got beyond the rank of private and in his biographical listings, that
period was dismissed in four words.
There was, however, clearly considerable negotiation going on behind the
scenes, because he was allowed to return to Harvard after his military
discharge. Possibly as a reaction to military discipline, his increasingly erratic
temperament began to emerge. To the horror of his team-mates in a football
match against a side from New York, he was sent off after three times starting
fights on the field. He did not like being bested.
Although he got a BA in government at Harvard (1956), he failed to
qualify for its law school and enrolled instead at that of the University of
Virginia. He again jeopardised his career there with a series of motoring
offences, including jumping a red light on a suburban street at 90mph.
However, he graduated as a bachelor of law in 1959 and was immediately
admitted to the Massachusetts bar.
Just before graduation he had met and married Joan Bennett, but even with
a wife to support, he was hardly in need of a paying job. Kennedy had started
to benefit from his father's trust fund and, having acted as manager of his
older brother John's 1958 Senate re-election campaign, was now
recruited for the next stage of the family's grand plan, John's bid for the White
House. For the most part he was sent to work in the western states, most
of them hopeless prospects with a long history of voting Republican.
It fell to his brother Robert to control the central campaign, in which John
scraped into the White House in 1960 as the country's first Roman Catholic
president by a margin of 113,000 votes out of 69m. His victory was
subsequently attributed to large-scale ballot rigging by the Chicago mayor
Richard Daley's Irish-run administration. The episode starkly underlined an
adage of Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, one of the Kennedy family's closest allies in
Boston and later speaker of the House of Representatives. In the end, he
declared, all politics was local. It was a lesson Edward Kennedy absorbed, and
would underpin his entire political career.
With John as president (and Robert his attorney general), the Massachusetts
Senate seat fell vacant, but Edward was still two years below the
minimum legal age to take over. So it was held by a nominee until the
Kennedys could reclaim it in the 1962 election. Edward won the remainder of
John's term by an overwhelming majority, partly through crude hints that the
family would now be able to shower the state with federal largesse.
A year later JFK was assassinated. Edward was in the Senate chamber when
the news was brought to him. He gathered his papers silently and left the
chamber to discover more. But the Washington telephone system had
collapsed under the weight of calls, and he arrived at the family home in
Hyannis still unclear about the precise circumstances of his brother's death. His
father was by now frail and bedridden and it fell to Edward and his sister
Eunice to break the news to him the following morning.
In the private turmoil that followed the murder, the senator's public life had to
continue. He was obliged to fight once more for his newly won seat because its
six-year term had expired. While criss-crossing the state to gather support, his
private plane crashed. Kennedy was the only passenger who had not
fastened his seat belt, and he sustained six spinal fractures and two
broken ribs. He spent six months in hospital and never wholly shook off
the effects of the injuries.
But the combination of Kennedy money and widespread sympathy for the
family ensured an easy victory, and his political career hit its stride. There was,
of course, considerable hostility between the remaining brothers and President
Lyndon Johnson, and the vehicle for its expression became the Vietnam war.
Edward joined with Robert – who had secured one of New York's Senate seats
in the 1964 election – to focus the country's increasing disenchantment with
the conflict.
As American troops became mired more deeply, Robert announced he would
fight Johnson for the 1968 Democratic presidential nomination. Within days,
the president withdrew from the contest and Robert looked certain to be the
party's candidate. He had just won his sixth primary, in California, when
he, too, was assassinated. It had a cataclysmic effect on Edward, now the
only remaining brother.
At the funeral he gave a short, spontaneous address which many felt was the
most moving speech of his life. "My brother need not be idealised or enlarged
in death beyond what he was in life," he said. "He 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."
Robert had left 10 children and a pregnant widow. His brother now had
to assume responsibility for them as well as for his own growing
family, particularly when it soon became evident that his sister-in-law, Ethel,
could not cope. One of his staff wrote later that "kids in various states of
undress ran amok, Ethel scurried about screaming orders at the top of her
lungs. The kids had adopted nearly a dozen cats and dogs and these ran
about with the same abandon as the children."
The strain began to show on Kennedy, notably in his increased consumption
of alcohol. It surfaced publicly when he went on a Senate fact-finding trip to
Alaska the following spring. His staff and the accompanying journalists noticed
him taking constant drags from a hip flask on the flights and then
searching out bars at each stop. On the homeward flight he repeatedly
teetered down the aisle, spilling his drinks on other passengers.
He was also having difficulties with his marriage. Like his father and brother
John, he had a voracious sexual appetite. Joe Kennedy, in addition to a
long-lasting liaison with the film star Gloria Swanson, had had a large number
of flings. John's inheritance of these propensities was notorious, and his
youngest brother's became equally so.
The Washington gossip circuit was awash with increasingly lurid accounts of
Edward's frequently bizarre sexual behaviour. Though some of the tales
undoubtedly grew in the telling, others were authenticated by reliable
witnesses. One of the most notorious was when Kennedy was observed in
sexual intercourse with a woman lobbyist in the booth of a
Washington restaurant. On another occasion he was photographed in the
act on a boat. He made little effort to hide from his wife this procession of
young women.
Edward Kennedy in the 'Meet the Press' TV Series A younger Ted Kennedy as
he appeared on American television's Meet the Press. Photograph:
NBCUPHOTOBANK/Rex Features
In parallel with this misconduct, however, Kennedy was establishing a well-
deserved reputation on Capitol Hill as a diligent and effective legislator. In the
face of President Richard Nixon's determined efforts to cut back on welfare and
other federal programmes for the needy, Kennedy emerged as the champion of
the poor and black people.
His reputation among his peers reached the point where they elected him the
Senate's youngest ever majority whip, a position only one step below that of
Democratic leader in the chamber. There was a widespread assumption – not
least in the White House – that he would be the Democrats' candidate when
Nixon sought re-election in 1972. Then came the incident at Chappaquiddick
that dominated the rest of his life.
The bald circumstances have been rehearsed endlessly since they occurred on
the night of 18-19 July 1969 – the eve of the first manned landing on the moon.
Kennedy had been competing in a regatta off Martha's Vineyard, one of a
cluster of Massachusetts islands. At the end of the race he went to
Chappaquiddick Island, just across a narrow sound to the east of Martha's
Vineyard, for a party arranged by his cousin in an isolated cottage. The guests
were six young women who had worked on Robert Kennedy's campaign
and six men, including Kennedy. The party was supposedly to thank the
women for their election work.
At about midnight Kennedy left the cottage, accompanied by 28-year-old
Mary Jo Kopechne, ostensibly to take her to the Edgartown ferry so she could
return to her hotel. Kennedy missed the main road and, driving at speed down
a narrow dirt track, ran off a narrow bridge. His car overturned and rolled into
about 10 feet of water.
That is the extent of the undisputed facts of the case. Kennedy claimed that
having extricated himself from the car, he made repeated dives in an attempt
to rescue Kopechne. He then walked the mile and a half back to the cottage
and sought help from his cousin and a lawyer who was joint host. The three
returned to the scene to make further unsuccessful efforts to retrieve
Kopechne.
The accounts of the next few hours changed repeatedly, and few of them
withstood the intense media investigations of the following years. The one
incontestable fact was that Kennedy failed to report the accident for
more than 10 hours and, even by his own account, had behaved appallingly.
The public uproar intensified when he made a self-pitying television statement
and reached its peak when the inquest was held in private. The judge ruled
that Kennedy "was probably guilty of criminal conduct" but made no
move to indict him.
This obvious manipulation of the local judiciary by the state's most
powerful family was probably more damaging in the long term than
the tragedy itself. As with the Watergate conspiracy a few years later, it was
the cover-up that caused the outrage, allied to Kennedy's apparent readiness
to put his political career ahead of a young woman's life.
But Kennedy himself seemed curiously unable to grasp the effect of the
incident, not least that it had destroyed any prospect of him becoming
president. Though his record of bringing funds into his home state secured him
re-election in 1970, the immediate fallout from the scandal was to cost him his
position as Senate whip. He was also forced to rule himself out of the 1972
presidential election, which Nixon won with a landslide.
In 1976, press investigations of what had happened at
Chappaquiddick kept the issue in the public mind. That, along with Nixon's
resignation in 1974 after the Watergate scandal, made Democrats highly
sensitive about their own political skeletons. Kennedy again felt obliged to rule
himself out of the White House contest.
But in 1979, with Carter in deep trouble at home and abroad, Kennedy
announced he would seek the 1980 Democratic nomination. Though the
opinion polls were initially heavily in his favour, his campaign was a disaster
from the outset. In an extraordinary nationwide television interview, he
was completely incoherent when asked why he wanted to be
president.
The media was filled with accounts of his history of sexual
misbehaviour, his now notorious use of alcohol and drugs, and the
Chappaquiddick accident. Even the deeply unpopular Carter began to win
one primary election after another and, though Kennedy continued the battle
through to the party convention, he was finally forced to cede the nomination
to Carter.
Perhaps with the realisation that he had no hope of ever reaching the White
House, he again made a superb speech to the convention, calling on delegates
to fight for the ideals that had informed the party from the days of Franklin
Roosevelt. "For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end. For all
those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause
endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
He then returned to the politics of which he was an expert practitioner – patient
crafting of legislation in Senate committees, the endless negotiation and
dealing required to secure its passage, and unremitting attention to the
detailed concerns of the voters at home.
Through all his political and private vicissitudes, the Massachusetts electorate
continued to return Kennedy to Washington because he delivered the goods. A
federal contract here, a new highway there, a restored railway in New
Bedford, a grant to clean up a polluted bay; after more than three
decades as their representative, his patronage amounted to hundreds of
millions of dollars.
The pundits thought his time had finally come during the 1994 campaign. By
then he had been involved in a rape case in which his nephew was
eventually acquitted, and he had felt obliged to make a humiliating public
statement about his abysmal personal life. "I am painfully aware of the
disappointment of friends and many others who rely on me to fight the good
fight. I recognise my own shortcomings, the faults in the conduct of my private
life."
It followed a familiar pattern that Kennedy had evolved down the years –
contrite public statement after a particularly outrageous incident. It was
attacked by one commentator as "a speech most other drinkers make with a
borrowed quarter", but Kennedy still racked up his usual two-to-one victory in a
year that saw the Republicans finally gain full control of Congress.
He had now become the fourth most senior member in the Senate. In this
position he was one of 23 senators who opposed the congressional
resolution authorising President George W Bush's invasion of Iraq in
2003. It enabled him to become the leading voice in the opposition to the war.
Shortly after Bush staged his infamous "mission accomplished" declaration,
Kennedy brusquely assured Americans: "There was no imminent threat. This
was made up in Texas. [Bush] announced to the Republican leadership that
war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole
thing was a fraud." He accused White House officials of "distortion,
misrepresentation and selection of intelligence to justify the war. My belief is
that money is being shuffled around to political leaders in all parts of the world,
bribing them to send in troops."
When Kennedy returned to the Senate last November, after Obama's victory,
he announced his intention "to lay the groundwork for early action by Congress
on health reform when President Obama takes office in January". In spite of the
gravity of his illness – diagnosed as glioblastoma, the deadliest form of
brain cancer – he had insisted on continuing his political life. He had been
active in supporting his niece Caroline's short-lived campaign to be the New
York governor's selection to fill Hillary Clinton's vacant Senate seat and, as one
of Obama's earliest and most prominent supporters, had turned out in the
bitterly cold Washington winter for January's inauguration.
During the luncheon after Obama's swearing-in, Kennedy began shaking
uncontrollably due to a combination of fatigue and the extreme cold. He was
discharged from hospital the following day but these attacks – usually shielded
from public view – are a common feature of brain cancer and had become
regular. It was plain that he was in decline.
Kennedy's first marriage ended in divorce in 1982. It had produced a
daughter, Kara, and two sons, Edward Jr and Patrick, who is a congressman
for Rhode Island. In 1992, he married Victoria Reggie, a family friend. She
and his children survive him.
• Edward "Ted" Moore Kennedy, politician, born 22 February 1932; died 25 August 2009

August 26, 2009

Obituary: Legacy of the only Kennedy brother to grow old
By Press Association
In his half-century in politics, Edward Kennedy was above all heir to a legacy -
as well as a hero to liberals, a tough opponent to conservatives, and a
legislator with few peers.
Alone of the Kennedy men of his generation, he lived to comb grey hair, as
Irish poet WB Yeats had it.
It was a blessing and a curse and assured that his defeats and human foibles
as well as many triumphs played out in public at greater length than his
brothers ever experienced.
He was the only Kennedy brother to run for the White House and lose.
His brother John was president when he was assassinated in 1963 a few days
before Thanksgiving. Robert fell to a gunman in mid-campaign five years later.
An older brother, Joseph Junior, was killed piloting a plane in the Second World
War.
Runner-up in a two-man race for the Democratic nomination in 1980, this
Kennedy closed out his failed candidacy with a speech that brought tears to
the eyes of many in a packed Madison Square Garden.
"For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end," he said. "For all
those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause
endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die."
He was 48, older than any of his brothers at the time of their deaths. He lived
nearly three more decades, before succumbing to a brain tumour late
yesterday at the age of 77.
Mr Kennedy made plans to run for president again in 1984 before deciding
against it. By 1988, his moment had passed and he knew it.
He turned his energy toward his congressional career, now judged one of the
most accomplished in the history of the Senate.
"I'm a Senate man and a leader of the institution," he said more than a year
ago.
He left his imprint on every major piece of social legislation to pass Congress
over many decades: healthcare, immigration, civil rights, education and more.
Republicans and Democrats alike lamented his absence as they struggled
inconclusively in recent months with President Barack Obama's healthcare
legislation.
He was in the front ranks of Democrats who torpedoed one of President Ronald
Reagan's Supreme Court nominees in 1987.
He said at the time: "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be
forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters,
rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, children could
not be taught about evolution."
It was a single sentence that catalogued many of the issues he - and
Democrats - devoted their careers to over the second half of the 20th century.
More than a decade later, President Bill Clinton nominated a former Kennedy
aide, Stephen Breyer, to the high court. He was confirmed easily.
There were humiliations along the way, drinking and womanising, coupled with
the triumphs that the Kennedy image-makers were always polishing.
After the 1980 presidential campaign, the Kennedy family's Camelot took
another hit when he divorced. He later remarried, happily.
In later years came grumbling from fellow Democrats that his political touch
had failed him, and that he was too eager to strike a deal with President
George Bush on education and Medicare.
For years, he left the Capitol once a week to read to a student at a nearby state
school as part of a literacy programme.
Mr Kennedy took up painting in earnest after a plane crash that broke his back
in the mid-1960s and led to a lengthy convalescence.
Much of his work hangs in his Senate office, including several seascapes or
images of sailing boats of the type he piloted in the waters off Cape Cod.
The walls of other rooms were filled with political and personal memorabilia,
family photographs or letters, or some combination of the two that hint at the
passage of time and power.
In one room hangs a photo showing the young Mr Kennedy in a family portrait
taken in the 1930s, when their father, Joseph Kennedy, was US ambassador to
Britain.
In another hangs a plaque from the USS John F Kennedy, the Navy vessel
commissioned in 1968 and named after the slain president.
In another, the letter he wrote to his mother Rose, teasingly accusing her of
having covered up a deficiency in maths. No, she wrote back firmly in pencil,
she always got an A.
There were many ways in which Mr Kennedy became the family standard
bearer.
Robert Kennedy spoke of the assassinated president at the 1964 Democratic
national convention. Four years later, he too was dead, and this time the last
surviving brother delivered the eulogy.
"My brother need not be idealised or enlarged in death beyond what he was in
life," his voice trembled at St Patrick's Cathedral in New York.
"He 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."
A generation later, John Kennedy Junior, who had been a toddler when his
father was in the White House, died in a light aircraft crash off Martha's
Vineyard.
As the most prominent liberal of his day, Mr Kennedy was long an easy and
popular target for Republicans.
The car accident that resulted in the death of a young Pennsylvania woman,
Mary Jo Kopechne, drew sneers both before and after it shadowed his
presidential campaign in 1980. Mr Kennedy was driving the car in the accident
at Chappaquiddick.
If his name was invaluable in Democratic fundraising, conservatives long ago
discovered they could generate cash simply by telling donors they were doing
battle with Mr Kennedy.
Mr Kennedy understood that, and knew how to turn it to his own advantage.
When a Moral Majority fundraising appeal somehow arrived at his office one
day in the early 1980s, word leaked to the public, and the conservative group
issued an invitation for him to come to Liberty Baptist College if he was ever in
the neighbourhood.
Pleased to accept, was the word from Mr Kennedy.
"So I told Jerry (Falwell) and he almost turned white as a sheet," said Cal
Thomas, then an aide to the conservative leader.
Dinner at the Falwell home was described as friendly.
Dessert was a political sermon on tolerance, delivered by the liberal from
Massachusetts.
"I believe there surely is such a thing as truth, but who among us can claim a
monopoly?" Mr Kennedy said from the podium that night.
"There are those who do, and their own words testify to their intolerance."
More than a quarter of a century later, he was still eager to make a difference.
At a critical point in the 2008 presidential race, he endorsed Barack Obama
over Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, then embarked on an
ambitious schedule of campaign appearances.
He cast his endorsement in terms that linked Mr Obama to the Kennedys.
He said: "There was another time, when another young candidate was running
for president and challenging America to cross a new frontier.
"He faced criticism from the preceding Democratic president, who was widely
respected in the party.
"And John Kennedy replied 'The world is changing. The old ways will not do. It is
time for a new generation of leadership'."
That endorsement came a few months before the seizure that signalled the
presence of a deadly brain tumour.
But there were still memorable public moments ahead - a surprise visit to the
Senate to cast the decisive vote on a Medicare bill on healthcare and, before
that, a turn at the podium at the Democratic national convention in Denver.
He said there last summer: "As I look ahead, I am strengthened by family and
friendship. So many of you have been with me in the happiest days and the
hardest days. Together we have known success and seen setbacks, victory and
defeat.
"But we have never lost our belief that we are all called to a better country and
a newer world.
"And I pledge to you, I pledge to you that I will be there next January on the
floor of the United States Senate when we begin the great test."
But his time in the Senate was growing short. He smiled broadly as he took his
seat outdoors at Mr Obama's inauguration on January 20, then suffered a
seizure a few hours later at a lunch.
The nation's first black president said of him moments later: "He was there
when the Voting Rights Act passed. And so I would be lying to you if I did not
say that right now a part of me is with him. And I think that's true for all of us."
Generations of aides recall Mr Kennedy telling them the biggest mistake of his
career was turning down a deal that President Richard Nixon offered for
universal healthcare.
It seemed not generous enough at the time. Having missed the opportunity
then, Mr Kennedy spent the rest of his career hoping for an elusive second
chance.
Now some Democrats wonder privately if the party can learn from that lesson,
and take what is achievable rather than risk everything by reaching for what it
uncertain.
Republicans and Democrats alike say Mr Kennedy's absence has affected the
debate on Mr Obama's signature issue, with unknown consequences.
It was the issue that motivated him even after he was no longer able to travel
to the Capitol to cast a vote. He called it "the cause of my life".
And last month, in a reflection on his own mortality, he worried that his
precarious health might mean Massachusetts would have only one senator for
a brief while, and Democrats would be handicapped as they tried to pass
healthcare legislation.
After 47 years in the Senate - in a seat held by his brother before him - Mr
Kennedy urged a change in state law so the governor could appoint a
temporary replacement "should a vacancy occur".

Chappaquiddick, uma tragédia que tirou Ted Kennedy da disputa

pela Presidência
WASHINGTON, EUA — Edward Kennedy, irmão do presidente norte-americano
John Kennedy, chegou a se candidatar à Casa Branca, mas o acidente de
Chappaquiddick, uma trágico episódio do qual foi o principal protagonista,
provavelmente, pesou muito sobre suas ambições políticas.
Senador respeitado, e até bajulado, membro de uma família poderosa, "Ted"
Kennedy, que morreu na terça-feira aos 77 anos, carregou durante boa parte
de sua carreira essa lembrança atormentadora, repleta de dúvidas sobre o seu
papel e o das drogas nessa tragédia.
Em julho de 1969, o carro que dirigia saiu da estrada e caiu em um rio na
pequena ilha de Chappaquiddick (Massachusetts, nordeste).
Ted conseguiu sair do rio, mas não alertou as autoridades. A pessoa que
estava com ele no carro, Mary Jo Kopechne, de 28 anos, que tinha participado
da campanha presidencial de seu irmão Bob no ano anterior, morreu afogada.
Edward Kennedy foi condenado a dois anos de prisão por ter fugido
do local da tragédia, uma condenação que seria suspensa.
"Considero como indefensável o fato de não ter avisado imediatamente a
polícia a respeito do acidente", disse ele ao pedir desculpas públicas. Ted
Kennedy, considerado então uma estrela em ascensão da dinastia, negou que
estivesse sob efeito de álcool e que tivesse uma relação extraconjugal com a
jovem.
Mas a dúvida permaneceu na cabeça de muitos norte-americanos: Teria ele
deixado a jovem morrer? Será que houve um relacionamento entre os dois
enquanto ele era casado?
Sua carreira política jamais se recuperou completamente, mesmo com suas
seguidas eleições para o Senado durante 47 anos. Em 1980, aspirante à
candidatura democrata na eleição presidencial, fracassou em sua disputa
interna contra Jimmy Carter ao término de uma campanha em que o episódio
de Chappaquiddick foi trazido à tona insistentemente pela imprensa.
Sua vida continuou alimentando rumores, com fama de mulherengo,
problemas com álcool e um divórcio conturbado de sua primeira esposa, Joan
Bennett Kennedy, que sofria de depressão e alcoolismo.
Seu filho Patrick, de 42 anos, membro da Câmara dos Representantes do
Estado de Rhode Island (nordeste), também ocupou com frequência os "faits
divers". Ele reconheceu ter consumido cocaína na adolescência e, em 2006,
envolvido em um acidente de carro, assumiu ser dependente de alguns
medicamentos, tendo sido submetido depois a um tratamento de
desintoxicação.

Senator Edward Kennedy

Senator Edward Kennedy, who died on August 25 aged 77, was once described
by his brother Jack, the President, as “the best politician in the family”, and
over 47 years on Capitol Hill did much to justify that judgment — even if the
scandal that hung about his name prevented a move to the White House.
Published: 7:33AM BST 26 Aug 2009
As senator for Massachusetts from 1962, Kennedy proved both hard-working
and effective, with a consistent devotion to liberal causes. The old, the young,
the unemployed, the disabled, ethnic minorities, homosexuals, women — all
found in him an eager advocate. But not unborn children: unexpectedly for a
Roman Catholic, Kennedy approved federal payments for abortions.
Kennedy defended bussing as a means of achieving desegregation in schools.
He was an early advocate of legislation to protect the consumer. He helped to
make the draft fairer, and then to end it. He was instrumental in the abolition
of the poll tax, played a critical role in lowering the voting age to 18, and led
the campaign for the deregulation of airlines.
In the aftermath of Watergate he piloted through the Senate a measure to
provide public financing for Presidential campaigns. In 1981 he was to the fore
in reshaping the Voting Rights Act of 1965, strengthening the clauses against
discrimination. Above all, he fought long and hard, if unsuccessfully, to achieve
a national scheme of health insurance in America.
Kennedy’s lengthy experience in the Senate enabled him to become an
accomplished wheeler-dealer, with a particular gift for finding Republican allies
and persuading them to back his liberal causes. By way of corollary, he himself
took a hard line on law and order, calling for mandatory sentencing for street
crimes, less judicial discretion in deciding penalties, and severe restrictions of
parole.
In foreign affairs, Kennedy fought for an early end to American involvement in
the Vietnam War (having supported it without question during his brother’s
Presidency); prodded successive administrations into pursuing arms
agreements with the Soviet Union; lobbied for a comprehensive nuclear test
ban treaty; denounced apartheid in South Africa; and needled the American
conscience on famine abroad.
He also annoyed several British administrations — and won the support of his
Boston constituents — with his consistent support for the Irish Republican
cause. It was Kennedy who urged in 1995 that Gerry Adams should be given a
visa to visit America.
All Teddy Kennedy’s ambitions, however, foundered on the events of the night
of July 18 1969, when he left a party with Mary Jo Kopechne (who had worked
on Bobby Kennedy’s presidential campaign the year before), and drove a big,
black Oldsmobile off a rickety wooden bridge at Chappaquiddick,
Massachusetts, into an 8ft-deep tidal pool. He managed to escape — he could
not remember how — but Mary Jo Kopechne was trapped in the car.
Kennedy, on his own account, “repeatedly dove down and tried to see if the
passenger was still in the car”, but was unsuccessful. Rather than raise the
alarm, however, he returned to the cottage where the party had been, slumped
into a parked car, summoned two friends (both of them lawyers), and went
back with them to the bridge, where they tried in vain to rescue Mary Jo
Kopechne.
Although there was a pay-phone near the bridge, no one contacted the police.
Instead, Kennedy swam back to the inn where he was lodged. At 2.25, some
three hours after the accident, he emerged, dry and neatly dressed from his
room, and asked the proprietor what time it was. Next morning, before
breakfast at 8am, he was seen calmly reading a newspaper in the lobby of the
inn.
He then returned to his room where he again met the two lawyers, and made
several telephone calls. By the time he went to the police the car had already
been found, with Mary Jo Kopechne dead inside it.
Kennedy himself later admitted that his behaviour was “inexplicable”, even
while attempting to account for it by saying that he must have been in a state
of shock, and a neuro-surgeon did indeed diagnose “concussion”. It could not
but seem, however, that he had tried to save his own reputation before
exhausting all means of saving Mary Jo Kopechne’s life.
Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident, and was given a
two months’ suspended sentence. In a televised address to the people of
Massachusetts that night, he admitted that his conduct had been
“indefensible”. At the same time he denied rumours of being drunk or having
“a private relationship” with Miss Kopechne. In a well-calculated display of
repentance, he then asked voters to tell him if his behaviour had impaired his
standing to such an extent that he should resign as senator.
The response was satisfactory enough to allow him to announce on July 30 that
he would remain in office. In 1970 he was re-elected to the Senate. But he was
never able completely to lay the ghost of Chappaquiddick.
His best chance of winning the Presidency seemed to have arrived in 1979,
when the polls showed him three times as popular among voters as the
incumbent President, Jimmy Carter. After denying for two years that he had
any intention of challenging Carter for the Democratic nomination in 1980,
Kennedy, finally tempted, took the plunge on November 7 1979. “The country
is ready to advance,” he declared. “It is willing to stand, and so am I.”
Notwithstanding the careful calculation that informed Kennedy’s every political
move, his timing for entering the Presidential race could not have been worse.
Three days before he announced his candidacy, a mob in Teheran had seized
63 hostages from the American embassy.
The sight of the Stars and Stripes being burned in the streets, and of the
hostages being paraded before the cameras had the effect of rallying American
opinion behind the President. Kennedy, meanwhile, seemed surprisingly
unimpressive in television interviews, and notably failed to deal convincingly
with the Chappaquiddick issue.
“Senator,” began one interviewer, “you were expelled from Harvard for
cheating, then you left a woman to drown in your car at Chappaquiddick. What
makes you think you have what it takes to be President?” On the streets
bumper stickers proclaimed: "No one drowned at Watergate”.
It was also well known that Kennedy’s wife Joan (whom he had wed in 1958)
was fighting alcoholism and that their marriage was in serious trouble. Asked
about it during a television interview in 1979, Kennedy had one of his fits of
inarticulacy: “Well, I think that it’s a — it’s had some difficult times, but I think
we have, we, I think have been able to make some very good progress and it’s
— I would say that it’s, it’s, it’s — delighted that we’re able to, to share the
time and the relationship that we, that we do share.”
Carter won the early primaries in 1980, and by June appeared to have secured
the Democratic nomination. But Kennedy insisted on soldiering on till the
Democratic convention in August, where he made the best political speech of
his life. It came too late, and he was left to console himself with the reflection
that his only motive had been to serve the public.
Edward Moore Kennedy was born at Brookline, Massachusetts, on February 22
1932, the ninth and last child of Joseph and Rose Kennedy. Both his parents
came from Irish Catholic families which had established a strong power base in
Boston politics. His father, Joseph Kennedy, after making a large fortune by
dubious means in the 1920s, was in 1938 appointed American ambassador to
London, where he made no bones about his conviction that Hitler would win
the war.
As the family moved between London, New York, Boston and Palm Beach,
Teddy Kennedy studied at a string of private boarding schools, ending up in
1946 at Milton Academy, a co-educational establishment near Boston. He did
not excel academically, but showed all the Kennedys’ competitiveness in
games, and proved himself a good debater.
He went on to Harvard, where, in his first year, he persuaded a friend to take
his examination in Spanish, one of his weaker subjects. Both of them were
expelled, but in 1953, after a couple of years in France and Germany as a
private in the US Army, Kennedy was readmitted to Harvard.
After graduating in 1955 with a degree in History and Government, Kennedy
continued his studies at the International Law Institute at The Hague, worked
as a reporter for the International News Service, and finally, in 1959, achieved
an LL.B from the University of Virginia Law School. Later that year he was
admitted to the Massachusetts Bar.
From these fraught and prolonged educational processes, Kennedy moved
unblushingly into politics, masterminding his brother Jack’s campaign for re-
election to the Senate in 1958. Two years later he played an important part in
organising support in the primary elections which secured his brother’s
nomination as the Democratic candidate for the presidency.
When Jack, having been elected President, gave up his seat as one of the
senators for Massachusetts, he saw to it that a family friend called Benjamin
Smith was appointed in his stead. The understanding was that Smith would
stand aside in time for the special election scheduled for November 1962,
when Teddy Kennedy would be 30, the qualifying age for the Senate.
And so it transpired. Kennedy did not have an altogether easy ride — “If your
name was Edward Moore instead of Edward Moore Kennedy,” his Republican
opponent observed, “your candidacy would be a joke” — but nevertheless he
won by more than 300,000 votes. He was the youngest man ever elected to
the Senate.
Teddy Kennedy happened to be presiding over the Senate when the press
officer brought him the news that the President had been assassinated. Within
a year he too came close to death when he was seriously injured in a plane
crash. He spent six months in hospital, totally immobilised, but refused to
abandon his political career and in 1964 won re-election to the Senate with an
unprecedented 74 per cent of the votes.
The murder of Bobby Kennedy in June 1968 was another shattering blow, which
led Teddy temporarily to withdraw from public life, though he managed to
deliver the eulogy at his brother’s funeral in St Patrick’s Cathedral, New York.
In August he announced his intention to “pick up the fallen standard”.
Some felt that the Democratic nomination might have been his for the asking
after Bobby’s death. But Teddy Kennedy felt that he had enough on his plate
simply as head of the stricken family. The litany of scandal and misfortune
never seemed to end. Of his own sons, Edward had to have a leg amputated in
1973 after contracting bone cancer, while Patrick, after overcoming an
addiction to cocaine, had to have a tumour on his spine removed in 1988 (it
proved to be benign).
Of Bobby Kennedy’s children, Robert pleaded guilty to possessing heroin in
1983; David died of a drug overdose in 1984, and Joseph was prosecuted after
a car crash left a girlfriend paralysed. An eyewitness reported that Teddy
Kennedy’s attempt to lecture his own children on the dangers of drug abuse
ended in his snorting lines of coke with them.
Teddy Kennedy had his full share of the Kennedy libido, and gave many
hostages to the scandalmongers. Though his wife Joan gamely accompanied
him in his presidential bid in 1980, they divorced in 1982.
Against this troubled background, it is extraordinary that Kennedy retained
such enduring zest for his political career. In January 1969, a few months
before the disaster at Chappaquiddick, he had succeeded in wresting the post
of Senate majority whip from Russell Long. It was a sign of his reduced status
in the aftermath of Chappaquiddick that in January 1971 he was ousted from
this position.
Yet he remained an effective senator. In 1986 he took over the chairmanship of
the Labour and Human Resources Committee, where he proved a thorn in
President Reagan’s side. Even the Mormon bishop from Utah, Senator Orrin
Hatch, admired the way Kennedy fought for liberal causes in sub-committees.
“You’re a great senator now, but you are going to have to grow up,” he told
him.
But sexual scandals proliferated to such an extent that it seemed that Kennedy
hardly cared whether he was caught or not. The climax came at Palm Springs
on Good Friday 1991, when Kennedy, who had been drinking all day, woke up
his son Patrick and his nephew William Smith around midnight, and insisted
they cruise the town with him. They picked up a couple of women; and next
morning one of them claimed that William Smith had raped her.
Smith was subsequently acquitted, but Teddy Kennedy’s image was badly
damaged. He did not carry much force when, later that year, he spoke up for
Anita Hill, who had accused Clarence Thomas, President Bush’s nominee for
the Supreme Court of sexual molestation.
Yet Kennedy allied himself eagerly to the Clintons’ doomed attempt to
establish a scheme of national health care, and on the domestic front at last
found some stability when he marred Victoria Reggie in 1992.
All the same, having been re-elected senator for Massachusetts four times
almost without a contest, Kennedy found himself with a fight on his hands in
1994.
Bloated, raddled, obese, and proceeding by means of a stately waddle, he
summoned all his resources and, supported by his friend President Clinton,
emerged as the victor for the sixth time. And his son Patrick was elected to the
House of Representatives.
Still the old warrior showed a remarkable appetite for politics. He helped to
rebuild President Clinton’s morale after the Republican triumph in the
Congressional elections of 1994, and warned him against the dangers of
drifting too far to the Right.
Kennedy helped lead the fightback against Newt Gingrich, the seemingly
triumphant Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, whose policy
he anathematised as “taking from the needy to give to the greedy”. In the
Senate he outmanoeuvred Bob Dole to secure an increase in the minimum
wage.
He also, at last, scored two successes on health care, successfully fighting for a
bill which limited the time during which an insurer could deny cover for a
specific condition, and in 1997 guiding through a measure which provided
cover for uninsured American children, partly through an extra charge on
cigarettes.
Kennedy had previously spurned such a piecemeal approach to health reform,
but was happy enough, after so many years of fruitless struggle, “to eat a little
crow about incremental health care”.
In 2004 he endorsed John Kerry for the Democratic nomination, and two years
later he was re-elected to the Senate (as the second-longest serving member).
Had he completed his term, he would have spent half a century as a senator.
That year he published America Back on Track, a political history, as well as a
child’s guide to Washington. In January last year he backed Barack Obama’s
bid for the presidency, and four months later, after he had suffered two
seizures, he was diagnosed with a brain tumour. He caused concern in January
this year when he collapsed with fatigue at the President’s inaugural lunch.
Last March the prime minister, Gordon Brown, announced that he had been
awarded an honorary knighthood.
Edward Kennedy had two sons and a daughter by his first marriage.

August 27, 2009

Edward M. Kennedy, Senate Stalwart, Is Dead at 77
By JOHN M. BRODER
Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a son of one of the most storied
families in American politics, a man who knew acclaim and tragedy in near-
equal measure and who will be remembered as one of the most effective
lawmakers in the history of the Senate, died late Tuesday night. He was 77.
The death of Mr. Kennedy, who had been battling brain cancer, was announced
Wednesday morning in a statement by the Kennedy family, which was already
mourning the death of the senator’s sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver two weeks
earlier.
“Edward M. Kennedy — the husband, father, grandfather, brother and uncle we
loved so deeply — died late Tuesday night at home in Hyannis Port,” the
statement said. “We’ve lost the irreplaceable center of our family and joyous
light in our lives, but the inspiration of his faith, optimism and perseverance will
live on in our hearts forever.”
President Obama said Mr. Kennedy was one of the nation’s greatest senators.
“His ideas and ideals are stamped on scores of laws and reflected in millions of
lives — in seniors who know new dignity, in families that know new
opportunity, in children who know education’s promise, and in all who can
pursue their dream in an America that is more equal and more just — including
myself,” he said. Mr. Obama is scheduled to speak at a funeral Mass for Mr.
Kennedy on Saturday morning in Boston.
Mr. Kennedy had been in precarious health since he suffered a seizure in May
2008. His doctors determined the cause was a malignant glioma, a brain tumor
that carries a grim prognosis.
As he underwent cancer treatment, Mr. Kennedy was little seen in Washington,
appearing most recently at the White House in April as Mr. Obama signed a
national service bill that bears the Kennedy name. In a letter last week, Mr.
Kennedy urged Massachusetts lawmakers to change state law and let Gov.
Deval Patrick appoint a temporary successor upon his death, to assure that the
state’s representation in Congress would not be interrupted.
While Mr. Kennedy was physically absent from the capital in recent months, his
presence was deeply felt as Congress weighed the most sweeping revisions to
America’s health care system in decades, an effort Mr. Kennedy called “the
cause of my life.”
On July 15, the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee,
which Mr. Kennedy headed, passed health care legislation, and the battle over
the proposed overhaul is now consuming Capitol Hill.
Mr. Kennedy was the last surviving brother of a generation of Kennedys that
dominated American politics in the 1960s and that came to embody glamour,
political idealism and untimely death. The Kennedy mystique — some call it the
Kennedy myth — has held the imagination of the world for decades, and it
came to rest on the sometimes too-narrow shoulders of the brother known as
Teddy.
Mr. Kennedy, who served 46 years as the most well-known Democrat in the
Senate, longer than all but two other senators, was the only one of those
brothers to reach old age. President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F.
Kennedy were felled by assassins’ bullets in their 40s. The eldest brother,
Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., died in 1944 at the age of 29 while on a risky World War
II bombing mission.
Mr. Kennedy spent much of the last year in treatment and recuperation, broken
by occasional public appearances and a dramatic return to the Capitol last
summer to cast a decisive vote on a Medicare bill.
He electrified the opening night of the Democratic National Convention in
Denver in August with an unscheduled appearance and a speech that had
delegates on their feet. Many were in tears.
His gait was halting, but his voice was strong. “My fellow Democrats, my fellow
Americans, it is so wonderful to be here, and nothing is going to keep me away
from this special gathering tonight,” Mr. Kennedy said. “I have come here
tonight to stand with you to change America, to restore its future, to rise to our
best ideals and to elect Barack Obama president of the United States.”
Senator Kennedy was at or near the center of much of American history in the
latter part of the 20th century and the early years of the 21st. For much of his
adult life, he veered from victory to catastrophe, winning every Senate election
he entered but failing in his only bid for the presidency; living through the
sudden deaths of his brothers and three of his nephews; being responsible for
the drowning death on Chappaquiddick Island of a young woman, Mary Jo
Kopechne, a former aide to his brother Robert. One of the nephews, John F.
Kennedy Jr., who the family hoped would one day seek political office and keep
the Kennedy tradition alive, died in a plane crash in 1999 at age 38.
Mr. Kennedy himself was almost killed in 1964, in a plane crash that left him
with permanent back and neck problems.
He was a Rabelaisian figure in the Senate and in life, instantly recognizable by
his shock of white hair, his florid, oversize face, his booming Boston brogue, his
powerful but pained stride. He was a celebrity, sometimes a self-parody, a
hearty friend, an implacable foe, a man of large faith and large flaws, a
melancholy character who persevered, drank deeply and sang loudly. He was a
Kennedy.
Senator Robert C. Byrd, Democrat of West Virginia, one of the institution’s
most devoted students, said of his longtime colleague, “Ted Kennedy would
have been a leader, an outstanding senator, at any period in the nation’s
history.”
Mr. Byrd is one of only two senators to have served longer in the chamber than
Mr. Kennedy; the other was Strom Thurmond of South Carolina. In May 2008,
on learning of Mr. Kennedy’s diagnosis of a lethal brain tumor, Mr. Byrd wept
openly on the floor of the Senate.
More Than a Legislator
Born to one of the wealthiest American families, Mr. Kennedy spoke for the
downtrodden in his public life while living the heedless private life of a playboy
and a rake for many of his years. Dismissed early in his career as a lightweight
and an unworthy successor to his revered brothers, he grew in stature over
time by sheer longevity and by hewing to liberal principles while often crossing
the partisan aisle to enact legislation. A man of unbridled appetites at times, he
nevertheless brought a discipline to his public work that resulted in an
impressive catalog of legislative achievement across a broad landscape of
social policy.
Mr. Kennedy left his mark on legislation concerning civil rights, health care,
education, voting rights and labor. He was chairman of the Senate Committee
on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions at his death. But he was more than a
legislator. He was a living legend whose presence ensured a crowd and whose
hovering figure haunted many a president.
Although he was a leading spokesman for liberal issues and a favorite target of
conservative fund-raising appeals, the hallmark of his legislative success was
his ability to find Republican allies to get bills passed. Perhaps the last notable
example was his work with President George W. Bush to pass No Child Left
Behind, the education law pushed by Mr. Bush in 2001. He also co-sponsored
immigration legislation with Senator John McCain, the 2008 Republican
presidential nominee. One of his greatest friends and collaborators in the
Senate was Orrin G. Hatch, the Utah Republican.
Mr. Kennedy had less impact on foreign policy than on domestic concerns, but
when he spoke, his voice was influential. He led the Congressional effort to
impose sanctions on South Africa over apartheid, pushed for peace in Northern
Ireland, won a ban on arms sales to the dictatorship in Chile and denounced
the Vietnam War. In 2002, he voted against authorizing the Iraq war; later, he
called that opposition “the best vote I’ve made in my 44 years in the United
States Senate.”
At a pivotal moment in the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, Mr.
Kennedy endorsed Mr. Obama, then an Illinois senator, Obama for president,
saying he offered the country a chance for racial reconciliation and an
opportunity to turn the page on the polarizing politics of the past several
decades.
“He will be a president who refuses to be trapped in the patterns of the past,”
Mr. Kennedy said at an Obama rally in Washington on Jan. 28, 2008. “He is a
leader who sees the world clearly, without being cynical. He is a fighter who
cares passionately about the causes he believes in without demonizing those
who hold a different view.”
This month, Mr. Obama awarded Mr. Kennedy the Presidential Medal of
Freedom, which his daughter, Kara, accepted on his behalf.
Mr. Kennedy struggled for much of his life with his weight, with alcohol and
with persistent tales of womanizing. In an Easter break episode in 1991 in Palm
Beach, Fla., he went out drinking with his son Patrick and a nephew, William
Kennedy Smith, on the night that Mr. Smith was accused of raping a woman.
Mr. Smith was prosecuted in a lurid trial that fall but was acquitted.
Mr. Kennedy’s personal life stabilized in 1992 with his marriage to Victoria
Anne Reggie, a Washington lawyer. His first marriage, to Joan Bennett
Kennedy, ended in divorce in 1982 after 24 years.
Senator Kennedy served as a surrogate father to his brothers’ children and
worked to keep the Kennedy flame alive through the Kennedy Library in
Boston, the Kennedy Center in Washington and the Kennedy School of
Government at Harvard University, where he helped establish the Institute of
Politics.
In December, Harvard granted Mr. Kennedy a special honorary degree. He
referred to Mr. Obama’s election as “not just a culmination, but a new
beginning.”
He then spoke of his own life, and perhaps his legacy.
“We know the future will outlast all of us, but I believe that all of us will live on
in the future we make,” he said. “I have lived a blessed time.”
Kennedy family courtiers and many other Democrats believed he would
eventually win the White House and redeem the promise of his older brothers.
In 1980, he took on the president of his own party, Jimmy Carter, but fell short
because of Chappaquiddick, a divided party and his own weaknesses as a
candidate, including an inability to articulate why he sought the office.
But as that race ended in August at the Democratic National Convention in New
York, Mr. Kennedy delivered his most memorable words, wrapping his
dedication to party principles in the gauzy cloak of Camelot.
“For me, a few hours ago, this campaign came to an end,” Mr. Kennedy said in
the coda to a speech before a rapt audience at Madison Square Garden and on
television. “For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes
on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the dream shall never die.”
A Family Steeped in Politics
Born Feb. 22, 1932, in Boston, Edward Moore Kennedy grew up in a family of
shrewd politicians. Both his father, Joseph P. Kennedy, and his mother, the
former Rose Fitzgerald, came from prominent Irish-Catholic families with long
involvement in the hurly-burly of Democratic politics in Boston and
Massachusetts. His father, who made a fortune in real estate, movies and
banking, served in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, as the first
chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and then as ambassador
to Britain.
There were nine Kennedy children, four boys and five girls, with Edward the
youngest. They grew up talking politics, power and influence because those
were the things that preoccupied the mind of Joseph Kennedy. As Rose
Kennedy, who took responsibility for the children’s Roman Catholic upbringing,
once put it, “My babies were rocked to political lullabies.”
When Edward was born, President Herbert Hoover sent Rose a bouquet of
flowers and a note of congratulations. The note came with 5 cents postage
due; the framed envelope is a family heirloom.
It was understood among the children that Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., the oldest
boy, would someday run for Congress and, his father hoped, the White House.
When Joseph Jr. was killed in World War II, it fell to the next oldest son, John, to
run. As John said at one point in 1959 while serving in the Senate: “Just as I
went into politics because Joe died, if anything happened to me tomorrow,
Bobby would run for my seat in the Senate. And if Bobby died, our young
brother, Ted, would take over for him.”
Although surrounded by the trappings of wealth — stately houses, servants and
expensive cars — young Teddy did not enjoy a settled childhood. He bounced
among the family homes in Boston, New York, London and Palm Beach, and by
the time he was ready to enter college, he had attended 10 preparatory
schools in the United States and England, finally finishing at Milton Academy,
near Boston. He said that the constant moving had forced him to become more
genial with strangers; indeed, he grew to be more of a natural politician than
either John or Robert.
After graduating from Milton in 1950, where he showed a penchant for
debating and sports but was otherwise an undistinguished student, Mr.
Kennedy enrolled in Harvard, as had his father and brothers.
It was at Harvard, in his freshman year, that he ran into the first of several
personal troubles that were to dog him for the rest of his life: He persuaded
another student to take his Spanish examination, got caught and was forced to
leave the university.
Suddenly draft-eligible during the Korean War, Mr. Kennedy enlisted in the
Army and served two years, securing, with his father’s help, a post at NATO
headquarters in Paris. In 1953, he was discharged with the rank of private first
class.
Re-enrolling in Harvard, he became a more serious student, majoring in
government, excelling in public speaking and playing first-string end on the
football team. He graduated in 1956 with a Bachelor of Arts degree, then
enrolled in the University of Virginia School of Law, where Robert had studied.
There, he won the moot court competition and took a degree in 1959. Later
that year, he was admitted to the Massachusetts bar.
Mr. Kennedy’s first foray into politics came in 1958, while still a law student,
when he managed John’s Senate re-election campaign. There was never any
real doubt that Massachusetts voters would return John Kennedy to
Washington, but it was a useful internship for his youngest brother.
That same year, Mr. Kennedy married Virginia Joan Bennett, a debutante from
Bronxville, a New York suburb where the Kennedys had once lived. In 1960,
when John Kennedy ran for president, Edward was assigned a relatively minor
role, rustling up votes in Western states that usually voted Republican. He was
so enthusiastic about his task that he rode a bronco at a Montana rodeo and
daringly took a ski jump at a winter sports tournament in Wisconsin to impress
a crowd. The episodes were evidence of a reckless streak that repeatedly
threatened his life and career.
John Kennedy’s election to the White House left vacant a Senate seat that the
family considered its property. Robert Kennedy was next in line, but chose the
post of attorney general instead (an act of nepotism that has since been
outlawed). Edward was only 28, two years shy of the minimum age for Senate
service.
So the Kennedys installed Benjamin A. Smith II, a family friend, as a seat-
warmer until 1962, when a special election would be held and Edward would
have turned 30. Edward used the time to travel the world and work as an
assistant district attorney in Boston, waiving the $5,000 salary and serving
instead for $1 a year.
As James Sterling Young, the director of a Kennedy Oral History Project at the
University of Virginia, said the catchphrase of that era was: “Most people grow
up and go into politics. The Kennedys go into politics and then they grow up.”
Less than a month after turning 30 in 1962, Mr. Kennedy declared his
candidacy for the remaining two years of his brother’s Senate term. He entered
the race with a tailwind of family money and political prominence.
Nevertheless, Edward J. McCormack Jr., the state’s attorney general and a
nephew of John W. McCormack, then speaker of the United States House of
Representatives, also decided to go after the seat.
It was a bitter fight, with a public rehash of the Harvard cheating episode and
with Mr. McCormack charging in a televised “Teddy-Eddie” debate that Mr.
Kennedy lacked maturity of judgment because he had “never worked for a
living” and had never held elective office. “If your name was simply Edward
Moore instead of Edward Moore Kennedy,” Mr. McCormack added, “your
candidacy would be a joke.”
But the Kennedys had ushered in an era of celebrity politics, which trumped
qualifications in this case. Mr. Kennedy won the primary by a two-to-one ratio,
then went on to easy victory in November against the Republican candidate,
George Cabot Lodge, a member of an old-line Boston family that had clashed
politically with the Kennedys through the years.
When Mr. Kennedy entered the Senate in 1962, he was aware that he might be
seen as an upstart, with one brother in the White House and another in the
cabinet. He sought guidance on the very first day from one of the Senate’s
most respected elders, Richard Russell of Georgia. “You go further if you go
slow,” Senator Russell advised.
Mr. Kennedy took things slowly, especially that first year. He did his homework,
was seen more than he was heard and was deferential to veteran legislators.
On Friday, Nov. 22, 1963, he was presiding over the Senate when a wire
service ticker in the lobby brought the news of John Kennedy’s shooting in
Dallas. Violence had claimed the second of Joseph Kennedy’s sons.
Edward was sent to Hyannis Port to break the news to his father, who had been
disabled by a stroke. He returned to Washington for the televised funeral and
burial, the first many Americans had seen of him. He and Robert had planned
to read excerpts from John’s speeches at the Arlington burial service. At the
last moment they chose not to.
A friend described him as “shattered — calm but shattered.”
A Deadly Plane Crash
Robert moved into the breach and was immediately discussed as a presidential
prospect. Edward became a more prominent family spokesman.
The next year, he was up for re-election. A heavy favorite from the start, he
was on his way to the state convention that was to renominate him when his
light plane crashed in a storm near Westfield, Mass. The pilot and a Kennedy
aide were killed, and Mr. Kennedy’s back and several ribs were broken. Senator
Birch Bayh of Indiana pulled Mr. Kennedy from the plane.
The senator was hospitalized for the next six months, suspended immobile in a
frame that resembled a waffle iron. His wife, Joan, carried on his campaign,
mainly by advising voters that he was steadily recovering. He won easily over a
little-known Republican, Howard Whitmore Jr.
During his convalescence, Mr. Kennedy devoted himself to his legislative work.
He was briefed by a parade of Harvard professors and began to develop his
positions on immigration, health care and civil rights.
“I never thought the time was lost,” he said later. “I had a lot of hours to think
about what was important and what was not and about what I wanted to do
with my life.”
He returned to the Senate in 1965, joining his brother Robert, who had won a
seat from New York. Edward promptly entered a major fight, his first. President
Lyndon B. Johnson’s Voting Rights Act was up for consideration, and Mr.
Kennedy tried to strengthen it with an amendment that would have outlawed
poll taxes. He lost by only four votes, serving lasting notice on his colleagues
that he was a rapidly maturing legislator who could prepare a good case and
argue it effectively.
Mr. Kennedy was slow to oppose the war in Vietnam, but in 1968, shortly after
Robert decided to seek the presidency on an antiwar platform, Edward called
the war a “monstrous outrage.”
Robert Kennedy was shot on June 5, 1968, as he celebrated his victory in the
California primary, becoming the third of Joseph Kennedy’s sons to die a violent
death. Edward was in San Francisco at a victory celebration. He
commandeered an Air Force plane and flew to Los Angeles.
Frank Mankiewicz, Robert’s press secretary, saw Edward “leaning over the sink
with the most awful expression on his face.”
“Much more than agony, more than anguish — I don’t know if there’s a word
for it,” Mr. Mankiewicz said, recalling the encounter in “Edward M. Kennedy: A
Biography,” by Adam Clymer (William Morrow, 1999).
Robert’s death draped Edward in the Kennedy mantle long before he was ready
for it and forced him to confront his own mortality. But he summoned himself
to deliver an eloquent eulogy at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York.
“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,”
Mr. Kennedy said, his voice faltering. “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 someday come to pass for all the world.”
A New Role as Patriarch
After the funeral, Edward Kennedy withdrew from public life and spent several
months brooding, much of it while sailing off the New England coast.
Near the end of the summer of 1968, he emerged from seclusion, the sole
survivor of Joseph Kennedy’s boys, ready to take over as family patriarch and
substitute father to John’s and Robert’s 13 children, seemingly eager to get on
with what he called his “public responsibilities.”
“There is no safety in hiding,” he declared in August in a speech at College of
the Holy Cross in Worcester, Mass. “Like my brothers before me, I pick up a
fallen standard. Sustained by the memory of our priceless years together, I
shall try to carry forward that special commitment to justice, excellence and
courage that distinguished their lives.”
There was some talk of his running for president at that point. But he
ultimately endorsed Hubert H. Humphrey in his losing campaign to Richard M.
Nixon.
Mr. Kennedy focused more on bringing the war in Vietnam to an end and on
building his Senate career. Although only 36, he challenged Senator Russell B.
Long of Louisiana, one of the shrewdest, most powerful legislators on Capitol
Hill, for the post of deputy majority leader. Fellow liberals sided with him, and
he edged Mr. Long by five votes to become the youngest assistant majority
leader, or whip, in Senate history.
He plunged into the new job with Kennedy enthusiasm. But fate, and the
Kennedy recklessness, intervened on July 18, 1969. Mr. Kennedy was at a party
with several women who had been aides to Robert. The party, a liquor-soaked
barbecue, was held at a rented cottage on Chappaquiddick Island, off Martha’s
Vineyard. He left around midnight with Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, took a turn away
from the ferry landing and drove the car off a narrow bridge on an isolated
beach road. The car sank in eight feet of water, but he managed to escape.
Miss Kopechne, a former campaign worker for Robert, drowned.
Mr. Kennedy did not report the accident to the authorities for almost 10 hours,
explaining later that he had been so banged about by the crash that he had
suffered a concussion, and that he had become so exhausted while trying to
rescue Miss Kopechne that he had gone immediately to bed. A week later, he
pleaded guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident and was given a
two-month suspended sentence.
But that was far from the end of the episode. Questions lingered in the minds
of the Massachusetts authorities and of the general public. Why was the car on
an isolated road? Had he been drinking? (Mr. Kennedy testified at an inquest
that he had had two drinks.) What sort of relationship did Mr. Kennedy and Miss
Kopechne have? Could she have been saved if he had sought help
immediately? Why did the senator tell his political advisers about the accident
before reporting it to the police?
The controversy became so intense that Mr. Kennedy went on television to ask
Massachusetts voters whether he should resign from office. He conceded that
his actions after the crash had been “indefensible.” But he steadfastly denied
any intentional wrongdoing.
His constituents sent word that he should remain in the Senate. And little more
than a year later, he easily won re-election to a second full term, defeating a
little-known Republican, Josiah A. Spaulding, by a three-to-two ratio. But his
heart did not seem to be in his work any longer. He was sometimes absent
from Senate sessions and neglected his whip duties. Senator Byrd, of West
Virginia, took the job away from him by putting together a coalition of Southern
and border-state Democrats to vote him out.
That loss shook Mr. Kennedy out of his lethargy. He rededicated himself to his
role as a legislator. “It hurts like hell to lose,” he said, “but now I can get
around the country more. And it frees me to spend more time on issues I’m
interested in.” Many years later, he became friends with Mr. Byrd and told him
the defeat had been the best thing that could have happened in his Senate
career.
Turmoil at Home
In the next decade, Mr. Kennedy expanded on his national reputation, first
pushing to end the war in Vietnam, then concentrating on his favorite
legislative issues, especially civil rights, health, taxes, criminal laws and
deregulation of the airline and trucking industries. He traveled the country,
making speeches that kept him in the public eye.
But when he was mentioned as a possible candidate for president in 1972, he
demurred; and when the Democratic nominee, George McGovern, offered him
the vice-presidential nomination, Mr. Kennedy again said no, not wanting to
face the inevitable Chappaquiddick questions.
In 1973, his son Edward M. Kennedy Jr., then 12, developed a bone cancer that
cost him a leg. The next year, Mr. Kennedy took himself out of the 1976
presidential race. Instead, he easily won a third full term in the Senate, and
Jimmy Carter, a former one-term governor of Georgia, moved into the White
House.
In early 1978, Mr. Kennedy’s wife, Joan, moved out of their sprawling
contemporary house overlooking the Potomac River near McLean, Va., a
Washington suburb. She took up residence in an apartment of her own in
Boston, saying she wanted to “explore options other than being a housewife
and mother.” But she also acknowledged a problem with alcohol, and conceded
that she was increasingly uncomfortable with the pressure-cooker life that
went with membership in the Kennedy clan. She began studying music and
enrolled in a program for alcoholics.
The separation posed not only personal but also political problems for the
senator. After Mrs. Kennedy left for Boston, there were rumors that linked the
senator with other women. He maintained that he still loved his wife and
indicated that the main reason for the separation was Mrs. Kennedy’s desire to
work out her alcohol problem. She subsequently campaigned for him in the
1980 race, but there was never any real reconciliation, and they eventually
entered divorce proceedings.
Although Mr. Kennedy supported Mr. Carter in 1976, by late 1978 he was
disenchanted. Polls indicated that the senator was becoming popular while the
president was losing support. In December, at a midterm Democratic
convention in Memphis, Mr. Kennedy could hold back no longer. He gave a
thundering speech that, in retrospect, was the opening shot in the 1980
campaign.
“Sometimes a party must sail against the wind,” he declared, referring to Mr.
Carter’s economic belt-tightening and political caution. “We cannot heed the
call of those who say it is time to furl the sail. The party that tore itself apart
over Vietnam in the 1960s cannot afford to tear itself apart today over budget
cuts in basic social programs.”
Mr. Kennedy did not then declare his candidacy. But draft-Kennedy groups
began to form in early 1979, and some Democrats up for re-election in 1980
began to cast about for coattails that were longer than Mr. Carter’s.
After consulting advisers and family members over the summer of 1979, Mr.
Kennedy began speaking openly of challenging the president, and on Nov. 7,
1979, he announced officially that he would run. “Our leaders have resigned
themselves to defeat,” he said.
The campaign was a disaster, badly organized and appearing to lack a political
or policy premise. His speeches were clumsy, and his delivery was frequently
stumbling and bombastic. And in the background, Chappaquiddick always
loomed. He won the New York and California primaries, but the victories were
too little and came too late to unseat Mr. Carter. At the party’s nominating
convention in New York, however, he stole the show with his “dream shall
never die” speech.
With the approach of the 1984 election, there was the inevitable speculation
that Mr. Kennedy, who had easily won re-election to the Senate in 1982, would
again seek the presidency. He prepared and planned a campaign. But in the
end he chose not to run, saying he wanted to spare his family a repeat of the
ordeal they went through in 1980. Skeptics said he also knew he could not fight
the undertow of Chappaquiddick.
A Full-On Senate Focus
Freed at last of the expectation that he should and would seek the White
House, Mr. Kennedy devoted himself fully to his day job in the Senate, where
he had already led the fight for the 18-year-old vote, the abolition of the draft,
deregulation of the airline and trucking industries, and the post-Watergate
campaign finance legislation. He was deeply involved in renewals of the Voting
Rights Act and the Fair Housing law of 1968. He helped establish the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration. He built federal support for
community health care centers, increased cancer research financing and
helped create the Meals on Wheels program. He was a major proponent of a
health and nutrition program for pregnant women and infants.
When Republicans took over the Senate in 1981, Mr. Kennedy requested the
ranking minority position on the Labor and Public Welfare Committee, asserting
that the issues before the labor and welfare panel would be more important
during the Reagan years.
In the years after his failed White House bid, Mr. Kennedy also established
himself as someone who made “lawmaker” mean more than a word used in
headlines to describe any member of Congress. Though his personal life was a
mess until his remarriage in the early 1990s, he never failed to show up
prepared for a committee hearing or a floor debate.
His most notable focus was civil rights, “still the unfinished business of
America,” he often said. In 1982, he led a successful fight to defeat the Reagan
administration’s effort to weaken the Voting Rights Act.
In one of those bipartisan alliances that were hallmarks of his legislative
successes, Mr. Kennedy worked with Senator Bob Dole, Republican of Kansas,
to secure passage of the voting rights measure, and Mr. Dole got most of the
credit.
Perhaps his greatest success on civil rights came in 1990 with passage of the
Americans with Disabilities Act, which required employers and public facilities
to make “reasonable accommodation” for the disabled.
When the bill was finally passed, Mr. Kennedy and others told how their views
on the bill had been shaped by having relatives with disabilities. Mr. Kennedy
cited his mentally disabled sister, Rosemary, and his son who had lost a leg to
cancer.
Mr. Kennedy was one of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s strongest allies in their failed
1994 effort to enact national health insurance, a measure the senator had
been pushing, in one form or another, since 1969.
But he kept pushing incremental reforms, and in 1997, teaming with Senator
Hatch, Mr. Kennedy helped enact a landmark health care program for children
in low-income families, a program now known as the State Children’s Health
Insurance Program, or S-Chip.
He led efforts to increase aid for higher education and win passage of Mr.
Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act. He pushed for increases in the federal
minimum wage. He helped win enactment of the Medicare prescription drug
benefit, one of the largest expansions of government health aid.
He was a forceful and successful opponent of the confirmation of Robert H.
Bork to the Supreme Court. In a speech delivered within minutes of President
Ronald Reagan’s nomination of Mr. Bork in 1987, Mr. Kennedy made an attack
that even friendly commentators called demagogic.
Mr. Bork’s “extremist view of the Constitution,” Mr. Kennedy said, meant that
“Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-
alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police
could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, and schoolchildren could
not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the
whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the
fingers of millions of Americans.”Some of Mr. Kennedy’s success as a legislator
can be traced to the quality and loyalty of his staff, considered by his
colleagues and outsiders alike to be the best on Capitol Hill.
“He has one of the most distinguished alumni associations of any U.S. senator,”
said Ross K. Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University who has worked in
Congress. “To have served in even a minor capacity in the Kennedy office or on
one of his committees is a major entry in anyone’s résumé.”
Those who have worked for Mr. Kennedy include Stephen G. Breyer, appointed
to the Supreme Court by President Clinton; Gregory B. Craig, now the White
House counsel; and Kenneth R. Feinberg, the Obama administration’s top
official for compensation.
A Place in History
Mr. Kennedy “deserves recognition not just as the leading senator of his time,
but as one of the greats in its history, wise in the workings of this singular
institution, especially its demand to be more than partisan to accomplish
much,” Mr. Clymer wrote in his biography.
“The deaths and tragedies around him would have led others to withdraw. He
never quits, but sails against the wind.”
Mr. Kennedy is survived by his wife, known as Vicki; two sons, Edward M.
Kennedy Jr. of Branford, Conn., and Representative Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode
Island; a daughter, Kara Kennedy Allen, of Bethesda, Md.; two stepchildren,
Curran Raclin and Caroline Raclin; and four grandchildren. His former wife, Joan
Kennedy, lives in Boston.
Mr. Kennedy is also survived by a sister, Jean Kennedy Smith, of New York. On
Aug. 11, his sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver of Potomac, Md., died at age 88.
Another sister, Patricia Kennedy Lawford, died in 2006. His sister Rosemary
died in 2005, and his sister Kathleen died in a plane crash in 1948.
Their little brother Teddy was the youngest, the little bear whom everyone
cuddled, whom no one took seriously and from whom little was expected.
He reluctantly and at times awkwardly carried the Kennedy standard, with all it
implied and all it required. And yet, some scholars contend, he may have
proved himself the most worthy.
“He was a quintessential Kennedy, in the sense that he had all the warts as
well as all the charisma and a lot of the strengths,” said Norman J. Ornstein, a
political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute.
“If his father, Joe, had surveyed, from an early age up to the time of his death,
all of his children, his sons in particular, and asked to rank them on talents,
effectiveness, likelihood to have an impact on the world, Ted would have been
a very poor fourth. Joe, John, Bobby ... Ted.
“He was the survivor,” Mr. Ornstein continued. “He was not a shining star that
burned brightly and faded away. He had a long, steady glow. When you survey
the impact of the Kennedys on American life and politics and policy, he will end
up by far being the most significant.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: August 28, 2009
A picture caption on Thursday with the continuation of the obituary of Senator
Edward M. Kennedy misidentified two of his sisters and omitted a third in some
editions. Shown in the picture, of the Kennedy clan in 1934, were front row,
from left: Patricia, Rose, Joe (holding 2-year-old Edward), Rosemary, Eunice and
Kathleen. (In some editions, Eunice’s name was omitted, and in some editions
Rosemary and Kathleen were reversed.)

The Times
August 27, 2009
Senator Edward 'Ted' Kennedy
Senator Ted Kennedy, who long survived his three ill-fated elder brothers,
could well have followed John F. Kennedy to the White House had it not been
for his involvement in the Chappaquiddick scandal.
Instead he took on the role of surrogate father to the children of his
assassinated brothers John and Robert and at the same time became one of
the most successful and effective of senators.
As Democratic Senator for Massachusetts continuously from 1962, Kennedy
became his party’s leading champion of liberalism, focusing his energies on
health-care, education, civil rights and immigration.
He was a harsh critic of the invasion of Iraq, stating that the best vote he had
ever cast in the Senate was against giving President George W. Bush the
authority to use force against Iraq. And despite his friendship with Bill and
Hillary Clinton, he threw his considerable political might behind Senator Barack
Obama’s 2008 campaign to be president of the United States “I know what
America can achieve,” said Kennedy. “I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. And with Barack
Obama we can do it again.”
Kennedy lacked the incisive intelligence of JFK and the dynamic intensity of
Robert Kennedy and throughout his public life was burdened by public and
family expectations as the survivor of a dynasty that once seemed likely to
dominate US politics for decades to come. But despite his playboy reputation
and lack of presidential calibre, he proved to be a forceful public speaker and a
skilled political operator.
Kennedy was the ninth and last child of Joseph P. Kennedy, a multi-
millionaire businessman who made his fortune smuggling liquor in the
days of Prohibition. An Irish-American with little love for Britain, his father
was the American Ambassador in London in the early days of the Second World
War who advised President Roosevelt that Britain would be defeated in its war
with Germany.
Edward Moore Kennedy was born in Boston in 1932 and was 6 when the family
moved to London. His eldest brother, Joseph, was killed in a wartime air crash.
Edward returned to the US when his father was recalled in 1940, attended
Fessenden School and entered Harvard in 1950.
While in his freshman year he brought on himself the first of the scandals that
were to plague his political life when he was expelled after being caught
cheating in a Spanish exam.
He then enlisted in the US Army for two years and was assigned to SHAPE
headquarters in Paris. Eventually he re-entered Harvard, graduating in 1956,
and went on to the University of Virginia Law School from which he graduated
in 1959.
Despite a reputation for fast living and brushes with the law for speeding and
drunken driving, Kennedy became an assistant district attorney in
Massachusetts in 1960. He soon turned his eye towards politics and played a
leading role in his brother JFK’s campaign for the presidency in 1960.
When JFK was elected President in 1960, Kennedy was too young to fill his
brother’s vacant Massachusetts Senate seat. The Kennedys, therefore, devised
a plan for a family friend to fill out the Senate term, keeping the seat until
Edward reached the age of 30 and was eligible to stand for election. With the
Kennedy machine behind him he was elected to a full six-year term and was re-
elected five more times after that.
From the start Kennedy proved a success as a US Senator, but in 1963, the
year after he was elected to the Senate, President Kennedy was assassinated
in Texas. In the next chapter of tragedy for the ill-starred Kennedy family, in
1968 his brother Robert was gunned down in Los Angeles while campaigning
for nomination for the Democratic presidential candidacy, causing Ted Kennedy
to withdraw from public life for nearly three months. His decision was prompted
not only by bereavement but also, as he admitted, a very real fear that “they”
would kill him just as “they” had killed his two brothers and Martin Luther King.
The following year, despite his youth, he was selected as Senate Majority whip
and with the magic of his family name, became widely regarded as the
Democrats’ best candidate to defeat President Richard Nixon in the 1972
election. But then on July 18, 1969 — the weekend of the first American landing
on the Moon — came the event that was to hang around his neck like a political
albatross for the rest of his career.
Chappaquiddick, along with Nixon’s Watergate and Bill Clinton’s affair with
Monica Lewinsky, became one of the biggest scandals of the century in the US.
Exactly what happened on that fatal weekend has been subject of endless
speculation ever since. All that is known for certain is that a young woman,
Mary Jo Kopechne, a former member of Robert Kennedy’s campaign staff, was
a guest with a group of married men and single women hosted by Kennedy at
an evening party on Chappaquiddick Island, off Martha’s Vineyard, after a
regatta at the Edgartown Yacht Club. Kennedy’s wife Joan, who was pregnant,
was not among the guests.
Kennedy left the party late that night and averred that he had been driving
Kopechne to the ferry when his car swerved off a bridge into tidal water. He
escaped from the submerged car and told the police that he then dived in
repeatedly but unsuccessfully to rescue his trapped passenger.
It was more than nine hours before Kennedy reported the accident to the
police, and his account of his actions after the event were widely doubted. He
became an easy target for his political enemies, and the Simon and Garfunkel
hit song Bridge over Troubled Water became a theme used by his detractors.
The suspicion still lingers that the power of the Kennedy clan resulted in his
escape from justice. The Kennedys paid Kopechne’s parents $90,000. Edward
Kennedy pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and received a
suspended sentence of two months in jail.
His behaviour aroused instant suspicions of a cover-up, which were reinforced
when Kopechne’s body was taken from the island and hurriedly buried in
Pennsylvania without an autopsy.
This omission and the apparent lack of a thorough investigation by the local
police led rapidly to allegations that the Senator had received favoured
treatment. Kennedy had already gained a reputation as a heavy drinker and
inveterate womaniser, and his claims of a perfectly innocent relationship with
Kopechne were not much believed.
On the night of his conviction Kennedy made a televised speech which was
watched by more Americans than had tuned in to see Neil Armstrong’s first
steps on the Moon.
Joe McGinnis, one of his several biographers, was later to describe it as
“perhaps the most wretched public address ever given by a prominent political
figure”.
At the end of an emotional, rambling and often contradictory statement about
his actions on the night of the accident, during which he claimed to have swum
the channel between Chappaquiddick and Martha’s Vineyard and almost
drowned, Kennedy offered to resign his Senate seat if voters of Massachusetts
had lost confidence in him.
His explanation was almost universally disbelieved in the press, with Time
magazine accusing him of “fencing with half truths, falsehoods, omissions,
rumours and insinuations of cowardice”. Nevertheless Kennedy did not resign
and was re-elected to the Senate in 1970, albeit with a reduced majority.
The fallout over Chappaquiddick is credited with preventing him from running
for President in 1972 and 1976. By 1980 it was considered that Kennedy’s
redemption was sufficiently advanced for him to run for the Democratic
nomination against President Jimmy Carter.
His campaign began well ahead in the polls but the final nail in the coffin of his
presidential aspirations came when he gave a long, rambling but unconvincing
answer to the question “Why do you want to be president?” After that he
bowed out of the campaign.
A decade later Kennedy faced another scandal that almost destroyed his
political career. In March 1991 his nephew William Kennedy Smith was charged
with rape in Palm Beach, Florida. The alleged assault took place at the Kennedy
family compound. The episode began around midnight when Edward Kennedy
asked his nephew and his son to go out for drinks at a local nightspot where
Smith picked up a woman who later accused him of raping her.
In her testimony the woman said she felt safe going to the Kennedy estate
“because after all he was taking me to the Kennedy home”. She said: “I
thought they would have security there. There was a Senator there. I didn’t feel
in danger whatever.”
There were many questions as to why a 59-year-old man would embark on a
post-midnight round of clubbing with his nephew and son. In a speech Kennedy
apologised to his constituents stating: “I am painfully aware that the criticism
directed at me in recent months involves far more than honest disagreement
with my position or the usual criticism from the far right. It also involves the
disappointments of friends and many others who rely on me to fight the good
fight. To them I say I recognise my own shortcomings — the faults in the
conduct of my private life. I realise that I alone am responsible for them, and
that I am the one who must confront them.”
Kennedy had only a 22 per cent approval rating in a national Gallup poll after
the so-called Palm Beach scandal. However, by 1994 his popularity was
restored, and he was re-elected with a solid majority in a tough competition
with Mitt Romney. After that his career once again gathered strength, and in
2006 Time magazine described him as one of the US’s ten best senators and
the leading liberal critic of Republican politics and policies.
His persistence, bipartisanship and long service won him friends on both sides
of Capitol Hill. He continued to be the advocate of numerous causes, including
raising the minimum wage, strengthening laws covering civil rights, the
protection of senior citizens and the disabled, the environment and workers’
safety.
Ted Kennedy supported the American-led 2001 overthrow of the Taleban
Government in Afghanistan but in 2007 was the first senator to oppose
President Bush’s troop surge policy in Iraq. On Northern Ireland Kennedy was
conscious of his Irish-American constituency and was regarded by many in the
UK as being sympathetic to Sinn Fein. In 1971 he compared the British
presence in Ulster to America’s involvement in Vietnam, and called for the
withdrawal of British troops.Later, however, he supported efforts for a
settlement and in 2005 publicly snubbed Gerry Adams by cancelling an
arranged meeting citing the IRA’s “ongoing criminal activity and contempt of
rule of law”. In March of this year the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown,
announced that Kennedy had been awarded an honorary knighthood, saying
that Northern Ireland owed a “great debt” to him.
In 1999 the Kennedy family suffered a further tragedy when Kennedy’s
nephew, John Kennedy Jr, piloting a small plane, went down in the ocean near
Martha’s Vineyard killing himself, his wife and sister-in-law. Once again
Kennedy found himself playing the role of family patriarch as he oversaw
funeral arrangements.
In the new millennium Kennedy continued his role as senior senator, serving as
ranking member on the health, education, labour and pensions committees. He
was the senior Democrat on the immigration subcommittee and a member of
the Senate Arms Control Observer committee.
Kennedy suffered serious health problems as a result of a plane crash in 1964.
His first marriage, in 1958, was to Virginia Joan Bennett who suffered in later
years with much publicised problems with alcohol.
They had two sons and a daughter and divorced in 1982. In July 1992 Kennedy
married Victoria Reggie, a Washington lawyer, the mother of two children.
Kennedy had hoped to survive to the end of the year so that he could vote for
President Obama’s extended national health insurance plan. He was the
leading supporter in the Senate for health reform, having fought for it for 40
years.
A few days before his death, in a dying wish, Kennedy requested a change in
the Massachusetts state law, so that, in the event of his death, his Senate seat
would not be vacant during the health reform vote — an event that would
leave the Democrats a vote short in a tight contest. Under the current law
there would be a time lapse of up to five months before a by-election for his
Senate seat.
Kennedy’s deteriorating health prevented him from attending the funeral of his
sister, Eunice Kennedy Shriver (obituary, August 12) and from a ceremony at
the White House to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest
civilian award in the US.
Kennedy is survived by his wife, Victoria Reggie, two stepchildren and the
daughter and two sons of his first marriage.
Senator Edward Kennedy, US politician, was born on February 22, 1932. He
died of cancer on August 25, 2009, aged 77

August 27, 2009

Edward Kennedy
Liberal American senator who never escaped his brothers' shadows or
the whiff of scandal
Edward Moore Kennedy was the youngest of the four sons of the ferociously
ambitious Joseph Patrick Kennedy, bootlegger, ambassador to the Court of St
James and the founding father of a dynasty whose luck was not the equal of
their fortune.
Video: Obama honours Kennedy
After the deaths of his three older brothers he tried to pick up the family
standard, but in spite of genuine political gifts and a spark of idealism that was
somehow never quite extinguished, either by his family's arrogance or by a
streak of coarse self-indulgence in his character, he was, by his own and his
family's elevated standards, a failure. He served with distinction in the United
States senate for almost half a century, longer than all but two senators in
history. But he never achieved the goal his father set for one son after another,
to be elected president of the United States.
His oldest brother, Joe, was shot down on a dangerous mission from East Anglia
over Germany in 1944. His second brother, Jack, did become President, but was
assassinated less than three years after his inauguration; and his third brother,
Robert, was murdered in a Los Angeles hotel as he was leaving a rally to
celebrate his victory in the California primary election, a victory that might well
have made him president, too.
Ted, as he was known (it was only his close family and his political enemies
who called him by the childhood nickname "Teddy"), also came close to
winning the presidency. He would probably have been the Democratic
candidate for president in 1972 had it not been for the worst of the several
scandals that punctuated his life and clouded his reputation, the mysterious
accident at Chappaquiddick in 1970, which Kennedy survived, but in which a
young woman was drowned. In 1980, he did run in the primaries - and strongly
- against Jimmy Carter, the incumbent president, only to lose the Democratic
nomination after a bruising campaign in which the Chappaquiddick episode
surfaced repeatedly.
In 1962, when he was still strictly speaking under the minimum age of 30 laid
down by the Constitution, Kennedy was elected to the Senate for the family's
home state of Massachusetts in a bitter fight with Edward McCormack, an
experienced scion of a rival Boston Irish political clan scion which gave the
United States a Speaker of the House of Representatives in the 1970s. In spite
of all the scandals and his inability to fulfil his brilliant promise in presidential
politics, Senator Kennedy was effective and respected in the Senate. His
positions were unabashedly liberal, especially on health care, more in keeping
with his brother Bobby than the more cautious, centrist track pursued by Jack.
Though he never succeeded in rising to the top of the Senate hierarchy as
majority leader (he was defeated by Robert Byrd of West Virginia in 1971), he
was for many years chairman of the Senate's labour and public welfare
committee, which had jurisdiction over health policy. He used that position to
good effect, just as he fought in later years for education reform. Kennedy was
also one of the earliest, most consistent, and most outspoken Democratic
critics of President George W. Bush's Iraq war.
Throughout the ups and downs, a constant of Kennedy's political career was his
resilience. He might have been overweight, with a red face that betrayed his
drinking. But to his great credit he never changed his political philosophy, even
when the traditional liberal welfare policies to which he was committed were
going out of fashion in the 1980s and 1990s. And in his political fiefdom of
Massachusetts he was immovable - never more so than when he beat off a
dangerous challenge from Mitt Romney, son of the Republican presidential
contender George Romney, for his Senate seat in 1994.
Kennedy was born in 1932 and christened Edward Moore Kennedy, after Eddie
Moore, one of his father's "rough and tumble but incredibly efficient" Boston
Irish hangers-on. Friends and biographers have speculated that it must have
been hard to grow up as the baby of the nine Kennedy children. Certainly he
was pampered as the heir to great wealth. His father's assets were often
estimated at about $400m, and Kennedy himself was given a trust fund of
$10m which grew to at least twice that sum as a result of the careful
management of the Park Agency, run by his brother-in-law Stephen Smith.
As the youngest male child of an intensely religious mother who was frequently
abandoned for long periods by her husband, himself a notorious womaniser,
young Teddy was in effect brought up by four women, his mother and his three
surviving older sisters. (His eldest sister Katherine, Marchioness of Hartington,
was killed in an air crash and another sister, Rosemary, was mentally deficient
and confined to private nursing homes after a lobotomy insisted on by Ted's
father). Kennedy himself said that, "It was like having a whole army of mothers
round me", and his mother confirmed in her memoirs that "he was my baby
and I tried to keep him my baby".
Although father and mother were scarcely on speaking terms after Joe
Kennedy's affair with Gloria Swanson in the 1930s, the father, too, undoubtedly
encouraged his youngest son to feel that life would be made easier for him. In
1962, when Ted ran for the Senate, his elder brothers expressed some doubt
about whether he was ready for such high office. "Now it's Ted's turn," said Joe,
"and whatever he wants, I'm going to see he gets it."
Whatever the reason, a whiff of scandal hung around Ted from a fairly early
age. There was always a streak of dishonesty, and a dangerously quick fuse
that could trigger off sudden, ugly violence. There was lifelong recklessness in
the pursuit of whim or pleasure. And there was a certain arrogance, born of the
certainty that he was not as other men, and that what Ted wants, Ted gets.
These deep flaws of character were not the whole story of a complex character.
But they were there, and he paid for them.
Six foot tall and weighing 15 stone, he was a useful football player and he
hoped to make the university team at Harvard. But Harvard, anxious to show
that it was not as other colleges that recruited giant dunces on football
scholarships, insisted its players pass various academic requirements,
including a foreign language. Aware that he would fail his Spanish exam, Ted
Kennedy paid a friend to take it for him. He was found out, and expelled. The
first result was that he had to do military service, in which he did not shine: he
failed to rise above private in two years. Harvard readmitted him, but again he
did something stupid. Playing rugby against a New York team, Kennedy three
times lost his temper and got into fist-fights and was sent off the field.
Next he tried to get into the Harvard law school and failed, so he went instead
to the law school at the University of Virginia, then a relaxed place for
equipping southern gentlemen to practice law in what were unreconstructed,
not to say somnolent, agrarian societies. Kennedy duly met the law school's
modest standards of the time, after a career of riotous living and four arrests
for reckless driving.
I first met him in Palm Beach shortly after he had announced for his brother's
old seat in the Senate representing Massachusetts, a seat which had been
"kept warm" since Jack went to the White House by one of his old Harvard
room-mates. He was newly married, and when the Kennedy yacht, the Honey
Fitz, stopped at the dock to pick them up, he and his young wife Joan, he in
blue seersucker, she in pink, were both shining with good looks, good health
and good fortune.
Yet there was a darker side to this Massachusetts Irish Greek god. One summer
when Ted was on a cruise from the family compound at Hyannis on Cape Cod,
up to Maine, he was rowing ashore for supplies. A yachtsman shouted some
taunt. Ted stormed on board the yacht, threw the yachtsman overboard, and
when his friends came on deck, he threw them into the sea too, not knowing or
caring whether they could swim. In 1964, campaigning for his second term in
the Senate, he was badly injured in a light plane crash, in part because he was
the only passenger on board who had not fastened his seat-belt. His spine was
broken in six places, he broke two ribs and he spent six months in hospital.
Ted took the murder of his two brothers very personally. For one thing, he was
very close to them both, though in slightly different ways. Jack was so much
older that he was almost a father figure, and one who supplied some of the
warmth that was not forthcoming from his real father. The relationship with
Bob was more complex: close partnership inextricably mixed with intense
competitiveness.
Later, the youngest Kennedy wondered whether he, too, whom the gods had
blessed, might be destined to die young. Once, on a trip to Alaska, he had too
much to drink and told his companions, "They're going to shoot my ass off the
way they shot Bobby's." Grief and fear fuelled a growing drinking habit, and
that in turn reinforced his established traits of recklessness and erratic
behaviour. The syndrome came together in his destructive behaviour on the
night of 18-19 July 1969, after he had competed in a sailing regatta on Martha's
Vineyard, an event he had taken part in since he was a child. That evening he
went to a party at an isolated holiday cottage on Chappaquiddick island, which
is linked to the island of Martha's Vineyard only by a ferry.
Afterwards, attempts were made to portray his attendance as an act of
noblesse oblige, as if the great senator condescended to reward junior helpers
by visiting their party. Anyone with the slightest acquaintance with the mores
of the time, the place and the Kennedy sub-culture, would dismiss that out of
hand. Six attractive, young unmarried women had been assembled and the
senator and three favoured male guests, including a cousin, were there with
partying on their minds. There was a certain amount of drinking before
Kennedy left the party with a young woman called Mary Jo Kopechne, who had
worked on his brother's campaign the previous year.
All that is certain is that the next morning Miss Kopechne was found in the back
of the senator's car, drowned and without her underwear. The car had failed to
take a right-angle bend on the road from the cottage to the ferry to Edgartown.
Senator Kennedy's story was that he had come off the road, failed to save Mary
Jo, then swam the narrow channel and checked into a motel. Other
explanations, more or less plausible, have been put forward. Whatever
precisely happened that night, a number of facts, collectively deeply
discreditable to Kennedy, are undisputed.
A United States senator, married, attended a party with a number of young
women in an isolated cottage. He left the party, having drunk heavily, with one
of the young women. She was drowned or perhaps asphyxiated in an air bubble
in his car. He then failed to report what had happened for many hours. Only
when the car and the body had been discovered did he report the accident.
Thereupon the dean of the Yale Law School and other high-powered lawyers
were summoned to help the senator extricate himself from his legal difficulties,
and Kennedy aides spirited away the witnesses who had been at the party.
Kennedy did briefly appear in court to plead guilty to a misdemeanour charge
of leaving the scene of an accident. For this offence he was duly sentenced, as
his lawyers had arranged with the prosecution, to two months, suspended, in
jail, and to the loss of his driving licence for one year. He then retreated to the
family compound at Hyannisport, where he read out on television a 17-minute
apologia. It was a rambling, disingenuous and tasteless performance, in which,
for example, he referred to the "Kennedy curse", though it occurred to most of
viewers that he, not some non-existent curse, was to blame for the difficulty he
found himself in.
There was perhaps more than a touch of hypocrisy in the national outburst of
moral indignation to which Kennedy was subjected: stones were certainly cast
by many who were not without sin. Yet the Chappaquiddick episode was
disgraceful enough. A detail, the senator's inability to remember Mary Jo
Kopechne's name, lingered in many minds. His cool appearance in freshly
pressed yachting gear on the Edgartown dock before he knew that the accident
was known stuck in other craws. The efficient way in which the well-oiled
Kennedy machine went to work, too, was indecorous.
Then there was the senator's self-pity. "He did the worst thing he could have
done," commented the Kennedy retainer Richard Goodwin. "He Nixonised the
situation."
The punishment, if not inflicted according to due process of law by the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, was nevertheless a life sentence. However
hard he worked, however loyally he sought to defend his brother's liberal
legacy in Congress, Chappaquiddick would never be entirely forgotten or
forgiven. In a sense, it was the end of the Kennedy legend of invincibility and of
style. Ted Kennedy had behaved in about as unstylish a way as could be
imagined. And now he was to become the thing his family disdained above all
things: a loser.
In 1972, there was a brief flicker of the presidential flame. He had ruled himself
out for the nomination, and the campaign in his absence turned into a deeply
divisive contest between Senator George McGovern of South Dakota,
representing the anti-Vietnam war insurgency, and senator Hubert Humphrey
of Minnesota, champion of traditional Cold War liberalism. McGovern won. But
at the convention itself Kennedy had his moment of glory - a speech that,
whether or not he had much to do with the writing of it, was a magnificent call
to arms for the Democratic party.
As the 1980 election approached, with Jimmy Carter mired in failure and
unpopularity, Kennedy once again pulled on his campaign armour. But at the
very first hurdle he stumbled irretrievably. In 1979 he agreed to be interviewed
by the CBS correspondent, Roger Mudd. But when Mudd, as he could hardly
have avoided doing, asked him about Chappaquiddick, Kennedy stuttered
incoherently.
"I find," he mumbled, "as I have stated, that... I've found that the conduct
that... evening, in in in in the... as a result of the impact, of the accident, and
the... and the the sense of loss, the sense of hope, and the, and the sense of
tragedy and the whole set of circumstances, that... the the behaviour was
inexplicable." The dots represent, not excisions from a coherent text, but
pauses in a tortured utterance that was painfully close to breakdown.
Essentially his bid for the nomination ended at that moment. Kennedy was well
beaten by Carter in New Hampshire, which ought to have been his own New
England territory, partly because two national magazines ran investigative
features about Chappaquiddick during the campaign. He recovered doggedly,
pressing his glamorous family into service and winning the New York primary.
But at the convention, the last nail was driven into his defeat when he failed to
change the rule that forbade delegates elected with a commitment to Carter to
change sides.
In 1982 his wife, Joan, who had herself become an alcoholic, divorced him.
Kennedy drank heavily and pursued young women with an apparent disregard
for either his reputation or theirs: it was not unusual for a big black limousine
whose licence plate proclaimed that it belonged to the senior senator from
Massachusetts to be parked outside a young woman's house all night. In 1991
his reputation took a further knock when his nephew, William Kennedy Smith,
was prosecuted for a rape in Palm Beach, Florida. Although Smith was
acquitted, it suggested that Kennedy, at 59, was accompanying relatives half
his age on expeditions to pick up young women in nightclubs.
Yet if these accounts of his private life suggest he was a lost soul, that would
give a very misleading impression. He remained an assiduous and a
surprisingly popular legislator. Some called him "the best politician in the
family" - meaning that he was far better attuned than either his coolly
ambitious brother Jack or his idealistic, aggressive brother Bob to the hail-
fellow-well-met style of Capitol Hill, and to the hard-ball game of legislative
negotiation and horse-trading.
He maintained an exceptionally able staff, and staunchly defended liberal
causes, from health care and education to immigration. In 1987 he led the
successful liberal attack on the Supreme Court nomination of the conservative
Robert Bork. Under Bill Clinton he was a tireless facilitator in the search for
peace in Northern Ireland, and early in George W. Bush's administration
worked closely with a Republican President on education reform. But
bipartisanship ended with the Iraq invasion, which Kennedy termed, "a fraud
cooked up in Texas. He called the war "George Bush's Vietnam."
In 2008 he endorsed Senator Barack Obama at a critical point in the campaign
for the Democratic presidential nomination, explicitly likening Obama to
President Kennedy. Despite having been diagnosed with a brain tumour in May,
he returned to the Capitol last summer to cast the decisive vote for the
Democrats on Medicare, and was there again to see Obama sworn in as
president, but suffered a seizure at a luncheon afterwards.
His private life had setted down. In July 1992 Kennedy married a Washington
lawyer, Victoria Reggie, a divorced mother of two. It was by all accounts a very
happy union. Much had been taken, but there was much to abide. Kennedy left
behind three children by his first marriage with Joan, including Patrick, a
congressman for Rhode Island, and Edward Jr, who has been rumoured to eye a
Congressional seat from Connecticut. But in politics as in the abiding public
legend of the family, it was their father - tarnished, flawed yet always somehow
larger than life - who was the last of the Kennedy titans.
Godfrey Hodgson and Rupert Cornwell
Edward Moore Kennedy, politician: born Boston, Massachusetts 22 February
1932; US Senator (Democrat) for Massachusetts, from 1962; married 1958 Joan
Bennett (divorced 1982, two sons, one daughter), 1992 Victoria Reggie; died
Cape Cod, Massachusetts 25 August 2009.

Death of a dynasty
Thursday, 27 August 2009
The death of Senator Edward Kennedy ends an era in American politics when a
member of the Kennedy clan was never far from power. The only one of four
Kennedy brothers to die a natural death, he was an expert lawmaker and a
master tactician practised at reaching across the aisle when it would further
one of his many liberal causes.
His decision to support Barack Obama for his party's presidential nomination
over Hillary Clinton helped speed Mr Obama to the White House, while
simultaneously restoring hope to US liberals. And it might not be out of place to
observe that his death, at a crucial juncture in the President's political battle to
reform US healthcare, could just jog America's conscience one last time – as his
old-fashioned eloquence did so often in life.
In so many respects, Edward Kennedy trod a very American path from privilege
through disgrace and atonement to widespread respect. Painfully aware that
the stain of Mary Jo Kopechne's death at Chappaquiddick would never leave
him, he knuckled down to a life of legislative graft , placing his undoubted gifts
at the disposal of his rich country's poorest. With the presidential mantle never
likely to be his, he settled for a future as kingmaker, not king.
It is a rare US legislator whose reputation transcends the home arena. But
Teddy Kennedy was one such, and not only because of his lineage. From this
side of the Atlantic he will be remembered as an eminent Irish-American who
had the courage to look beyond the clichés of British-Irish discord and act on
the possibility of peace. In convincing President Clinton to grant a visa to the
Sinn Féin leader, Gerry Adams, he began a journey that would take him from
partisan to intermediary. That the tributes flowed yesterday from all parties to
the Anglo-Irish agreement is testimony to his contribution.
With his death, the Kennedy dynasty as a political force, the glamour of
Camelot, and a particular strain of paternalistic US liberalism pass into history.
He was a flawed man and a politician whose influence can be overestimated –
but one to whom President Obama, the British and the Irish all have reason to
be grateful.

salon.com > News July 17, 1999

www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/07/17/tragedy
The beautiful and the damned
Much has been given to the Kennedys, and much has been taken away
By Jake Tapper
Tragedy began shadowing John F. Kennedy Jr. before he was born.
Jacqueline Kennedy suffered severe complications during the premature labor,
and on her way to the hospital she frantically asked the ambulance attendant,
"Will I lose my baby?" Though it was a difficult delivery, things turned out OK
for the 6-pound 3-ounce baby, born on Nov. 25, 1960, just weeks after his
father was elected 35th president of the United States.
"Do you want your son to be president?" President Kennedy was asked as he
stood outside the incubator at Georgetown Hospital.
"I hadn't thought about it," Kennedy said. "I just want him to be all right."
He was, but the next Kennedy son wasn't so lucky. John Jr.'s brother, Patrick,
died on Aug. 9, 1963, just two days after his birth.
President Kennedy didn't get to spend as much time with his son as he wanted,
and he once worried aloud to an aide: "John sees so little of his father. How can
he ever know me?"
But their brief relationship was marked by laughter. "John-John and JFK quite
simply break each other up," former Washington Post editor Benjamin Bradlee
wrote in his book "Conversations with Kennedy." "Kennedy likes to laugh and
likes to make people laugh, and his son is the perfect foil for him."
The young boy was also entranced by the helicopters that landed on the White
House lawn. And in an unsettling anecdote related by Ralph Martin in "A Hero
for Our Time," President Kennedy once gave his son a toy plane and told him
he would buy him a real plane when he grew up.
"Promise, daddy?" Kennedy said to his father.
"I promise," President Kennedy answered, holding his son tightly. Both
Kennedy children were mesmerized by aircraft; according to aide Ted
Sorenson, Caroline Kennedy's first word was "plane."
John F. Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963; his son turned 3 on the
day his father was buried. With tears in their eyes, his mother and his uncles
Ted and Bobby, sang "Happy Birthday" to the toddler. Despite his extraordinary
adult accomplishments, the world will probably always remember him best for
his heartbreaking salute, at his mother's side, as his father's horse-drawn coffin
passed by.
Almost a year after President Kennedy's funeral, Boston Cardinal Richard
Cushing, who led mourners in the Lord's Prayer at the funeral Mass, still
couldn't talk about the salute. "Oh, God, I almost died," he told a reporter.
After the president's death, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis worked hard to keep
her son and daughter grounded despite the wealth, privilege and intense
media glare that marked their lives. She also made a point of limiting their
contact with the Kennedy brood at Hickory Hill, Hyannis Port and Palm Beach.
Still, every possible tidbit of Kennedy's life was served up to a ravenous public.
From the age of 2, when Look magazine featured a photo spread on him, the
young prince was an object of fascination and hope -- all the more so after his
father was martyred. As a child, Kennedy was curious as to why the world held
him in such rapt attention. In William Manchester's "The Death of a President,"
Kennedy -- still only a toddler of 3 -- approaches a newspaper photographer
who'd taken his picture while he drank from a water fountain.
"What are you doing?" he asked the photographer. "What are you taking my
picture for -- my daddy's dead."
The obsession continued. An excursion through New York's Central Park at the
age of 9, the theft of his bicycle and tennis racket at the age of 13, an Outward
Bound trip at the age of 16, uncertainty about which college to attend after
high school graduation, not passing the New York bar until the third try -- no
matter how innocuous (or inaccurate) the detail, it was shared with the world.
Mostly the attention was fawning. In the 1983 "Growing Up Kennedy: The Third
Wave Comes of Age," by Harrison Rainie and John Quinn, the 22-year-old
Kennedy was described as "astonishingly good looking, reminding at least one
gawker of the Greek athletes sculpted by Praxiteles." Another book, "Kennedy:
The Third Generation," said that Kennedy "has become a tall, darkly handsome
young man with the startling Bouvier looks of his mother's family and a poetic
air that has been described as Byronic."
After flirting with the idea of becoming an actor -- a notion that displeased his
mother to no end, almost as much as the thought that he'd enter politics --
Kennedy graduated from Brown University in 1983 and soon entered law
school. He joined the Manhattan District Attorney's office and won all six of his
cases.
He had no love for the law, however, and in 1995 he launched George
magazine, a political-style glossy billing itself as "not just politics as usual."
Though the intelligentsia scoffed at George's marriage of show biz and politics,
its debut marked the largest single magazine launch, and has since settled to a
circulation of more than 400,000. But the magazine's future was uncertain. Just
last month there were reports that the magazine had lost roughly 20 percent of
its ad revenue, and Kennedy was reported to be unhappy with his relationship
with the Paris-based Hachette Filipacci Media, which partnered with Kennedy to
publish George.
George is a melange of policy, political profiles and Hollywood stardust.
Kennedy described his publishing experiment as an attempt to bring women
and young people into the electoral fold. Cover photographs have included
actors like Robert De Niro, John Travolta and Tom Hanks, and eye candy like
Christy Turlington and Cindy Crawford. Contributors have included Norman
Mailer, former Sen. Al D'Amato, R-New York, and former Clinton advisor Paul
Begala. Kennedy himself has conducted a number of the interviews, with
former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, Cuba's Fidel Castro, conservative
philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife and radio personality Don Imus. He
thumbed his nose at the staid political media world in many ways, not least by
inviting Larry Flynt to be his guest at this year's White House Correspondents'
Dinner.
In a March interview with Brill's Content, Kennedy remarked that "This
enterprise has consumed almost six years of my life. It came at considerable,
personal kind of risk. There [were] a lot of people that would have loved to see
this be a farce, and it hasn't been." Kennedy defended the magazine's mix of
politics and Hollywood.
"It would really be unsatisfying to me to have some somber politician on the
cover, and we gather dust in the back of some newsstand somewhere. I mean,
if I sell 180,000 copies of a political magazine -- man, I am happy. And so I
could do something else, with some drawing of [South Carolina Republican
Sen.] Strom Thurmond and sell 20[,000], and maybe I'm serious and
consequential in Washington. But if the people that I'm trying to reach are
passing me by, then that's a failure."
Kennedy was known as a risk-taker, and not only for trying to launch a political
magazine. He was known for his love of physical adventure: he kayaked in
rapids, rappelled down mountains, inline-skated through Central Park and was
a fan of extreme sports. He broke his leg in a parasailing accident this summer,
and according to some reports the injury might have interfered with his flying,
since his Piper aircraft was partly controlled by foot.
He got his pilot's license 15 months ago. By some accounts, he waited until
after his worrying mother died to pursue his lifelong passion.
In a story in the Palm Beach Post, observers of his flight training at the Flight
Safety Academy in Vero Beach, Fla., said that Kennedy "could probably be
called a natural" at flying. But last Labor Day, New York tabloids reported that
Kennedy family members refused to accompany JFK Jr. in his refurbished 20-
year-old Cessna, out of concerns for their safety. According to the New York
Post, William Kennedy Smith said "John may have pushed his limitations
getting his pilot's license, but he hasn't overcome them yet. He's yet to
persuade any of his relatives to fly with him."
And in May 1998, Kennedy told USA Today, "The only person I've been able to
get to go up with me, who looks forward to it as much as I do, is my wife. The
second it was legal she came up with me."
In 1996, in an ultra-secret ceremony, Kennedy married Carolyn Bessette, a 30-
year-old public relations specialist at Calvin Klein. Until then, he may have
been the most eligible bachelor in the history of the Western world into his 30s.
Named People magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1988, Kennedy was linked in
gossip columns to actress Daryl Hannah, Madonna and others. Bessette, the
daughter of a Connecticut doctor, regularly made Women's Wear Daily and
other fashion magazines for her singular style. Tabloids reported occasional
spats between the papparazzi-plagued couple, but friends said the marriage
was solid.
Clearly, tragedy has spared no generation of Kennedys. Joseph P. Kennedy Jr.
died in a plane crash during World War II at the age of 29. The husband of
Kathleen "Kick" Kennedy was killed in World War II; Kick herself died in a plane
crash in 1948 at the age of 28. Since 1941, Rosemary Kennedy has been
institutionalized due to a failed lobotomy. President Kennedy was 46 when he
was killed in Dallas. One year later, Sen. Edward Kennedy was in a plane crash
that took the lives of two men and broke Kennedy's back and punctured his
lung.
"How much more do [my parents] have to take?" Robert Kennedy asked after
Ted Kennedy's plane crash, according to C. David Heymann in "RFK: A Candid
Biography of Robert Kennedy."
"Somebody up there doesn't like us," he added.
In June 1968, an assassin's bullet felled Robert Kennedy in a Los Angeles hotel.
He was 42.
Then there are the many Kennedy scandals that are no less tragic, though
more complex. Sen. Ted Kennedy saw his presidential hopes plunge with his
car -- and a 28-year-old victim named Mary Joe Kopechne -- in an accident on
Chappaquiddick Island in July 1969, 30 years ago Sunday.
In 1972, Joseph Kennedy's car overturned on Nantucket in an accident that left
a woman paralyzed. Robert Kennedy's oldest son, a future congressman,
admitted guilt and was convicted of negligent driving. His brother, Robert Jr.,
was found in possession of heroin in 1983, and another brother, David, fought
a long and public battle with drugs, eventually losing the fight when he died in
1984 of an overdose.
In 1991, nephew William Kennedy Smith was accused -- and later acquitted --
of rape charges. Ted Kennedy's son, Patrick, now a congressman, has battled
cocaine. Robert Kennedy's son Michael -- dragged through tabloid muck for an
alleged affair with a baby sitter -- died in a skiing accident in 1997 at the age of
39.
John Kennedy Jr. took his cousins to task in the pages of George, referring to
Joe and Michael as "poster boys for bad behavior."
In February 1998, not long after Michael Kennedy's skiing accident, Maryland
Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the oldest of the third generation of
Kennedy's, spoke with Larry King about the black cloud of doom hanging over
her family.
"One of the great things about my family is we try to -- we know that life is
tough," she said. "I mean, there is pain. And we all know that It's not fair, and --
what the challenge in life is, how you deal with it. Do you complain, or do you
say, you know, we have been blessed as a family, as you well know, we have
been very fortunate."
"And unfortunate," King said.
"But it's good to also focus on the fortunate," she replied.
Indeed, the Kennedys constantly reaffirm their need to look for the good. At the
October 1979 dedication of the library named for his father, Kennedy, then a
freshman at Brown, read a poem by Stephen Spender, called "I Think
Continually of Those Who Were Truly Great."
"What is precious is never to forget The essential delight of the blood drawn
from ageless springs ... Never to allow gradually the traffic to smother With
noise and fog the flowering of the spirit."
When his plane disappeared, Kennedy was on his way to the wedding of cousin
Rory Kennedy, a woman who will always be known as the daughter of Robert
Kennedy who was born five months after his assassination. Now another tragic
clause has been added to her biography.
All The Senator’s Women
By Eleanor Clift | NEWSWEEK
Aug 29, 2009
The city editor at a small daily in Iowa sent a reporter out last week to gather
reminiscences of Senator Kennedy. "Be sure to ask about Chappaquiddick," he
said, a request that drew a blank look. The young reporter had no idea what he
was talking about. When this story was related to me by the editor's wife, who
is a baby boomer steeped in Kennedy lore, I thought how relieved the Kennedy
family must be that a generation of Americans doesn't automatically reflect on
the tragedy that for so long clouded Ted Kennedy's life and career.
For those who remember, there's no forgiving the incident that took the life of
Mary Jo Kopechne, a campaign aide left to drown in the waters of
Chappaquiddick Island. The moment embodied an era that was mercifully
ending. For a long time a rich and powerful man in the public eye could
reasonably expect that women would simply be playthings, and that private
sins would remain just that: private. That was changing in 1969. Feminism was
moving toward the mainstream, and the image of a Kennedy leaving a woman
to drown seemed to epitomize the inequality of the sexes. But always Kennedy
managed to muddle through and even grow in stature, to become known as a
Great American. Some Americans—men and women—are infuriated by this.
If you're not sympathetic to Kennedy's politics, you'll note that he had a
staggeringly privileged life, and got away with something he shouldn't have.
It's easy to tally his other failings. In 1980, when he ran for president, his wife
Joan dutifully stood by his side, but it was clear from her body language that
the marriage was in trouble, and soon after the campaign ended, so did the
marriage. Joan was one of many political wives who have been subjected to the
humiliation of publicly pretending to be in a loving marriage that was a sham.
Kennedy was a rogue, and his escapades, fueled by alcohol, were well
documented. He was single through much of the '80s and into the '90s, and his
risky behavior blew up on him one night in Palm Beach, Fla., when a bout of
drinking ended with his nephew William Kennedy Smith being charged with
date rape. A sensational trial followed, after which Smith was acquitted. But
there was no escaping that Kennedy, the scion of the family, had damaged
himself further. Even he knew it, saying at one point that he recognized "the
faults in the conduct of my private life."
But if you are sympathetic to Kennedy and his politics, as I am, you're mindful
that the accident at Chappaquiddick happened in 1969, the year after Bobby
Kennedy was assassinated. (Ted, just 36 and the last of the brothers,
shouldered the burden of 11 more fatherless nieces and nephews.) You're also
willing to measure the benefits that Kennedy brought to countless people
through his politics, and give them proper weight on the scales of the man's
record. Finally, if you measure his capacity to reform himself, you tip the scales
further.
Organized women's groups overlooked a lot to stand by the senator from
Massachusetts. Feminists who proclaimed "The personal is the political" made
an exception for Kennedy. They argued that the political outweighs the
personal: if a politician's private life doesn't interfere with his public life, why
should it be a problem? You have to search hard to find an example where
Kennedy's personal behavior affected his public life. The only one I recall was
during the height of the Palm Beach trial, when the Senate was in the midst of
confirming Clarence Thomas. Kennedy was silent on the charges of sexual
harassment that Anita Hill brought against Thomas. At a time when liberals
really needed him, the contradiction between Kennedy's public and private
values was too great for him to speak out, and he was effectively muzzled.
That was a turning point. After publicly acknowledging his flaws—though not
quite apologizing—Kennedy worked harder than ever to improve other people's
lives as a way, perhaps, to justify his own. He was the indispensable man on
women's issues, social justice, disability laws, health reform, and civil rights. As
an Irish Catholic from Massachusetts, he was not raised to allow women to
make their own reproductive choices. But he was at the center of the battle,
defeating Robert Bork on the issue of privacy—which was central to arguments
about the constitutionality of Roe v. Wade.
One of the loudest applause lines in his 1980 convention speech was his
declaration that it was "Founding Mothers as well as Founding Fathers" who
made this country great. He believed that—or at least he acted on it, which is
more important. In addition to his strong support for a woman's right to
choose, he pushed through legislation for equal rights.
For many women, his past is an understandable barrier to seeing him as a
great leader. But whatever mixed feelings women may have, a fair reading of
his life is one of redemption. This is especially true since his marriage to
Victoria Reggie in 1992, when he seemed to have found a peace that eluded
him before. In the nearly two decades since, his life was a lot fuller and
perhaps more meaningful than it had been.
During this time, women who agreed with his politics still looked to him for
leadership—and followed him. When Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama at a
critical point in the 2008 presidential election, women who supported Hillary
Clinton were furious, and a few diehards accused Kennedy of abandoning his
long commitment to the advancement of women. Other women, though,
valued the way he advanced their interests even though he had done things
they found reprehensible. For some women, reverence for Kennedy stopped
with Chappaquiddick. The rest of us have a very different view: Kennedy had
the gift of time to make amends, and we were the beneficiaries of that.
Find this article at http://www.newsweek.com/id/214252