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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,
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.
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.
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
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
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.