Ted Kennedy was undoubtedly the lion of the Senate who lived a long and consistent life as a public servant. Not even political foes can argue that his service was not of the highest order; he served just as his brothers before him had and his legacy is one of proud accomplishment. Always a liberal trendsetter, this Kennedy pushed for single-payer national health care starting in 1974. A consistent promoter of what he believed was right, the man never wavered.
Throughout the career of the Massachusetts leader, a notable cloud followed him at all times. He just wan't able to shake Chappaquiddick '69, the night he drove off a Cape Cod bridge. Though he swam to safety, his career never fully recovered. His passenger - a young woman who worked for both him and his brother Bobby - drowned. To make it worse, Kennedy did not alert the authorities of the accident until the next day. The young politician pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and received a two-month suspended sentence. An empaneled grand jury brought no indictment.
The bridge in question.
It was the Kennedy curse: bad happened to the K clan all the time. He was no exception.
Then Sen. Kennedy ran a messy campaign for president in 1980 and broke the long-standing custom of leaving an incumbent president unchallenged by his party. Polling suggested Kennedy would beat Carter for the nomination until that day Chappaquiddick's skeletons were levied from the closet (by Dem naysayers, no less). It made excellent TV as Kennedy was roundly, honorably defeated at the convention later that summer.
After that loss he never had one. He was reelected easily each time through 2006. His electoral stature gave him a unique place in politics: the chance to do something without real fear of losing his position. He worked alongside (with and against) every administration since Nixon on that still-evolving issue of health care and along the way successfully championed the cause of uninsured children. There isn't room to explore every little thing he did but here's a moment to consider what would have happened if he had not crossed that dark bridge....
He would have run for president in 1972. Defeated Nixon? Who knows. In the thick of the Vietnam War it would have been a more exciting race than McGovern's bid. Had he been elected, many pages would be missing from the history books: Watergate, "I am not a crook," Midnight Massacre, Gerald Ford (or the ridiculous rise of vainglorious Chevy Chase), Reagan, and the Republican revolution in 1994. Lots of rewritten chapters for America.
This nation would by 1980 have passed a health care system ahead of most of the rest of progressive Earth. We'd have left Vietnam a lot sooner and with heads held higher. Justice Kennedy would never have had a firm seat on any bench. Clarence Thomas? Who is that?
Yes, this is speculation - could Mario Cuomo have ridden his own 1984 wave to a post-Kennedy White House?--yet remember how minor choices in life affect the rest of it. Kennedy was an admirable steward of liberalism who drove into water and changed his world (and ours) in hard-to-fathomways.
RIP Senator Lion!
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