Ted Kennedy – Why He Could Never Be President

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Two of his brothers were candidates for President of the United States, and one even became President. The question is why Ted Kennedy, the highly-respected Senior Senator of Massachusetts, considered the ‘Lion of the Senate’, never followed in his brothers’ footsteps.

There were two main reasons. One, of course, is that both his brothers John and Robert had been assassinated, and that if he became President there was an excellent chance that he would be next.

Another main reason is that rumors have always flown around Ted Kennedy, like a wild tornado, that he had let a younger woman die in the incident referred to as “Chappaquiddick”. This occurred during the presidential campaign of his brother Robert Kennedy. Many idealistic young people had volunteered in this campaign, swept up by the Kennedy mystique: that a Kennedy as President could usher in a new, better world for everyone, especially the poor and minorities.

On July 18, 1969, after a party where he had been drinking, Ted Kennedy was driving his car, and one of the campaign workers, Mary Jo Kopechne, an attractive 28 year-old, was his passenger. It was nighttime, and they were on the tiny island of Chappaquiddick, on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts. Kennedy unfortunately drove his car off a bridge into the water. He was able to save himself by swimming to land, and although he later claimed that he had tried valiantly to save the life of Kopechne, he was unable to.

Immediately, there were questions which remain unanswered to this day, as to what actually had happened. Strangely, Kennedy failed to report the incident to police, even though he had promised several colleagues whom he had contacted immediately after the incident, that he would do so. The police only found out about the accident after two fishermen reported they had seen her body the next morning. In addition, before she had left with Kennedy, other party-goers heard Kopechne ask him to drive her to ‘her hotel’. However, she had left both her purse and hotel key at the party before heading off with Kennedy. Also, after the incident, the Judge merely gave Kennedy a suspended sentence, after he had pled guilty to leaving the scene of an accident. And this came after the judge had found that Kennedy could be guilty of further crimes, but the prosecutor never pursued this possibility. In addition, almost all of the legal proceedings were held in secret, and Kennedy eventually ‘voluntarily’ gave Kopechne’s parents over $90,000. The parents refused to sue Kennedy, or investigate their daughter’s death any further.

Because of all these unusual circumstances, many strongly suspected that Kennedy, a married, Catholic Senator, was having an affair with Kopechne, a single, attractive campaign worker, and that Kennedy had panicked during the accident. A possible affair, especially in the 1960’s, ruined any real chances he ever had for the presidency.

Although the Chappaquiddick incident is most often cited as the reason he could never run for President, in reality there were others. One is the “Kennedy curse”, the notion that eventually all Kennedys meet with tragedy. In Ted’s case, this could have been especially true, as both of his brothers who had run for President were ultimately killed, and he could have met with the same fate.

In addition, even though they ultimately divorced in 1982, Joan Kennedy, his wife, had repeated bouts with alcoholism and drunk driving. Like his then-wife, Ted himself faced public accusations of drinking and “partying”, which the press widely reported.

Except for his highly-respected legislative record as Senator, Ted Kennedy’s reputation became increasingly negative over time. Whatever the actual facts were, he had to ultimately cede his hopes of ever becoming President of the United States. Sadly, now, with his death, the political legacy of that generation of Kennedys has also been extinguished.