I have never taken the glee that some have in Ted Kennedy’s lapse.
Truly, I think it was a lapse. In judgement, in panic, and in the light of a political powerhouse that the brothers Kennedy had formed, and the ambitions that they had, that lapse cost him dearly.
Not just any hope of Presidential office, but I do think personally he was deeply affected. And in the light of how politics run in this country, I fear that he will never truly be able to comment on the truth of the matter.
This month has seen some odd things. The death of legends, and not in small numbers it seems, have overshadowed events, and in many ways, the Chappaquiddick incident has always been overshadowed by an event that was so grand in scope, and in many ways the entire opposite of that accident and retreat into thin excuses.
I don’t bear Senator Kennedy personal malice, nor do I bring up these events to sharpen a stick to poke at him, but rather this article reminded me that we are constantly caught in tides of events, large and small. And sometimes the ones that we’d like to forget, are ones that have shaped our times just as much as the great ones.
Had Ted Kennedy not been involved in this sad event, what would his chances have been? Where would his ambition and his oratorical power have taken him? Would it have made that much of a difference?
I think that our nation took a very different turn when that car went into the water, and Mary’s article put me into a pondering mood.
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