THE REAL KENNEDY

Forty years ago, in July 1969, two men walked on the moon and one man drove off a bridge. At the time the galactic heroics of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin overshadowed the drunken antics of Teddy Kennedy which led to the death in his car of a young woman. There was talk again of the ‘Kennedy Curse’ a modern version of an ancient Greek tragedy in which son after son was stricken by a cruel fate.

The eldest son Joseph – being groomed for the presidency by his ruthless father – was killed at 29 in World War Two. Then the standard bearer John Kennedy made it to the White House but was assassinated in Dallas in 1963. Then Bobby picked up the banner and was assassinated less than five years later in Los Angeles.

And that left Teddy. The only Kennedy son to reach old age. He died yesterday from a brain tumour at 77.

I remember sitting in St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York in June 1968 to hear the most poignant and brave eulogy from a struggling and scared man talking about his brother. There was already talk that if Teddy Kennedy ran for the presidency some nutter would try to complete a macabre Kennedy hat trick.

And Edward Kennedy said of Bobby: ‘He need not be idealised or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life. He should be remembered as a good and decent man who saw wrong and tried to right it…’

Those words are being used to lionize Teddy Kennedy today. And it is true. He was a great politician. He served America in the Senate for more than 40 years. Like his brothers, he was a millionaire who fought for better laws to bring better lives to less fortunate Americans.

But he did not always ‘see wrong and try to right it’. Not when it concerned him personally. I covered that story in Chappaquiddick when Kennedy drove off the bridge and Mary Jo Kopechne died. And also her inquest in home state Pennsylvania.

Mary Jo didn’t drown. She suffocated. Kennedy escaped and left her breathing in a pocket of air in the upturned Cadillac in a tidal pond. His only goal was to save his own life and his political skin. He ignored lights in nearby houses as he made his escape. He didn’t report the accident for nine hours. Until he’d sobered up. Until after one of his gophers had cleaned up all the booze bottles from the party house where a bunch of married men had been whooping it up with young single Washington office staff.

And then the Kennedy machine kicked in to get him off the island. It is true Teddy Kennedy went on to do great things. But I can still hear the words of Mary Jo’s mother when she asked me in a small house in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania ‘Please tell the world, my daughter died a virgin’.

Prime Minister Rudd has called Kennedy ‘A great American, a great Democrat and a great friend of Australia’. To an extent he was.

But that night in 1969 Edward Moore Kennedy was a selfish, self-preserving, coward. He failed as a man.

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2009