Understanding Ted Kennedy requires that we understand alcoholism. And sometimes, it really does take an addict.
Sometimes, it takes an addict:
Senator Edward “Ted” Kennedy, dead from brain cancer at 77. Kennedy’s life was filled with the conflicts, inconsistencies and enigmas that are rarely explained by anything other than alcoholism. Although he reportedly sobered up in the 1990s, to the end he continued to manipulate the system wherever he could and maintain he was not drunk the night he left a party in 1969 and drove his chauffeur’s limousine off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island into Poucha Pond, leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to drown. However, the facts belie the claim: he swam to shore and walked back to the party, past several houses and a fire station. (Kopechne had scratched the upholstered floor above her head in the upside-down car and is believe to have remained alive for as many as five hours before dying.) As for manipulation, something recovering alcoholics readily admit to having done when using, Kennedy on his death-bed pleaded with Massachusetts lawmakers to allow a temporary gubernatorial appointment of a successor to his Senate seat until a special election to replace him could take place. This is the same Kennedy who orchestrated the 2004 law that required a special election, designed to prevent then Republican Governor Mitt Romney from naming a replacement for Massachusetts’ other Senator, John Kerry, who was running for President. Recovering alcoholics are supposed to work a program that requires honesty in all one’s affairs. One might question whether such manipulation, for whatever “noble” purpose, violates that idea.
Kennedy was certainly guilty of misbehaving in ways typical of alcoholics on numerous occasions. He was known around Washington, DC as a public drunk, loud, boisterous and disrespectful to ladies. A self-proclaimed lifelong Democrat who owned a nightclub told me that he considered Kennedy a “pig,” having had to toss him out of the club for misbehaving. He was thrown out of Harvard twice, once for cheating on a test and another time for paying a classmate to cheat for him. While attending law school at the University of Virginia, he was cited for reckless driving four times, including once when clocked at 90 mph in a residential neighborhood with his headlights off after dark (which, as pointed out in Get Out of the Way! How to Identify and Avoid a Driver Under the Influence, is a virtual certain indication of DUI). After Kennedy launched a viciously unfair attack on the Senate floor against President Reagan’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Robert Bork, observers widely agreed that “there was not a line in that speech that was accurate.” His lies about Bork, as is often all-too-true of the many lies of alcoholics, did their job, because the lies of addicts are often more believable than truths told by non-addicts.
Despite his never having come clean about the Kopechne and other alcoholism-fueled episodes, Kennedy was known to work across party lines in a way that many Republicans felt other Democrats couldn’t. While he never shrank from political combat and (from the point of view of this libertarian) engaged in lifelong demagoguery, Sen. John McCain told CNN that “he had this unique capability to sit people down at a table together…and really negotiate, which means concessions.” He developed what is reported as “warm friendships” with Republican Senators Orrin Hatch of Utah, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, and others. In the 1970s, he took up the cause of transportation deregulation, arguing that competition among businesses would benefit their customers and, ultimately, consumers. (It’s amazing to me that he never applied the principal of competition and deregulation to health care, but I digress.) Agree with him or not, he has left a lasting impression on the United States, with more than 550 of his bills signed into law during 47 years in the Senate. Sometimes, alcoholism is the only explanation for a life torn in many directions.. Ted Kennedy’s life is a prime example.