Wednesday 26 August 2009

Valete, Ted Kennedy

So Ted Kennedy is dead. His life, as summarised in this obituary, is a classic lesson in the complexity of mankind. Monstrous son of a monstrous Nazi-supporting bootlegger, brother to two assassination victims, he juggled a cruel and selfish private life, leading to the death of a young woman, amongst other things, but he was also a principled liberal leader who reached out from a position of the utmost privilege to the poorest and most oppressed in his country.

Seymour Hersh's Camelot is a no-holds-barred examination of the Kennedy dynasty, well worth reading, but the Kennedy mystique is as golden as it is appalling. JFK started the Vietnam war, but RFK would have ended it, had he not been shot dead. It was RFK who took on the Mafia, despite the fact that his brother's election (opposed by Nixon) in 1960 was achieved through widespread vote-rigging and corruption. Edward Kennedy would have been one of the best presidents had he won the nomination in 1980 - but his alcohol, sex and drug-fuelled private life put paid to that, and nice Jimmy Carter went on to lose to that evil hack Reagan.

So Ted Kennedy - proof that bad/good co-exist in us all…

Don't worry - there's already at least one of the next Kennedy generation in power: Patrick is a state senator in Rhode Island, and Caroline ran for New York, unsuccessfully. Arnie's wife is a Kennedy too!

2 comments:

Ewarwoowar said...

A fascinating family. Like you said, JFK was only President thanks to his Mafia links and the corruption that went on throughout that election.

Nevertheless he, and particularly Jackie Onassis, are still worshipped in New England and in surrounding areas of the US. I must remember to blog about my trip to the Kennedy Museum in Boston, very interesting.

The Plashing Vole said...

Do!
Despite the corruption - imagine Nixon as President that early, and for a full two terms - do the ends justify the means?

The New England thing is funny - the Kennedys were despicable Irish until Joseph Kennedy turned his bootlegging fortune into respectable banking money, and they were embraced by the wasps - though JFK's Catholicism was a big issue in 1960.

Despite Cuba, Vietnam and so on, the world is a better place for that generation of Kennedys. and RFK would have been an amazing president because, although he had some rightwing tendencies, he'd more fully overcome the prejudices of his family than any of the others.