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His legacy is to be remembered as a giant of American politics

Barack Obama called him the greatest Democratic senator in history. Considering that the President was
presumably including both John and Robert Kennedy in that list, it’s no mean accolade.

But Edward Kennedy, the youngest of the three brothers, was nearly the man who destroyed the family’s reputation for ever. That he is now so highly lauded is all the more remarkable for the contempt in which he was held 40 years ago.

The events of Chappaquiddick
In 1969, the married, 36-year old senator had been partying in the town of Chappaquiddick with “boiler room girls” – women who had worked on his brother Bobby’s presidential campaign the year before.

He left the party with 28-year old Mary Kopechne, and whilst crossing a bridge, lost control of his car, which sank into just eight feet of water. Kennedy escaped – leaving Mary trapped to die a horrible, slow death. The senator did not report the incident for 10 hours – and only then after he had consulted his lawyer.

He was charged with leaving the scene of an accident and failing to report an accident, and received just two months’ probation. The world was outraged: it seemed the magic of America’s first family was tainted forever.

In disgrace
After the murders of John in 1963 and Bobby in 1968, Chappaquiddick was seen as the last nail in the coffin of the idealistic American dream that the Kennedy brothers helped create. Norman Mailer once claimed that the Kennedy assassinations precipitated a “national nervous breakdown”: Chappaquiddick was a sick twist at the end of it. If Edward Kennedy had died that year, he would have been remembered as a disgrace.

Trying to right wrongs
It seems that senator Kennedy set about trying to right wrongs. Unable to atone for his actions of that night, he became a tireless campaigner for ordinary Americans, a champion of healthcare reform, environmental issues, the minimum wage. He authored over 2,500 bills, of which several hundred became law.

Thanks to his campaigning, millions of Americans have access to health care; he sponsored legislation in 1986 to establish a network of education and outpatient services for victims of AIDS; he brought about a raise in the minimum wage (it would not be raised again for a further decade) and he was involved in negotiations which led to the Good Friday Peace Agreement in Northern Ireland.

Conscious of climate
He was also instrumental in raising American consciousness of climate change – and a vocal critic of the Bush administration’s blindness to global warming. In 2002, he co-sponsored an amendment to the budget resolution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He voted against the War in Iraq – something even Hillary Clinton did not do, and a courageous stance given the mood of the nation at the time. He fought hard and tirelessly, almost right up to his death, for the little people, the poor, tired and huddled masses.

His legacy, as President Obama claims, is almost certainly to be remembered as a giant of American politics. “Virtually every major piece of legislation to advance the civil rights, health, and economic well being of the American people bore his name and resulted from his efforts,” the President said.

Ironically, the man who came so close to destroying the dream of America’s greatest Democrat family became the man who did most to make that dream a reality.

And was it enough?
As Joyce Carol Oates pointed out in the Guardian: “If one weighs the life of a single young woman against the accomplishments of the man President Obama has called the greatest Democratic senator in history, what is one to think?".

The poet John Berryman once wondered: ‘Is wickedness soluble in art?’. One might rephrase, in a vocabulary more suitable for our politicized era: ‘Is wickedness soluble in good deeds?’”

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