Kennedy lays ghost of Chappaquiddick

Press, 18 August 1979, Page 13

Kennedy lays ghost of Chappaquiddick

By

ANTHONY HOLDEN,

“Observer,” London

The water is not very deep, only six or eight feet, but the strength of current is frightening. Through its swirls and eddies it is hard, even at low tide, even in broad daylight, to make out the bottom of Poucha Pond. The wooden planking has been renewed and the guard-rail raised a couple of feet ... but Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, otherwise looks much the same as it did 10 years ago when a black Oldsmobile driven by Senator Edward Kennedy careered off it at 22 miles an hour, flew through the air some 30ft and landed upsidedown in the pitch-dark water. Senator Kennedy, after swallowing a lung-full of water and thinking he was going to die, escaped from the wreck: to this day, he says, he does not know how. Six feet beneath him his companion, a former Robert Kennedy aide called Mary Jo Kopechne, became recent history’s most celebrated victim of death by drowning. Knots of tourists still gather daily on Dike Bridge, pointing at the murky shallows, speculating, sharing giggled innuendoes. They take the dirt track round the corner to Lawrence Cottage, scene of the house party the couple had just left. They pace out the distances. check them against the timings given in evi- , dence at the inquest.

To get there, they take the tiny two-car ferry from Edgartown on the island of Martha’s Vineyard. The crossing is only 500 feet but the ferry has to struggle hard against the strong tidal flow, making its passengers wonder if Kennedy could really, as he said, have swum across it in total darkness so soon after such an ordeal. Few visitors get through a holiday On Martha’s

Vineyard, say the locals, without being drawn on the grisly pilgrimage across Dike Bridge. Some itinerant wit has carved the names Ted and Mary in the restored wooden guard-rail, lest anyone should cross the bridge, making for the secluded beach beyond, in ignorance of its place in American history. Little danger of that. After 10 years, Chappaquiddick’s episode, with its many unanswered

questions, still provides a bottomless pit of doubt about the moral probity of the last Kennedy brother. But 10 years is long enough, it seems, for the American people to find it in their hearts to forgive, if not to forget. As Kennedy allows speculation to swirl around him for the third presidential election running, regular polls show that Chappaquiddick is no longer a political liability. Republican opponents

would not hesitate to raise it — -“it would be an issue,” says one hopeful, Senator Howard Baker — but the indications are that they would do themselves more harm than good. Americans are not political grudge-bearers. Moreover, it is argued, they rather like a good oldfashioned flesh-and-blood in a man’s past. Eisenhower was elected in 1952 in spite of opposition gdssip about his war-

time relationship with Kay Summersby. Twenty years later Nixon carried 49 out of 50 states in spite of a murky record of character assassination and wheelerdealing. Even since Watergate, it is possible to perceive him creeping back towards respectability as a national figure. Jimmy Carter’s flawless past is now, in the nation’s hour of discontent, held up as further evidence that he is a colourless, ineffectual leader woefully lacking in strength of character.

Few Americans believe Kennedy’s version of events. Why was he travelling in a diametrically wrong direction on an island he knew well? Why did he delay 10 hours before reporting the accident? Why was he seen relaxed and smiling next morning before the events of the night became known? Why was another girl’s handbag found in the salvaged car?

But they don’t care any more. It is fruitless, they know, to hope for any fresh evidence. Kennedy’s line has remained the same: “The record is there. The people must judge it.” Even Mary Jo Kopechne’s parents, living off a $140,000 settlement from Kennedy, say they would vote for him if he ran for President.

The fact is, however, that Kennedy does not want to run for President just yet. He may have to,

but he does not want to. He would rather wait until 1984, when he could be absolutely certain of winning. Announcing his candidacy for 1980 now would mean challenging an incumbent President of his own party, thus splitting it disastrously and probably handing the Presidency to the Republicans. The nomination is his for the asking,” but he would rather ask for it when he could be sure of its due reward. That, given the dire economic prognosis, will be in 1984 — when either President Carter or President Reagan, even

President Connally or President Baker, has still failed to prise America from the doldrums. Why then does Kennedy not unequivocally rule himself out of the race? Why does he allow the “Draft Kennedy” movement to gather strength and money nationwide — even to set up, as it has done, a national campaign headquarters? Because the next few months might see the Carter presidency, quite simply, fall apart. Kennedy has other cosmetic liabilities: above all his virtual separation from his wife Joan, an admitted alcoholic — driven to drink, she said in a recent

interview, by the constant rumours of his womanising. But the fact that none of this is held against him is clearly relfected in incessant polls —all of which, while still gently demurring about his candidacy, he dominates. Carter has learned, bitterly, that Democratic voters throughout his Southern homeland, even in his own state of Georgia, now prefer Kennedy by 11 percentage points. It takes a good deal for the South to clasp an East Coast liberal to its bosom. In the words of Senator

Daniel Moynihan of New York, "Carter now governs only by Kennedy’s sufference.”

If Carter has the slightest hope of renomination, Kennedy will continue for four more years to lurk in the wings, the only American more powerful than the President.

The people will be disappointed. They do not want to wait until George Orwell’s witching hour (1984) to hail the return of Camelot. Now, as in the wee small hours of a dark night 10 years ago, the waters of Chappaquiddick run exceeding shallow. — O.F.N.S. Copyright.