The Mysteries of Chappaquiddick

In his sorrow last summer, he seemed larger than anyone had remembered. Forgotten were the early misadventures of the youngest son of a rich and famous family. Like Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, he was not what he had seemed to be, and friends and critics alike saw not an immature Senator from Massachusetts but the legend’s last guardian. That summer he avoided a chance for the presidential nomination. It would have been premature. But who could doubt that, if spared the fate of his brothers, he would make his claim on the legacy in the future? In his first speech after the murder in Los Angeles of Brother Robert, Edward Moore Kennedy proclaimed: “Like my three brothers before me, I pick up a fallen standard. Sustained by the memory of our priceless years together, I shall try to carry forward that special commitment to justice, to excellence, to courage that distinguished their lives.”

(See pictures of intimate moments with the Kennedys.)

The recollection of these words evoked bitter irony last week. Kennedy’s career was threatened not by a violent enemy or a political foe but by a scandal that revealed a shocking lapse of judgment and control.

Harried Seclusion
Kennedy’s lost night on Chappaquiddick off Martha’s Vineyard and the mystifying week that followed brought back all the old doubts. For approximately nine hours after the car that he was driving plunged from Dike Bridge—carrying his only passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, to a death by drowning—Kennedy failed to notify police. After his first brief and inadequate statement at the station house, his silence allowed time for both honest questions and scurrilous gossip to swirl around his reputation and his future. Only once did the Senator leave the harried seclusion of the Kennedy compound at Hyannisport—when he flew to the funeral at Plymouth, Pa., still wearing a neck brace he received after the accident.

The Kennedy debacle became a topic of more interest in much of Washington and elsewhere in the country than man’s landing on the moon. Americans in Saigon discussed the case more than they did the war. Politicians began weighing the practical repercussions: What of his Senate seat? The party’s future? One Republican National Committee official even noted that Kennedy’s value as a Democratic fund raiser had been destroyed.

Finally, at week’s end, Senator Kennedy did break his silence. Through his lawyers, Kennedy withdrew his opposition to the misdemeanor proceedings against him, waiving a hearing scheduled for this week. He then pleaded guilty at Dukes County Courthouse in Edgartown to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident. That night Kennedy went on all-network TV to tell his story of what happened before and after the accident and to make an artfully emotional appeal for the guidance of the Massachusetts electorate as to whether he should resign from the Senate.

For all of its pain, the courtroom was probably the easier ordeal. Arriving 25 minutes before the 9 a.m. trial was to begin, Kennedy, accompanied by his wife Joan and his brother-in-law Stephen Smith, looked like a ruined man, the strain clearly showing in his drawn face. When the clerk asked for his plea, the Senator softly replied, “Guilty,” then, after a second, “Guilty,” in a louder voice that all the reporters and onlookers who crowded the 1840-vintage courtroom could hear. He uttered no other word during the nine minutes the proceedings lasted.

Judge James Boyle pronounced sentence: two months in a house of correction, suspended for a year. Kennedy was not on formal probation, but he was made subject to the court’s jurisdiction for twelve months. Prosecutor Walter Steele requested that Kennedy be spared imprisonment, as did one of Kennedy’s three lawyers, saying that the “reputation of the defendant is known to the court, and to the world.”

See TIME’s complete Ted Kennedy coverage.

See a Kennedy family photo album.

Edgartown Police Chief Dominick Arena, who had investigated the accident and brought the charge against the Senator, found no fault. “I’m satisfied,” he told reporters, “and the case is closed.”

In legal terms, the chief was almost certainly right. Politically and morally, he could scarcely have been farther from the truth. Speaking to the nation before a bookcase in his father’s house in Hyannisport—his own house had insufficient electrical capacity for TV equipment—Kennedy sought not only to fill some of the gaping holes in his earlier story, but, in an appeal slightly reminiscent of Richard Nixon’s famous Checkers speech in 1952,* to salvage his political future as well. The appearance did, in fact, answer a few of the questions, but left the most serious ones unanswered and raised a few that had not been asked before. The questions and the facts, so far as they are known:

What Was the Occcasion?
A group of secretaries and women aides from Robert Kennedy’s 1968 presidential campaign and several male Kennedy friends and retainers met for a cookout Friday, July 18, at the small, two-bedroom Lawrence cottage that Kennedy’s cousin, Joseph Gargan, had rented on Chappaquiddick. Kennedy said he had “encouraged and helped sponsor” the gathering for the “devoted group” of women. It is a fact that such social reunions of Kennedy people are held occasionally, and this one was not at all unusual.

(See more about Chappaquiddick.)

There were six women and six men, including the Senator. Besides Mary Jo, the women, all from Washington, were Susan Tannenbaum, Rosemary Keough, Esther Newberg, and two sisters, Nancy and Mary Ellen Lyons. Besides Kennedy and Gargan, the men were Paul Markham, a former U.S. attorney for Massachusetts; Jack Crimmins, a Kennedy employee; Charles Tredder and Raymond Larusso, frequent sailing companions. Kennedy was registered at the Shiretown Inn in Edgartown, across the channel from Chappaquiddick; the women were put up at The Dunes, a motel several miles away. Kennedy had raced his yacht, the Victura, that afternoon in the first heat of the annual Edgartown Regatta, an event long attended by members of his family. Kennedy’s wife Joan remained at their summer home on Squaw Island off Hyannisport. “Only reasons of health,” Kennedy said, prevented her from joining him. Mrs. Kennedy is expecting their fourth child around the first of the year, though this was not necessarily the “reason of health.” No other wives attended the party, and no reasons were given for their absence.

Why Did Kennedy and Miss Kopechne Leave?
According to both his first written statement and his television accounting, Kennedy and Mary Jo left the party about 11:15 p.m. Though he failed to repeat it on TV, his purpose, Kennedy told police, was to catch the last ferry at midnight back to Martha’s Vineyard. The Senator, said one of the women last week, wanted to turn in early so that he would be rested for the second race the next day, and Mary Jo’s mother later observed that “M.J.” was a “sleeper” who usually retired early. Kennedy reportedly offered to take Miss Kopechne back with him when Mary Jo said that she was tired.

Some of the other women, however, did not even know that Kennedy had left; none were aware of the accident until the following morning.

At this point, according to the TV recounting, Kennedy faced up to one of the most damaging and obvious questions: “There is no truth, no truth whatever, to the widely circulated suspicions of immoral conduct that have been leveled at my behavior and hers regarding that evening. There has never been a private relationship between us of any kind.” No one can prove conclusively, of course, that Kennedy was telling the truth about this aspect of the incident, but most evidence indicates that he was, if for no other reason than that an affair in the night seemed totally out of character for Mary Jo (see box, overleaf). Says Esther Newberg: “Mary Jo was not a stranger or a pickup. She was like a member of the family.” On the other hand, says a longtime Kennedy watcher, “one can also sense that Kennedy, jovial, relaxed, perhaps high, might have said: ‘Come on, Mary Jo, and let’s have a look at the ocean.’ ”

See TIME’s complete Ted Kennedy coverage.

See pictures of the lion of the senate, Ted Kennedy.

Was Kennedy Drunk?
According to his television statement, he was “not driving under the influence of liquor” and, says Esther Newberg, “it was a steak cookout, not a Roman orgy. No one was drinking heavily.” Still, it is unlikely that Kennedy abstained entirely—he never said that he did—and the lack of a blood or breath test afterward can only arouse suspicion, justified or not. Kennedy has been drinking more heavily since his brother was murdered last year, but he is far from being a drunkard. He has been quite sober at several parties where liquor flowed freely, and a TIME correspondent who has watched him for months has seen him drunk only once. And that was on an airplane coming back from his celebrated trip to Alaska last winter. There is, in short, no proof either way.

(See the most memorable quotes by Senator Kennedy.)

How Did the Accident Happen?
Leaving the cottage in his black 1967 Oldsmobile, Kennedy was almost at once brought up against a T-junction. If he had turned left, he would have continued along the paved Chappaquiddick Road leading toward the ferry crossing. But he turned his car right onto a dirt road leading to the wooden bridge and to the beach beyond. In his first statement to police, Kennedy explained that he had simply made a wrong turn, heading to the right. That meant he would have had to overlook a reflector arrow pointing the way to the ferry, and longtime residents say that all of the Kennedy brothers knew—or should have known—the area very well. The question arises: Could the Senator have traveled six-tenths of a mile down an unpaved road without knowing that he was on the wrong course? Or was he knowingly heading for the beach?

The bridge, once reached, is demonstrably dangerous night or day, and someone was bound to go off it sooner or later. A narrow (10 ft. 6 in.) structure without guard rails, it meets the road obliquely, so that if a driver goes onto the bridge at exactly the same angle he has been traveling, he will automatically wind up in the water. Kennedy’s car, in fact, got only 18 feet onto the bridge before plunging into the pond. Locals recommend stopping altogether before leaving the road, then inching forward at 5 m.p.h. Kennedy informed the state Bureau of Motor Vehicles, which suspended his license last week pending its own administrative investigation, that he had been going 20 m.p.h. There is no tangible evidence to dispute his figure, and there were no skid marks to indicate that Kennedy had braked the car or had even been aware that he was in danger. It is known, however, that some members of Kennedy’s entourage refuse to ride with him because he is such a daredevil driver, and Kennedy incurred four traffic convictions in the ’50s, two for speeding and two for reckless driving.

How Did He Escape?
Describing the climactic moment on television, Kennedy said that he had no idea at all of how he got free of the car, which overturned in the tidal water. “I remember thinking, as the cold water rushed in around my head,” he said “that I was for certain drowning. Then water entered my lungs, and I actually felt the sensation of drowning. But somehow I struggled to the surface alive. I made immediate and repeated efforts to save Mary Jo by diving into the strong and murky current, but succeeded only in increasing my state of utter exhaustion and alarm.”

(See Ted Kennedy’s top 10 legislative battles.)

Encumbered with a back brace from his 1964 airplane crash, Kennedy must have found it difficult to dive into the water, and the question is how strenuously he really tried. The tidal current was running at 1½ knots. Considering the physical circumstances, and Kennedy’s description of his condition, there is some doubt as to how much credibility this part of his story carries. When the car was brought to the surface the next morning, a purse belonging to Rosemary Keough, Edward Kennedy’s secretary, was found. This led to all kinds of speculation that Miss Keough might have been in the car along with Mary Jo. In fact, she had used the car earlier in the day to pick up a radio for the party and had forgotten the pocketbook in the automobile.

See TIME’s best JFK covers.

See TIME’s complete Ted Kennedy coverage.

Why Didn’t He Call the Police
In all accounts of the accident, the most mysterious gap—and unquestionably the most serious—was in what happened next. Why did he not immediately summon the police or a fire department rescue crew? “My conduct and conversation during the next several hours,” Kennedy told the TV audience, “to the extent that I can remember them, make no sense to me at all. My doctors informed me that I suffered a cerebral concussion as well as shock. I do not seek to escape responsibility for my actions by placing the blame either on physical or emotional trauma brought on by the accident or anything else. I regard as indefensible the fact that I did not report the accident to the police immediately.” Instead, he walked back to the cottage, and along his route he passed four houses, at least one of which had lights showing.

At this point, the statement that Kennedy gave to the police and the accounting that he gave to the public seemed to diverge. In the first version, he said that on returning to the cottage he climbed into the back seat of a car and asked someone at the party to take him back to Edgartown. How he finally managed to get to Edgartown he did not relate. In the second explanation, he said that when he reached the cottage, he talked to Gargan and Paul Markham, a former U.S. attorney for Massachusetts, and took them back to the bridge. Both of his friends then dived into the water, Kennedy said on TV, but failed to find Mary Jo. “All kinds of scrambled thoughts” went through his mind, said Kennedy, including the notion that perhaps the event had not happened at all, or, on the other hand, perhaps “some awful curse did actually hang over all the Kennedys.” He added: “I was overcome, I am frank to say, by a jumble of emotions —grief, fear, doubt, exhaustion, panic, confusion and shock.”

Was Kennedy in Shock?
In many ways, common sense chafes at the idea of shock, particularly the kind that Kennedy described. How could he remember some things so well and other things not at all? His memory did indeed seem highly selective.

Questioned by TIME, three experts said, however, that Kennedy’s behavior was not unusual for a person who had suffered such an experience. By simple definition, shock causes a person to dissociate himself temporarily from threatening circumstances. Subconsciously seeking the protective company of those he knew, Kennedy might thus have passed up nearby houses that could have offered help for the more certain, if more distant safety of his friends. “No one knows what his own breaking point is,” says Dr. Max Sadove, professor at the University of Illinois Medical School. “It is different at different times for different people.” Nevertheless, it remains somewhat difficult to accept the thought that Kennedy’s state of shock could have allowed him the rational move of calling on his friends for help and giving them various instructions but would have prevented him from making the equally rational move of instructing them to call the police.

Why Didn’t Gargan and Markham Call the Police?
Assuming that Kennedy was in a state of shock, the conduct of Gargan and Markham is nothing less than incomprehensible. They are both lawyers, although Gargan is used by Kennedy largely as companion for carrying out miscellaneous chores—making reservations, ordering food, emptying glasses and drawing baths. Though under no legal compulsion to do so, the two men could reasonably be expected to have called the police immediately if they were thinking of the girl. Not only would Mary Jo’s body have been recovered faster, but her life might conceivably have been saved. Though only the slimmest of possibilities existed, there is a chance that an air bubble might have remained for a brief time within the submerged vehicle, giving the girl moments of life. If a bubble formed, it would have been in the car’s rear, which was higher in the water than the heavy front end. Mary Jo’s body was, in fact, found in the back seat, although she presumably had been riding in front next to Kennedy.

See TIME’s complete Ted Kennedy coverage.

See pictures of Maria Shriver.

Beyond what would seem to be a natural instinct to get help quickly, a prompt call to the police would have saved Kennedy from some of the innuendo that followed—if indeed he was innocent of drunkenness. One minor point not explained in any statement is how the two men—after undergoing the experience Kennedy describes—could return to the small group and arouse no curiosity. Kennedy says only that he instructed them “not to alarm Mary Jo’s friends.” As it is, the suspicion is bound to linger that the only reason the two men did not call the police is that they were afraid that Kennedy was in no shape to undergo breath or other tests for alcohol. Thus, they might have chosen to risk the lesser charge of leaving the scene of an accident over the graver charges that might have arisen from drunken driving. It is, of course, possible that the two men were simply being inept. Whatever the explanation, that point remains one of the weakest in Kennedy’s story.

How Did Kennedy Get Back to Edgartown?
On TV he said that he had Gargan and Markham drive him to the ferry crossing. The last scheduled ferry had already left—though it was possible by special arrangements to have service resumed. On a sudden impulse, Kennedy said, he jumped into the water and swam the 250-yard channel separating Chappaquiddick from Martha’s Vineyard, “nearly drowning once again in the effort.” Finally, he said, he collapsed in his hotel room, going out only once before morning to talk to a man he identified as a clerk. Russell E. Peachey, actually a co-owner of the Shiretown Inn, later told TIME Correspondent Frank Merrick that he did indeed see Kennedy at 2:25 a.m., dressed in a suit coat and trousers that appeared dry. Kennedy complained that party noise from an adjacent building was keeping him awake, and inquired what the time was. To Peachey, Kennedy did not seem to be acting or talking strangely. As in the phase of his story concerning his escape from the Oldsmobile, his recapitulation raises odd questions. How did he have the strength to make the dangerous swim? If he was trying to sleep, as Peachey’s recollection indicates, why the suit?

On Chappaquiddick, meanwhile, the party apparently continued long past the time of the accident. The remaining members of the group missed the ferry back to Edgartown and spent the night in the cottage. There were not enough beds to go around and some had to sleep on couches or the floor. Apparently Markham and Gargan left the party to help Ted without being noticed. What they did or where they were for the remainder of the night is still not known.

Were the Authorities Lax?
Edgartown Police Chief Dominick Arena, a well-meaning former state trooper who had escaped to the island to avoid the tensions of the mainland, was on a diet of tranquilizers last week. In his own words, he had never investigated anything more serious than complaints of “snapping turtles or snakes in people’s yards.” Though Kennedy spent some time in Arena’s office the morning after the accident preparing his initial statement, Arena never thought to question him. Nor were the other participants in the party interrogated. “After all,” Arena told reporters, “when you have a U.S. Senator, you have to give him some credibility.”

Inundated with telephone calls and telegrams charging that Kennedy was not receiving the same scrutiny anyone else might have, Arena heatedly said to newsmen: “Let me tell you—he is being treated the same as everyone else.” This hardly seems to have been the case. According to John Farrar, the diver who retrieved Mary Jo’s body the next morning after an islander had reported the submerged car and after Arena had himself made an unsuccessful attempt to recover the body, the chief was informed that Kennedy was waiting for him back at Edgartown. By this time Arena knew that it was Kennedy’s car and was attempting to have his office locate the Senator. When Arena heard that Kennedy preferred to talk to him in Edgartown rather than on Chappaquiddick, said Farrar, Arena said: “Teddy wants me to go back to the station. I’ve got to go.” Oddly, Kennedy had already gone from Edgartown to Chappaquiddick not long before word of his presence in the area reached Arena. He lingered at the ferry slip and while there, he said on TV, he tried to call Burke Marshall, a prominent attorney and family friend, from a public telephone booth. Then he went back to Edgartown and appeared at the police station.

See pictures of intimate moments with the Kennedys.

See TIME’s complete Ted Kennedy coverage.

Later in the week, Arena told reporters: “You people have been asking a lot of questions about manslaughter and about other driving charges. The only case I have is of leaving the scene of an accident. We have no witness who saw him driving. From my study of the scene, the dirt road, the darkness, the narrow bridge where the car fell, it was an accident, a true accident.” Actually, under Massachusetts law, a charge of manslaughter, which requires “willful or wanton” conduct, would have been very unlikely. Even assuming the worst, Kennedy’s actions would probably not have met that extreme criterion.

Nonetheless, neither Arena, Dr. Donald Mills, the associate medical examiner, nor Arena’s superiors, Prosecutor Steele and District Attorney Edmund Dinis, can brag about their handling of what is probably the most publicized case they will ever be associated with. In keeping with Arena’s sketchy investigation, Mills, who pronounced Mary Jo dead, omitted an autopsy. Mills examined the body, but an autopsy would have shown how much Mary Jo had been drinking. Instead, a blood sample, which is much less conclusive, was taken that showed she had drunk a moderate amount. “An autopsy is best in cases like these,” said District Attorney Dinis, “because it clears the air and there is no room for speculation.” Dinis, however, did not order an autopsy or take over the inquiry from Arena, and both of these steps were in his power.

Why Did Kennedy Wait So Long to Explain?
His own explanation on TV: “Prior to my appearance in court, it would have been improper for me to comment on these matters.” Scarcely anything he finally did say, however, could have damaged his legal case. In any event, the damage to his public case and reputation was so shattering that an early accounting was in his overriding interest. For six days the simplest details remained unexplained and were an endless source of speculation. Until Kennedy went before the cameras, a report by a county deputy sheriff, Christopher Look, that he had seen three people in a car headed toward the bridge at 12:40 a.m.—almost an hour and a half after Kennedy had said that he had left the party—was a mine of burning gossip. The three people, of course, were most likely Kennedy, Gargan and Markham.

(See the most memorable quotes by Senator Kennedy.)

Was it possible that Kennedy, like Abe Fortas, had such pride of place that he thought he could ignore the buzz and emerge unscathed? Some did not doubt it for a minute. Others at least wondered if there was not, in fact, a peculiar Kennedy hubris.

As the crisis continued, the old Kennedy hands—Robert McNamara, Theodore Sorensen, Richard Goodwin, Kenneth O’Donnell and Burke Marshall, among others—crowded the famous Hyannisport compound, taking every spare bed. Only the house of Jacqueline Onassis, who was away, escaped service as a dormitory. One group of advisers, led by McNamara, strongly urged a full and immediate explanation. Finally, Ted agreed and the speechwriters—Sorensen, J.F.K.’s wordsmith; David Burke, Ted’s administrative assistant; and Milton Gwirtzman, a Washington lawyer and Kennedy friend—began their work. By the time their output was broadcast, of course, much of the country was analyzing the case.

Newspapers, for the most part, agreed prior to the television speech that Kennedy had some explaining to do. The usually sympathetic Boston Globe stated editorially: “It is in his own best interest as well as the public’s that all the facts should come out.” The Cleveland Press, reviewing the questions left unanswered by Ted’s police station statement, declared: “The public is entitled to a better explanation than it has had yet.” For all its smooth carpentry, the television statement did not dispel most such doubts and questions. The New York Times, which had begun its coverage in a mild and reticent way but gradually stepped it up in intensity, ran an editorial under the headline STILL A TRAGEDY AND A MYSTERY. Said the Times: “His emotion-charged address leaves us less than satisfied with his partial explanations for a gross failure of responsibility, and more than ever convinced that the concerned town, county and state officials of Massachusetts have also failed in their duty thoroughly to investigate this case because of the political personality involved.”

See TIME’s complete Ted Kennedy coverage.

See TIME’s Ted Kennedy covers.

Ultimately, of course, the issue is Edward Kennedy’s character and personality. As Chicago’s Daily News put it: those whom Ted may hope to serve as President are entitled “to know something of the inner workings of his mind under grave stress.”

Pool of Blood
Some psychiatrists, both professional and amateur, posed some other interesting questions about those inner workings of his mind. Did the accident and his behavior after it represent some sort of subconscious desire to escape the path that seemed ahead of him? Or was it an unwitting wish to avoid the burdens of becoming a presidential candidate? Few who knew him doubted that in one sense he very much wanted to take that path, but that at the same time he had a fatalistic, almost doomed feeling about the prospect. Such speculation about his psyche may very well be entirely fanciful. But there is no question that since Robert’s assassination he has been a different and deeply troubled man.

He was both more and less serious than he used to be—and more complicated. For one thing, he faced considerable responsibilities. He was suddenly, at the relatively young age of 36, the torch bearer of the Kennedy political tradition. “I came into politics in my brother Joe’s place,” his brother John had once said. “If anything happens to me, Bobby will take my place, and if Bobby goes, we have Teddy coming along.” There were also family responsibilities. Joe Kennedy, the patriarch of the clan, was partially paralyzed and only partly conscious of what happened around him, and Ted was now in effect acting as father to 15 children, three of his own, ten of his brother Robert’s (an eleventh child was born later) and, until Jacqueline Kennedy’s remarriage, two of John’s.

By any standard, he handled his duties, official and nonofficial, with devotion. Ted was probably a better Senator than were his two brothers, who found the Senate confining; with only one or two missteps, he served ably. When the 91st Congress assembled in January, he unseated Louisiana’s bombastic Russell Long as assistant majority leader. He was a beneficiary, of course, of the grace of being a Kennedy. Without that, he would probably never have won his Senate seat in the first place, and he certainly would never have been considered, at his age and level of experience, a serious presidential contender. Yet he was well-liked in the Senate, was deferential to his elders; he played by the rules and did his homework. If he was far less abrasive—and far less disliked—than Bobby, he also seemed to lack his brother’s genuine heat and passion for the causes he backed. In recent months he had only just begun to make a record: speeches on Viet Nam, the space program and the ABM—all of them cautiously worked out with the help of advisers, on whom he relied more than his brother did. But he gained confidence in his own political judgment and seemed to believe a statement that has been attributed to both John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, that Ted is the best politician in the Kennedy family.

At the same time, he could not forget the image of his brother lying in a pool of his own blood in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel. He made clear to his closest associates that he knew better than anyone else that there were uncounted numbers of psychopaths who might like to claim the murder of the last of the Kennedy brothers. Once he reportedly said: “I know that I’m going to get my ass shot off one day, and I don’t want to.” He talked privately of how his father had watched the Eisenhower funeral on television and of how the former ambassador had thought that his youngest son was being buried. Ted, who had always been the blithest brother, and the least intellectual or introspective, could now be morose at times.

The youngest, handsomest and most spoiled of the Kennedy brothers had often seemed shallow and irresponsible.

Apart from the famous exam-cheating episode at Harvard, there were numerous pranks—riding a bronco in the West or landing a plane without adequate training. Recently, his desire for kicks seemed to friends to be tinged with a tomorrow-we-die spirit. He seemed in private more fatigued by the demands of his public image. As LIFE reports this week, Kennedy would be in a room and feel people pressing in on him. His aides would hear him mumble “T.M.B.S.”—Too Many Blue Suits —and they would know that it was time to clear the room.

As for women, there are countless rumors in Washington, many of them conveyed with a ring of conviction. Some who have long watched the Kennedys can say with certainty that he often flirts with pretty girls in situations indiscreet for someone named Ted Kennedy. At the same time, he and his wife Joan are rumored to have had their troubles. There is no question that they are frequently separated. On one journey alone last summer, he was seen in the company of another lovely blonde on Aristotle Onassis’ yacht. Such incidents might be recounted about innumerable people in Washington and elsewhere; it is only the Martha’s Vineyard tragedy that suddenly makes them seem pertinent.

See TIME’s complete Ted Kennedy coverage.

See pictures of Maria Shriver.

Prayers Sought
How will the case affect Kennedy’s political career? One factor will be to what extent the U.S. public accepts his TV account of the debacle. It was a slick, carefully written statement that was well-delivered, with uncanny echoes of the haunting John Kennedy voice. Apart from its failure to answer key questions, it was disturbing in other respects. It played somewhat cheaply on the “Kennedy curse” and brought in rather more than necessary the shades of the slain brothers. Above all, Kennedy seemed to want it both ways. He asked to shoulder the blame for what happened: “I regard as indefensible the fact that I did not report the accident to the police immediately.” At the same time he was obviously also begging to be excused. “I would understand full well why some might think it right for me to resign. I ask you tonight, the people of Massachusetts, to think this through with me. In facing this decision, I seek your advice and opinion. In making it, I seek your prayers.”

There could be no doubt that the appeal was effective with many listeners and that Massachusetts, at any rate, would not abandon him. The speech, said Harvard Government Professor Samuel Beer, was a “great tribute to his humanity and strength.” Many other Bay Staters obviously agreed. Tens of thousands of telegrams and phone calls offering support came into newspapers and TV and radio stations. Elsewhere, of course, reaction was more mixed. The usual surge of Kennedy hate mail came to Arena and, cruelly enough, to the dead woman’s parents. In Massachusetts, where the Kennedys are almost sacrosanct, Republicans will probably still have a tough time finding a candidate of stature to contest Kennedy’s Senate seat next year. In the Senate proper, his future may be unaffected. Members are notably tolerant of all kinds of peccadilloes by fellow Senators. “After all,” noted Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield last week, “even a politician is human.”

The Rigors of the Oval Office
But in some respects, a presidential candidate must be above the larger human frailties. Some people will always wonder whether Kennedy, who at best bent and broke under extreme pressure, can stand up to the rigors of the Oval Office. Would his judgment, like his brother’s, remain unimpaired through the tension of a Cuban missile crisis? “Can we really trust him if the Russians come over the ice cap?” asked one Washington analyst last week. “Can he make the kind of split-second decisions the astronauts had to make in their landing on the moon? If this becomes a problem for him, some of the stuff he admitted about his behavior could be brought back and used against him.” One sick joke already visualizes a Democrat asking about Nixon during the 1972 presidential campaign: “Would you let this man sell you a used car?” Answer: “Yes, but I sure wouldn’t let that Teddy drive it.”

Many Democrats as well as Republicans, liberals as well as conservatives, rushed to write Kennedy’s political obituary. Many more, however, again from both parties and both ends of the political spectrum, were less convinced that the Senator had been damaged beyond repair. The situation has been widely compared with Richard Nixon’s own comeback from defeat and eclipse—although the cases are entirely different, since Nixon has never been involved in a personal tragedy of such significance. Some years of hard work and impeccable behavior might well restore Kennedy’s chances in public life. Some political observers believe that his resignation from the Senate—even if he is overwhelmingly supported by the Massachusetts public—would only help that process by demonstrating his sincere contrition. ” ‘Never’ is a long time,” said one moderate Republican Senator. “Kennedy has been hurt, but we’re all so close to it this week that I just don’t think anyone can judge so soon just how badly he’s been hurt.” The electorate’s memory, of the good as well as the bad, can be surprisingly short.

Remember 1988
In any event, Kennedy has undoubtedly slipped drastically in the odds counting for the 1972 nomination, even as Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey and George McGovern—not to mention some man yet unknown—have gained. That year is not out, of course, but the prospect last week was that 1976, when Ted will be only 44, will be more promising for him. Beyond that no one can see. It is worth noting that in 1988, another presidential year, Kennedy will be only one year older than Richard Nixon was when he finally won the crucial plurality.

Whatever conclusions political leaders and the public ultimately reach, however long or short the national memory, Kennedy may suffer in another, more basic way. He has not been a man devoid of self-doubt for some time. Now this burden could grow heavier, as he compares the Kennedy standard as it was passed to him and its present condition. Can he be sure of his own judgment and grit? He himself acknowledged the dilemma last week when he quoted from J.F.K.: “The stories of past courage cannot supply courage itself. For this, each man must look into his own soul.”

* Under attack for having accepted an $18,000 private expense fund raised by California supporters, Nixon, the G.O.P. vice-presidential candidate, went on TV to explain and ask for a public verdict. One contribution he would never give up, Nixon said, was his daughters’ dog Checkers—hence the name given the speech.

See TIME’s complete Ted Kennedy coverage.

See pictures of Eunice Kennedy Shriver.