Joyce Carol Oates: How does one woman’s life compare to decades of awesome Senate service?
Somehow, the fact that she recognizes Chappaquiddick as “unconscionable, despicable, unmanly and inexplicable” only makes it worse. It’s come to this: Yet, ironically, following this nadir in his life/ career, Ted Kennedy seemed to have genuinely refashioned himself as a serious, idealistic, tirelessly energetic liberal Democrat in the mold of 1960s/1970s American liberalism, arguably the greatest Democratic senator of the 20th century. His tireless advocacy of civil rights, rights for disabled Americans, health care, voting reform, his courageous vote against the Iraq war (when numerous Democrats including Hillary Clinton voted for it) suggest that there are not only “second acts” in American lives, but that the Renaissance concept of the “fortunate fall” may be relevant here: one “falls” as Adam and Eve “fell”; one sins and repents and is forgiven, provided that one remakes one’s life… Yet if one weighs the life of a single young woman against the accomplishments of the man President
