Let's have a couple of beers and talk about an old accident scandal

There's a well-known book called The Commissar Vanishes, about the ways the Soviet government during Joseph Stalin's rule used to doctor photographs to fit changing Party-line versions of history.

The Russian Communists weren't the first to discover propaganda edits, of course. Sometimes similar things happen today: Beer comment scrubbed from NBC story.

It just wouldn't do to leave an eyewitness report out there about drinking alcohol before that unfortunate minor shooting-a-guy-in-the-face-with-a-shotgun incident. (Via Atrios).

See also Cheney, "A Beer or Two," and A Gun by John Nichols The Nation 02/15/06 (from the CommonDreams.org site).

One of the Cheney defenses we've already seen appearing in the comments is "What about Ted Kennedy and Chappaquiddick?"

This is kind of a stretch as a defense, although misdirection has become second nature to the true-blue faithful. For one thing, they have to go back 37 years to 1969 to find a comparable "the Democrats did it first" example. More importantly, every good conservative has repeated for years that Kennedy's behavior around the Chappaquiddick incident was awful, terrible, thoroughly reprehensible.

Anyone who's been awake the last five years won't be surprised, though, that what Republicans consider a hideous scandal for Dems is a minor thing if not entirely righteous when good Republican white folks do it.

And, yes, this means that at least for a few paragraphs I'm going to go where angels and sensible people know better than to tread, the Chappaquiddick incident.


I'm really not into helping the other side sling their sleaze. Or promote their black-helicopter theories, of which there are many related to that incident.

But, to the extent that its possible during the postmodern Bush-Cheney administration, it's worth thinking a bit about that earlier scandal and what it tells us about accidents involving major politicians where they hurt someone else, and the aftermath.

The Chappaquiddick accident was in July of 1969, when some large percentage of today's blogosphere weren't even born yet. Ted Kennedy had attended a party on Chappaquiddick island in Massachusetts for campaign workers from Bobby Kennedy's Presidential campaign of 1968, which of course ended with his assassination in Los Angeles. In the evening, he gave one of the young women at the party, Mary Jo Kopechne, a ride home.

The bridge to shore was an unlighted, wooden bridge with no siderails. As he drove onto the bridge he steered too far to one side and the car went into the water. Kennedy escaped the car. Mary Jo Kopechne did not, and she drowned. Kennedy dove repeatedly into the water to try to locate the car and help her, but couldn't find it. He ran back to the house where the party and taken place and got two other men, who also dove into the water trying to locate her.

After that, he did what created permanent doubts about the incident. He swam back to shore, and didn't report the accident to the police unitl the next morning. A week after the accident, he gave a televised speech in which he took full responsibility for the accident. He pleaded guilty to a charge of leaving the scene of an accident.

This incident has been intensely researched by journalists, historians, private detectives and partisans of various sorts. I don't pretend to be familiar with all the literature relating to this incident. But I think its safe to say the following about it, with the qualification that I'm not trying to troll-proof every line.

So far as I'm aware, it's universally agreed that Kennedy's failure to report the action to the police immediately was wrong. It's also agreed that the accident was his fault. There's probably some dispute about the length of time he waited to make a detailed public statement.

The flat-earth crowd has all kinds of theories bouncing around. But in the reality-based world, there is no evidence that Kennedy had any kind of personal relationship with the young woman who died, or that he had any kind of motive to do her intentional harm.

I'm not sure that Kennedy had any "defenders" in the strict sense. If anyone ever blamed the drowning victim for the accident that killed her, I'm not aware of it.

But he did have defenders in the sense that there were people willing to believe that his actions after the accident were not entirely sinister. To start with, he had gone under water with the car and was at some serious risk of drowning himself. He suffered a concussion during the accident. He dived repeatedly into the water in an attempt to reach the car. By the time he made the strange decision to swim to shore, his judgment had been arguably physically impaired in a significant way by the concussion and physical exhaustion. And it's certainly conceivable that emotional shock played a part.

Still, the delay in notifying the police left a lasting cloud over him. The often-quoted political scientist Larry Sabato wrote in 1998 that "more than any other single factor, Chappaquiddick ... has ensured that Ted Kennedy would not follow his brother John to the White House." (Feeding Frenzy Washington Post 1998).

Sabato also notes, without being specific, "virtually no journalist who has closely examined the evidence fully believes Kennedy's story, and almost 30 years later, the tragedy still trails the senator, with aggressive press investigations revived in five-year anniversary intervals."

I would assume that any historian or journalist - or even a blogger who wanted to do some heavy research on it - would ask some basic questions about the incident: Is Kennedy's story supported by witnesses and by physical evidence? Are there discrepancies in the witness accounts? Is there reason to think he was intoxicated? Did his story change in unexplained ways? Is there any reason to think that the police investigation was deficient or improperly influenced? Are there plausible alternative theories to explain uncorroborated parts of his story? Is there any evidence of a motive to do the victim harm?

Those are legitimate questions about the Chappaquiddick incident. And they are legitimate questions about Deadeye Dick's Elmer Fudd moment in Texas. But Chappaquiddick is probably the most-investigated auto accident in history, with the possible exception of Princess Diana's fatal crash. Deadeye's shooting took place last Saturday. And there are lots of open questions that have only begun to be investigated.

But for politicians, Deadeye's shooting accident along with Chappaquiddick should provide a couple of lessons on avoiding endless questions and doubts. Notifying the police right away and being as open as possible with the public about the incident as quickly as possible would seem to be two obvious lessons.

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