Senator Kennedy's posthumous memoir - Universal Health Care/1980

http://www.smh.com.au/world/chappaquiddick-inexcusable-kennedy-20090903-f9kh.html?autostart=1

(...)The memoir, True Compass, is to be published September 14 by Twelve, a division of the Hachette book group.

The 532-page book was obtained early by The New York Times.(...)

He also explains why he decided to run for the presidency in 1980, saying he was motivated in part by his differences with then-President Jimmy Carter.

He criticised Carter's go-slow approach to providing universal health care.

The book was written with the help of a collaborator and was based on contemporaneous notes taken by Kennedy throughout his life and hours of recordings for an oral history project.

his whole life, as if that is all there is in it. But he never tried to excuse it away.... he never tried to abdicate responsibility.... and these people want to make that his whole life. yet we have all these republicans who do shit and they don't accept responsibility and don't even apologize.... and somehow it's forgive and forget or something.... it's all in the past.

When I was a kid I had some rough times with my dad. He had a really hard time after my mom died and we were left pretty much to fend for ourselves. We had no food, no heat and no running water.... We would see him for less than an hour and when we did see him, it wasn't pleasant. I remember him trying to push me down the stairs once because I tried to stop him from throwing my brothers things out in the snow. I remember fighting with him over a phone we had hidden behind my dresser because he thought we were all 'consipiring' to take my little sister from him.

I didn't talk to him for TWO years after I left at 16. But when he knocked on our door, you could see it in his eyes. And though he never said the words "i'm sorry" he spent the rest of his life making up for those bad years. I bring this up because I believe that Ted Kennedy spent the rest of his life after that dark time in his life making up for those things. He has, imo, more than made up for it. Just sincere regret about what happened and acceptance of responsibility should go a long way on it's own. But he is by no means that once incident... and it makes me sick how republicans can try to make him out to be something that he is not because of it.

:cry:

It was a year after Bobby's death, six after John's. We can assume the repukes suffer no grief. It isn't bootstrapish.

More ..

In it, the venerable Massachusetts politician says his actions on Chappaquiddick on July 18, 1969, were "inexcusable".

He says he was afraid and "made terrible decisions" and had to live with the guilt for more than four decades.

Kennedy drove off a bridge into a pond. He swam to safety, leaving Mary Jo Kopechne in the car.

Kopechne, a worker with slain Senator Robert F. Kennedy's campaign, was found dead in the submerged car's back seat 10 hours later.

Kennedy, then 37, pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and got a suspended sentence and probation.

Interesting, I thought.