Edward M Kennedy's "Chappaquiddick" Speech
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On July 25, 1969, speaking from the library of his father's home in Hyannis Port, Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts addressed the voters of Massachusetts--and, by live network television, the American public--on his involvement in an automobile accident that resulted in the death of a woman passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne. That accident had taken place on Chappaquiddick Island, Massachusetts, six days earlier; Kennedy's ambiguous responsibility for the accident--and his subsequent delay in reporting it---set up a scenario where he faced both criminal charges and public censure. On the morning of July 26, the criminal issues were resolved with a suspended sentence on a plea of guilty to the misdemeanor of "leaving the scene of an accident." The address that evening, henceforth described as the "Chappaquiddick Speech," was a rhetorical act designed to salvage Kennedy's public image. This paper will analyze the speech descriptively, historically and critically. The purpose of Kennedy's speech was straightforward rehabilitation: "These events, the publicity, innuendo and whispers which have surrounded them . . . raises the question . . . of whether my standing among the people has been so impaired that I should resign my seat in the United States Senate." Kennedy's speech indicates that he believes the actions he took on the night of July 18, 1969 damaged his standing in both the state and national political arenas. Clearly, he
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t to his credit, in addition to the Kennedy good looks, beautiful wife, and aura of integrity.
The aura had always been slightly tarnished for Ted, however. Too young to be a war hero, in the background he had the scandal of being suspended from Harvard for cheating. His marriage to the blond and trendy Joan was alternately glamorous and spiked with incidents of marital discord. Both were publicly heavy drinkers, not in itself a scandal in the cocktail circuit atmosphere of the time, but they were sufficiently out of control to attract attention more than once. They would divorce in the 1980s and continue to have public substance-abuse problems.
Consequently, while the accident on Chappaquiddick Island might itself have been cause for concern, the controlling exigence behind Kennedy's decision to address the nation on July 25, 1969 was the conflict between the public's idealization of the Kennedy mythos and the reality of the Kennedy personality. This conflict presented a threat to society, one that only Kennedy himself could repair or attempt to repair. The threat was simple and quaintly naive: how could this leader, this Kennedy, behave so absurdly irresponsibly? Kennedy's week-long silence did not answer that question
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Approximate Word count = 6976
Approximate Pages = 28 (250 words per page)
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