The best ad of all time in any category was the VW ad that said, “If Teddy Kennedy drove a VW he would be president today.”
National Lampoon
That was a good one. Believe it or not, I was watching a BBC documentary about Chappaquiddick the other night and they posit that Teddy wasn't even in the car when his car plunged into the water. It's an elaborate story with three key witnesses which, pieced together, show drunken Teddy was trying to have sex with Mary Jo in the car when an officer returning home saw them parked in the middle of the road. The officer gets off work at Midnight which shows Ted was lying about hitting the water around 11:15, not long after guests saw he and Mary Jo left the house. Ted returned to the house - dry and on foot - and had an aide drive him another direction to the ferry dock. Mary Jo - drunk and alone - sped off the wrong way to the unlit bridge and hit the turn too fast, causing the car to plunge into the water. While there was no autopsy, the diver that recovered MJK's body noted there were no bruise or cuts on her body, which would have surely been true if she was in the front passenger side as most presume. It's consistent with if she were in the driver's side of the car where her body would not have been crushed by the weight of the sinking car against the bottom. Since the Ferry stopped running at midnight, Teddy jumped into the water and swam back to Edgartown unaware that Mary Jo had drowned until the following morning. So why did he confess to being in the car and moving up the timeline? Because he couldn't admit he was cheating on his wife - which would have torpedoed his career - so Gallant Ted claims he was just giving Mary Jo a ride back into town and that he bravely fought to pull Mary Jo ashore once the car ran off the bridge. He could fight off charges of vehicular negligence and involuntary manslaughter more easily than he could fight off charges of infidelity. The BBC documentary claims he was scared into leaving Mary Jo in the car to fend for herself where she panicked and took the wrong turn while Teddy hoofed it past a fire house and two lit homes (if he had wanted to get help for a drowning passenger) to go back to the party house and talk an aide into providing an alibi. So the VW might have saved Mary Jo. It might have made matters worse for Teddy.