Posted on 08/29/2009 5:20:32 PM PDT by kingattax
I was working as an intern in the office of then-Minnesota Senator Walter Mondale in the summer of 1969. Senator Kennedy's office was down the hall and around the corner from Mondale's on the fourth floor of the old Senate Office Building, if I remember correctly, but his cramped mail room was next door to Mondale's office.
The Chappaquiddick accident that took the life of Mary Jo Kopechne occurred that July. Last month, in connection with the fortieth anniversary of the accident, Robert George and Dermot Quinn revisited the basic facts of the Chappaquiddick story.
In the immediate aftermath of the accident, Senator Kennedy treated the affair as a sort of crisis of state. He convened a meeting of the Kennedy administration brain trust at Hyannis Port to craft a speech that would get him out of the jam in which he found himself. Among the old hands pitching in were Robert McNamara, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and Theodore Sorensen. They were only too willing to oblige.
Kennedy gave the speech they wrote for him live on national television. Audio, video and text of the speech are available here. Kennedy waited to give the speech until he had appeared in court to resolve the traffic offense arising from the accident. The speech is a complete and utter crock.
Among the speech's most laughable lines is this one: "Today, as I mentioned, I felt morally obligated to plead guilty to the charge of leaving the scene of an accident." Anything less than that would of course have involved trading on his privileged status. That was something he would never do, except when necessary. Having provided his constituents his self-serving account of the accident, Kennedy pretended to throw himself on their mercy
(Excerpt) Read more at powerlineblog.com ...
Congressman Billybob
. . ..is THIS part of the speech??
Surprisingly, in the wee hours of the night he died CNN aired that bit with the memories and working with the people of Massachusetts. Barf.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.