A Letter From Europe / An Englishman Looks at Teddy
Worsthorne, Peregrine
A LETTER FROM EUROPE AN ENGLISHMAN LOOKS AT TEDDY by Peregrine Worsthorne Any idea that there should be some magical quality about a particular family would have seemed the merest superstition....
...In which case, the continuing attraction of the Kennedys may be a sign not so much that the Americans have lost their way as that they are about to find it...
...Any other man with any pretense to moral sensitivity would have withdrawn into obscurity after such a shameful experience...
...If the American people have decided to forgive him, as the opinion polls imply, then that will be to break with all egalitarian precedent...
...For the only thing impressive about him is his name...
...But none has had so many moral marks against him, in advance of being chosen, as Edward Kennedy...
...No longer, it seems...
...so in a way could Robert...
...While history affords many examples of kings and queens enjoying great popularity in spite of notorious failures of character-the same tolerance was allowed Greek gods, who were even permitted to get away with murder-this has never been the custom in well-ordered democracies...
...If that is the idea, then it has to be recognized as a rather extraordinary one for a modern republic to entertain...
...Until recently, however, this hereditary principle would have been totally alien to the American spirit...
...In his classic work describing the nature of American democracy, he argued that its people would always give special honor to public men embodying "those quiet virtues which tend to regularity in the body social...
...What better indication of the extent to which Americans have lost their way than that they, of all people, should develop a new deference towards the glamor of genealogy just when, in the old world, its ancient fascination has finally begun to fade...
...As for chastity, the less said the better...
...If this were to be the case, then Western Europe would have every reason for grave concern...
...Thus the monarchical-aristocratic principle, which the What should one make of a nation that shows disturbing signs of looking to a man like Edward Kennedy for leadership...
...It seems to hark back to the era when the mere fact of being royal was enough to inspire public faith and loyalty...
...perhaps even because of it...
...The question is important...
...For United States leadership is still essential to our protection and prosperity...
...In that sense one can say that it is a point of honor to be chaste...
...To argue, as his apologists do, that he has purged the guilt of Chappaquiddick by a subsequent decade of hard work in the Senate is to demonstrate a wholly un-American softness of moral judgment...
...No ordinary mortal, or senator, could expect to be so easily forgiven...
...Kennedy III equals Napoleon III-not a very happy parallel...
...If he could not make the grade on account of his own virtues, then he had no chance of winning popular favor...
...Being a commercial people, anxious to be allowed to get on with the business of making money, they would never fall victim to the more intoxicating lures of aristocratic or royal leadership: "All those turbulent virtues which sometimes bring glory but more often trouble to society will rank low in the opinion of this same people...
...Nor has he yet sought secular absolution for his sin, because it has never been publicly confessed, let alone punished...
...It is to allow him a privileged immunity, because he is who he is...
...The phenomenon of Edward Kennedy, however, suggests that the United States, which once put the democratic clock forward, is now concerned to put it back...
...For the Kennedy cult suggests a complete reversal of American values...
...In the nineteenth century that was the stuff out of which monsters were made...
...De Tocqueville would certainly have been very surprised...
...It was not so mush the man they wanted as the dynastic message...
...Ruling dynasties went out of fashion almost everywhere, except where the shadow was maintained-as in Britain-for ceremonial and symbolic purposes...
...Nor is Chappaquiddick the only scandal besmirching Edward Kennedy's reputation...
...Ten years ago he was the cause of a young girl's tragic death in circumstances that can only be described, at best, as deeply dishonorable...
...As soon as Nixon's arrogant amorality was found out, he was expelled from office...
...Harmony, whether as a public or private ideal, is not dreamt of in their philosophy...
...Similar considerations, he argued, applied in America to the private vices of public men: "Americans are particularly hard on bad morals, which distract attention from the search for well-being and disturb that domestic harmony which is so essential to business success...
...Even so, the prospect is somewhat daunting...
...Forgiveness will indicate an acceptance of privilege and reverence for rank alien to the American tradition...
...Perhaps a great power, seeking to exercise worldwide dominion, needs to encourage a more rumbustious, devil-may-care approach to life...
...Judged by the normal republican and democratic criteria-criteria that the United States pioneered-Edward Kennedy does not appear at all suitable for the Presidency...
...One explanation of the Senator's mounting popularity is that there is a magical quality about the family name, rather as there was once a magical quality about the family name of Bonaparte...
...Just try to imagine what a novelist like George Eliot would have made of a character who had tried to brazen it out...
...Americans expelled from the front door 200 years ago, would seem to be returning by the back...
...Both were possessed of qualities a democracy could quite properly admire...
...In bringing back Charles II, they hoped to recapture "the good old days" as well as to expiate their crime of regicide...
...A NOTE TO OUR READERS R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., is on vacation, and will return next month to resume "The Continuing Crisis...
...Such an attitude, which was pioneered in the United States, eventually became the conventional wisdom throughout the civilized world...
...Naturally not all democratic leaders have turned out to be virtuous...
...This might represent a far more insidious threat to democracy, or to freedom, than ever came from Richard Nixon...
...By this token, Americans are simply seeking to engineer a dynastic restoration, in much the same way as the French did a hundred years ago...
...Jack could just be understood as an exceptional human being...
...It could mean that the American people have gone soft in the head or plain decadent...
...In those days any old-or young-Hapsburg, Bourbon, or Hanoverian could do the trick, however degenerate, so long as he was of the right royal blood...
...Conceivably this is as it should be in contemporary America, whose chief business is no longer business...
...Edward Kennedy seems to be popular in spite of his arrogant amorality...
...His private life is well known to be deplorable...
...But if the American people turn to Teddy, this will suggest that there is a hankering not for this or that great man-as a man he is contemptible- but for some abstract idea of political virility that has nothing at all to do with personal virtue...
...Conceivably the American people are experiencing a comparable upsurge of nostalgia-not to mention the matter of expiation-hoping to recapture the New Frontier euphoria of the 1960s...
...Therein lie the seeds of a truly dangerous ruler, whose fascination for the public is based on nothing more respectable than a kind of animal energy: the musky smell of a beast of prey...
...When a great nation behaves so out of character, so contrary to its own traditions, then surely that must be a cause of legitimate concern to its friends and allies...
...Perhaps a more encouraging example of the same kind of thing would be our own 17th-century forebears' insistence on restoring a Stuart to the throne of England...
...His life has been anything but exemplary...
...Few families have ever done less to embody "those quiet virtues which tend to regularity in the body social...
...Turbulence comes as naturally to the Kennedys as ruthlessness in its suppression did to the Tutors...
...Thus, to win the esteem of their fellows, Americans are bound to conform to regular habits...
...Individual merit was held to be the only rational test of a person's right to rule...
Vol. 12 • November 1979 • No. 11
