There’s never been a serious debate about it. It’s undisputed that the late Senator, Edward M. “Teddy” Kennedy lacked the intellectual prowess and political acumen of his two older brothers- President John F. Kennedy and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. He was always regarded as a bit of a lightweight. Still, in 20^th Century America, the name “Kennedy” opened a lot of doors. In 1962, Teddy’s father, Joesph P. Kennedy, Sr, bought his 30-year-old son Teddy, a seat in the United States Senate.  What of young Teddy’s qualifications for this office, one might reasonably ask?

   The answer to this question was raised during a 1962 debate which young Teddy had to impatiently suffer through with his Republican opponent, Massachusetts Attorney General Edward McCormack. It was McCormack who retorted during the debate:

   “If your name were Edward Moore, your candidacy would be a joke. You have absolutely zero qualifications. You’ve never even held a steady job. But your name isn’t Edward Moore. Your name is Edward Moore Kennedy.”

   Teddy’s father had spent as much money on his son’s 1962 Senate election as Richard Nixon had raised in running for the Presidency two years earlier. In these early days before required public disclosure of campaign finance, Teddy’s father shamelessly greased everyone’s palm to ensure his son’s election- union bosses, newspapermen, Afro-American church pastors, etc. Hence Teddy, the young political neophyte, was victorious in an election that was bought and paid for by his father- fair and square!

    Teddy had attended Harvard, like his father and older brothers. However, Teddy’s academic performance was shall we say, less than scholarly. Prior to his graduation, he had been kicked out of Harvard after hiring another student to take his Spanish final. Those pesky Spanish verb conjugations really confused the young lad. He was busted by the exam monitor and school officials tossed him out on his ear for his violation of Harvard’s academic honesty policy. No longer a student and thus losing his deferment from the draft, not even his father could get him out of his mandatory military service. Teddy served two years in the U.S. Army where he was discharged as a Private First Class (E-3).

   After finishing his two years of service in the Army, Teddy petitioned his way back into Harvard- with a little help from Daddy.  Two years later, he earned his degree. He had applied for Harvard Law School and even with considerable pressure on the law school from his father, school officials balked at admitting a student with a “C” average. However, Teddy’s father was able to secure his admission to the University of Virginia Law School where Teddy graduated with less than stellar grades. It wasn’t that Teddy was dumb, he just preferred the life of wine, women and song to certain mundane things like say, academic performance.

   Not long after graduating, Teddy was given the title of “Western States Campaign Chair,” in his brother’s presidential race of 1960. His brother, John F. Kennedy, ended up losing every single one of the Western States. Teddy was what typical American liberals refer to as a “rich, privileged white guy.” However, the Left has always made an exception in applying this mark when the “rich, privileged white guy,” is willing to advance their cause. Under those circumstances, the “rich, privileged white guy,” becomes known as the “useful idiot,” a term invented by the Communist Bolsheviks. Don’t you just love the hypocrisy of the Left?

   Teddy’s first decade in the Senate was unremarkable from a legislative standpoint. He was less than respected by his peers in the chamber. However, his evening escapades became the talk of the town. Teddy had a penchant for going to the local bars with his buddies and leaving with various strange woman most nights. This, while his young wife sat at home and cared for their children. While Teddy was unable to achieve the political standing of his older brothers as statesmen, he surely seemed up for the challenge of outperforming them as philanderers. The latter was no small achievement.

   Teddy’s debauched lifestyle came crashing down atop him in the wee hours of the morning on July 19, 1969. Teddy had been at a bibulous gathering of his friends and young women on Chappaquiddick Island, off the eastern end of Martha’s Vineyard. As usual, his wife was at home caring for their young children. Teddy would leave the island with his conquest for the night: the young, naïve true believer, Marry Jo Kopechne. Driving back toward Edgartown with Miss Kopechne, a highly inebriated Teddy drove off the wooden bridge, plunging his car, himself and 29-year-old Miss Kopechne into the icy cold waters of Cape Pogue Pond.

   Teddy was able to free himself from the car. Miss Kopechne was not. Rather than attempting to rescue Ms. Kopechne, the drunken U.S. Senator hobbled down the road, fleeing the scene. Yeah, he bolted and left Miss Kopechne for dead. While escaping the scene, he passed four different homes near the location of the accident. These homes had their porch lights on. All he had to do was knock on a door and ask the residents to summon the authorities. Yet, Teddy wasn’t thinking about Miss Kopechne, only the political ramifications from the authorities discovering him in his intoxicated state after driving his car off the road with a passenger still trapped inside. The police diver who retrieved Miss Kopechne’s body, later reported that she likely survived underwater for some thirty minutes as her body was found with the upper torso thrust into “a large air pocket.”  Miss Kopechne didn’t drown. She suffocated. Had Teddy went to one of those homes and called the police, Miss Kopechne might still be alive.

  Teddy stumbled back to the house he was staying at. He sobered up and the next morning, after consulting his political advisors, concocted a cover story. This didn’t prevent him from being charged with a crime but, with the full force of the Kennedy family bearing down on the authorities, he received a sweetheart deal whereby he would plead guilty to the misdemeanor charge of leaving the scene of an accident with a two-month suspended sentence. Had it been you or I, we would have been handed a long prison sentence. Chalk up another win for the “privileged white guys.”

   Teddy used his family name and sympathy over the recent assassination of his older brother, Robert F. Kennedy, to get the Senate Democrats to elect him as their Majority Whip. The primary job of the Whip is to keep the other Senators of his party in line and ensure that they vote the way the Senate Majority Leader wants them to vote. Pretty simple, right? Except, there was a problem. Kennedy’s Democratic Senate colleagues didn’t really have a lot of respect for him. They had the strange idea that Teddy was a lightweight who wasn’t particularly dedicated to his responsibilities as a Senator and further, that he was only a member of the Senate due to his family name and wealth. How dare they!

   Later, Teddy was politely asked to give up his position as Whip. He went quietly. As the years passed, Teddy’s career in the Senate didn’t amount to very much. It wasn’t long after Chappaquiddick, when he returned to his decadent pleasure-seeking lifestyle. His wife finally left him although, returned to his side for his abortive presidential campaign in 1980. Drowning in his own delusions a grander, Teddy confidently declared that he would mount a primary challenge to sitting Democratic President, Jimmy Carter. In response, Jimmy Carter publicly announced that he would, “kick Teddy Kennedy’s ass,” in the Democratic Presidential Primaries. President Carter in fact, did just that. Carter would go on to lose in a landslide to Governor Reagan in the 1980 General Election. Thus, making him the first sitting President since Herbert Hoover to lose reelection to another term.  Yet, it’s likely that Teddy would have fared far worse were he the nominee instead of Carter. This, as many southern Democratic voters could at least tolerate Carter, although not Teddy’s wild-eyed liberalism.

   The election of Reagan seemed to annoy Teddy to no end. Reagan was from a poor, working class family in the Midwest who graduated from the fine but obscure Eureka College in Eureka, Illinois. Kennedy seemed to consider that alone as disqualifying Reagan from the high office. But you know, those dumb voters- right? The former California Governor seemed to so easily capture that which Teddy considered his birthright, even though it had so utterly eluded him. Teddy looked upon Reagan as a simple-minded plebian and made it his life’s mission to undermine Reagan’s presidency. He crossed the line into sedition when he set out to conspire with Soviet leaders to thwart President Reagan’s agenda.  

  Soon after taking office, Reagan met with his military and national security advisors and declared that the status quo of peaceful coexistence with the Communist world had to change. He introduced a bold plan to bring on the collapse of the Communist USSR from within. See The Historical Truth Project article, How Ronald Reagan Took Down the Communist World. Teddy, upon catching wind of this, became quite unhinged. Teddy believed there was a rightful place in this world for the USSR and Communism.  Those forced to live under Communist rule as well as most Americans, disagreed with him.

   When Reagan took office, the US was in a life-or-death struggle against world-wide Communism. The past American policy of “Containment,” had not worked. Reagan left a lucrative career as an actor to pursue political office solely because he considered the issue of Communism to be the “moral imperative of our time.” The Soviet Union and its network of totalitarian satellite countries were seeking our demise as a nation. They were our enemies. This fact didn’t dissuade Teddy from colluding with them to hurt Regan’s reelection prospects in 1984. Kennedy, in typical liberal fashion, saw Reagan as a greater threat to the world than the Communist alliance of nations dedicated to our destruction.

   Through his Soviet contacts, Teddy sent secret correspondence to the notorious KGB of the USSR. After the Soviet Union collapsed, Kennedy’s correspondence was uncovered and no less than the London Times reported on this in their edition of February 2, 1992. The report detailed a 1983 document describing Kennedy’s overtures to Soviet officials.

    In secret correspondence addressed to USSR leader Yuri Andropov, KGB head Victor Chebrikov, reported that Teddy was eager to “counter the “militaristic policies” of President Reagan. A little Treason with your bourbon Mr. Kennedy? But Teddy didn’t stop there. He stood ready to give our Communist adversaries the whole farm. Kennedy’s handlers in the USSR soon gave him the code name “Polezni Durak.” In Russian, “Polezni Durak” translates into English as “useful fool” or “useful idiot.”

   In addition to giving away U.S. secrets, Kennedy also offered the Soviet Communist public relations advice. In a report from KGB head Chebrikov to the Kremlin, Kennedy’s advice was outlined as follows:

   “Kennedy believes that in order to influence Americans it would be important to organize in August-September of this year, televised interviews with Y.V. Andropov in the USA. A direct appeal by the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union to the American people will, without a doubt, attract a great deal of attention and interest in the country. The senator is convinced this would receive the maximum resonance in so far as television is the most effective method of mass media and information.”

   Kennedy emissaries such as John Tunney traveled to the USSR to relay messages and to coordinate resistance to our sitting US President. Just think what would have happened had a Republican been caught engaging in similar activities with our foreign adversaries. Further, Kennedy informed the Soviets that he would be seeking the Presidency again in the 1988 elections and that the Soviet Communists could count on “warm relations” with his future administration. Why of course they could!

   In the end, President Reagan’s reelection campaign won the largest landside in history- 49 states. Reagan has secured a legacy in American History as one of our greatest Presidents.  Like the Soviet Union itself, Teddy too was “resigned to the ash heap of history.”  He stuck around in the Senate until his death in 2009 but, was never of any real importance. His fawning admirers in the liberal press assigned him the name, “The Lion of the Senate.” To his colleagues in the upper chamber, this nickname was the source of much snickering.

   Many have asked the question, how could someone with Teddy’s family name, wealth and connections amount to so little? Well, the Corleone family had Fredo. The Kennedy family had Teddy. Maybe it’s just that simple.