Would this happen for Bush?
One man is the son of a former President who went on to become the President himself. He had a checkered early life with numerous arrests and alcohol problems. However, he was sober and more responsible by age 40 when he began to enter politics.
Another man is the son of a wealthy businessman and politician whose brother was President and other brother was a Senator and Attorney General and well on the way to becoming President before his assassination. He won his older brother’s former Senate seat a couple years after his brother was elected President and held onto it for nearly fifty years until his death. He continued to live a checkered life for decades, including killing a woman by driving off a bridge and not reporting the “accident” to authorities until after her body was found.
The first politician is former President George W. Bush whose political career was marred by charges of nepotism and constant reminders of his past transgressions.
The second politician is former Senator Ted Kennedy who is always referred to in the media as being a part of a “great political family” and the Chappaquiddick incident, which killed Mary Jo Kopechne, has been ignored in the media. When the incident is brought up, accusations are made that the person who brings up the incident is trying to discredit Kennedy by bringing up something that happened well in the past, ignoring the fact that he continued to live an irresponsible life for decades after Chappaquiddick.
In the wake of Kennedy’s death in the last week, the media has gone to great lengths to portray Kennedy as a true American hero and has provided incessant positive coverage of him.
However, what if another long-term senator such as Robert Byrd (D-WV) or Orrin Hatch (R-UT) had died instead? Byrd and Hatch have also been “great” senators in that they have numerous accomplishments and are known for being willing to compromise with the other party. However, they were elected to the Senate without the backing of a “great political family” and have lived much more respectable lives than Kennedy (although Byrd was in the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s, a membership which he has regretted for more than sixty years).
Therefore, if a politician wants to have a massive public display of support after his death and get canonized by the media, they must be elected as a result of their parents’ success and not be a role model throughout their political career (and not be named Bush).
