Ted Kennedy

It is interesting watching the response to Ted Kennedy's passing.

I'm not particularly a Camelot junkie - I'm about equally uninterested in Jacquie Spencer or Diana Bouvier (I can't even be bothered to check the spellings). And I have no sympathy for the way Kennedy men seem to have treated women.

But .... I guess I must admire redemption.

Oh that we should live long enough to learn something, and long enough that the balance of our life tilts towards the good we do and lets the small (and great) errors we all make seem less important.

There are those who want to point out how a privileged young man cheated at university - and how, as an adult, he drunkenly contributed to death of a young woman - and then pretty much failed to take responsibility.

I have been struck by the way in which an interview with Roger Mudd has been mentioned as a turning point in his life. At the time the incoherence of his reply to Mudd's question "Why do you want to be President?" seemed like a disaster. With the passing of time, it seems like the making of him - as it released him from chasing the presidency and allowed him to grow into a role for which, it turns out, he was always better suited.

Vale Ted Kennedy.