"Help is on the way": thus the rallying cry from Democratic candidate John Kerry, whose candidature at the party convention was formally proposed last week by Teddy Kennedy.
A fine man indeed to propose anyone or anything. "Help is on the way." Were those the words he called to Mary Jo Kopechne 35 years ago as he left her to drown in his car, while he sought refuge in the company of his lawyers? Were those the words with which she consoled herself as she held on to life in her air-bubble, until finally as the oxygen ran out and life began to fade, she knew it wasn't?
It's a good year, 1969, as a kind of chronological co-ordinate with which to fix Ireland and the US. The two countries have surprisingly similar political cultures, even if they are radically different in style and vocabulary. In 1969 we had the outbreak of the Northern troubles which took Fianna Fáil to its moral watershed. This led to the Arms Trial and the acquittal of Charles Haughey. And instead of Haughey then being marooned on the margins of the party - or even expelled - he was allowed to claw his way back to power.
Why? Because people wanted the kind of stroke politics which he practised, and the network which made it possible. Everyone knew of his deep anglophobia; everyone knew of his bottomless supplies of money, ill-gotten perhaps, but more importantly both gotten and his; and everyone knew about the fabulous sexual hypocrisy behind his conspicuous displays of marital fidelity. And within Fianna Fáil, some people loved these values, in all their hypocritical awfulness, which he in his hypocritical awfulness truly represented.
Ted Kennedy's riches were similarly ill-gotten - not by him, but by his dreadful father. He was a more successful philanderer than Haughey, being American, younger and more attractive (not difficult). But in terms of moral worthlessness, it's a near-run thing who is the more despicable. Yet despite their conspicuous vices, both their political parties ultimately embraced them - and with what result? Since Fianna Fáil chose Charles Haughey to be its leader 25 years ago, it has never been able to secure an overall majority - a feat which it had managed in all but two elections over the previous 38 years. Under Haughey, Fianna Fáil only ever scrambled back to power by means of unseemly coalitions with independents whose private deals furthered the corruption of Irish political life, or by the final deal with the PDs. Only dyed-in-the-wool Fianna Fáil voters - whom Hugh Leonard memorably once termed "not so much rank and file as rank and vile" - remained loyal; the majority of Irish people couldn't stomach the lies, the humbug and the filth of Haughey's political style.
I believe that the continued eminence of Teddy Kennedy within the Democratic Party similarly disgusts many Americans, especially the God-fearing, bible-reading, blue-collar folk who revere "family values". I do not patronise them when I say they are simple people. There is an intactness and integrity in their moral vision for their own lives, and for the country they love. It is a seamless garment. They could never vote for a party which continues to esteem a man who left his young aide to drown, while he swam for safety.
So, in the previous 37 years before Mary Jo Kopechne's death, there were Democratic presidents for all but eight of them. In the 35 years since then, the Republicans have been in the White House for 25 of them, despite the Watergate scandal and the brief Democratic presidency of Jimmy Carter as a backlash to that.
For whatever Richard Nixon did at Watergate, and in the cover-up afterwards, was nothing compared to what Teddy Kennedy did at Chappaquidick, or the greater subsequent scandal - that he continued to be cherished in the upper echelons of the Democratic Party.
Is it possible that a married Republican who was having an affair with a young intern and who left her to drown could remain an esteemed member of the Republican Party? You just know it's not, just as you know that no Fine Gaeler could have comported himself as Charles Haughey did and yet prospered within the party.
The careers of both Kennedy and Haughey were embodiments of Tammany politics. Haughey fixed and grafted so compulsively that even his election agent was caught voting twice; but that is small beer compared with what the Kennedys got up to. Courtesy of the Irish mafia of Mayor Daly of Chicago and the missing ballot-boxes, they stole the 1960 presidential election and changed the history of the world.
That successful theft seemed to put the wretched Kennedy clan above the law; and above the law Edward Kennedy was able to remain, facing a minor charge but evading the serious ones which would certainly have awaited a less elevated man who had driven a young girl into a river, and then abandoned her to drown.
And the point of all this is that democratic politics ultimately is a moral business, and politicians who think that they are above the law of the common man are sooner or later riding for a fall. Truth will always out. And while the Democratic Party continues to carry the bloated, prating, humbug of Teddy Kennedy on its communal back, it will continue to be despised by the Good America: the plain, upright God-fearing simple folk who on their uncomplaining back carry the freedom of the world. They know what "Help is on the way" really means.