The Crash of a Kennedy

Patrick Kennedy, who mysteriously plowed his Ford Mustang into a security barricade on Capitol Hill last week, once seemed the great hope of his generation of America's most storied political dynasty. He won his first election at 21: a college junior who had lived in Rhode Island only two years, Kennedy trounced a five-term incumbent to win a seat in the state legislature. In 1994 he was elected to Congress, and people predicted he would follow his father Edward into the Senate.

But Patrick's story turned stereotypically Kennedy in other ways. He has battled depression, drug addiction and bad publicity, as in 2000 when he argued with a girlfriend aboard a yacht he had chartered; she got the Coast Guard to take her to shore. He later trashed the boat. The car crash last Thursday at about 2:45 a.m. was the most bizarre incident yet. Capitol police officers, who suspected that Kennedy, 38, was drunk, alleged he was given special treatment: a superior told them not to give a sobriety test but to take Kennedy home. (Acting chief Christopher McGaffin later said the senior officer had shown "poor judgment" and was disciplined.) Strangest of all, Kennedy claimed, "I simply do not remember" the incident. He blamed the sleeping pill Ambien and the gastrointestinal drug Phenergan and checked himself into the Mayo Clinic, where he had been treated in December for addiction to prescription painkillers.

Kennedy told TIME in 2001 that while privacy would be his "ultimate luxury," there were advantages to having the details of his life be public grist. "It makes you honest about your frailties because--guess what?--you've got to get to a place where you can deal with them," he said. "There's no running away from them in this business." Certainly not if you're a Kennedy.