In my previous comparison of Ted Kennedy to Henry VIII, I touched on how unaccountability -- a feature of both traditional royal prerogative and Kennedy family prerogative -- can be buttressed by populism:

Ted Kennedy does remind me of Henry VIII in one important sense. Both men believed in their ultimate unaccountability, and neither really was held accountable. In Henry's day, though, the man in the Tudor street wanted his king to be strong, and unaccountable. They liked the idea of him standing up to the Pope and having as many wives as he wanted. They liked the fact that he was a bloated, dissipated gourmand who kicked anybody's ass anytime he wanted. Unfortunately, there's a strong streak of populism that loves unaccountability. This was something Republicans forgot during Monicagate.

Clinton was arrogant and shameless, and many people loved him for it.

I was 14 when Ted Kennedy drove Mary Jo into Poucha Pond, and I remember his TV appearance with the cervical collar, and a lot of arguing back and forth. In general, people who liked him sympathized, and people who didn't like him didn't. I noticed that it all seemed to come down to whether people agreed with his politics. Kennedy/Camelot lovers (invariably Democrats) used to say things like "That poor man has been through enough!" while Republicans said he should be held accountable the same as anyone else, despite the fact that they all knew he would get away with it.

The fact is that Republicans don't get away with anywhere near as much. There is no Republican Camelot. A Democratic senator can get away with leaving a girl to tap, tap, tap on the windows while she slowly dies over a period of hours, and yet a Republican senator is politically ruined and permanently disgraced for tapping his foot in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Nothing fair about it.

I think the American people vacillate between liking accountability, and liking unaccountability, and I cannot explain it.

Actually, tolerating is not the right word; it's enjoyment. The "little people" often have an unfortunate tendency to like and even revel in the unaccountability of strong populist leaders. Yet it is often the case that these same "little people" have zero tolerance for similar conduct by people who are popularly perceived of as not being "one of us" but as belonging to the elite, or the aristocracy. Compare the ho-hum treatment of Charles Rangel to that of Leona Helmsley, or Martha Stewart. Populist demagogues can not only get away with not paying their taxes, they are applauded for it. I think that because he is a rank populist, Rangel would actually stand a good chance of being elected from prison.

Anyone remember Philadelphia Mayor John Street? The discovery that he was the subject of an FBI investigation (something that would have been fatal to any Republican) actually ensured his reelection.

I guess that populism must have something to be said for it, or so many Republicans wouldn't seem to be embracing it. I don't mean to sound like an elitist libertarian snot, but if I didn't admit that it worried me I would be less than candid. It's all too easy to forget the many excesses of populism over the centuries.

Anyway, I think the embrace of corruption is but one one of the scary yet characteristic downsides of populism. While it would be bad enough if it were limited to financial corruption, what's really scary is when the "little people" become so callused as to be willing to look the other way when their populist leaders take the lives of other people. True, Ted Kennedy did not chop off the heads of inconvenient lovers, but Mary Jo Kopechne was just as dead as Ann Boleyn. (And the latter did have a quicker death.)

The reason I look at history is not so much to resort to historical comparisons (which are always risky), but because I sometimes tire of contemporary politics. Tired though I am, issues like this have a timeless quality to them.

Sometimes I wonder whether the medieval peasant mentality is still with us. Anyway, I thought about my previous post when I saw two items that Glenn Reynolds linked earlier. First, Matt Welch takes issue with the HuffPo meme that "maybe she'd [Mary Jo] feel it was worth it," as well as an equally preposterous assertion by Joyce Carol Oates:

[I]f one weighs the life of a single young woman against the accomplishments of the man President Obama has called the greatest Democratic senator in history, what is one to think?

Though Oates (I think) is more ambivalent than this passage would suggest, the sentiment is a timely reminder of the seductive awfulness of political ideologies everywhere and always. The ends are always worth a few strangled means, especially to those wielding or sympathizing with power. If you're openly musing whether the unwilling, unjust sacrifice of an innocent is worth a broad set of alleged legislative improvements, you're not asking a morally challenging question, you're answering it.

Glenn also links Mark Steyn, who takes issue with another cloying populist remark:

Ted was not perfect, and his post Chappaquiddick, life-long mission of penance almost makes up for getting away with leaving Mary Jo Kopechne to suffocate to death.

As for the argument that, well, for a rich and powerful man Ted sure did a lot for da liddle guy, include me out. Benign paternalism and droit du seigneur are two halves of the same coin: The former has excused the latter in monarchical societies through the ages. It's distressing to see so many alleged "democrats" embrace it here.

But on the bright side, at least they can't reelect Ted Kennedy.

(On the dark side, they would if they could.)

MORE: From Ann Althouse, a reminder of the next best thing to electing a dead Kennedy -- Joe Kennedy contemplates the "Kennedy Seat." (Via Glenn Reynolds.)