We were driving to Cape Cod a few weeks ago when the toll booths arrived in Massachusetts. The lines into the tolls were long, but for one lane, the cars were zipping merrily through. I joked that that booth was for the Kennedy family.

This was a few weeks before Ted Kennedy died. Ted Kennedy was Massachusetts, New England accent and all. I always thought that when he died, all the attention would focus on Chappaquiddick, the small island off Martha's Vinyard where Teddy in 1969 drove his car off a bridge, leading to the drowning death of a young woman who worked for the 1968 campaign of Teddy's slain brother, Robert.

While Chappaquiddick was a focus in the obituaries, the media also talked about Kennedy's legislative achievements. Teddy entered the U.S. Senate in 1962, at 30 probably too young for the position. After his brothers were murdered, he got serious and played a role in enacting nearly every progressive piece of legislation over the last 40 years, including labor laws, workplace safety laws, employment discrimination laws and education laws. In terms of his achievements, he is probably the best U.S. Senator this country ever had.

But let's talk about Chappaquiddick for a moment. No one defends what happened that night. Known for his drinking and womanizing, the idea that Teddy drove a car off a bridge and swam to safety while a woman drowned in the car obviously brings to mind all the worst stereotypes of the drunken womanizer. Teddy did not call the police right away, and the case will go down as one of the great shams in American history. People argue to this day that Teddy got off easy. It cost him the presidency, for sure. My guess is he would have won in 1976.

Kennedy's recent death brings to mind one of the great debates of our time. Can you redeem yourself after doing something horrible? Most people say the answer is yes. Teddy worked harder after Chappaquiddick to establish himself as a serious Senator. But if you scratch beneath the surface, something else hits you: that old adage really is true. Killing one person is murder. Killing 10,000 is foreign policy.

Teddy's memoirs are being released ahead of time. In his autobiography, he writes convincingly that the death of Mary Jo Kopechne has haunted him every day for 40 years. I believe it. I have read books about Teddy and it seems his compassion was not an act. He personally called family members of the 9/11 terror attacks, and the victims were surprised and comforted to know that a U.S. Senator actually called them to offer his condolences. Conservative Senators loved the guy like a brother. Biographies of Teddy include these and other examples of his compassion. Makes sense in light of the progressive legislation that he promoted over the course of his career. This does not change what happened at Chappaquiddick, and it does not bring Mary Jo Kopechne back to life. Teddy was 36 years old when that incident happened; he was no kid.

Remember what I said about murder and foreign policy? Another man who inflicted great damage over the course of his life and began to second-guess his decisions was Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War, which raged through the 1960's through the early 1970's. I don't forgive McNamara for fighting the war long after he thought the war was lost; the war never should have been started. But at least he made some attempt to reconsider his decisions. If George W. Bush was paying attention in the mid-1990's when McNamara went public with his mea culpa, the war in Iraq may not have happened.

Now take a look at a man who is totally beyond contempt, a killer who has no remorse at all. Henry Kissinger, statesman, Nobel Peace Prize winner. Kissinger was Secretary of State during the Nixon administration in the early 1970's, when the Vietnam War was raging and over one million people died at the other end of the war (in addition to nearly 60,000 American soldiers). If you think the Iraq war was bogus, take a look at Vietnam. In the Nation magazine a few weeks ago, a letter was published which blew my brains:

I am of a '60s antiwar movement that can never forgive Robert McNamara for his central role in the Vietnam War, though of course he had the decency to acknwledge many years later that the war was wrong. No so Henry Kissinger, who took up where McNamara left off.

I interviewed both men in 2001 for a PBS documentary, The Sixties: The Years That Shaped a Generation. McNamara told me that he'd come to realize the war was a tragedy that could have been avoided. He said his "greatest regret" was urging President Johnson in 1965 to commit American troops to a land war in Asia.

But Kissinger was unreconstructed, unapologetic. "If you are going to ask I feel guilty about Vietnam, the interview is over," Kissinger said before I asked my first question. "I'll walk out."

I told him that I had just interviewed McNamara. That got his attention. And then he did something I'll never forget: he began to cry. Actually, he pretended to cry.

"Boohoo, boohoo," Kissinger blubbered, rubbing his eyes. "He's still beating his breast, right? Still feeling guilty." He spoke in a mocking, singsong voice and patted his heart for emphasis.

It was one of those private moment, before the camera rolls, when you get a rare glimpse into someone's character and it's even darker than you ever dreamed.

Redemption for Teddy. None for Henry.