Kennedy's Bad Boy Days

Sen. Ted Kennedy was widely considered to be the rock of the Kennedy clan, but for many years following his brothers' deaths, he seemed ill-suited for the part.

CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller reported Kennedy seemed a man with two sides: he was a prolific elder statesman on one side and a brazen bad boy on the other.

Biographer Edward Klein says the youngest of the Kennedy nine seemed to get a free pass.

Klein said, "He was like the playboy of the Western world. ... The (other Kennedy children) had to achieve according to their father and mother's standards, (but) he could get the attention by being the clown."

Klein says Kennedy's demerits were many. He'd been kicked out of college for cheating. And in 1969 there was there Chappaquiddick accident, when the passenger in his car, Mary Jo Kopechne, died in the crash. Kennedy left the scene, and didn't notify authorities until his young companion's body was discovered the following day.

Klein said, "He drove a car off a bridge and drowned a woman. ... He left her in the car when she still had an air bubble in the car, and probably could have been saved."

Chappaquiddick haunted Kennedy, Miller said, and by 1980, his first marriage crumbled. The rest of the decade, Klein says, his reputation with women and booze spun out of control.

And by 1991, Miller reported, Kennedy hit rock bottom. After a night of bar-hopping with relatives, he was forced to testify in the rape trial of his nephew, William Kennedy Smith.

Klein said, "This is a mature man taking these young boys out for a romp with some women."

The press was relentless: Time magazine called him a "Palm Beach Boozer." GQ magazine dubbed him "an aging Irish boy clutching a bottle."

Peter Cannellos, editor of "Last Lion: The Fall and Rise of Ted Kennedy" said on "The Early Show" Kennedy's drinking and serial dating were "undignified for someone in his position."

And for the next 17 years, Klein says, Kennedy tossed the bad boy image and grew up. However, reflecting on those troubled years was never easy.

Read more stories on Sen. Kennedy's life and death at CBSNews.com:

CBS News Special: Ted Kennedy - The Last Brother
Mourners Gather For Kennedy Memorial
Kennedy To Be Missed in Health Care Fight
Across the Pond, Irish Praise Hero Abroad
Kennedy Did His Life's Work Until the End
Kennedy's Bad Boy Days
Who Is Heir to Kennedy's Liberal Legacy?
Brothers "Would Have been Proud"

In an interview with "60 Minutes," Kennedy told correspondent Lesley Stahl he never looked at how he would be remembered.

"I never looked at it, really, in terms of the questions of legacy," Kennedy said. "I think I've always wanted to try and be a better person."

But does the good outweigh the bad?

Klein said, "My guess is, 50 years from now, a hundred years from now, when Ted Kennedy makes his appearance in these history books, his bad behavior will be footnotes."