02:48 PM EDT on Wednesday, May 10, 2006

The soap opera needs to wrap up now. We don't need to be kept waiting for the next installment, wondering what form the next embarrassment will take.

Patrick Kennedy has been Rhode Island's boy congressman for six terms. He began his road to Washington back on a sunny September day in 1988 when he inflicted the political equivalent of saturation bombing on the 9th Representative District in Providence.

It was primary day and Kennedy, then a PC student, brought in the family. Polling places were awash in the teeth, the curls, the charisma of the Kennedys. Ted and Ted Jr., John John and Joan greeted voters and dazzled them. John John had just been anointed the sexiest man alive by People magazine.

John Skeffington, the incumbent, was driven to cover. He was an undertaker. He had old neighborhood connections, an easy familiarity going for him. But he had nothing to match the tidal wave of celebrity washing over his district. Old favors, old friendships were nothing compared with the opportunity to press some Kennedy flesh, to get close to a troubled but glamorous American dynasty.

And Patrick was swept along on the family tide and into the family business. He became a state representative. Celebrity trumped old neighborhood ties.

In 1994, when Kennedy ran for Congress, he faced Dr. Kevin Vigilante. Vigilante is probably one of the most impressive people to seek public office in Rhode Island in the last quarter century -- smart and caring and dedicated. Vigilante versus Kennedy offered a choice between accomplishment and family ties.

And family ties won. Credentials counted for nothing. There was a Kennedy in the race and somebody else.

And so it has gone. Kennedy has remained Rhode Island's Kennedy in Congress. He has stumbled along with a boyish charm that has remained boyish. He is likable, in large part, I think, for his refusal or inability to change much. He still seems a kid among the grownups. And he screws up as kids will.

The incidents pile up -- the one at the airport, the one on the sailboat, more than one at the wheel of a car. Kennedy has addiction problems. A lot of people do. But his become mini-dramas, played out in painful public confession.

Last week, he drove his Mustang into a concrete barrier near the Capitol in Washington in the early morning. Capitol police appeared to do all they could to keep the incident under wraps, but this one got loose.

Kennedy called a news conference to say he was going into rehab at The Mayo Clinic to deal with his addictions. Would he have made the same decision if the incident had not been made public?

I have to disagree with my friend Charlie Bakst on this one. I don't think what Kennedy did was courageous. I think it was politically expedient. He didn't have many options -- except, of course, to decide there have been enough embarrassments, enough bad judgment, enough childish indulgence, enough examples of simply not being able to handle the pressures of public office while swimming in the family fishbowl.

On Monday night, Rhode Island Democrats endorsed Kennedy for reelection despite the questions raised by his behavior. Why not? He's still a Kennedy. He's still a sure thing.

But his fellow Democrats didn't do him any favors. They didn't make it easy for him to walk away and try to find a life in which he will be known for more than a last name. Who knows -- he might end up happy.

And this would seem the time to find out if that's possible.

bkerr@projo.com / (401) 277-7252