It was early summer, and the wealthy politician’s son was in trouble. He’d done something terrible, possibly criminal, something that would almost certainly derail his future and harm his family.

As he and his siblings had always done, he went back to the family home, to confess to the father who’d had such high hopes for his offspring. “Dad, I’m in some trouble,” he reportedly said.

And then the family took over.

The family’s crisis team drafted a statement for the young man to give and, crucially, a strategy to shape the public’s perception. If America saw this married man in his late 30s as a boy — handsome and high-spirited, mischievous, not a criminal — he’d be able to squirm out of his misdeeds with minimal punishment.

If this sounds familiar, it should. It’s how, in the summer of 1969, the Kennedy camp managed the fallout after 37-year-old Teddy drove his car off a bridge off Chappaquiddick Island, and his young female passenger died.