Dynasties die out in different ways. The Adamses lost altitude in stages, so that ambition gave way to ennui over four generations, and by the fifth one, was utterly gone.
The sons of Theodore Roosevelt had bowed out early on, (at least after Ted jr. lost his political struggle with fifth cousin Franklin), while it was the children of Franklin and Eleanor who had the most spectacular flame-out, staging a riveting race to the bottom as to who could disgrace himself the in the most novel fashion, or have the most scandals and wives.
The Roosevelts crossed the paths of the Kennedys twice: first in the 1930’s, when Joe Kennedy embraced the ascendant Franklin D. Roosevelt (and launched his public career—and his sons’– in the process), and the second in 1960, when a descending FDR jr. embraced the ascendant John Kennedy, endorsing him in the 1960 campaign.
Now it is the Kennedys who are descending, trying to extend the family’s political reach into a third generation. Right now, they aren’t doing it well.
After trying and failing with Bobby’s son, Joe Kennedy II (the oldest male of his generation); with Bobby’s daughter, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, with Eunice’s son Mark (who lost in a primary), and with Bobby’s son Max, (who never got to a primary), they are playing the trump card with the president’s daughter, the one from the ‘royal’ branch of the family, the golden-haired tot from the Camelot fantasy, the one of whom people thought nothing but good.
She survived with fortitude a series of losses; she avoided the fates of celebrity children; she led a life of private dignity and quiet good works, being so faithful a custodian of her relatives’ legacies that it was not until later that anyone noticed that the role of custodian was all that she played.
Sitting on boards of institutions named for her family, giving awards in the name of her family, collecting poems loved by her mother and essays based on ideas of her father’s, she preserved the family brand without adding to it, and when forced back on her private resources, turned out to have little to say.
She showed none of her father’s wit, grace or eloquence; no grasp of the issues, no recognition of the fact that her father’s ideals differed from those of his present-day party, and no sense of what her father—beyond being inspiring–did.
She entered the ‘race’ with a store of good will based on her background of grace under pressure, but she never understood that this was conditioned on the fact that she had not tried to exploit it, and when she was perceived to have done so, it faded quickly away.
Recent polls showed her dropping 40 points in several weeks among Democrats, and trailing ex-cousin-in-law Andrew Cuomo 58-27%. As the reverence faded, she became a figure of ridicule, her ‘ums’ and ‘you knows’ relentlessly criticized, and has now reached Dan Quayle levels of mockery. Quayle, you recall, was famously told by Lloyd Bentsen he was ‘no Jack Kennedy.’ And neither, it seems now, is she.
Most of the young Kennedys have realized that when your forebears have accomplished a great deal in one field, even a good performance by you is seen as a relative failure, but those who have been lured or been pushed into politics have only diminished their own and their family’s name.
No one can name anything Joe II did in his career as a Congressman, but everyone knows of the scandals that forced him to leave it. No one knows of the accomplishments of Kathleen Townsend as Lieutenant Governor of Maryland, but every one knows of her loss to Bob Ehrlich.
Patrick Kennedy is the one member of the third generation now in national politics, but no one can name his accomplishments either. Everyone knows of the shoving incident at the airport in Denver; of the wrecked boats, and the Coast Guard’s being called on to rescue his girlfriend, and his car’s encounter in the small hours with the safety barriers outside the Capitol in 2006.
If Kennedys should some day emerge with real talent, the system should welcome them, but till then this effort to extend the ‘legacy’ beyond its natural limits seems much more like cruelty.
Everyone should wish Ted Kennedy well in his battle with cancer, and admire the courage with which he is waging it, but his attempt to burden the government with his untalented relatives should be resisted. For their sake, as well as our own.
Noemie Emery is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard, and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
