IT IS AXIOMATIC that political families end up in time turning into their opposites, and quite often both eerie and sad. The Adamses began with John, blunt, out-spoken, middle-class, bursting with energy and fiercely ambitious, and ended, three generations and many drunks later, with Brooks and with Henry–who gave the words “effete snob” new meaning; loathed, feared, and detested the vibrant democracy John had created; and became obsessed with their own enervation and decadence. The public-spirited and over-achieving Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt produced Jimmy, Elliott, and FDR Jr., who specialized in producing embarrassments. There is Ron Reagan, the Republican Elliott Roosevelt. With all this in mind, it is none too surprising that the current iteration of Kennedys, in their long slide down from Camelot, have now embraced defeatist war critic John Murtha by giving him the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage Award–which transforms the spirit of the prize into something like the Joseph P. Kennedy medal for isolationism, appeasement, bad judgment, and very bad faith.

A history lesson might be in line here, as the Kennedy story is somewhat complex: Before Ted there was Jack, a defense hawk and war hero, before Jack, there was Joe. Joe, of course, was a whole other story, an isolationist and an appeaser, a fan and facilitator of the Munich agreement, a man who avoided service in World War I, and earned the scorn of the British during the Blitz by leaving the embassy to spend nights out of town (and the range of the Luftwaffe) during the later unpleasantness. Historians claim that by the start of the war, the elder Kennedy had so damaged the family name that only the wartime heroics of his two older sons made it once again viable. In his first speech as a congressman, in l947, Jack Kennedy ripped into the Munich agreement as a catastrophic mistake that must not be repeated, and spent his political life preaching Churchillian vigilance.