The Book of Ecclesiastes tells us that to everything there is a season: birth, death, planting, plucking, killing, healing … you get the gist.
So can someone please tell me when it will finally be time for America to move past its unhealthy attachment to the Kennedy political dynasty?
America’s royal family has been on my mind lately, thanks to its latest entrant into the national political arena, John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg, the dashing young grandson of President John F. Kennedy. Mr. Schlossberg, who goes by Jack, is running to represent New York’s 12th Congressional District. So far, his candidacy has been a case study in chaos and entitlement, as detailed in a recent article in The Times. Especially in the crucial early days of the campaign, it said the newbie candidate “would regularly blow off weekly strategy meetings called for his benefit, and made a habit of disappearing for long stretches with little notice or explanation. (He did carve out time to swim or paddleboard in the Hudson most days.)”
Some might be inclined to scold Mr. Schlossberg for sullying his family’s storied political legacy. But that broader legacy — and the inclination, particularly in certain Democratic circles, to keep treating members of this overhyped clan as inherently serious players — is no longer serving the party, or the broader public, well.
In some cases, the golden aura of the family’s beloved brand seems to take the place of vetting individual members, saddling the public with uninspiring or even unfit leaders. And especially these days, the promotion of and cheerleading for American royalty is unlikely to help the Democratic Party shed its rep as a redoubt of elitist, entitled, well-connected insiders more interested in clinging to the comfortable status quo than embracing the future.
Where politics are concerned, it is time to let go of Camelot.
Yes, Mr. Schlossberg is a fresh face. At 33 years old, he is blessed with his forebears’ charm and great hair and has a trolly social media saltiness befitting the late Trump era. His dearth of practical experience in government could even be a bonus, with political outsiderism all the rage.
Except that he is not an outsider. It is hard to think of a category of candidate more establishment and nostalgia-soaked than a Kennedy. Mr. Schlossberg’s appearances over the years on behalf of other Democratic candidates, including Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, were not because he was a talented up-and-comer. Nancy Pelosi, the formidable speaker emerita, did not give him an early endorsement based primarily on his skills. Starring in Team Schlossberg’s first paid ad, Ms. Pelosi echoed his campaign slogan that Americans need to “Believe in something again.” Totally agree. I’m just not sure that something should be dynastic sparkle.
Some children of fame and privilege grow up committed to working extra hard to prove themselves. Mr. Schlossberg does not seem to have chosen this path. He has “little traditional work experience,” as The Times put it, and now seems to be approaching this campaign as something of a cool side hustle. This kind of princeling energy doesn’t feel like what Americans are crying out for more of in Congress.
In fairness, Mr. Schlossberg is not the real problem. The enduring allure of the broader Kennedy mystique is, with its intoxicating blend of nostalgia, glamour and an unquenchable longing for some sort of restoration. I get that the dynasty’s peak era — of Jack and Jackie and Bobby — was cut tragically short before it could fade or be tarnished. The brothers’ violent deaths captured the turmoil of the 1960s, a time when boomers were young and idealistic.
Dragging the weight of that era forward, Teddy Kennedy loomed large as well, in good ways and bad. His “unbridled appetites,” as his obituary in The Times put it, limited his political horizons. But — points for persistence — his four-plus decades in the Senate saw him become one of the most effective legislators of modern times and a Democratic icon.
In more recent generations, the dynasty has been defined more by lowlights than profiles in courage. Representative Joseph Kennedy II, Bobby’s eldest son, saw his political career damaged in the late 1990s by a scandal involving the annulment of his 12-year first marriage. (The annulment was later reversed.) Around the same time, his younger brother Michael Kennedy was investigated after being accused of having sex with his children’s teenage babysitter. In the summer of 1997, John F. Kennedy Jr. declared his two cousins “poster boys for bad behavior.” That December, Michael died when he crashed into a tree while playing ski football. The next March, Joe announced he would retire from Congress at the end of his term.
Nearly three decades on, we find ourselves saddled with arguably Bobby’s most dangerous offspring. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a public-health nightmare, a cad — his sex diary alone should have disqualified him from any office — a grifter and a crank. But there he sits at the helm of the Department of Health and Human Services, steering us into a future of more measles, less cancer research and who knows what other horrors.
Every royal family has its scoundrels and scandals. And there are Kennedys who managed to hold public office without disgracing themselves. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Bobby’s oldest child, was a perfectly solid lieutenant governor of Maryland. Patrick Kennedy, Teddy’s son, struggled off and on with addiction, and at one point in his House career crashed a car into a traffic barrier in Washington while under the influence of prescription meds. But he mostly stayed out of trouble and became an advocate for improved mental health care. Joseph Kennedy III did four terms in the House without incident.
Look, nostalgia is a heckuva a drug. I, too, long for a simpler time when my phone wasn’t spying on me — or when Donald Trump was a mouthy playboy rather than a duly elected menace to democracy. And who doesn’t feel a pang looking at the iconic photo of 3-year-old John-John saluting his father’s coffin?
But letting fuzzy feelings about yesterday overwhelm our clear sense of the present is a recipe for disappointment or — as Robert Jr. makes painfully clear — potentially much worse. So reminisce about the cultural cool of Camelot all you want. Wallow in the tragic glamour of Jacqueline and John-John in Ryan Murphy’s “Love Story.” (Though let me assure you, the ’90s weren’t all that.) But for the love of God and the sake of our democracy, let us stop treating Mr. Schlossberg and his extended family as inherently worthy of important political jobs that affect the lives of real people.
