Is the donald trying for a dynasty?
The word came slowly, eerily, in the early hours of Saturday, July 17, 1999. A small light aircraft had gone down the evening before in the waters off Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. The pilot was John F. Kennedy, Jr.
There was a massive air and sea search, but everyone knew: He was dead. The heir to the most illustrious name in American politics was gone; another tragedy visited on the benighted House of Kennedy. Cruelly, ironically, wreckage washed ashore on the Vineyard near the estate of his late mother, Jacqueline Kennedy.
I was in Natchez, Miss. — with no laptop and little internet when my editor called. Write a reflection on the family and tragedy, he said. Take some space, he said. The newspaper would run a special section on Monday. Readers expected it.
In those days, at the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency, loyalists still dreamt of a restoration of Camelot. On the face of it, the idea was silly: Kennedy was then the editor of George, a feature magazine he’d founded. At 38, he was a lawyer who hadn’t practised and who had shown no interest in public life.
His cousins were in politics. Joseph P. Kennedy II, the eldest son of Robert F. Kennedy, served in the House of Representatives from Boston. Patrick J. Kennedy, the son of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, served in the House from Rhode Island.
Neither sought higher office. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Joe’s sister, entered state politics in Maryland, but she, too, went no higher than serving as lieutenant-governor there.
Twenty years ago, many had hopes for John, Jr. He was strikingly handsome, wealthy and charming. He had memorably addressed the Democratic National Convention in 1988. Because he was a Kennedy, there was persistent talk that he would run for the Senate from
New York (a seat once held by Uncle Bobby). Or, as one confidant wrote recently, he would run for governor.
That all ended on July 16, 1999. Years later, Caroline Kennedy, John’s elder sister, considered running for the Senate. Her exploratory campaign ended quickly and badly. Later, more successfully, she was U.S. ambassador to Japan.
The fate of the Kennedys shows just how hard it is to create and sustain dynasties in American politics. It’s why they are rare.
Before the Kennedys, there was the Adams family, which produced two presidents in the 19th century. There were also the Roosevelts, Theodore and Franklin — same family, different branches, different parties, great presidents.
The Kennedys produced three senators, one who was president and another attorney general. Ted Kennedy sat in the Senate from Massachusetts from 1962 to 2009, one of the most influential members in its history.
Interestingly, the death of John Kennedy, Jr., coincided with two significant family anniversaries. One was the tragic automobile accident involving Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick Island across the narrow channel from Martha’s Vineyard on July 18, 1969, which effectively ended Ted’s presidential ambitions. The other was the landing on the Moon on
July 20, 1969 — 50 years ago this week — an audacious promise made and program launched by JFK in 1961.
The other great dynasty of the last generation is George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush, father and son, both presidents. Jeb Bush, the former two-term governor of Florida, ran unsuccessfully for president in 2016.
One of the stranger stories circulating in Washington has Donald Trump dropping Vice-president Mike Pence in 2020 and naming his daughter, Ivanka, as his running mate. It’s preposterous — straight out of House of Cards — but pundits have written about it as one way for Trump to ensure that he is pardoned after he leaves the White House, when he will be vulnerable to criminal prosecution.
No doubt if he does do it, Trump will invoke Jack Kennedy naming his brother Bobby to cabinet, as if that were the same as making your daughter your running mate.
The United States was founded in reaction to monarchy but the Kennedys were always American royalty. Now the talk is about Representative Joseph P. Kennedy III, a rising congressman and grandson of JFK, who is called the new star of this generation. And so it goes.