I had a very weird dream last night, and woke up at 3AM, heeby-jeebies because of it; took an hour and a half to fall back asleep.
Dream was: flying above New England, and seeing the Bush and Kennedy compounds, as isolated kingdoms, creating their own successive dynasties, within the US concept of government, not that that’s supposed to be in any case, right? Well, them Kennedys got killed, and now we have the Bushes in power, with a different agenda. In the dream, I remember asking where were the Kennedys now, why don’t their kids run for office now? A parallel dynasty, yet the Kennedy’s aren’t on any large national front now.
Why not? Were the assassinations enough to stall out any action on the kids motivating, or is it a case of just not having a second generation motivation?
The worst part of this dream is that, in it, I saw it as as a clear case of warring fifedoms, and it scared the shit out of me. Help me to dissuade that way bad feeling, or, at least explain it.
Well, John-John’s death forestalled probably the best chance of a second-gen Kennedy resurgence. Teddy’s son Robert has been in the House for ten years, and Bobby’s daughter, Kathleen, ran for Governor of Maryland in 2004 (she lost).
It’s not that there aren’t any chances for the Kennedys to reclaim their dynastic position, but none of the current scions seem to have captured the public’s eyes like their fathers did.
Last night must have been a night for nightmares. I dreamed one that I know had to have been triggered by **Sierra Indigo’s ** thread on her husband’s abdominal pain (it was me in pain). And from there, it got weird.
He was never called “John-John” by the family, incidentally - William Manchester wrote that that nickname was mistakenly created by a reporter who overheard JFK call to his son twice from another room.
Max Kennedy flirted with a run for U.S. Senate a few years ago, from Illinois I think, but dropped it pretty quick. It’s Teddy’s son Patrick (not Robert) who’s a Congressman from Rhode Island, and seems to be wrestling with alcoholism. He had an unpleasant incident in the last year or so on Capitol Hill before going into rehab. Seems like most of the Kennedy kids nowadays aren’t interested in politics, but I’m sure we haven’t heard the last from Jeb Bush and some of the younger Bushes.
There are lots more political dynasties than just these two, you know. And these other dynasties have different levels of success.
The Adams dynasty produced two presidents, various congressmen, a Secretary of the Navy and Henry Adams, a very prominent social critic and political scientist.
The Harrison dynasty produced two presidents and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.
The Taft dynasty produced a president who later became a Supreme Court Chief Justice, cabinet members, senators, congressmen, and governors.
The Long dynasty was extensive within Louisiana.
This doesn’t even count the number of “dynasties” that are created when a son or daughter follows a parent into politics. If you count these, you’d have a very long list that included the Gores, the Caseys, Landon-Kassebaum, and countless others.
I think you’re referring to Patrick “Patches” Kennedy, who is a Rep from Rhode Island. Teddy doesn’t have a son named Robert. Joe Kennedy II (Bobby’s son) was also a Rep for 12 years, and Teddy’s other son Edward has been floated as a possible candidate from time to time, but never ran for anything.
My personal guess - the several scandals tied to the Kennedy name have never been quite enough to chase Teddy out of office, but have been enough to hold down the next generation
There’s always regression to the mean – John, Robert, and Edward have all been fairly remarkable men and they were aided by a variety of circumstances. They also had pretty big flaws. Their descendants suffer from the flaws as well as from fluxes in all the circumstances that make everything come together.
I disagree that John F. Kennedy Jr. was some kind of a lost chance. He seemed pretty lightweight and not very interested in public service.
Of the descendants, though, a lot of them have been in elective office – Mark Shriver, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Joseph P. Kennedy II, Patrick Kennedy. A couple more have had other kinds of prominent careers – Maria Shriver and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. That’s a lot better than most families do.
Whenever political dynasties are mentioned, I can’t resist bringing up the succession of men named Hamilton Fish. The forefather served as both Governor of New York and U.S. Secretary of State, while descendants have included three members of the U.S. House of Representatives, another candidate for the House, and the first American killed during the charge up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War.
Two Kennedy scions who’ve tainted the family’s reputation have been William Kennedy Smith (son of JFK’s sister Jean) and Michael Skakel (nephew of Robert F. Kennedy’s widow Ethel).