
Kennedy legend.
Meanwhile, John’s younger brother, Robert (1925–68), made a name for himself as an
assistant to Joseph
McCarthy
in the attempt to purge communists from all branches o
the government. Robert’s connection with McCarthy would later seem anomalous in light
of his much-touted radical credentials. Yet his father had tended to see Roosevelt’s
internationalism though the prism of communist or Jewish conspiracy.
After a less than distinguished period in the Senate, John Kennedy ran for the
residency in 1960, where the Kennedy machine defeated consummate parliamentarian
and
Texas
Senator Lyndon B.
Johnson
for the nomination and barely defeated Richard
Nixon
in the general
elections
. With help from friends, John Kennedy also had become
the celebrated author of
Profiles in Courage
(1954), for which he earned a
Pulitzer
Prize
. At the same time, Robert matched Nixon in campaign strategy including helping
to get Rev. Martin Luther
King,
Jr. released from jail in the week before the election,
swinging many
African American
votes to Kennedy (with a poor civil-rights record) and
providing the slim margin of victory.
JFK created a special moment for the Kennedy myth, epitomized in the epithet
“Camelot,” linking his regime to the mythical age of King Arthur. The president’s
reliance on his
family,
especially his father’s advice, and his younger brother continued
with Robert as an activist
Attorney-General
in
civil rights
and a key role in Cuban
interventions. Following JFK’s assassination—again a defining moment for the nation—
Robert continued serving Lyndon Johnson, although his contempt for the Texan made
this short-lived, and he seized the opportunity of a vacant New York Senate seat.
In 1968, following Eugene McCarthy’s strong showing against Johnson in the New
Hampshire primary “Bobby” Kennedy joined the race for the presidency After winning
the
California
primary in June, however, he was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan.
This left Edward Moore “Ted” Kennedy as the remaining son (the daughters had
public but less political and sometimes tragic lives). “Inheriting” the Massachusetts
Senate seat, he had developed a strong reputation as a good legislator without the
charisma of John or the political savvy of Robert. Nevertheless, the Kennedy mystique
might have gained him the White House but for a July 1969 incident at Chappaquiddick,
in which Edward drove off a bridge, drowning Mary Jo Kopechne. Kennedy’s failure to
report the accident immediately to police led to the widespread suspicion that he had been
drunk. When he later tried to wrest the
Democratic Party
nomination from Jimmy
Carter
in 1980, the incident and other rumors haunted him. As the third most senior
senator, Edward has remained a powerful liberal voice in the Democratic Party.
In the next generation, while Kennedy “cousins”—including member of Congress
Joseph P. Kennedy II (Massachusetts), Patrick Kennedy (Rhode Island) and Maryland
Lieutenant-Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend—have been visible in politics and
media, John F.Kennedy Jr., became the focus of the family mystique. Since his birth to
the charismatic first family and the photograph of him saluting his father’s cortege in
1963, he has been treated by media and the public as a prince whose time on the throne
would come. His legal career and political
magazine
George
were followed in detail, as
Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Culture 626