Talented Joe Kennedy the next great Kennedy political leader? -- The next generation of Kennedys comes to bat in Boston race

Joseph P Kennedy III on the campaign trail

When it comes to politics, regardless of possessing a famous name, you can’t fake it when it comes to the red meat: mixing with, chatting to and addressing people, solving their problems.

That was the way with many of the offspring of the Kennedy family, who were ill fitted for political offices despite the incredible family history.

That was no knock on them. As Brendan Behan remarked, “Genius does not come in litters” and following in the footsteps of Jack, Robert, and Teddy Kennedy was surely the most difficult political undertaking in the world.

Inevitably, there was disappointment and regret that the Kennedy dynasty seemed at an end, especially when Patrick, Teddy’s son, stepped down from Congress in 2010 and ended an unbroken run back to 1947 when John F. Kennedy became a congressman.

But now comes a young Kennedy who is ready to restore the legacy. Joe Kennedy III is running for Barney Frank’s seat in the 4th district in Massachusetts and looks like a sure thing as the polls have him far ahead.

The grandson of Robert Kennedy, son of former Congressman Joe, will reignite the Kennedy name in national politics and I have strong suspicions this guy will go a lot further than the congressman.

I had the occasion to meet Joe, now 32, last week at our “Irish New England Leaders” awards held at the Irish Consulate in Boston – and I came away very impressed.

He was the winner of our Young Leader award and according to Consul General Michael Lonergan who hosted the evening, he was the first Kennedy clan member to come to the consulate.

While it is always difficult to size someone up in a brief meeting, Joe Kennedy strikes me as a natural politician, which was certainly not the case with many of his relatives.

When he got up to speak at our event, I was even more impressed.

He threw away his notes, spoke eloquently about his Irish heritage and drew the crowd in with his recitation of what his family history of commitment to the poor and the needy had meant to him.

“I believe this country was founded on a simple idea: that every person deserves to be treated fairly, by each other and by their government,” might sound clichéd when coming from someone else, but given the family history and the fact that two of his family predecessors gave their lives for those very sentiments, it came across as genuine.

He has walked the walk too, spending two years in the Peace Corps (he is a fluent Spanish speaker), working for free legal aid in Harvard, and developing a reputation as a crusading assistant district attorney.

Don’t look for any scandal allegations circling around this redheaded Kennedy either. His strongest drink is coffee, he’s engaged to his college sweetheart and his social life is said to be as tame as some of his relatives were wild.

There will be great expectations and outsized publicity when he arrives in Congress, as he surely will. But this Kennedy is hardly likely to have the bright lights or the family reputation turn his head.

There is a lot to like about young Joe Kennedy and the feeling of a new era in America’s most famous political dynasty is real. It will be fascinating to watch.

Vicki Kennedy and the Kennedys 'brat boys' attack on her -- Ted’s widow brave in her efforts to keep the Kennedy sons in line

Vicki Kennedy pictured with Sen. Ted Kennedy

The news of a Kennedy family feud involving Vicki Kennedy, widow of Ted, and her two stepsons Patrick and Ted Junior, is hardly surprising.

It seems the family is fighting over Ted’s legacy institute and how the funding is organized as well as access to the Hyannisport house where Ted lived the last few years.

Seems the Kennedy lads wanted to use Ted’s mansion for their own ends but Vicki wants it as a permanent institute and memorial to her husband as he had specified in his will.

Some of the Kennedy clan allegedly wanted performer Taylor Swift to stay there on the recent July 4th holiday but Vicki would have none of it.

The Boston Globe revealed the feud after the brothers informed a family friend who clearly leaked it to the Boston paper. It was a pre-emptive strike against Vicki. “Brat Boys Attack” is how the Boston Herald headlined it.

My heart is with Vicki on this one. I have met her on several occasions, canvassed for a full day with her and her husband during his tough race against Mitt Romney back in 1994, and have observed her up close on many occasions since.

She strikes me as a wonderful woman, who prolonged Ted’s life and happiness and took him away from the often-sordid life he led after his first marriage breakdown.

They always seemed a special couple when I met them and she looked out for and watched over him on every occasion. You could see the love was reciprocated by him, as he clung to her like his anchor.

As for Ted’s sons, I’m afraid I have less kind things to say. Patrick was one of the most obnoxious politicians I have met, and I have met a few, full of his own importance and utterly unable to flash any of that famous Kennedy charm.

He had his problems with alcohol and bi-polar condition so it is probably not fair to go too hard on him. But like many Kennedys of that second generation, the sense of entitlement was palpable.

I remember flying to Ireland on the Clinton presidential plane on his famous visit there in 1995 and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Bobby’s daughter, insisting on two seats for herself because she felt so important. That’s the kind of entitlement I’m talking about.

Joe Kennedy junior came into my office one time for a briefing from me on Northern Ireland. By the time he stopped briefing me the session was over.

And so it goes. In fairness, I have never met Ted Junior and he gave a beautiful eulogy for his father, but I have no doubt that entitlement runs deep there too.

Vicki, on the other hand, exudes a genuine warmth and interest in people. In this particular Kennedy feud I think she is probably the aggrieved party.

Kennedy watcher Joe Battenfeld wrote in the Boston Herald: "Vicki Kennedy is right to resist demands by the family to use the house. Ted Kennedy put in his will that he wanted his historic, rambling home to become a place of learning for the public, especially young people. I'm pretty sure he didn't mean Taylor Swift."’

Amen to that.

Kennedy curse talk revived after latest tragic death of Mary Kennedy -- Huge extended families will always suffer untimely losses and tragic events

The Kennedy family

Talk of a Kennedy curse is already filling online discussions and tabloid headlines after the suicide of Mary Kennedy, former wife of Robert F Kennedy Junior.

She tragically took her own life, at the age of 52, in the family home at Mount Kisco, in upstate new York.

Talk of a curse  makes for good tabloid fodder but study the history of any large and extended family and you will find ample tragedy as well.

It is nonsense of course, but it was used when Ted Kennedy’s daughter, Kara Kennedy, just 51, died unexpectedly last year.

It is true that untimely deaths run like a river through the history of the extended family and Kara and Mary were no exception.

But when you examine the deaths throughout the family, they were from war, assassination, and plane crashes; random and terrible events that struck many families exposed to risk and danger.

Four out of Ambassador Joseph Kennedy’s nine children died tragically, but there was hardly a curse involved. Joe Junior died in the war and Kathleen died in a plane crash and John and Bobby were struck by assassin’s bullets. It is hardly likely that Sirhan Sirhan or Lee Harvey Oswald were enacting a curse when they shot them.

There has been much pain in the next generation.

Ted’s two other kids, Ted Junior, who lost a leg to cancer, and Patrick, who has had major substance abuse and alcohol issues, illustrate just how tough the battle has been for the younger generation.

Michael died in a skiing accident, while others, including former Congressman Joe Kennedy Junior, had close scrapes.

John Kennedy Junior was also a casualty of course, dying far too young in that Martha’s Vineyard plane crash.

His sister Caroline remains the only direct inheritor of the JFK family name as a result.


Is it a curse or is it just what any family so large and so extended would go through?

I believe it is the latter. Talk of a curse is nonsense really, this is a massive extended family, always under scrutiny and one in which every illness and death is highlighted.

The mad men who gunned down JFK and his brother Bobby were not acting out some curse, but rather a twisted agenda of their own.

The death of this generation of Kennedys has actually been few and far between.

David died of a drug overdose, brought about by a very tough childhood after his father’s death. John died in a plane crash that arguably was avoidable, and that is it really, until Kara’s death.

So talk of a curse, with such large numbers in a massive extended family, is just nonsense. The Kennedys may not be that all American normal family, but then who is these days?

John F. Kennedy the lecherous lover at odds with Camelot image -- New book destroys the Camelot fantasy for me

The latest memoir by a former lover makes me think twice about John F.Kennedy.

Mimi Alford’s account of her sexual dalliance with President Kennedy when she was a White House intern cannot be refuted by the late president but I have to say it rings true.

She was just 19-years-old when Kennedy, then 45, took her aside and to his wife’s bedroom where he ended her virginity.

There was worse to come. Perhaps the most damning part of the book is when Kennedy gets the very young woman to ‘service’ his White House aide Dave Powers while Kennedy looks on.

It is pretty disgusting stuff and while we all knew Kennedy was a roué, the direct evidence like this makes it a lot less appealing than the glamorous Marilyn Monroe alleged affair.

Kennedy it appears was a lech if Mimi Allford is to be believed and he practiced his lechery right under the nose of his beautiful wife Jackie.

That does not necessarily reflect on him as a president; as the frequency of sexual liaisons among presidents is pretty extensive to say the least, both Republican and Democrat.

But it does say a lot about him as a man, even allowing for the fact that it was a different era.

The sordid events that Allford relates certainly take the sheen off the Kennedy presidency, so magnificently polished by generations of pro-Kennedy writers.

I am disappointed but perhaps should not be by the overwhelming evidence about Kennedy’s crass acts while in office.

Mimi Allford seems a credible witness, she never put herself forward but was tracked down and now she is giving her long ago affair with the president a public voice.

Not all our heroes have feet of clay but many do unfortunately. It is the human condition and certainly men in powerful positions have long abused that position for sex and favors.

But Kennedy somehow, in my mind seemed above that – living in a Camelot where bravery and brilliance abounded.

Instead we have a sordid scenario indeed. It will be interesting to see what impact it has on his legacy but it certainly has shaken my personal belief in the man so many of my generation worshipped.

What if John F.Kennedy had survived Dallas 1963?- New Stephen King time travel book poses question

JFK in Dallas 1963

What if John F.Kennedy had survived the assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's bullets in Dallas on November 22 1963?

It is a question that will haunt history forever but a fascinating new book by Stephen King takes a stab at what might have happened.

King's book 11/22/63 tells the story of a time traveller, Jake Epping, who is sent back in time to prevent the murder of Kennedy.

The theory is that Kennedy would have kept America out of Vietnam, hundreds of thousands of lives would have been saved and the world would be a much better place.

No Kennedy assassination, no murder of RFK, no killing of Martin Luther King, no Black riots, etc,a kinder gentler America

It is fiction, of course,mixed with fact about the assassination and King portrays the world of Oswald, the communist sympathiser and of Dallas in 1963, with extraordinary insight .

It is 800 pages long but I found I could not put it down during the Thanksgiving weekend

Though Oswald was an avowed Cuban sympathiser he was also strangely mixed up with right wing groups, Russian expatriates and mafia types.

He was also just 22, a deeply weird guy who slept with his controlling mother until he was 11, lived in the Bronx for a time where he was diagnosed as having delusions of grandeur by a psychiatrist.

Most of the conspiracy theories arise because Oswald himself is such an insignificant figure who took down the most important man on earth. As King makes clear however, the evidence is overwhelming that he did just that acting on his own.

King does an amazing job pointing out just how much of a hothouse of hate on several different Dallas was on the eve of the Kennedy visit. There was deep racial tension, right wing and left wing feuding and a deep sense of America on the verge of a major breakdown.

All this is wonderfully drawn out and explained by King who also throws the reader a curve ball after (spoiler alert)..... the president's life is saved.

Instead of America the noble, it actually gets worse in a second Kennedy term, he is unable to drive through the civil rights legislation that Jonson was able to with his superior senate experience.

America collapses even worse than it actually did and saving Kennedy proves a disaster.

The book is a fascinating exercise in what might have been but will never be-- and more's the pity..

John F Kennedy shot 48 years ago today - a defining moment for a kid in Ireland - VIDEO

John F Kennedy and his wife Jackie O

I was 10 years old sitting in front of a television in my home town of Drogheda in Ireland. The program on RTE, the Irish national station was called 'Air Power' about America's military might and the importance of the latest kind of fighter planes.

It was November 22nd 1963, 48 years ago today.

A world away John F.Kennedy had already made that fatal turn past Dealey Plaza in Dallas to his appointment with death.

A few moments later the TV screen went blank and a long silence followed.

After about five minutes the scene switched to RTE's newsroom.

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A newsreader, Charles Mitchell, the Walter Cronkite of his day, came on. He was usually so unruffled and calm and yet ,on this occasion he looked agitated and ill at ease.

He read a brief statement from United Press International that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.

The screen went blank again

I fetched ny father and mother and soon my brothers and sisters joined us.

We sat looking at the screen, by now showing footage from President Kennedy's recent visit to Ireland, a week of incredible pride for my nation.

Then we switched to BBC and a teary eyed newsreader announced that Kennedy was dead.

To say we were stunned was an understatement.

How could that vibrant brilliant young shining star be quenched so suddenly?

In the long days that followed we felt our innocence had died along with John F.Kennedy.

His brief period in power seemed more like an Irish Aisling, the dream poems where lovers conjured up visions of those they lost and loved.

Even to this day he holds a place in our memories, he has influenced every leader since, he has become the political icon of our time.

Years later I visited Dealey Plaza and the book repository where he had been shot from. It seemed so banal, so small, so anonymous for what monstrous deed had been committed there.

But to a ten year old all those years ago, he represented the first intimation of mortality.

As Shakespeare wrote;

"In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire."

Here's some of the live feed of the news from November 22nd 1963: