Bad Kennedy

What strikes me about Bobby Kennedy Jr's endorsement of Trump is how prominent Democrats like David Axelrod view it as a betrayal of the Kennedy myth:

Robert F. Kennedy was my political hero. He battled fiercely & eloquently against poverty, injustice and for economic fairness.
Sadly RFK Jr, who made a rambling exit from the race today, proves that sometimes an apple DOES fall far from the tree...in this case, down a hill and…

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) August 23, 2024

His siblings agree:

I am sharing a personal statement that my family and I have made in response to my brother’s announcement. pic.twitter.com/j7vTTabNYZ

— Kerry Kennedy (@KerryKennedyRFK) August 23, 2024

However, with John Jr dying with his cokehead wife and sister-in-law in an aircraft accident attributable to his own incompetence as a pilot and Caroline maintaining a low public profile, Bobby Jr is by far the most prominent Kennedy of his generation, and unliike John Jr, he's maintained some level of gravitas. The track record of the others, especially when John Jr was expected to carry the torch, isn't good.

His problem is that as a once-loyal Democrat, he had the temerity to try to challenge Joe Biden in a 2024 primary contest. What was especially peculiar about this is the poor judgment of the Democrat establishment in resisting a primary challenge to Joe, when every indication is that there should have been one, since as we've been slowly learninng, Joe's cognitive decline was well known to insiders throughout much of his term in office.

I've been saying all along that Democrats made a series of blunders starting in 2016, first in enabling Hillary's candidacy that year and apparently discouraging Biden from running, but then supporting Biden in 2020 as the only alternative to Bernie Sanders, when it was apparently understood that Biden wasn't in a condition to run for re-election in 2024 -- but then discouraging any other Democrat from opposing Joe in primaries that year, when a younger, more viable candidate should have emerged.

On one hand, Bobby Jr was never likely to do well as a Democrat, since his views overall tend toward the libertarian when they aren't actually far left. On the other hand, he's probably closer to the original Kennedy brand, which is to say the one created by the family patriarch, Joseph Kennedy Sr. Although claiming to be a New Deal Democrat, Kennedy Sr had an ambiguous relationship with the h8ghly controversial Father Charles Coughlin, an anti-Semitic and isolationist Roosevelt opponent. This was in large part because Kennedy Sr felt he controlled the Catholic vote, and Fr Coughlin was an asset.

When Roosevelt appointed Joe Sr ambassador to the UK,

Kennedy hoped to succeed Roosevelt in the White House, telling a British reporter in late 1939 that he was confident that Roosevelt would "fall" in 1940 (that year's presidential election).

. . . Kennedy rejected the belief of Winston Churchill that any compromise with Nazi Germany was impossible. Instead, he supported Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement. Throughout 1938, while the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany intensified, Kennedy attempted to arrange a meeting with Adolf Hitler. Shortly before the Nazi bombing of British cities began in September 1940, Kennedy once again sought a personal meeting with Hitler without the approval of the U. S. Department of State, in order to "bring about a better understanding between the United States and Germany".

. . . Throughout the rest of the war, relations between Kennedy and the Roosevelt administration remained tense, especially when Joe Jr., a Massachusetts delegate at the 1940 Democratic National Convention, vocally opposed President Roosevelt's unprecedented nomination for a third term, which began in 1941. Kennedy may have wanted to run for president himself in 1940 or later.

Thus the Kennedy patriarch had idiosyncratic beliefs, while he was primarily interested in his own advancement. In this, it seems as though his grandson Bobby Jr is, contra David Axelrod, an apple that didn't fall far from the tree at all. On the other hand, Kennedy Sr's political instincts don't seem to have carried him very far in his own career -- though a little like Donald Trump, he had several careers, first in real estate, then in Hollywood, and finally in politics, unlike Trump, he failed in politics.

On one hand, it's easy to see where Bobby Jr, as a descendant of Joe Sr, would see common interests with Trump, maybe not too far from how Joe Sr saw common interests with Roosevelt. On the other, I'm inclined to think that in a historical context, Bobby Jr is the authentic Kennedy, even if other members of his extended family claim he's the opposite.

So insofar as there's a remaining magic to the Kennedy name, it's Bobby Jr's to do with as he chooses -- with the caveat that John Jr's example shows that generation of Kennedys hasn't had the best judgment overall. But if anyone knows now how to use the Kennedy name effectively at all, it may well be Donald Trump.