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Obama and the Kennedys

The Return of America's First Family

By Marc Hujer

With the rise of Barack Obama the influence of the Kennedys is growing. Edward Kennedy, the family's gravely ill patriarch, has had a huge impact on the nation, and JFK's daughter Caroline is helping Obama decide on a vice-presidential candidate. Could a Kennedy be slated for a role in an Obama administration?

It is Saturday, May 17, and Edward "Ted" Kennedy is nowhere to be seen. The guests at the family estate in Hyannis Port on Cape Cod are at a loss, not quite sure whether the party can begin without him. They include Tom Brady, star football player for the New England Patriots and boyfriend of supermodel Giselle Bündchen, the former world record sprinter Carl Lewis and a few important sponsors of the Kennedys. The appetizer, mozzarella with yellow and red cherry tomatoes, has already been set out on the buffet tables. The guests could start eating, but there is no one there to greet them.

The party was intended as the high point of a weekend dedicated to Best Buddies, a charity organization run by Ted's nephew, Anthony Kennedy Shriver. But, as has so often been the case, it was much more than that. It became a family festival, complete with a reception at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, a 20-mile bicycle race on Cape Cod and a lobster dinner for 1,200 Kennedy supporters on the beach at Hyannis. The Kennedys still see themselves as America's first family.

The guests realized what was wrong when they looked at their Blackberrys and saw the breaking news report from CNN. Ted Kennedy had suffered a seizure shortly after getting up that morning and, after being checked out by doctors at the local hospital on Cape Cod, he was flown to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. At this point, no one knows what is wrong with Kennedy, but his emergency room visit alone is enough to fuel the worst speculations. Wasn't he, only recently, more full of life than ever? Hadn't he discovered his enthusiasm for Obama only a few months earlier, even anointing Obama as the next Kennedy? Wasn't this a new beginning? And now Ted Kennedy was dying?

Anthony Kennedy Shriver is the first Kennedy to appear after the CNN report. He is the senator's second-youngest nephew, a successful philanthropist who founded the precursor organization to Best Buddies in 1987, when he was still a student, and has since expanded it into an international aid organization for people with intellectual disabilities, with offices in 37 countries, including Germany. At about 1 p.m., he arrives at the Kennedy compound wearing cycling gear, after participating in the 20-mile Best Buddies race on Cape Cod. He hasn't even showered yet, but he has to say something. The guests want to know how Ted Kennedy is doing.

Shriver gathers the guests together in front of a small podium in the tent, while the Kennedys outside block off the street that provides a view into the compound. Television crews from Boston are on their way to Hyannis Port, because the stations are beginning to air special programming about Ted Kennedy.

Shriver says what he has to say, a few words about Best Buddies, about the day and the celebration, about the $3 million in donations he expects to collect this weekend, and then he gets to the point: "Uncle Teddy is in the hospital in Boston. Everything is under control. We expect him to make a full recovery."

His words come as a relief at this moment, when no one knows exactly what to say, at least salvaging the party and the rest of the weekend. Perhaps this is what distinguishes the Kennedys from other families and has made them so successful for decades: that they are used to tragedies and do not even allow sickness and death to dampen their spirits. In fact, quite the opposite is true.

Kennedy Legacy Lost for Good?

They have been through many tragedies. In 1944 Joseph, Ted's oldest brother and the first presidential hope, died in a bombing mission over the English Channel. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas in 1963, and five years later, in 1968, his brother Robert was assassinated after the California primary. In 1969 Ted, the last surviving brother, drove his car off a bridge on Chappaquiddick Island. He managed to save himself, but his passenger, campaign worker Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned. He was later convicted of fleeing the scene of an accident. The accident effectively dashed any hope of another president emerging from his generation of Kennedys.

The next generation also soon lost its greatest hopes, and it seemed as if the great Kennedy legacy had been lost once and for all. In 1973, Ted's son Edward lost a leg to cancer. In 1984, Robert Kennedy's son David died of a drug overdose in Florida. In 1997, his brother Michael died in a skiing accident in Aspen. And in 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr., the secret crown prince at the time, died in a plane crash, together with his wife Carolyn and her sister.

But death was never simply an end for the Kennedys, but also a beginning. In fact, death was what made the Kennedy myth possible in the first place. The Kennedys have always taken things to extremes, always stoically choosing the most difficult approach. "It was," as John F. Kennedy once said, "a chain reaction that my brother Joseph started and that eventually reached me and all of my brothers and sisters." Each sibling felt compelled to surpass the heroic actions of the others.

Three days after Ted Kennedy collapsed on Cape Cod, the Kennedys announce the diagnosis, and the world learns that Ted, the last survivor of the four presidential brothers, is seriously ill. He has a glioma, a tumor that is fatal within 15 months in half of all cases. Within the first few hours, 19 flower bouquets and more than 2,500 e-mails arrived at the senator's office. King Abdullah II of Jordan sent an orchid, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote a get well card, and there were messages from actors Glenn Close and Martin Sheen, former First Lady Nancy Reagan and former Vice President Al Gore. In the Senate, Senator Robert Byrd broke out in tears, saying: " Ted. My dear friend. I love you and miss you."

Byrd's words reflect the return of an old feeling, a memory of the idealism of the early Kennedy years, but also respect and admiration for a 76-year-old man who, since the Chappaquiddick accident, has spent close to four decades diligently and reliably making amends, for himself and for his clan. Kennedy has had the same job, Senator for Massachusetts, his father's state, for almost 46 years. In August 2007, when he celebrated his 15,000th vote in the Senate, he was able to say that he had sponsored more than 2,500 pieces of legislation. Time wrote that in all of his years in the Senate, Kennedy "amassed a titanic record of legislation."

This, too, helps to explain the wave of sympathy for the Kennedys throughout the United States, and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama is using every opportunity to portray himself as a friend of the family. When Obama heard that Ted Kennedy had to cancel an address at Wesleyan College, he took his place. When he was searching for a suitable location for his first speech in Europe, he chose Berlin, where John F. Kennedy gave his famous "I am a Berliner" speech in June 1963. And when it came time to selecting a special site for his nomination speech at next week's Democratic Convention in Denver, he chose the enormous Invesco Field, the Denver Broncos' home stadium, because JFK also gave his nomination speech, in 1960, in a football stadium.

This suits the zeitgeist, for which Obama already showed a keen sense when, in February 2007, he flew to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to give his first campaign speech at the John F. Kennedy High School there. It seemed presumptuous at the time, even a little coquettish, but then, in late January 2008, Ted Kennedy anointed Obama as his political heir. "He will be a president who refuses to be trapped in the patterns of the past," the senator said. "He has the power to inspire and make America good again." JFK's daughter Caroline, who was standing next to him, said that she had waited half her life for a man who was so much like her father.