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COMMENTARY: Kennedys Have No Monopoly On "Curse"

By Chris Powell

What is the "curse of the Kennedys"?

For the family it starts with the untimely deaths of four of the nine children

of Ambassador Joseph Patrick Kennedy and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy and the

medical catastrophe that befell a fifth child.

Rosemary was incapacitated by a misguided lobotomy; Joseph Jr was killed in

military service during World War II; Kathleen was killed in an airplane

crash; John was assassinated as President; and Robert was assassinated as

senator and Presidential candidate.

The "curse" continues with the deaths of two of John's three children --

Patrick, soon after birth, and now presumably John F. Kennedy, Jr, in the

crash of his airplane off Martha's Vineyard, and with the deaths of two of

Robert's 11 children, David from a drug overdose and Michael in a skiing

accident.

But too much can be made of "the curse." For well into the second and third

generations now, the family is so large and prominent that a few misfortunes

are only to be expected. In any case the "curse" has not prevented the

political dynasty from rooting itself with the new generation. Massachusetts

Sen Edward M. Kennedy's son Patrick is a US representative from Rhode Island,

Robert F. Kennedy's daughter Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is lieutenant governor

of Maryland, and Robert's son Joseph has been US representative from

Massachusetts.

Besides, many other Presidents and their families thought themselves similarly

"cursed."

The first President, George Washington, had no children, but the second, John

Adams, had five and saw three of them die, including one during his term as

President. Adams' successor, Thomas Jefferson, lost a daughter while in office

as well.

Having lost his first two children in infancy, President Franklin Pierce lost

his last in a railroad accident two months before his inauguration.

Abraham Lincoln saw two of his four children die, one of them in the White

House. Lincoln's wife went crazy upon his assassination and eventually was

committed to an asylum. The one child of Lincoln who lived a long life, Robert

Todd Lincoln, who became secretary of war and president of a national

corporation, was cursed not only with the assassination of his father, for

which he was present at Ford's Theater in 1865, but also with being present at

the assassinations of President James A. Garfield in 1881 and President

William McKinley in 1901. After McKinley's murder Robert Lincoln swore he

would again never curse a President with his presence.

President Calvin Coolidge's namesake son died while his father was in the

White House in 1924.

President Theodore Roosevelt, nine years out of office, lost his youngest son

in aerial combat over France in July 1918 during World War I. It broke

Roosevelt's heart and he died seven months later. Roosevelt's namesake son was

killed in France in July 1944 during World War II. If the "curse of the

Roosevelts" is forgotten, it may be only because the two wars were, of course,

curses for the whole world as well.

So insofar as it has been anything special lately, most of the Kennedy "curse"

may be the culture of mere celebrity.

Today even the nephews of Ethel Skakel Kennedy, Robert's widow, who are only

distant relations by marriage to the political side of the family and never

have been associated with it in any practical sense, are portrayed as Kennedys

for the sake of their implication in a murder case in Greenwich.

Having been an indifferent student and having failed to establish himself

before the celebrity culture seized on his sex appeal and pursued his personal

life relentlessly, John F. Kennedy, Jr was struggling to be taken seriously

with his political magazine, George.

The rest of the "curse" of the Kennedys is only the problem of distinguishing

risks worth taking from risks not worth taking, a problem everyone faces.

For there are risks taken for good cause -- like serving in war on behalf of

democracy against totalitarian evil, risks that Joseph Kennedy Jr and John F.

Kennedy gladly took.

There are risks taken for modest political gain, like riding in an open car

not quite 50 years after an Austrian archduke inadvertently proved its danger

and only 30 years after doing the same thing nearly got Franklin D. Roosevelt

murdered as well a few weeks before his inauguration.

And there are risks taken just for fun -- like a married senator's driving off

with a young female aide in the dark after drinking and partying; like fooling

around with drugs; like playing football while skiing down a forested slope;

and like flying a light plane to Martha's Vineyard on a hazy night, perhaps to

prove that one really is on top of the world in every sense.

Of course many people take the latter sort of risks, even as most Kennedys

themselves don't. It is part of the curse of the Kennedys that the country has

taken to living vicariously through theirs.

(Chris Powell is managing editor of The Journal Inquirer in Manchester.)