Is RFK Jr an embarrassment for the Kennedys or a gamechanger in the US election? America’s royal family has a new challenger
President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, 60 years ago. I do not remember that fateful day on 22 November 1963, as I was just four years old.
But I do remember the summer day, five years later in 1968, when his brother – former US attorney general and would be president, Robert F “Bobby” Kennedy – was shot dead in that tumultuous election year.
Over the decades since their deaths the two brothers, often referred to just by their initials – JFK and RFK, have never been forgotten.
In the United States, and much of the Western democratic world, they have assumed iconic status in death. Their family members left behind, have tried to pick up their political legacies.
The Kennedy name has been the biggest brand in American politics, public interest in its members sharpened by numerous tragedies and scandals.
RFK with his wife and their seven children, including Robert F Kennedy Jr (back, far left). Pic AP
Some likened them to America’s royal family complete with symbolic castles at the “family compounds” in Massachusetts and Florida. Clan members seemed to occupy political office, almost as if by divine right.
But the dynastic vision has been fading at last. The myths, personalities and untimely deaths associated with the Kennedys are inevitably resonating less and less with contemporary electorates. There are currently none of the dynasty in elected state or national office.
In this election year, a maverick Kennedy is hoping to reverse all that. RFK’s 69-year-old son, who shares his father’s name, is running for president.
Whether Bobby Junior revives or further tarnishes the Kennedy brand is an open question. At least four of his 10 siblings say he is “an embarrassment”.
He has abandoned his family’s traditional allegiance to the Democratic party. He pulled out of the Democratic nomination contest to run as an independent candidate against both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, declaring “my intention is to spoil it for both of them”.
John F Kennedy (centre) surrounded by his family, including his brothers and father, Joseph. Pic AP
RFK junior is a self-styled environmentalist, an anti-vaxxer, and a supporter of the right to bear arms. He has embraced numerous conspiracy theories – even suggesting the CIA was involved in the assassinations of his father and uncle.
He marked the 60th anniversary of the death of President Kennedy by launching a petition to release the last of the government’s records relating to the shooting.
The National Archives says 99% of the material is already in the public domain, following orders from Presidents Trump and Biden. RFK junior retorted, “what is so embarrassing that they’re afraid to show the American public 60 years later?”.
Political dynasty
The Kennedys came to America as immigrants from Ireland. JFK was the first Roman Catholic US president. A grandfather of Joseph Kennedy was mayor of Boston in the 1890s.
Joe Kennedy was the patriarch of the clan and founder of the family fortune. His businesses flourished through the great depression and the prohibition of alcohol.
JFK reaching toward his head seconds before being fatally shot in 1963. Pic AP
President Franklin Roosevelt gave Joseph P Kennedy I his highest rank in politics by appointing him a controversial ambassador to the UK.
He resigned during the Battle of Britain in 1940, suspected of Nazi sympathies, after commenting “democracy is finished in England”.
He was subsequently a major supporter of the anti-communist senator Joe McCarthy.
Today Joseph’s fortune is shared by several generations of direct descendants, who have mostly chosen to go into public service rather than business. Their net worth is put at several billion dollars.
Read more:
Who’s running to be US president? – The 2024 election candidates
Could Trump win the US election again? It’s looking very close
Donald Trump ahead of Joe Biden in five key swing states
Joe and his ambitious wife, Rose, had nine children, all now dead. The eldest son, Joe junior, a US Navy bomber pilot was killed above the English Channel in 1944. Their youngest daughter, Jean Kennedy Smith, was US ambassador to Ireland and died in 2020.
Rose and Joseph put their ambitions and their money behind their surviving sons – Jack, Bobby and Ted. All three became US senators and presidential candidates. Their siblings and descendants have often followed in their political footsteps – to a lesser and dwindling degree.
JFK was elected the US’s youngest-ever president. Young, rich, and beautiful, the Kennedys carefully curated their glamourous image in the White House.
President John F Kennedy
Most famously Marilyn Monroe sang a seductive “Happy Birthday, Mr President” at the Madison Square Garden for his 45th birthday.
He and his stylish wife Jackie had three children. Patrick died in infancy. John junior and Caroline were still small when their father was killed.
Neil Diamond has said Caroline was the inspiration for his song “Sweet Caroline”. More recently Biden appointed Caroline Kennedy US ambassador to Japan, she was previously Obama’s ambassador to Australia.
John junior and his wife Carolyn Bessette were killed when a plane he was piloting crashed off Martha’s Vineyard in 1999.
The last powerful, world-famous Kennedy died in 2009. Edward Kennedy was the younger brother of JFK and RFK.
“Ted” died while still a US senator. Many viewed the liberal Democrat’s 47 years’ of continuous service as an attempt to expiate for what happened at Chappaquiddick in 1969.
Caroline Kennedy, who has been a US ambassador to Japan and Australia, with her father JFK
A 29-year-old aide, Mary Jo Kopechne, drowned in his car when Kennedy drove it off a bridge in Martha’s Vineyard. He survived but was later linked to a further scandal.
After a night partying with his son and nephew, his nephew, William Kennedy Smith, was charged and subsequently acquitted, of rape. Dr Smith went on to found the charity Physicians Against Land Mines (PALM).
Ted had three children, including Patrick who served eight terms as a congressman from Rhode Island before retiring with mental and addiction issues.
Of RFK’s 11 children, Joseph P Kennedy II was a six-term congressman for Massachusetts, Kathleen was a two-term lieutenant governor in Maryland and then there is RFK jnr.
Jack, Ted and Bobby’s sister Eunice married Sargent Shriver, who ran unsuccessfully in 1974 on the Democratic ticket as George McGovern’s vice-presidential candidate.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
What will decide the US election?
Their daughter Maria Shriver was married to the bodybuilder and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was twice elected Republican governor of California.
‘Challenger’
Joe Biden has always enjoyed a close relationship with his fellow Irish Americans. As well as sending Caroline Kennedy to Tokyo, he made Ted’s second wife, Victoria, ambassador to Austria.
President Biden also appointed Ted’s 23-year-old grandson, Joseph P Kennedy III, US special envoy to Northern Ireland.
Now Bobby is challenging Biden. In a favourability opinion poll this month by Harris, he topped the candidates list with a net rating of +27, ahead of Trump on +7 and Biden on -2.
That does not make him a likely winner in the US’s fundamentally two-party system, but third-party candidates matter because they often affect who becomes president.
In 2000, when Democrats won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College, the activist Ralph Nader scored 97,488 votes in Florida. If Al Gore had picked up just 537 of those votes he would have become president instead of George W Bush.
In 2016 Democrats again won the popular vote and lost the Electoral College.
In the swing states of Wisconsin and Michigan the Libertarian, Gary Johnson, and Green Party’s Jill Stein, each took multiples of the margin of votes by which Hillary Clinton lost to Donald Trump.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
‘I don’t mind being Nelson Mandela’
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
Biden updates media on Air Force One
Kennedy’s current ratings around 20% are on a par with the businessman Ross Perot, the strongest third force of modern times.
Perot won 19% and 8% of the popular vote respectively in 1992 and 1996, arguably assisting Bill Clinton’s election.
With typical entitlement, Kennedy says he is confident he will win the battle against Trump and Biden’s lawyer to “get on the ballot of every state”.
If he succeeds, polls suggest he takes slightly more votes from Trump than from Biden. That could be enough to change who wins in closely fought key states.
Trump has called Bobby a Biden “plant”. The Biden campaign is worried that the Kennedy name could cost Democratic votes.
They note Bobby’s visit to Trump’s White House and the encouragement he has received from Steve Bannon and alternative media outlets such as Fox News, Joe Rogan and Jordan Petersen.
Plugging into the mood of populist discontent, Bobby is appealing for votes from “people who are willing to question orthodoxy”.
As embodied by JFK and RFK, the Kennedy name is one of the most revered in American politics. Now yet another descendant is attempting simultaneously both to exploit and to escape from being a Kennedy.
US
Financial markets were always going to respond to Trump tariffs but they’re also battling with another problem
Stock markets around the world fell on Thursday after Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs – with some economists now fearing a recession.
The US president announced tariffs for almost every country – including 10% rates on imports from the UK – on Wednesday evening, sending financial markets reeling.
While the UK’s FTSE 100 closed down 1.55% and the continent’s STOXX Europe 600 index was down 2.67% as of 5.30pm, it was American traders who were hit the most.
Trump tariffs latest: US stock markets tumble
All three of the US’s major markets opened to sharp losses on Thursday morning.
The S&P 500 is set for its worst day of trading since the COVID-19 pandemic. File pic: AP
By 8.30pm UK time (3.30pm EST), The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 3.7%, the S&P 500 opened with a drop of 4.4%, and the Nasdaq composite was down 5.6%.
Compared to their values when Donald Trump was inaugurated, the three markets were down around 5.6%, 8.7% and 14.4%, respectively, according to LSEG.
Worst one-day losses since COVID
As Wall Street trading ended at 9pm in the UK, two indexes had suffered their worst one-day losses since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The S&P 500 fell 4.85%, the Nasdaq dropped 6%, and the Dow Jones fell 4%.
It marks Nasdaq’s biggest daily percentage drop since March 2020 at the start of COVID, and the largest drop for the Dow Jones since June 2020.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
The latest numbers on tariffs
‘Trust in President Trump’
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN earlier in the day that Mr Trump was “doubling down on his proven economic formula from his first term”.
“To anyone on Wall Street this morning, I would say trust in President Trump,” she told the broadcaster, adding: “This is indeed a national emergency… and it’s about time we have a president who actually does something about it.”
Later, the US president told reporters as he left the White House that “I think it’s going very well,” adding: “The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom.”
He later said on Air Force One that the UK is “happy” with its tariff – the lowest possible levy of 10% – and added he would be open to negotiations if other countries “offer something phenomenal”.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
How is the world reacting to Trump’s tariffs?
Economist warns of ‘spiral of doom’
The turbulence in the markets from Mr Trump’s tariffs “just left everybody in shock”, Garrett Melson, portfolio strategist at Natixis Investment Managers Solutions in Boston, told Reuters.
He added that the economy could go into recession as a result, saying that “a lot of the pain, will probably most acutely be felt in the US and that certainly would weigh on broader global growth as well”.
Meanwhile, chief investment officer at St James’s Place Justin Onuekwusi said that international retaliation is likely, even as “it’s clear countries will think about how to retaliate in a politically astute way”.
He warned: “Significant retaliation could lead to a tariff ‘spiral of doom’ that could be the growth shock that drags us into recession.”
Read more:
Do Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariff numbers add up?
Tariffs about something more than economics: power
It comes as the UK government published a long list of US products that could be subject to reciprocal tariffs – including golf clubs and golf balls.
Running to more than 400 pages, the list is part of a four-week-long consultation with British businesses and suggests whiskey, jeans, livestock, and chemical components.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Thursday that the US president had launched a “new era” for global trade and that the UK will respond with “cool and calm heads”.
It also comes as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a 25% tariff on all American-imported vehicles that are not compliant with the US-Mexico-Canada trade deal.
He added: “The 80-year period when the United States embraced the mantle of global economic leadership, when it forged alliances rooted in trust and mutual respect and championed the free and open exchange of goods and services, is over. This is a tragedy.”
Tanking stock markets, collapsing world orders, devastating trade wars; economists with their hair ablaze are scrambling to keep up.
But as we try to make sense of Donald Trumps’s tariff tsunami, economic theory only goes so far. In the end this surely is about something more primal.
Power.
Understanding that may be crucial to how the world responds.
Yes, economics helps explain the impact. The world’s economy has after all shifted on its axis, the way it’s been run for decades turned on its head.
Instead of driving world trade, America is creating a trade war. We will all feel the impact.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
PM will ‘fight’ for deal with US
Donald Trump says he is settling scores, righting wrongs. America has been raped, looted and pillaged by the world trading system.
But don’t be distracted by the hyperbole – and if you think this is about economics alone, you may be missing the point.
Above all, tariffs give Donald Trump power. They strike fear into allies and enemies, from governments to corporations.
This is a president who runs his presidency like a medieval emperor or mafia don.
It is one reason why since his election we have seen what one statesman called a conga line of sycophants make their way to the White House, from world leaders to titans of industry.
The conga line will grow longer as they now redouble their efforts hoping to special treatment from Trump’s tariffs. Sir Keir Starmer among them.
President Trump’s using similar tactics at home, deploying presidential power to extract concessions and deter dissent in corporate America, academia and the US media. Those who offer favours are spared punishment.
His critics say he seeks a form power for the executive or presidential branch of government that the founding fathers deliberately sought to prevent.
Whether or not that is true, the same playbook of divide and rule through intimidation can now be applied internationally. Thanks to tariffs
Each country will seek exceptions but on Trump’s terms. Those who retaliate may meet escalation.
This is the unforgiving calculus for governments including our own plotting their next moves.
The temptation will be to give Trump whatever he wants to spare their economies, but there is a jeopardy that compounds the longer this goes on.
Read more:
Do Trump’s numbers on tariffs really add up?
Trump hits island home only to penguins with 10% tariffs
Could America’s traditional allies turn to China? Pic: AP
Malcolm Turnbull, the former Australian prime minister who coined the conga line comparison, put it this way: “Pretty much all the international leaders I have seen that have sucked up to Trump have been run over. The reality is if you suck up to bullies, whether it’s global affairs or in the playground, you just get more bullying.”
Trading partners may be able to mitigate the impact of these tariffs through negotiation, but that may only encourage this unorthodox president to demand ever more?
Ultimately the world will need a more reliable superpower than that.
In the hands of such a president, America cannot be counted on.
When it comes to security, stability and prosperity, allies will need to fend for themselves.
And they will need new friends. If Washington can’t be relied on, Beijing beckons.
America First will, more and more, mean America on its own.
-
Sports2 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports12 months agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports1 year agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway