The Kennedy Heirs: John, Caroline, and the New Generation

by J. Randy Taraborrelli

  One person not present at Ted’s home during the discussion was arguably the family’s most influential tastemaker: Caroline. As the only daughter of the family’s only President, the Kennedys knew that her opinion carried a lot of weight with donors as well as with voters. Unlike Ted, she had no political experience herself, but neither did she have scandals in her past.

  Choosing between the two potential candidates put Caroline in a difficult spot because not only did she enjoy a good relationship with Hillary and Bill, but she was also quite friendly with their daughter, Chelsea. However, after careful consideration and a great deal of discussion with Ted, she came to the conclusion that she, too, wanted to stump for Obama. She felt he was an exciting new politician who promised great change from the über-conservative policies of eight dark years of President George W. Bush. Something about the excitement that he generated reminded her of what her father had done for the country back in 1960. Stories of Jack’s appeal were the stuff of legend—this young senator, handsome and dashing but also incredibly articulate, who promised a new kind of America and who appealed to its youth with idealistic notions of personal responsibility and service. Barack was much like Jack, Caroline concluded.

  Another reason for Caroline’s interest in Obama was because her children had been telling her for some time that he was someone she should notice. They were young, but Tatiana, Rose, and Jack were Kennedys at heart and did pay attention to what was going on in the world.

  With some of the Kennedys set on Hillary and others on Obama, they just had to agree to disagree; past experience had taught them that there was no point in trying to change anyone’s mind, even though a good debate about the issues was not something from which any of them would ever shy away. Later, Maria Shriver would support Obama, whereas her husband, Arnold, would go with his party’s candidate, John McCain. “We can be divided even in a marriage over these things,” Maria would say. “It happens.”

  During the third week of January 2008, Caroline and Ted—in separate phone calls—officially informed the Clintons that they were throwing their full support behind Barack Obama. They were difficult conversations, of course.

  Kicking off Caroline’s commitment to Obama was an editorial she authored for The New York Times on January 27, 2008, “A President Like My Father.” She wrote: “I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them. But for the first time, I believe I have found the man who could be that president—not just for me, but for a new generation of Americans.” The next morning, Bobby Jr., Kathleen, and Kerry would author an editorial of their own in the Los Angeles Times explaining their endorsement of Hillary. In a separate statement, Kathleen said, “I respect Caroline and Teddy’s decision, but I have made a different choice. At this moment, when so much is at stake at home and overseas, I urge our fellow Americans to support Hillary Clinton.”

  Later that day, Ted made the official announcement that he, too, was coming out for Obama. Then, Caroline and Patrick stood with him on stage at Bender Arena on the campus of American University in Washington, alongside their chosen candidate. To a cheering audience, Patrick started off by acknowledging that his father had just “shepherded the largest college tuition bill in our nation’s history.” He added, “One of my father’s great achievements is that he lowered the voting age to eighteen.” Applause. “And I can see that all of you are going to make good use of that in this election. Right?” More applause. He continued, “As President Kennedy said, ‘Change is the law of life, and those who look only to that past or present are certain to miss the future.’” He then introduced his cousin, “a proven patriot and inspiration in her own right, Caroline Kennedy.”

  As she took the podium, Caroline never seemed more self-assured, more at ease. It was as if she was really coming into her own as a speaker. “Over the years I’ve been deeply moved by the people who told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way they did when my father was President,” she said. “This longing is even more profound today. Fortunately, there is one candidate who offers that same sense of hope and inspiration, and I am proud to endorse Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States.”

  After a few more remarks, Caroline began to introduce her uncle. “For more than four decades in the Senate, Teddy has led the fight on the most important issues of our time, civil rights, social justice, and economic opportunity,” she said while surrounded by cheering people holding red and blue placards that read STAND FOR CHANGE and CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN. She continued, “Workers, families, the elderly, the disabled, immigrants, men and women in uniform all have no stronger champion. I know his brothers would be so proud of him. He’s an inspiration to all members of our family…”

  When Ted took the mic and started speaking, it was as if some sort of great political God had descended upon the stage; pretty much no one could deliver a speech like the Lion of the Senate. “I feel chaaaaaaange in the air,” he intoned, drawing out the word with a glint in his eye. “What about you?” he asked the crowd, who responded thunderously. “Every time I’ve been asked over the past year who I would support in the Democratic primary,” he continued, “my answer has always been the same. I’ll support the candidate who inspires me, inspires all of us, who can lift our vision and summon our hopes and renew our belief that our country’s best days are still to come. I’ve found that candidate. And I think you have, too. I’m proud to stand with him here today and offer my help, offer my voice, offer my energy, my commitment to make Barack Obama the next President of the United States.”

  For forty-six-year-old Barack Obama to follow Ted Kennedy on a podium was a big challenge, but he rose to it well. He looked deeply moved:

  “I stand here today with a great deal of humility. I know what your support means. I know the cherished place the Kennedy family holds in the hearts of American people. And that is as it should be, because the Kennedy family, more than any other, has always stood for … what is best about America. They’ve stood by the idea that each of us can make a difference and that all of us ought to try, that no frontier is beyond our reach when we are united and not divided, and that those of us who are not content to settle for the world as it is can remake the world as it should be, that together we can seek a new world. No one embodies this proud legacy more than the people we’ve just heard from…”

  Following his official announcement, Ted campaigned hard for Barack, using his considerable influence with the media and the public to extol the virtues of a man who, if elected, would be the nation’s first African American president. His support encouraged fearful Democrats that it was worth the risk to come out for Obama, that the time was ripe for change … and that Obama was the man to bring about such change. It would turn out to be the last time Ted would ever be able to use his power and authority to convince his followers to support a candidate he felt most represented Kennedy values and ideals. Soon, everything would change for him, as it would for his entire family.

  Family Emergency

  On May 17, 2008, when the call came in to Patrick Kennedy that something had happened to his father, the problem wasn’t immediately clear to him. Patrick was told that Ted had suffered a seizure at his home on the Cape and was being immediately airlifted from Hyannis Port to Massachusetts General. This was so unexpected. Ted had been just fine and working in the Senate and at home, as always. Alarmed, Patrick called Kara in Maryland and Teddy Jr. in Connecticut, and before long the three of them were flying to Boston to be with their father.

  When the siblings got to the hospital, they found Vicki pacing back and forth in a waiting room. She looked drawn and anxious. Trying to maintain her composure, she explained that earlier Ted was walking his Portuguese water dogs, Splash and Sunny, when he collapsed on the beach. An aide helped him back to the house. Hearing someone urgently shouting out her name, Vicki rushed into the dining room and found Ted slumped over in a chair, seeming disoriented. He had fallen to
his knees on the beach. She called an ambulance to the house.

  “Vicki knew in a split second that whatever was happening was grave,” reported Lois Romano of The Washington Post. “She also knew it would play out in public. Knowing the media would be tipped off in minutes because of her 911 call, she worked her cell phone at her husband’s side. Before the ambulance pulled up, she had already arranged for the Senator to be transported from the Cape to Massachusetts General Hospital, called his Senate staff to put in place a crisis management team, summoned family members, and notified his closest friends.”

  It was quickly determined at Cape Cod Hospital that the senator had suffered two small seizures. He was then, as per Vicki’s prior arrangements, transported to Barnstable Municipal Airport and then by helicopter to Boston. When his family finally had a chance to see him, the senator actually looked pretty good. “I think my sugar just dipped,” he explained with a shrug.

  The next couple of days were difficult as the family waited for more news about Ted’s test results. “Vicki spent a lot of time with Ethel, who was quiet,” said one observer. “The idea of losing Ted nearly had her paralyzed. I don’t think I’d ever seen her like that.”

  Of course, Ted had always been there for Ethel and her children. She’d never forget, for instance, the day she brought Rory home from the hospital after Bobby’s murder; Ted was right at her side, joking to the media that since Ethel already had so many kids, he and Joan were going to take this one. They had so many memories, shared so much happiness and heartbreak, just the idea of Ted suffering in any way was quite upsetting to Ethel. “To me, she somehow seemed, I don’t know … so much older, I guess,” said the witness.

  By Tuesday, test results were in and they were devastating. Ted had brain cancer, a malignant glioma of the left parietal lobe. It was incurable. One doctor predicted he had, maybe, four months to live; another guessed six.

  Of course, Kara couldn’t help but remember when she was given a death sentence. She also knew she was still alive, at least in part due to the fact that her father had refused to accept that diagnosis. She now said to him pretty much the same words he had once said to her: “We will fight this.”

  Kara immediately wanted to summon the best doctors in the world to see what could be done for her father, just as he had done for her. She wouldn’t have to do so, though. Within days, doctors were contacting her, her brothers, and Vicki. One by one, they got in touch to offer their advice. “It worked backwards for my dad” is how Teddy put it. “Usually my dad had to go out and find the best doctors. But this time, they came to him.”

  As he had been known to do in the past when his own children had cancer, Ted convened a meeting of medical experts. “The meeting on May 30 was extraordinary in at least two ways,” wrote Lawrence K. Altman, M.D., the chief medical correspondent of The New York Times. “One was the ability of a powerful patient … to summon noted consultants to learn about the latest therapy and research findings. The second was his efficiency in quickly convening more than a dozen experts from at least six academic centers. Some flew to Boston. Others participated by telephone after receiving pertinent test results and other medical records.”

  Just as had been the case with Kara, everyone agreed that surgery was not an option—everyone but one doctor, Vivek Deshmukh, director of cerebrovascular and endovascular neurosurgery at George Washington University Medical Center. Unlike Kara, though, it was agreed that Ted could not be healed. The best that could be hoped for was a brief extension of his life. Ted felt it was worth it, as did Vicki. Therefore, Dr. Allan H. Friedman, codirector of the Preston Robert Tisch Brain Tumor Center at Duke University, was summoned; he was known to be the best brain surgeon in the country.

  The operation occurred on June 2, 2008, about a month after the seizure. After Ted survived it, everyone tried to do what Kennedys usually did under dire circumstances, which was to steel themselves for a good fight. In weeks to come, though, Ted’s aggressive chemotherapy treatments took a toll even greater than any cancer. “Still, Ted had so much faith, he knew he would be fine, no matter what happened,” said Vicki. “If his life was soon to be over, what did this mean? It meant spending time at the Cape, where he had so many good times, so much history. I think it also meant coming to terms with his children on certain things.”

  Vicki wasn’t specific, but certainly there were any number of loose ends for Ted where Kara, Teddy, and Patrick were concerned. That summer, they spent as much time at the Cape with their father as possible, as did Joan, who also had her share of unresolved business with Ted. His family members wanted to have a more open relationship with Ted and dig down deep into subjects they’d shied away from in the past. However, it could be said that a man doesn’t just change overnight, even when he knows he’s dying; there were still a lot of issues Ted didn’t want to discuss. He still believed he had done his best as a father and wasn’t going to apologize for anything. It wasn’t so much that his grown children needed admissions of guilt, though, as much as just a clearing of the air. “This was a tough time,” Patrick would recall. “It was like chipping away at armor, trying to get to the heart of some important issues before it was too late. We felt that the clock was ticking.”

  These months would turn out to be important to everyone given Ted’s reticence about opening up. In the summer, Patrick and Kara joined him and Vicki and some of their cousins at the compound for a few weeks, sailing every day on Ted’s fifty-foot Concordia schooner, Mya. “Back at the house, my father made some time for us to speak privately—which we hadn’t done in a while,” recalled Patrick, “and while much of the conversation was about politics and legacy, it was warm and moving. I sent him a long letter afterward, thanking him for letting me come, letting him know I would always have his back, reinforcing that he had always been my ‘emotional sustenance,’ and saying, ‘There is no one I know who could have endured more emotional heartache than you have in your life and yet you’ve managed to keep living and loving your family.’”

  Patrick’s entreaties to Ted couldn’t help but affect him. He tried to forge a closer relationship not only with his youngest but with Teddy and Kara, too. Was everything straightened between them, all their grievances with one another at long last settled? Of course not. But they were family, and the bond they shared was undeniable. They knew their shared history would always endure. At the Fourth of July celebration that year, the Senator gave a toast to his children; his ex-wife, Joan; present wife, Vicki; as well as to the many extended family members who had gathered for the holiday: “When I’m not around, I want you all to remember this day. And I want you to remember how happy we are and what kind of family the Kennedys are. And I want you to take solace that we are Kennedys, each and every one of us, and that we are family and there is nothing more important than family. And I would want you to take that feeling and imprint it upon your own children, just as I would hope that they will then do with their children. Nothing is permanent. Nothing that is but the love.”

  A few days later, on July 9, Ted made a surprise visit to the floor of the Senate to vote on a Medicare bill that had fallen one vote shy of the sixty that were needed to break a Republican filibuster. Vicki definitely didn’t want Ted to go, but she knew he had to do it; there was no way he would not cast that vote. With her and Caroline both watching from the gallery, Patrick helped his father onto the Senate floor, trailed by Barack Obama and John Kerry. The noted writer Leonard Fein wrote for the Jewish Daily Forward:

  Enter Ted Kennedy, for the very first time since his diagnosis and surgery for a malignant brain tumor. Not only did all his colleagues, on realizing he’d entered the chamber, rise to applaud and whoop his presence; the gallery, too, where displays of this sort are proscribed, broke into sustained applause and was not gaveled to order.

  “Yea,” he said, and his “yea” carried enough Republicans to generate a veto-proof majority, preserving thereby (if it holds together) the core of a program that has dramatically imp
roved the life circumstances of many millions of Americans.

  PART VI

  A Political Gamble

  Testing the Waters

  A year earlier, in 2007, Caroline Kennedy turned fifty. Throughout the next year, she often confided to friends and family members that she felt a little lost. Of course, a sense of not being fulfilled, of worrying that one is missing out on a true calling, is not unusual for a person of her age; a midlife crisis is how it might best be described. Caroline’s children were now teenagers; she didn’t feel they needed her as much. Her marriage to Ed was solid; they were happy together, and she would never complain about him. They had a shared history, which they cherished; they’d been through some sad times together and had survived them. She wondered, though, according to what she said in rare moments of openness, what would happen when the kids all went to college and just she and Ed remained at home? Would they be able to connect? He had his work and was invigorated by it, whereas Caroline just had what she called “the blahs” and felt that she needed … something. She kept telling her kids to hold fast to their dreams, but the question remained: What were hers?

  This isn’t to say that Caroline wasn’t busy; she was still involved in a number of fulfilling charities. She was also still writing books; she’d written about the Bill of Rights and the right to privacy and had also compiled a series of anthologies, such as The Best Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis as well as A Family of Poems: My Favorite Poetry for Children and A Patriot’s Handbook, which included patriotic poems and speeches. She’d also edited Profiles in Courage of Our Time, a collection of essays about those who’d won the JFK Library’s Profiles in Courage award. The books were bestsellers—but still, she had to admit she was bored. She had a yearning for something new.