Could Joe Kennedy III revive the legend of Camelot?
https://www.lowellsun.com/2019/09/24/could-joe-kennedy-iii-revive-the-legend-of-camelot/
Joe Kennedy III is running for president in 2024.
That is what his Senate campaign is all about.
It is much more advantageous running for president as a senator than as a member of the House.
And if it means pushing Sen. Ed Markey, a fellow progressive, out of the way, so be it.
It is a small price to pay for the return of Camelot, especially after eight turbulent and crass years under Republican President Donald Trump.
Of, course, for this to come true, Trump will have to be re-elected in 2020, and Kennedy will have to beat Markey in the Democrat primary, both of which could happen.
The immediate goal of this campaign is to win a seat in the Senate. The long-range goal is to win the White House.
Like President John F. Kennedy — the King Arthur or Sir Lancelot of mythical Camelot — Joe Kennedy will be 44-years-old, close to the same age President John F. Kennedy, his great uncle, was when he was elected president in 1960 at age 43.
The fact that Kennedy has no issues to use against Markey, except that at 73 Markey is “old” and has been around too long, does not matter.
This campaign is not about issues. There are few if any differences on any progressive issues between the two, whether it is climate change or immigration. Issues in this upcoming primary will not matter.
This campaign is about generational change. It is also about returning a Kennedy to the White House.
It is about reviving the legend of Camelot that millions of Americans embraced during the overwhelming dread, grief and despair that gripped the country following the assassination of JFK in Dallas Nov. 22, 1963.
Camelot was launched by Jacqueline Kennedy, JFK’s wife, following JFK’s burial. She told Life Magazine writer Theodore White how much Kennedy loved the popular Broadway musical “Camelot.”
Kennedy, she said, was attached to the King Arthur and Camelot legend because he was an idealist who saw history as a thing made by heroes.
They listened to a recording of the closing couplet of the musical each night, she said. That couplet, sung by famous British actor Richard Burton, went, “Don’t ever let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief moment that was Camelot.”
Jacqueline Kennedy added: “There will be great presidents again, but there will never be another Camelot.”
It was all imaginative public relations hype, of course, but it went a long way to help a country in grief. It established the image of Kennedy as a strong and vigorous Cold War leader who was also a champion of social justice and peace. He was also a hard-core realist who sought to kill Fidel Castro, and who began combat operations in Vietnam that led to a long and miserable war.
Robert F. Kennedy, JFK’s younger brother and Joe Kennedy’s grandfather, tried to revive Camelot when he ran for president in 1968. But he was murdered in Los Angles on June 5 of that year.
The late Sen. Ted Kennedy also tried. But his presidential hopes died along with poor Mary Jo Kopechne when Kennedy drove off Dyke Bridge into Poucha Pound on Chappaquiddick Island off Martha’s Vineyard July 18, 1969.
Ted Kennedy’s son Patrick J. Kennedy served in the U.S. House from Rhode Island from 1996 to 2011 but left to work in the field of drug addiction.
John F. Kennedy Jr., the only son and heir apparent to JFK and Jackie, was killed, along with his wife Carolyn Bessette and her sister Lauren, when the plane Kennedy piloted, crashed into the ocean as it neared Martha’s Vineyard July 16, 1999. He was 38, the same age as Joe Kennedy is now.
And, after 10 years in Congress, Joe Kennedy II, this Kennedy’s father, threw in the political towel to go into business and live a private life.
But the Kennedy Camelot myth, while faded, still lives, especially in the hearts and minds of older people who were around when Jackie Kennedy promoted it.
So, now comes this young Kennedy, like one of King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, on a quest to restore the crown to its proper place.
Of course, the Kennedy Camelot story is a lot of imaginative bull.
But as the saying goes: When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
Markey is running against a legend.
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