RFK Jr.'s candidacy is a run against the Rose

The Irish are a clannish lot, fond of politics and a good story. So on St. Patrick’s Day at the White House, it wasn’t surprising to see the family of America’s first Irish Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, being photographed with the nation’s second Irish Catholic president, Joseph R. Biden.

In the photo, every Kennedy is decked out in green garb and toothy smiles — with one noticeable exception. Missing is another JFK relative — nephew Robert F. Kennedy Jr. He is running a self-professed “spoiler” third-party presidential candidacy against Biden and his GOP opponent, Donald Trump.

Several Kennedy family members, including some serving in Biden’s administration, have expressed their deep displeasure with RFK’s “dangerous” effort outside the Democratic Party, tarnishing the family’s political legacy. RFK Jr. is “trading in on Camelot, celebrity, conspiracy theories, and conflict for personal gain and fame,” said JFK’s grandson, Jack Schlossberg, in September. RFK’s supporters paid for a Super Bowl TV ad that mimicked a JFK campaign spot from 1960, but his dark proposals, anti-vaccination rhetoric, and isolationist stance toward Ukraine’s war against Russia do not reflect the optimism of the New Frontier.

Many critics say RFK Jr.’s uncle and father — both of whom were assassinated in what RFK Jr. contends were conspiracies that are unproven — would be just as disturbed about him as the rest of the Kennedys if they were alive today. But arguably, the most upset family member from the past would be his grandmother, Rose Kennedy, perhaps the family’s greatest Democrat.

Smart and savvy, Rose grew up steeped in Democratic Party politics in Boston. Her father, John F. “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald, was the city’s Democratic mayor and later a U.S. Congressman representing a district full of Irish Catholic immigrants. In the 1928 presidential race, Rose and her millionaire husband, Joseph P. Kennedy, were stunned by the defeat of New York’s Democratic governor Al Smith and the anti-Catholic bias that sunk his chances. It made them worry that their own family’s ambition to have the first Irish Catholic elected to the White House might not be possible.

But Rose showed perhaps her greatest fidelity to the Democratic Party in 1940 when her husband was thinking of bolting and publicly endorsing Republican candidate Wendell Willkie in a fit of anger against Democratic incumbent Franklin D. Roosevelt. Rose sternly warned Joe against appearing as an “ingrate” against FDR and endangering the reelection chances of a Democrat sitting in the White House. “The President sent you, a Roman Catholic, as Ambassador to London, which probably no other president would have done,” she reminded him. Most of all, Rose underlined that if Joe went against the Democratic Party, he would damage the political future of their sons. Eventually, Joe relented.

Since then, other Kennedys have been disrupters within the Democratic Party. In 1968, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, before he was killed, challenged Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson. In a bitter primary in 1980, Sen. Edward Kennedy unsuccessfully opposed incumbent Democratic President Jimmy Carter. In both those years, a Republican wound up winning the White House.

RFK Jr.’s third-party bid is different. It is outside the Democratic Party that his family worked so hard to build up in the past century. Recent polls suggest he could gain close to 10% of this November’s vote. Not only could this disrupt Biden’s chance for reelection, it also would undermine what his grandmother Rose strove to promote, and the name his entire Irish clan once stood for.

Columnist Thomas Maier's opinions are his own.

By Thomas Maier

thomas.maier@newsday.com

Thomas Maier is a member of the Newsday editorial board.