As Steve notes, the New York Times has finally gone after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., member of a family that has been “ersatz American royalty” for 60 years. The great Paul Johnson, who died at 94 back in January, had some thoughts on the Kennedys in A History of the American People, published in 1998.
Patriarch Joe Kennedy, appointed by Franklin Roosevelt to run the Securities and Exchange Commission, was “a crook and known to be such,” and FDR called him “a very dangerous man.” Joe was a big booster of son John Fitzgerald Kennedy, better known as “Jack” but with key realities carefully concealed.
“Strictly speaking Jack was never fit to hold any important public office,” Johnson explains, “and the list of lies told about his body by the Kennedy camp over the years is formidable.” That was also true of his alleged body of work.
“Profiles in Courage began as a disorganized, somewhat innocent mélange from secondary sources,” Johnson explains, authored by Ted Sorensen and a team of academics. It won Jack the Pulitzer Prize and “those who suggested the book was ghostwritten were sued for libel or even, at Joe’s request, investigated by the FBI.”
Some of the actual authors “must have known they were involved in one of the biggest frauds in American political history,” notes Johnson. “No figure has ever so consistently and unashamedly used others to manufacture a personal reputation as a great thinker and scholar.” No entry for Jack’s nephew RFK Jr., but if writing now Johnson would surely be all over the presidential candidate well in advance of the New York Times.
Meanwhile, at a time when America’s past is relentlessly vilified and falsified, Johnson’s book merits careful study, all the way to page 976:
It is appropriate to end this history of the American people on a note of success, because the story of America is essentially one of difficulties being overcome by intelligence and skill, by faith and strength of purpose, by courage and persistence. America today, with its 260 million people, its splendid cities, its vast wealth, and its unrivaled power, is a human achievement without parallel. That achievement – the transfer of a mostly uninhabited wilderness into the supreme national artifact of history – did not come about without heroic sacrifice and great sufferings, stoically endured, many costly failures, huge disappointments, defeats and tragedies. There have indeed been many setbacks in 400 years of American history. As we have seen man unresolved problems, some of daunting size, remain. But the Americans are, after all, a problem-solving people. They do not believe that anything in this world is beyond human capacity to soar to and dominate. They will not give up. Full of essential goodwill to each other and to all, confident in their inherent decency and their democratic skills, they will attack again and again the ills in their society, until they are overcome or at least substantially redressed. So the ship of state sails on, and mankind still continues to watch its progress, with wonder and amazement and sometimes apprehension, as it moves into the unknown waters of the 21st century and the third millennium. The great American republican experiment is still the cynosure of the world’s eyes. It is still the first, best hope for the human race. Looking back on its past, and forward to its future, the auguries are that it will not disappoint an expectant humanity.
Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.