The three could never fully find it. Years would pass when they could laugh and live like everyone else: Kennedys, yes, but not so terribly different from the rest of us. Then the fabric would tear again. The cliches they fled–“cursed,” “tragic” and so on–pursued them like some Shakespearean ghost, pulling them ceaselessly into the past. But they refused to live there, preferring always to look ahead, even as they kept an eye out for those left behind. I remember John Kennedy Jr. as a man with an astonishing psychological balance for someone in his position; with an easy, self-effacing sense of humor and a genuine social conscience. With the help of his mother and sister, he wore his royalty lightly.
Think about other aristocratic offspring in other parts of the world, perhaps none as famous as Kennedy. Most fit a predictable playboy mold, cutting a ribbon or two but more often racing speedboats, playing polo, mixing with a certain set. Superior and oblivious. Kennedy was unfocused for a time, but was fundamentally decent. Perhaps he will turn out to have been careless in choosing to fly that night, too willing to tempt fate. But he was unburdened by the constant need to test his manhood that afflicted some of his cousins. The one child of the 1960s who had the greatest chance of growing up strange and insecure turned into one of the most centered and easygoing guys around.
President Kennedy once said that life is unfair; his family’s pain–and that of the Bessettes–is bracing proof of that. Caroline has grown to adulthood mostly in peacetime but has endured the unending funerals associated with war. Unlike John, she clearly remembers her father, who was assassinated when she was nearly 6. Caroline was in Palm Beach, Fla., when her cousin David died of an overdose in 1984 and with her mother when she died of cancer in 1994. Her aunts and uncle lost four siblings to war and assassination. But they came from a family of nine children; Caroline has a husband and three kids, but her original nuclear family, once made up of five (brother Patrick died in infancy in 1963), now consists of her alone. To say that John and Caroline were close does no justice to their relationship.
Consider this poem that Caroline wrote for her Grandma Rose when John was 11:
John Kennedy inherited much else from his father beyond astonishing looks: a graceful way of working a room that made everyone he greeted feel at ease; a gently teasing, droll sense of humor that would have been charming even had the name been John Fitzgerald; a canny way of slipping away or avoiding scrutiny when it served him; an insouciance about risk. During World War II, John F. Kennedy had no business piloting a PT boat, given the condition of his back; his son probably had no business piloting a plane, given the condition of his foot. But they both grabbed life by the lapels.
Young Kennedy was routinely asked by New York Democrats to be a candidate for public office. A close friend confided to NEWSWEEK after his accident that Kennedy might well have run for the U.S. Senate in 2000 if Hillary Clinton had not; he was very quietly exploring a campaign before the First Lady expressed interest. It was only a matter of time before he ran for something. Kennedy lacked the obsession so often necessary today for success in politics, but he would have brought obvious assets of celebrity, money, wit and a compelling presence on television.
There was a complexity to him that wasn’t apparent at first glance, when he seemed a kind of playful man-child. At some moments, Kennedy didn’t care what people thought; he refused to be constrained by who he was or feel forced to live up to expectations. When he was criticized for auctioning off many of his parents’ possessions, he shrugged impishly, then laughed privately at the idea of his cousin Maria’s husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger, paying a fortune for golf clubs that Kennedy would have given him free if he had asked.
But the security and self-confidence masked a need to prove the doubters wrong. If Kennedy was driven by anything, it was to show that he wasn’t a dilettante–that he was a serious person, even if he didn’t take himself too seriously. He was immensely proud of having insisted on an idea people dismissed as foolish–George, a glossy magazine about politics–and making it work.
Kennedy seemed to have both more and fewer social graces than other people. He was almost always warm toward well-wishers, especially if they seemed down on their luck–extraordinarily accessible for someone so seemingly inaccessible. But he was happy to take the privileges that came with what he and friends jokingly called “the JK factor”–the willingness of everyone from tennis coaches to store clerks to do him favors. Kennedy’s charm came in part from his guilelessness, even about this: taking a subway to Yankee Stadium last week while on crutches, he was surprised that passengers stood up to give him their seats. “See,” he told a friend, “New Yorkers aren’t so rude.” When reminded that the JK factor was at work, he just laughed.
My own last conversation with Kennedy was about his magazine; George’s focus on history and politics made it a tough sell in the ad world. But Kennedy skillfully exploited his own name to keep it afloat, and the magazine’s comfort with the intersection of celebrity and politics was a reflection not just of its editor but of the times.
George enabled John to go anywhere and interview almost anyone, from George Wallace to General Giap, the winning commander of North Vietnamese forces in the war that President Kennedy helped start. In George’s first years, the questions Kennedy asked in these interviews were soft, particularly to the president of the NRA. But as time went on, he managed to stay polite while asking all of the necessary pointed questions, and with a level of preparation beyond that of many other interviewers. Sometimes his queries were as revealing as the answers. (To Garth Brooks: “So the willingness to risk it all is what people are drawn to?”) Kennedy’s exclusive interview with Richard Mellon Scaife gave the public its first close-up view of the reclusive multimillionaire who has funded much of the American right wing. In the last few years, Kennedy became that oddest of postmodern creatures: a supercelebrity and journalist rolled into one.
George, which will almost surely die now after four years of publication, is an underrated magazine–easy to brush off because it rejects the normal cynicism about American politics. In his June 1999 editor’s note, Kennedy explains why he helped select Sens. John McCain and Russell Feingold, sponsors of campaign-finance reform, for this year’s Profiles in Courage Award. “While we at George share your skepticism about many in Washington, we’ve always believed that political leaders can inspire a sense of pride and possibility. These two men have done just that.” After mentioning this summer’s “Star Wars” (which he later walked out of), Kennedy concluded: “But don’t walk out thinking heroes exist only in movies.”
This kind of talk is seen as almost quaint now, terribly out of fashion. In his own light way, Kennedy was trying to bring it back–to make idealism important and fun again. After visiting India and later South Africa as a young man, he returned knowing that he would use his wealth and fame to do his part. He helped some old friends start Exodus House, a school for Harlem kids. His efforts on behalf of the Robin Hood Foundation have helped spur innovative, community-based poverty organizations that actually produce results. For a time he was heavily involved with a program called Reaching Up, which aided mental-health workers. Each social commitment was done quietly, but with the intent of conveying to other wealthy people that they aren’t truly successful if they lack a sense of public service.
The Kennedy family will play a role in American public life in the next century. A member of the family, perhaps Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, may even be elected president some day. But we will never see a figure quite like John F. Kennedy Jr. again. He was more than our “Prince Charming,” as the New York tabs called him. We etched the past and the future on his fine face.
