Valete, Ted Kennedy

So Ted Kennedy is dead. His life, as summarised in this obituary, is a classic lesson in the complexity of mankind. Monstrous son of a monstrous Nazi-supporting bootlegger, brother to two assassination victims, he juggled a cruel and selfish private life, leading to the death of a young woman, amongst other things, but he was also a principled liberal leader who reached out from a position of the utmost privilege to the poorest and most oppressed in his country.

Seymour Hersh's Camelot is a no-holds-barred examination of the Kennedy dynasty, well worth reading, but the Kennedy mystique is as golden as it is appalling. JFK started the Vietnam war, but RFK would have ended it, had he not been shot dead. It was RFK who took on the Mafia, despite the fact that his brother's election (opposed by Nixon) in 1960 was achieved through widespread vote-rigging and corruption. Edward Kennedy would have been one of the best presidents had he won the nomination in 1980 - but his alcohol, sex and drug-fuelled private life put paid to that, and nice Jimmy Carter went on to lose to that evil hack Reagan.

So Ted Kennedy - proof that bad/good co-exist in us all…

Don't worry - there's already at least one of the next Kennedy generation in power: Patrick is a state senator in Rhode Island, and Caroline ran for New York, unsuccessfully. Arnie's wife is a Kennedy too!

Queen Caroline

Katha Pollitt, the brilliant Nation author, has written a stunningly sarcastic piece on the putative Senatorial career of Caroline Kennedy. If all you know about Kennedy is that the surname rings a bell in American political terms, that pretty much sums up her application form. Nobody knows what her politics actually are ('Democrat' ranges from rightwing Labour to rightwing Tory), and she has no public visibility. Just because Bush is going (8 days and counting) doesn't mean that our cousins have dumped the hereditary principle. Perhaps it was just George III personally they objected to…