Moving on from the Kennedy dynasty

The Kennedy family, in its heyday, in September 1963, at its Hyannis Port, Mass., home base. Of course, John F. Kennedy, in white shirt, was assassinated only a few weeks later, on Nov. 22, 1963.

From Robert Whitcomb’s “Digital Diary,’’ in GoLocal24.com

The defeat of Congressman Joseph Kennedy in his attempt to unseat Sen Edward Markey, another liberal Democrat, has been cited as the end of a long era of Kennedy pre-eminence of Massachusetts. I don’t know about that – a week is an eternity of politics – but it was interesting. Consider that Senator Markey, who is 74 and looks at least that, defeated Mr. Kennedy, who is 39 and looks younger, in no small degree because Mr. Markey ran as  the more “progressive’’ candidate and in doing so grabbed a lot of young voters for whom the Kennedy dynasty seems ancient history.

The latter didn’t  experience the dynasty’s political heyday -- from the ‘50s until about 2000 – and the family “charisma’’ factor eluded them.

I don’t like political dynasties – they engender cults of personality and can suck the oxygen out of politics.  The effort to create a Third World dictatorship  kind of dynasty out of the  Trump crime family is particularly scary.

Having said that, I’ve found the carrot-topped young Kennedy one of the best politicians to come out of that big gene pool. He’s honest, hard-working, self-disciplined, a stable family man, likeable and not arrogant. He’ll probably run again for high political office and win.

When I was growing up in Massachusetts, my family favored the sort of moderate Republicans now exemplified by the very popular and competent Gov. Charlie Baker – people such as  Gov. John Volpe and Sen. Leverett Saltonstall -- and they often saw the Kennedys as ruthless and arrogant. Such Republicans were then common around America. But much of the party has since gone south and west and far right.