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That ol' Kennedy invincibility is getting noticeably shopworn--even in Massachusetts, where Kennedys have been on the ballot 20 times and never defeated. Not next year. Two prospective candidates and sons of R.F.K.--former Congressman Joe Kennedy II and his younger brother Max--backed away from what could have been brutal races. (Both declined to be interviewed for this article.) "It's not there for Joe and the others. There are too many problems," says a Kennedy friend. "And they're not prone to taking the kind of chances they would have at one time."
Who can blame them? No one understands better than the Kennedys what it costs to go into politics. If they seize what has been held up as a birthright, they must also accept the diminishing, suffocating comparisons that come with walking in the footprints of giants. "They're all competing with icons and legends," says political consultant David Axelrod, who has worked with several of them. That is partly what is drawing them away from Massachusetts, where, as Patrick puts it, "whatever I did, I would be trampling on hallowed ground." But that's only the beginning of what it takes to be a Kennedy in politics today. For this generation, it is as much about carving out an identity as about cashing in on a legacy. And the first part is the hardest by far.
THE NEWEST NEW KENNEDY MARK KENNEDY SHRIVER
As a sweat-soaked Mark Kennedy Shriver trots up to yet another front porch in suburban Maryland, he admonishes a reporter not to step on the grass. When someone opens a door, he begins, "Sorry to bother you..." And when someone doesn't open one, he scribbles a note on one of his campaign flyers: "Sorry to have missed you..." Mark has met lots of mean dogs this way, and one mean homeowner with a handgun. "You related to Maria Shriver?" the man demanded. Mark put his hands up and said, "Depends."
Looking at Mark, it would be hard to mistake the features--hair, teeth, the whole Kennedy package. But the sunny Shrivers have always maintained a distance between their ambitions and the rest of the clan. When R.F.K. ran for President in 1968, Sargent Shriver refused to give up his post as L.B.J.'s ambassador to France to come home and campaign for him. Ted paid him back four years later by objecting to George McGovern's choice of Shriver as a running mate. And when Shriver ran for the Democratic nomination for President in 1976, Ted didn't lift a finger for his brother-in-law.
Mark, however, is a polite, hard-working cousin who, in the view of the larger clan, has earned the right to enter the family business. He was raised in the district he seeks to represent, founded a widely praised program in Baltimore for inner-city youth and did his time in the state assembly.