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There was magic in that moment in history. Old Joe, whose methods and money were more suspect than ever, stayed out of sight while that handsome clan captivated America. Rose and her daughters gave teas and speeches; Bobby ran Jack's campaign; and Ted gallivanted across the West riding broncos and making ski jumps. And the young Senator's wife Jackie shivered in the cold blasts of Wisconsin, wearing her designer sheaths and elbow-length shell gloves, beautiful, hushed and unyielding in her honesty about where she came from and who she was.
In power, the Kennedys strode over their failures--the Bay of Pigs, the Berlin Wall--with hardly a sidelong glance. John Kennedy's popularity grew, resting on eloquent speeches, his ravishing family and his toughness in national-security affairs and against racism as civil rights upheavals seized the nation. "Jack's the luckiest kid I know," rasped Old Joe one day in New York City after the dark summer of 1961. "He has learned most of the lessons of being President right at the start."
But the luck ran out in Dallas at noon on Nov. 22, 1963. Kennedy's assassination would cut short the promise, would unleash a Niagara of probes and books and movies, and suddenly Camelot would be tarnished with tawdry revelations about John Kennedy's careless sexual indulgences. But oddly, the legend of the Kennedy clan would soar above it all. There was enough honest devotion to the American ideal; there was enough honor and courage to carry it beyond the failures. The legend had been seared in the Dallas death throes. And then again in Los Angeles as a second brother fell. It was passed down as tribal wisdom to many children. It was the Holy Grail for the swelling ranks of the Kennedys themselves.
The family marched on, but all so human, no media blinders in this time. There was Chappaquiddick, the tragedy that disgraced Ted. And there was just plain dysfunction in the families of Old Joe's grandchildren, which had so often been pictured as a healthy, endearing gene pool of American strength and enthusiasm--raucous but right. There were divorces, bizarre sexual escapades and tragic accidents, all of them strewn across the tabloids and blared worldwide by the talk-show hosts.
But beyond these titillating interludes of scandal is the fact that most of the 87 surviving members of the Kennedy clan live worthy lives, the number of their family and personal debacles far below the national average. Most of the adults have advanced degrees of some sort. Virtually all the clan of proper age has been involved at some point in public service. The great fortune of Joe Kennedy has been divided into trusts, and while it provides the family with ease in education and travel, it does not put any of them in today's ranks of the superwealthy, the superindolent, the superarrogant. The adventure of public service still is the clan's most powerful impulse. "More exciting than anything I've done," said Old Joe a long time ago. The call is heard unto the fourth generation.
Hugh Sidey has reported on and written about nine U.S. presidencies for TIME