Walter Shapiro: The end of both Clintonism and its opposite -- Kennedy-style liberalism -- draws closer
The sun-dappled image from August 1997 shimmers in memory. The two great Democratic political dynasties had set sail on carefree waters. Aboard the Mya as the schooner maneuvered its way out of Menemsha Harbor on Martha's Vineyard were the reigning Clintons and the radiant Kennedys. The news photographs, which mesh with my memory, show the president and the ruddy white-haired Massachusetts senator, along with a waving Hillary Clinton and the extended Kennedy clan, including Rep. Patrick Kennedy and daughter-of-Camelot Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg.
Last week, 11 years after that in-happier-times snapshot, the curtain began to descend on the Kennedys and Clintons alike. Before the wrenching news of a brain tumor, there had always seemed something eternal about Ted Kennedy: the survivor, the eternal-flame keeper of the dream that never died, the last active link to the heady days of can-do 1960s liberalism.
Each day brings Hillary Clinton closer to publicly acknowledging that her own presidential ambitions are over or, at least, redeposited in a safe-deposit box with a long lease. Certainly, her maladroit comment last week about Bobby Kennedy's assassination -- even if it was wrenched out of context in a take-no-prisoners media environment -- may well have been her presidential swan song. At the same time, her husband, the baffled 42nd president, is struggling with his new role as "Over-the-Hill Bill." In an interview with People magazine, Bill Clinton admitted that he can no longer be trusted to speak "late at night" when he is "tired or angry" without issuing himself "Miranda warnings."
The Clintons and the Kennedys were on separate trajectories long before Teddy and most of his family blessed the presidential ambitions of Barack Obama. Like comets with elongated orbits, the two families would periodically intersect (a teenage Boys State president from Arkansas shaking JFK's hand at the White House) and forge fruitful political alliances as they did during the 1990s. But even though they could dominate rooms and domesticate political enemies, the 76-year-old patriarch of the Senate and the 61-year-old former president are, at their core, as different as Hyannisport, Mass., and Hope, Ark....
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Last week, 11 years after that in-happier-times snapshot, the curtain began to descend on the Kennedys and Clintons alike. Before the wrenching news of a brain tumor, there had always seemed something eternal about Ted Kennedy: the survivor, the eternal-flame keeper of the dream that never died, the last active link to the heady days of can-do 1960s liberalism.
Each day brings Hillary Clinton closer to publicly acknowledging that her own presidential ambitions are over or, at least, redeposited in a safe-deposit box with a long lease. Certainly, her maladroit comment last week about Bobby Kennedy's assassination -- even if it was wrenched out of context in a take-no-prisoners media environment -- may well have been her presidential swan song. At the same time, her husband, the baffled 42nd president, is struggling with his new role as "Over-the-Hill Bill." In an interview with People magazine, Bill Clinton admitted that he can no longer be trusted to speak "late at night" when he is "tired or angry" without issuing himself "Miranda warnings."
The Clintons and the Kennedys were on separate trajectories long before Teddy and most of his family blessed the presidential ambitions of Barack Obama. Like comets with elongated orbits, the two families would periodically intersect (a teenage Boys State president from Arkansas shaking JFK's hand at the White House) and forge fruitful political alliances as they did during the 1990s. But even though they could dominate rooms and domesticate political enemies, the 76-year-old patriarch of the Senate and the 61-year-old former president are, at their core, as different as Hyannisport, Mass., and Hope, Ark....