Slim to none.
Via KBZK:
Could a Kennedy become president again? That question has hovered over American politics for more than a half century.
The Kennedy family is still very active in politics — Joe Kennedy III is a US congressman representing Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy’s daughter Caroline Kennedy recently served as the US ambassador to Japan, and many other Kennedys advocate for political solutions to social causes such as mental health and the environment.
Only two Kennedys have run for president since John F. Kennedy’s term was cut short by his 1963 assassination: JFK’s brothers Robert F. Kennedy, who was assassinated on the campaign trail in 1968, and Ted Kennedy, who failed to secure the Democratic nomination in 1980.
Today, a Kennedy might have a chance at the White House in the 21st century if he or she remembers the lessons from the family’s history and can reinvent them for a new America — one that the Kennedy family helped to create.
The key to the family’s political future depends on understanding its true past rather than some romantic notion.
Like Trump, JFK was a wealthy outsider
While the Kennedy legacy is often presented as TV comfort food — beautiful images of “America’s royalty” scored to the soundtrack of “Camelot” — it’s important to remember that John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the first US president from a minority background. He was an Irish Catholic from Massachusetts, long ruled by white Anglo-Saxon Protestants who looked askance at anyone connected to the Pope.
During the 1960 election, Kennedy faced a startling amount of anti-Catholic bigotry. From today’s perspective, it’s hard to imagine what a challenge Kennedy’s candidacy posed to the existing WASP establishment.
The weekend before the nation went to the polls in November 1960, The New York Times editorial board concluded that “Mr. Kennedy’s Catholic religion is perhaps the greatest imponderable in the campaign.”
“Millions of votes are certain to be cast for and against the Democratic candidate because of his church,” it wrote.
For many Americans, Kennedy’s campaign was a truly aspirational breakthrough — allowing others from a diverse background to dream of becoming president. In the decades that followed, the candidacies of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Mitt Romney (a Mormon) — all from different minority backgrounds of their own — were compared to JFK’s pioneering example.
That underlines an important lesson: The Kennedys have always done well as outsiders, rather than products of entitlement or privilege. That seemed hard to do for Harvard-trained JFK, the son of one of America’s richest men.