‘VOTE FOR the Kennedy of your choice, but vote!’’ Such was the rallying cry among some student activists in the 1960s, who saw the Kennedy brothers as politicians they could believe in at a time of growing disenchantment with government. Apparently their trust was widely shared. Massachusetts voters kept sending Jack and then Ted Kennedy back to the Senate for over a half a century, but for a brief interlude when John F. Kennedy was elected president. Their nephew Joseph P. Kennedy II likewise won the loyalty of voters in the Eighth Congressional District, who voted him six terms in the House of Representatives.
When Franklin Roosevelt died, after being elected four times to the White House, there were many Americans who had never known another president. So it may feel to some Massachusetts voters as they look at the vacant Senate seat held for nearly half a century by Ted Kennedy. It is not surprising, given those long ties, that some are looking around for another member of the Kennedy family to run for the Senate.
That impetus reflects something more than an emotional attachment to a storied family, one whose history has been deeply intertwined with this state and the nation over a long and tumultuous period in the history of our country. It also reflects faith in a core vision of the nation and of government that has remained remarkably consistent, despite the vagaries of American politics, a political landscape far less hospitable to liberalism than when Ted Kennedy first won high office, and enormous changes in the nature and influence of the political parties.
The Kennedy brothers and their offspring have largely shared the belief that the instruments of government should be actively employed to improve the life chances of ordinary Americans. Across more than half a century, they have supported improved wages and job development, strong occupational health and safety laws, sweeping reform of the health care system, affordable housing and energy, an array of civil rights legislation, environmental protection, widened access to education, anti-poverty programs, and a host of other measures to provide social provision.
Their own great wealth, earned by the family patriarch in the early 20th century, stands in marked contrast to the causes they have championed. No one can accuse them of using political office to champion their own class interests. And in this lies part of the political appeal of the Kennedy family. They have traveled a great distance from their Irish immigrant forebears. But they never forgot where they came from.
That is why, for some voters, charges of political “dynasty’’ may seem less relevant than the opportunity to choose a reliable brand name. Few will feel in much doubt, for instance, about where Joe Kennedy or his politically engaged cousins would stand on the need for sweeping health care reform.
There is no stand-in, familial or otherwise, for Ted Kennedy. No member of his family’s younger generation will possess his extraordinary legislative skills and personal qualities. But Massachusetts voters may be forgiven for believing that the causes he championed would be safeguarded by a relative who has embraced a long and vivid political tradition that has energized American public life for generations.
Ellen Fitzpatrick is a historian. Her book on the public response to John F. Kennedy’s assassination will be published in 2010. 
