Fresh Face, Familiar Family

This year, the gentleman delivering the Democratic Party's rebuttal to the President's State of the Union address bore (for most Americans) an unfamiliar face, but a very familiar surname: Joseph Kennedy III.

The Family Tree:

This Joseph Kennedy is the son of Joseph Kennedy II and Sheila Kennedy, nee Rauch. He is thus the grandson of the late Robert Kennedy, the Attorney General of the United States who was largely responsible for the imprisonment of Teamsters President James Hoffa in 1964.

That of course makes him the great-grandson of Joseph Kennedy (I), and the great-nephew of President John Kennedy.

The leadership of the Democratic Party needs fresh faces. The old crowd, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (70 years old) and Senator Chuck Schumer (67) needs to make room for new blood. Bernie Sanders isn't properly a Democrat at all but wouldn't improve the demographics if he were.

This generation's Joseph Kennedy, though, is just 37.

So far so good, but it is in some sense unfortunate that they have to look back in order to look forward.

A Pun

And his name reminds me of the fact that the family patriarch, Joseph Kennedy I, was a real Nazi-appeasing Son of a Bee-yatch.

I think in this connection of a pun often attributed to Harry Truman, who was asked (when he was a party elder statesman in early 1960) whether he shared concerns widely expressed then about the Catholic candidate for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination. He replied, "I don't worry about the influence of the Pope, but I do worry about the influence of the Pap."

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