Camelot 2008; WHAT IF THE KENNEDYS HAD LIVED?

Byline: Tony Parsons 

IMAGINE if the race for the White House was being fought today by Barack Obama and John F Kennedy Junior.

If 20th century America was not soaked in the blood of the Kennedys, if that great political dynasty had been able to fulfil its destiny, would we be looking at a better America and a better world?

Could the son of JFK and the nephew of Robert Kennedy have ended America's love affair with guns?

Would John Kennedy II have finally healed the wounds of racial injustice that have endured for 500 years? Or would John-John, a womaniser in the mould of his father, but living in an age of greater media scrutiny, be caught with his Brooks Brothers' Y-fronts down before he even reached Washington?

We will never know. John-John's dream died in 1999 when the light plane he was flying crashed into the Atlantic, killing him and his wife Carolyn.

And now with the news that Senator Edward Kennedy has been diagnosed with a brain tumour, and may be dead within a year, it feels as if the sun is finally setting on Camelot - the mythical court of America's golden family.

The legend of the Kennedys rests upon the 1,000 days that John F Kennedy spent in the White House, followed by more than half a century of murders, tragedy, scandal and - and above all - unfulfilled promise.

But what if JFK had not been assassinated in Dallas in 1963? What if Robert Kennedy was not gunned down in Los Angeles in 1968? What if Ted Kennedy's presidential ambitions had not died in the mud of Chappaquiddick with Mary Jo Kopechne a year later?

Would America and the world be a better place if the Kennedys had fulfilled their promise?

Hope was the word always synonymous with the clan, so it is tempting to believe that if Jack had served a second term, then the Cold War would have starting defrosting 20 years earlier, that Martin Luther King would not have been assassinated and terrorism could have been strangled at birth with lasting peace in the Middle East.

Perhaps. It is true that JFK's courage during the Cuban missile crisis made Russia back off. But nothing could have saved Martin Luther King, such was the hatred unleashed among southern rednecks by black demands for equality.

And JFK's miscalculations in Vietnam - where he backed one corrupt South Vietnamese regime after another - do not suggest he could have been enough of a visionary to prevent the rise of Islamic terror.

A Kennedy spent less than three years in the White House and yet America's most famous political dynasty - which is not the same thing as the most successful - casts a shadow over the USA and therefore the world even today, as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton squabble over who is the heir to that Kennedy charisma.

The Kennedys are the blank canvas that America projects its dreams upon. Because of the early deaths of Jack and Bobby, we remember them in their shining prime.

They never grew old, they never sold out, they never had the chance to prove or disprove the old saying that, in the end, all political careers end in failure.

The destiny awaiting Jack and Bobby was not the fate reserved for most politicians. They went out in their incandescent glory, just like elder brother Joe, who was the great hope of their father before his bomber crashed in the Second World War.

What would America look like if Jack had escaped Lee Harvey Oswald's bullet? Would 50,000 Americans and Asians beyond number have died in Vietnam? Would the race riots that tore apart America have been avoided?

And if Bobby had won the Democratic nomination in 1968, would America have become the beacon of equality and justice that he dreamed of? Could President Ted Kennedy have prevented the Twin Towers from falling?

It is easy to become sentimental about the Kennedys.

Although Jack was seen as a martyred saint by the young who opposed Vietnam, he was responsible for the first great escalation, increasing the number of US advisers from a few hundred to 16,000.

And while Jack was sympathetic to civil rights, he was careful not to move too fast, at the risk of inflaming rednecks in the Deep South. Jack called himself an "idealist without illusions," and he recognised the limits of power. And it was not just violent death that stalked the Kennedys - it was scandal too. Both Jack and Bobby had affairs with Marilyn Monroe - one piece of gossip suggests she was carrying Bobby's child at the time of her death.

The Kennedys were privileged rich kids, the sons of a tough businessman who made millions in Wall Street, Hollywood and during Prohibition (and who had his own movie-star mistress in Gloria Swanson).

It is possible to imagine a parallel world where it was not the assassin's bullet that did for Jack and Bobby, but the paparazzi camera, the sordid headline, the corrosive hiss of scandal. Bill Clinton only got away with his oral sex in the Oval Office by lying though his teeth. It is ironic that genuine poor boys like Clinton and Obama idolise the Kennedys, because in many ways the Kennedys were nothing like them. The Kennedy boys always took what they wanted.

And yet for all the hype, all the buried scandal, all the privilege, the Kennedys always spoke to the better angels of America's nature.

People believed in the promise. When Jack Kennedy said that America would land a man on the moon by the end of the 60s, nobody doubted him.

When Bobby said that he wanted to, "close the gaps that now exist between rich and poor, between black and white, between young and old", he saw himself as fulfilling his dead brother's legacy.

Teddy was never cut from quite the same cloth, and neither was JFK Jr or anyone else in the clan.

At their best, the Kennedys embodied an alliance between hard-nosed pragmatism and big-hearted idealism. But as long as politicians genuinely try to make the world a better place, the Kennedys will matter.

Barack Obama is half-black, half-white but in so many ways he is all Kennedy.

CELEBRATING THE FAMILY FORTUNES

HAPPY days at the family mansion after JFK won in 1960, with, sitting from left: Eunice Shriver, on chair arm, Rose and their father Joe, JFK's wife Jackie facing away, and Ted.

Back row from left: Bobby's wife Ethel and Jean's husband Stephen Smith, JFK, Bobby, Pat, Robert Sargent Shriver, Joan and Peter Lawford

The lives and loves of America's most famous dynasty

JOSEPH KENNEDY JNR (1915-1944)

ELDEST and his dad's favourite, Joe died when his bomber blew up in World War II. He was 29 and already being groomed for a political career.

JOHN F KENNEDY (1917-1963)

SHOT dead by Lee Harvey Oswald three years after becoming the 35th US President.

ROSEMARY KENNEDY (1918-2005)

ROSE had a lobotomy at 23 and spent the rest of her life in a mental institution. Fifth sibling to die, but first as a result of natural causes.

KATHLEEN KENNEDY

(1920-1948)

UPSET her family when she married a Protestant English nobleman in 1944 but was widowed when he was killed in World War II. She later died in a plane crash.

EUNICE KENNEDY (b. 1921)

MARRIED Robert Sargent Shriver Jr. Her eldest daughter Maria wed Arnold Schwarzenegger in 1986. He became governor of California in 2003.

PATRICIA KENNEDY (1924-2006)

HAD four children with British actor Peter Lawford before divorcing due to his boozing and affairs. She later battled alcohol addiction and cancer.

ROBERT KENNEDY (1925-1968)

HE had 11 children and was US attorney general during his brother's presidency. Shot dead in LA during his own presidential campaign.

JEAN KENNEDY (b. 1928)

HAS two sons and adopted two daughters. Her son William was accused of rape in 1991 but acquitted.

EDWARD 'TEDDY' KENNEDY (b. 1932)

MOST prominent living member of the clan, the Massachusetts senator got a two-month suspended sentence in 1969 after driving a car off a bridge then fleeing, leaving passenger Mary Jo Kopechne to drown. This week it was announced he has a malignant brain tumour and has a year to live.

Could terrorism have been strangled at birth by second JFK term?

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CAPTION(S):

FAMILY GUY JFK, his wife Jackie and children John Jr and Caroline; JFK; BOBBY; TEDDY; JOE JNR Died in WW2