Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - JFK Special 5. | The Kennedy Curse

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

What was it about the Kennedy's that attracted so much tragedy, that many believed them to be cursed?From plane disasters in World War 2, to drug overdoses and of course, assassinations - it has to be said, they had their fair share.Is there something sinister going on, or is this tragedy the by-product of such a go-getter risk-taking attitude?Joining Kate today to explore the so-called Kennedy curse is Barbara Perry, Professor in Presidential Studies at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, where she co-directs the Presidential Oral History Program.This episode was edited by Tom Delargy and the producer was Stuart Beckwith. The senior producer was Charlotte Long.Don’t miss out on the best offer in history! Enjoy unlimited access to award-winning original documentaries that are released weekly and AD-FREE podcasts.Get a subscription for £1 for 3 months with code BETWIXTTHESHEETS1 sign up now for your 14-day free trial https://historyhit/subscription/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Lovely betwixters. It is I, Kate Lister, and I am here with the podcast and to make sure that everything is above board and just as comfortable and nice and pleasant as it possibly can be for your delicate ears. Here is your fair dude warning.

This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults in an adulty way covering a range of adult subjects, and you should be an adult too. And now that we've got that little lot out of the way, I hope that you can enjoy the podcast. Let's do it! The year is 1944. It's a warm summer's evening in East England. While all is calm across this idyllic rural landscape in the sky above, Operation Anvil is underway. The top secret mission to fire a remote control plane packed full of explosives to destroy a Nazi military complex in northern France.

That is what's underway. But before the remote control can take over, however, a crew member needs to take the plane up into the sky before they triggered the explosives and then parachute to safety. Manning this top secret mission is Wilford John Willie and Joseph Kennedy Jr., the darling son whose father had great aspirations for him to take political office once the war was over. As they fly over the Suffolk coast, Kennedy Jr. removes the explosive safety pin as planned and radios the agreed code. Spade flush back to bay. These are his last known words. Two minutes later, the explosives detonate prematurely.

The plane is destroyed and everyone on board is killed, scattering debris across the villages below. What would later become known as the Kennedy curse is said to have started here. Tragedy has haunted the Kennedy clan for generations. The Kennedy dynasty, thought of by many as being the American royal family, have a fascinating and tragic history with many famous members, JFK being one of the most well known. And he often eclipses the other members of that family.

But there were some truly fascinating people there, in particular the women of the Kennedy family, not to mention the women that JFK got himself involved with. From a great grandmother with humble Irish roots and a quiet determination who dragged the family out of poverty and set the foundations of a dynasty. So she was just like, boom, boom, boom, one thing after another, an entrepreneur at a time when that just wasn't a thing for widowed Irish maids.

To the world famous scandalous affairs. I can now retire from politics after having had a happy birthday sung to me. To a shy sister who was left without the ability to walk or talk after a disastrous lobotomy, ordered by her father. They'd only been doing the procedure for a couple of years. Rosemary was probably their, you know, 70th or 80th patient. 60 years on from JFK's death, we are looking at some of the women attached to the Kennedy family. They were fabulous and they were flawed, you know, and some of them just doomed.

This is the Kennedy Women, episode five, The Kennedy Curse. The latest ordeal for a family that has endured so many of them over the years. Mrs. Kennedy comes forward with Caroline in a tabernet. that calls for no words. Its poignancy calls only for cheers. I know it's such a long and often hopeless fight. We hope it will accomplish something. Welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, The History of Sex Scandal and Society with me, Kate Lister. This November, it's 60 years since President Jonathan Kennedy was assassinated. And to mark the anniversary, I am going to be looking into the women in his life and in his family line. What was it about this iconic family

dynasty that meant they attracted so much tragedy? Was it something that was hardwired into them and did they acknowledge it themselves? Today I am speaking about the Kennedy Curse and the legacy of this all-American family to Barbara Perry, who is professor in presidential studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, where she co-directs the Presidential Oral History Program. So if there's anyone who's going to know the answer to these questions, it is her. But let's go back to where it all started to JFK's great-grandmother Bridget, whose gung-ho attitude to leave Ireland and begin a new life in America led to great success, but also open the door for great tragedy. Hello, and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only Barbara Perry. How are you doing?

I'm doing just fine, thank you, Kate. It's so brilliant to have you here to contribute to our mini-series on the Kennedys because you, You're not just Barbara Perry, you are Professor Barbara Perry, and you are the professor of presidential studies at the University of Virginia's Miller Center, and you co-direct the Presidential Oral History Program. So if there is any historians we need to be talking to about JFK, it's you, isn't it? Well, I suppose it is. Yes, that does sound very impressive when you should put it that way. But it also happens that the Kennedy family and President Kennedy are, for me, lifelong interest and passions. And I was able to turn that into a career.

Wow. Where did that come from that passion? What is it about the Kennedys that captured your imagination and still fascinates you? I owe it to my dear mother, who was not a historian or a political scientist, and a very bright woman of the greatest generation, as we call them, the World War II generation, raising three boomer children in the suburbs of Louisville, Kentucky in the fall of 1960. And she piled my two brothers and me into the car and drove us to downtown Louisville, Kentucky, and would say until she passed, remember, we got there extra early so I could put you all in front of the podium

to see the senator at that time, Senator John F. Kennedy, but one month later, he would become the first Roman Catholic president of the United States to be elected, and then, of course, took the oath of office in January of 61. We're Catholic. He was the same generation as my mother and dad. They were World War II veterans, Jack Kennedy, my dad. And let's face it, he was handsome. Jack Kennedy was like a movie star, and he had been in Louisville a couple of years before visiting a woman's Catholic college. And a young co-ed yelled out, he's better than Elvis. So I think that also captured my mother's imagination. And then I have to say as well, I remember the day he died. I was in the second grade in a Catholic school and we were gathered together

and taken to our Catholic church that adjoined the school to pray the rosary for him. And when we came back into our classroom to be dismissed for the day, I saw the principal to come to the door. She told our teacher the updated news and our teacher turned to us to say, we're going to say our final prayer today for President Kennedy who has passed away. And when one is seven years old, that leaves a lasting memory. And so I was just mesmerized by his life and those of his family members. My dad's family is American. His mom was in Boston, probably about the same time that your mom was in Kentucky.

And when my grandma passed, we found all of this memorabilia from when she campaigned for JFK. She has these little ribbons and buttons and my dad sent them to me. And it was really sweet. She never spoke about it when she was alive, but she was a JFK fan, definitely. Oh, for sure. And both of my grandmothers, and I think it's interesting that it was a particularly female role to play, perhaps, but both of my grandmothers, when my dad's mother passed, we found a clipping file that she had made of clippings and cuttings from newspapers about President Kemp. Kennedy, starting with his inauguration. And in my maternal grandparents' home, when the president died, they took a magazine photo of him, put it in probably a dime store frame, and they hung it in

their living room. We just don't do that with politicians anymore. Because imagine anyone having a scrapbook on Boris Johnson, unless it was for blackmail purposes. Who would do that? That or a barbershop on what not to ask for. They just don't make them like that anymore. Maybe it's that we know too much about them now. I don't know. Maybe they can't weave that mythology anymore. It's very difficult to create Camelot from our presidents. I would say for someone like President Obama, particularly for black Americans,

I wouldn't doubt that they might have photos of him. And I have a young Black African-American colleague at the Miller Center. And I take all of my memorabilia that I've collected on Obama and take it to him because he remembers as a young university student that night. And I mean, I was weeping to see the first elected African-American president and his beautiful family there in Chicago. So maybe that comes closest. And thus far, there have not really been any mythology-busting stories about him.

No. And I remember that. Even all the way over here in the UK in Yorkshire, I was watching it when I was in the gym. And it was on all of the TVs, was Obama being inaugurated. So yeah, you're right. Maybe we do still have that mythology around presidents. But what I'm really interested to talk to you about is something that I haven't really known much about before we started doing this series.

Obviously, I know that poor old JFK was assassinated. But I hadn't come across the phrase the Kennedy Curse before. But now I've been looking into it. Oh, that family had their fair share of the troubles, didn't they? Well, they certainly did. And I have to think that some of it is bad luck. Many misfortunes befall human beings. And they had a very large family and still do. Robert Kennedy, the president's brother, who was assassinated in 1968 while running for the

nomination of the Democratic Party, had 11 children. President Kennedy was one of nine children. And many within the family, as the generations continue onward, have three and four and five children. So it's a large family. And I would say that the law of averages, if there is such a thing, must catch up. In other words, if you have such a large family spread throughout the country doing adventurousome and different things, someone is bound to have a misfortune, an occasional accident, perhaps, or cancer, a number of them have died of cancer. But obviously, too, we have these two brothers assassinated.

But let me also add another element to it. They are risk takers. I don't know whether that comes from going all the way back to Bridget Kennedy and the Kennedys who took the risk, getting on what were called coffin ships in the 1840s and 50s, leaving Ireland and coming to the United States not to know what they were coming to. As it turned out, they were coming to vast areas of discrimination, particularly in Boston where many of them landed. And yet, within two or three generations, they were multi-millionaires and president of the United States. But in addition to that, risk-taking. Here it is in a good way. They volunteer for combat. Okay. President Kennedy's brother Joseph, who was killed in a plane explosion over the coast of England, on a very dangerous mission, could have come home. He had flown enough missions in World War II by 1944 as a Navy aviator, and yet he volunteered for this most dangerous mission and lost his life. Future President Kennedy could have probably avoided military

service altogether because he had bad health from the time he was a little boy. But not only did he and his brother enlist in the Navy and become officers, future President Kennedy, Jack Kennedy, used his family's influence to go into combat in the South Pacific and almost lost his life when his PT boat that he was skippery was sliced into by a Japanese destroyer. So they volunteer for hazardous duty, on top of which when they are, I think, engaging in risky behavior, whether that's womanizing or in the case of President Kennedy's son, John Jr., flying a plane, when he had no business doing so. He was a new pilot. He was flying at night. He was not really up to instrument flying, and he got caught at nighttime. And in a marine fog, as he was going

from New York to Martha's Vineyard, and we know crashed solely because of his miscalculation. He engaged in what's called the death spiral. He did not follow the instruments. He followed his brain. And that caused him to spin into the ocean, killing himself, his wife, and her sister. Oh, dear. In 1999. I didn't know a lot of this stuff.

Being in the UK, the Kennedy family is, I've heard it describes being akin to the American Royal Family. So obviously it's much more prevalent over there. But when I started to look into it, I mean, we're talking like people for crashing planes. We're talking about people dying just after childbirth, people being assassinated, suicides, drug overdoses, skiing accidents. It goes on and on and on. Now, I don't believe that it's a curse, as in that somebody's put a hex on them. but why this is a lot of bad luck isn't it and i think that you're probably right it's because there are a family of people that take risks but where do you think that came from yes that's the crucial question well again i do point to the family's roots on both sides so president

kennedy from the kennedy clan and his mother was a fitzgerald and so all four of those great grandparents for the next generations were immigrants were refugees from the potato famine in Ireland. So their choices were stay in Ireland and starve. And if you were, quote, lucky and fortunate, you could live on and live a life of poverty. Or take your risk, get in a coffin ship, as they were called, because so many died on their way to the United States, and then get off at the first stop, which was Boston. And so that was the fare that many of them could afford. And so I think they're risk takers, but weighing the odds of, do I want to stay in the old

country and most likely die or be impoverished and certainly subjugated to British rule? Or do I want to go to the United States, which they probably didn't realize what they were going to face there in terms of the discrimination? But they probably believed the mythology. The streets are paved with gold. It's the land of opportunity. And it turned out the mythology was true for them. They ended up within a few generations being multi-millionaires and president of the United States

and attorney generals and senators and businessmen who were really, really fortunate and skillful. So I think, though, if you add into that mix of risk-taking, Joseph Kennedy, the father of President Kennedy, I think he had another element of risk-taking, which was in business. And so he played the stock market. He played as a Hollywood producer. And those are not safe positions for people to take on, but he was highly successful and taught his children to be competitive, take risks, and for them to take those risks in the political world.

But he never drew the line to say, well, it's okay to take risks in your career. Just be careful in your personal lives. He didn't draw that line. I've read a lot about this patriarch of... the Kennedy family and his influence on all of his children, he seems like quite a terrifying person. Like, I know that they all went on to do amazing things, but like he seems like quite a scary dad to have. But if you look at his photographs with the family and a historian friend of mine with the surname of McDunna, so also from Irish roots, said to me, when I was writing my

biography of Rose Kennedy, the president's mother and Joseph Kennedy's wife, the mother of their nine children. She said, look, Barbara, look at the photos of when the children are young, particularly, and when they're pictured with their mother and father, they're hanging on Joe. They are hugging Joe. And typically with their mother, they're set apart. That's interesting. And I think that's because she was the disciplinarian. She was the Catholic rule enforcer. whereas Joe was, first of all, he was often not there. So in a way, she was the custodial parent. And much as with a divorce couple, the custodial parent who has to enforce the rules is not the more popular.

It's the parent who's often away and then comes back and takes the children out for films and takes them to amusement parks and takes them for ice cream and takes them into New York and goes to movies and plays. So he was very popular with them, Rose less so because she was the disciplinarian and the Victorian, if I may describe her as said. Do you think that Joseph took risks? I know that he done good, you know, the American dream. And it seems like every generation of the Kennedys is reaching for more. Bridget, who undertook this, when you think about it, it's insane really. She just got on a boat and hoped for the best, hoped it would be all right when she arrived. but every generation is striving and striving more. What about Joseph Kennedy, JFK's dad? What risks do you think that he took?

Almost from the beginning. So now his father, who was second generation, began a business life. So he bought up taverns in East Boston, which was an enclave of the Irish immigrants, and then began to invest in banks and took over a bank and owned a bank. So Joseph Kennedy, the father of President Kennedy,

goes into the banking business and becomes one of the youngest bank presidents in the United States. He takes risks in the stock market prior to the regulation of the stock market after it crashed in 1929 in this country. And somehow he knows that it might crash, the bubble might burst. And so he makes a fortune in the pre-regulated stock market before 1929 and pulls out his resources before the crash. So playing the stock market is one of the market is one of the first. of the riskiest businesses anyone can be in. And most people who have only a normal allowance for risk are told don't play the stock market. Most people are no good at that. But he happened to be a great risk taker. Then he poured his money into Hollywood as a producer and he took risks there

and he made more in his fortune. And then in his personal life, he took the risk of becoming the paramour of the famous actress in the 20s and 30s, Gloria Swanson. And so he put his marriage at risk. He put his family at risk. And then when he came back to the East Coast from California, then he put his eye on politics. And he took the risk of supporting Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, hoping to get a big position there.

And he ultimately had three positions in the Franklin Roosevelt administration, including the ambassadorship from the U.S. to the U.K., the first Irish American to hold that position. But he took the risk of having a big mouth, and spoke very undiplomatically about American democracy and British democracy being at risk to the Germans and the Nazis. And he said, you know, democracy might be ending in the UK and it might be over in America too. And with that, FDR pulled the plug. So he risked all by speaking out and lost his position. And forevermore was toxic in American politics. So it was Rose Kennedy's

wife who had to go into the political realm to speak for the children. And then they had to separate themselves publicly from their dad when they could. I'll be back with Barbara after this short break. So when did this concept of a curse come around? And was this something that the Kennedys ever spoke about themselves? I just imagine did they sit down and were like, all this terrible stuff keeps happening? Like, when did that even start being something that people discussed? Well, it, Interestingly enough, I don't think it was when I would have started speaking about it if I had been in the family. And that was the loss of Joseph Jr. in 1944. One month later, his sister Kathleen's British nobleman husband, Billy Hardington, shot by a Nazi sniper in Europe.

So she loses her dear brother and her husband within the space of a month. The family loses those two. In 1948, she is killed in a plane crash. I think then in 1948, I would have started thinking at least privately. They believed in God. Have we done something wrong? Is this some sort of retribution or some Irish curse that we have been blasted with? But they started talking about it when they would be asked, Rose Kennedy, for example, after President Kennedy's assassination. And certainly after her second son, Robert Kennedy's assassination five years later. And she would say, in our own memoir, if this was fiction, no one would believe it. No one would believe one family could endure such curses. But the way she put it was we've experienced both the agony and the ecstasy. In other words, the blessings and the curse because we've risen to the heights and we've known great blessings in terms of the money we have and the fame and the fortune, but we have paid a price with lives. And she was once asked by

a reporter if she could have her boys back, Jack and Bobby, who had been. assassinated. In the early 70s, she was asked, if you could trade and not have them be public and not have them be president and attorney general and senators, what would you do? And she looked appalled by the question, and she paused, and she sort of stumbled around with it. And then ultimately, I think where she landed was she said, no, no. And she said, Robert Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy and Jack's children, those are 13 children without a family. father. And I think that's where she landed. So I think in her heart of heart, she would have traded the ecstasy and not had the agony that came with it and had a more normal life.

This is a very guts and glory family, isn't it? It certainly is. And that's why, it's Shakespearean. It's epic. And that's why they continue to be the focus of plays and documentaries and movies and books and podcasts. I suppose once people start talking about the concept of a curse, it almost becomes a self, not a self-fulfilling prophecy, but now people are going to notice it. Like when bad luck is befalling this family, now people are starting to go, oh, it's happened again, oh, it's happened again. Or do you think they really have had a disproportionate run of bad luck, this family? I would say despite my concept of the law of averages, and it's a big family, so the law of averages indicates that people are going to have misfortune. But I do think they've

had more than their share, but I also chalk a lot of it up to their own decision-making. And Robert Kennedy's youngest brother, Edward, of the four boys of Joan Rose, was the youngest and the youngest of the nine. And he said after Chappaquittick, in which he ran his car off into a tidal pool on the island of Chappaquittic off the island of Martha's Vineyard near Cape Cod, that not only was he severely injured, but a woman passenger was drowned. And he went on television one week later and said, I know that people now must think that the Kennedys are subject to some kind of curse. And he dismissed that. And I think he dismissed it because he knew he had to take responsibility.

And he did. And in the oral history that the Miller Center did with him, he speaks about this directly, that he forevermore. He said, I've had great tragedy in my family. So to know that I caused a tragedy to Mary Joe Kepekne's family, he speaks. He said, I will never get beyond that in my life. I will always feel guilty for that. And he took responsibility. And he continued to be reelected to the Senate.

But he was unable, I think because of that in 1980, to get the nomination, rest the nomination from the incumbent Jimmy Carter. And I think that was the end of the presidential hopes of the Kennedy family and the hopes that they could restore Camelot. I think that it wouldn't be too far as the mark to call it a curse to be born into the Kennedy family. and then grow up knowing you're a Kennedy. And what do you do with that legacy? I mean, yeah, there's wealth and there's privilege

and there's all of those things. But what do you do with it, knowing that there's this idea of a curse hanging around your family, that bad luck seems to befall everyone, that you've got presidents and all these important people, the generations that came after JFK, how do they cope with this legacy? Can you just have a normal life as a Kennedy? Can you just, like, get a cottage and look after cats or something?

Yes, and there are. some, I'll just name one as an example, Courtney Kennedy, one of Robert Kennedy's young girls. She is now in her 60s. She is rarely in the news. And I think that was of her own choice, except that her only child, her daughter died of a drug overdose at the home of Ethel Kennedy, Courtney's mother, and the child's grandmother. So even when Courtney tried to live a life that was private. Oh, that's so sad. You know, to hear this came out that her daughter died of a drug overdose. So I would say that there are some who have gone into a private life. There are some bless them who take on public roles. President Kennedy's only surviving child Caroline has been

the ambassador to Japan under Obama and currently under Biden. She's our ambassador to Australia. There are those like the Shriver's, Eunice Kennedy Shriver's children. Their father, Sergeant Schreiber was the first director of the Peace Corps, established by their uncle, Jack Kennedy. Some have worked in the Peace Corps. Some have continued in the Joseph Kennedy Foundation, the Special Olympics Foundation, all founded by the Kennedys and especially the Shriver's. And then they've added new programs like best buddies for intellectually challenged people who would like to have a best buddy to be a friend with. So some of them have engaged in what they call soft power. They're not running for elected office.

They are usually behind the scenes promoting the interests of the family and using their great resources and their name to help others. Like if you were a Kennedy, you can't just go and work down the supermarket or like just have some regular human person job. Can you? That seems so bizarre. Well, I'll give you an example of one who is. And it is Caroline's first child. She has three who, I did bring her for Jacqueline Kennedy, this young woman's. grandmother. This young woman is called Rose Schlossberg. And she rarely appears in public with her mother, Caroline. Now, the other two siblings, Tatiana and Jack, are frequently seen with her mother in public,

frequently seen at the Kennedy Library, serve on its board, serve on its committees. But Rose Schlossberg, with her partner, now married to her wife, lives a very quiet life on the West Coast in California, run a natural foods restaurant. That's what I'm talking about. I love that. The person serving you, your dinner in a natural food restaurant is actually very intimately related to JFK. That's just wild. But I think you have to be careful and not take risks. And so one time my dear mother who had introduced me to the Kennedy family when I was so young, she was so excited to tell me on a flight from Washington to Boston that Senator Edward Kennedy got on the plane with her. And not only had he experienced the Chappaquittic incident, and he was not flying the plane, but in 1964, he had been

in a horrific plane crash in a private plane going back to Massachusetts from Washington, and he broke his back. It was not clear whether he would ever walk again. His top aide was killed and the pilot of the plane was killed. So when my mother phoned me in the night, 1990s to say, some exciting news. Senator Edward Kennedy got on my plane in Washington to go to Boston. I said, Mother, I would have gotten off. Get off the plane. I just excuse me. I will take another flight. I don't believe in curses, but if there was ever a Kennedy sat next to me on a Ryanair flight, I'd definitely be getting off. No flights with them and don't ever be in a car where they're driving. No, in the course of your research, you did meet and

speak to Bobby Kennedy Jr., didn't you? Oh, yes, he is currently an independent candidate for president. Yes, I spent a couple of days with him when he came to speak at my former place of employment, Sweet Briar College in Virginia. And I always tell the story, he was a bit like a little boy, even though this was, you know, he was in his 50s at that point or maybe even early 60s, but he was a bit irresponsible. And he had a schedule he had to keep to, and I was the host. So I had to make sure that he was in the right building at the right time. And I'd say, now, pick you up at this spot, at this time. I'd go and he wouldn't be there. But he was very good once he spoke to people. He was very lovely. And he signed everyone's books,

600 people had books from to sign. He was very, very gracious. But on the way back from the college to where he was staying 50 miles away here in Charlottesville, Virginia, he said to me, you seem very rule-oriented. And I guess because I kept him on schedule. And I said, well, yes, I said I was brought up in a pretty strict household, and I went to Catholic school, and that's always very rule-oriented. And he said, here was his response. He said, well, my mother, this would be Ethel Kennedy, Robert Kennedy's wife. He said, my mother taught us, if you're obeying all the rules, you're missing all the fun. Right. It's okay. And I didn't respond out of diplomacy. Well, that has cost you two brothers and other people outside your family. I just let that go.

And then he carried on. He said, well, have you ever been so drunk? They brought you home in a shopping cart? And I said, no, I don't even particularly like the taste of alcohol. And he said, what about drugs? And I said, only if prescribed and very rarely then. I don't like to put chemicals in my body. And he said, oh, I love narcotics.

He said, I love narcotics. And I mean, everyone knows that he was addicted to heroin and other narcotics and opioids. But he said, I've been off of them for a number of years. But recently he said, I had surgery and they gave me narcotics and he said it felt so good. And it then dawned on me. If you know that your father was assassinated and you are 13 or 14 years old and you are pictured carrying his coffin to Arlington Cemetery to lie next to your uncle and you remember

when he was assassinated, it's understandable that you need in some way to dull that pain. The generational trauma of that, it must be like an earthquake. I can't even imagine. I suppose the closest thing that we've had in the UK was Diana dying in the car accident and her children having to walk behind the coffin. And of course now they're, well, Harry's talking about how utterly traumatic that must have been.

Yes. And by the way, Bobby Jr. would have been about the age of William when his father died. And again, being there with all the lights and the cameras and you cannot be private. And your mother's telling you if you're obeying all the rules, missing all the fun. So I should add that their grandmother, Rose Kennedy, was saying when she was compass mentis in the 80s, she said, I sure wish that my grandchildren would go on camera and go in public and talk about how it's not right to take drugs. And I just think she didn't realize to the extent

they were. She was thinking, oh, Bobby Jr. and Robert Schreiber Jr. had both been arrested for marijuana use. Well, that was the least of their worries, as it turned out. for Robert Jr. and his brother David, who ended up dying of a drug overdose. And by the way, Robert Jr.'s been married three times. His second wife, while they were married, committed suicide, leaving behind their, I think, three or four children. So, again, it surrounds them. I mean, it's so interesting to hear you talk about Bobby Kennedy Jr. there. And it's lack of boundaries, I feel. You know, to like sit in a car with somebody who is effectively on a professional visit and just go, drugs are great. It's so rough. How about you? Do you have any? No, we didn't say that.

You think you were going to go, oh, brilliant, Bobby. I've got some heroin. Should we? Yes. But also somewhat irresponsible as well when I said I'll be back tomorrow to collect you and take you to the airport, be at this point at 9 a.m. or you'll miss your flight. Get there at 9 a.m. No Robert Kennedy, Jr. So now I have to track him down to his hotel room and he opens the door and no shirt on. And his hair's all slicked back. Clearly, he's just jumped out of the shower. I'm presuming below the waist. He had a towel or something, but I didn't go there.

And there were clothes all over the floor in his suitcase. And he smiled, that girl, yeah, Kennedy smile. And he said, oh, I'm really behind. He said, my room is a mess. And I think he thought maybe I would come in and pack up for him. And I said, if you're not out on the sidewalk, on the pavement, in about 10 minutes, you'll miss your plane. And I will also say on the way to the airport, he said, you know, I've been thinking about what you said about rules, which I thought, oh, good.

You know, maybe I've taken the place of his mother, even though I'm a bit younger. And he said, but you don't seem judgmental. And I said, well, that was something else we were taught at home and in Catholic school. You know, do not judge, unless she be judged, sayeth the Lord. But I took that as a good sign that he was pondering, maybe another way. of thinking about life. Unfortunately, he is, as you probably know, has become a conspiracy theorist,

an anti-vaxxer, and possibly even an anti-Semite. So he's picking up a lot of the Trumpian votes and may even get some, simply by being a Kennedy, he may get some Democrats to vote for him. And he's polling at about 20%. I don't think there's any way he could win the presidency,

but he may prevent Trump or Biden if they are the two. nominees from winning. I think Bridget would kick his ass, don't you? Like, if she was hit, she would take him to task. I think she must be spinning, along with Rose. And Rose believed so much in the afterlife that she would see all of her departed children in the afterlife.

And I hope for her sake that's the case. In American politics, you do something that we just don't do over here in Britain, which is the idea of dynasties. Like I was just thinking when you were talking there, it's like the Kennedy dynasty. But then obviously there was the Bush family. They kept cropping up. And then the Clintons, who also I'll have a go, you'll have a go. And then the Obama's.

I have heard people say, like, was Michelle going to run? And she was like, no, no, no. But what is it about the American system that does that? I don't recall that happening in British politics, apart from perhaps Pitt the elder and Pitt the younger. Well, as you stated earlier, you have. have that equivalent, obviously, in the royal family by definition. Right? And so I think the United States, by virtue of not having royals as such and officially, and the fact that our presidency is you

also have a royalty, you have a king or a queen, and they are the head of state and do all the ceremonial things. But you have a head of government, the prime minister, who carries on the functions of government. In the United States, we don't have a separate head of state. We have that combined. That role of being head of state is combined with the head of government. So I think we tend to impose those celebrated times and events as well as participation in funerals and that sort of thing. So when Mrs. Carter died recently at her memorial this past week, there were all the first ladies, the living first ladies, and some of the ex-presidents, and they were all in the front row. And everyone made a comment about, oh, look, they've come to honor Mrs. Carter.

the current president and the current first lady were there. So there's that. And also remember that these dynasties developed just after we revolted against King George. And instead, we, you know, we had George Washington who could have become royalty if he wish, but he said, I'll step aside after two terms. But the next president, John Adams, was the first president to have a son become president, John Quincy Adams. So they developed the first political dynasty. And then you have the Roosevelt's. Yes. or Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt. Many of the, Franklin's sons were in the Congress.

Teddy's sons were running for office. We seem to be drawn to that. And again, I think it's because it's in our DNA from our British background. Second, because our American background started with dynasties and carried on. And finally, because we view them as our royals because we don't have any other option. And when they seem to be royal, as a. the Kennedys, good-looking and wealthy, and they also combine, in their case, the Hollywood celebrity. And in fact, President Kennedy's sister Pat, Pat Lofford, married Peter Lawford actor.

And she became involved with the Hollywood Rat Pack, as did President Kennedy, of Frank Sinatra, because of Peter Lofford. He was a bit of a scallywack, wasn't he? He was, Pete. My final question is, what do you think the legacy of the Kennedys is on American politics to this day? Because it all seems to start and end with JFK being assassinated, at least I know that it doesn't actually, but just that was almost like them at their pinnacle. And then the rest is kind of like shockwaves, like moving out all the time. What does it mean to be a Kennedy?

Yes, and attempts to recreate Camelot, which it's. comes from the label, which by the Arthurian legend of King Arthur, which is a legend to begin with, and then it becomes a play and a musical at the time of the president's death. And Jacqueline Kennedy creates another layer of legend upon the presidency of President Kennedy. And the quote that she takes from the lyric is, don't let it be forgot that once there was a spot for one brief shining moment known as Camelot from the learner and low lyrics. Well, what was true about it was it was brief, a little bit. over a thousand days of that presidency, and they were shining. There was something incandescent

and effervescent about them. And when that was lost in such a horrific, tragic way, part of that legacy is trying to recreate that, whether that's through other Kennedys, Robert Kennedy, Edward Kennedy, now maybe even Robert Kennedy Jr., or through someone like Barack Obama. So when President Kennedy's daughter, Caroline, and then Edward Kennedy, her uncle, come out in 2008 fairly early on and say, in Caroline's case, my whole life, people come up to me and said, I loved your father. I wish we could have another president like him. And she said, I've now found that candidate, and it's Barack Obama. So that's another legacy. And I actually have campaign buttons for Barack Obama that have a picture of him with President Kennedy. So that's part of the legacy

for good or ill, because it's pretty hard to live up to a mythology and a legend. But when we do, and I would argue we did with President Obama and his family. So it brings to be seen if his daughters, for example, will run as a dynasty. But the other legacy that's important is things like bringing peace during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Peace Corps, the hope that President Kennedy gave people, and particularly through things like the Civil Rights Act that he proposed and that became a law in 1964. So there are many elements, I think, positive of his presidency and his legacy. There's the sometimes positive element of aspiration, of finding great leaders. And then there's the inevitable disappointment when not everyone can live up to a legend. Barbara, you have been a legend

to talk to. You have been wonderful. I'd so enjoy talking to you about this. If people want to know more about you and your work, and if they fancied researching on the Kennedy Curse, where can they find you? Are you online? Yes. Oh, absolutely. So I have my own website through the Miller Center so just Barbara Perry and Miller Center or just Barbara Perry, Google. I'm not the tap dancing actress from the 1950s who was also called Barbara Perry. So if you see me in black and white tap dancing, you've got disambiguate and find Barbara Perry Miller Center. And then the Miller Center itself is www.miller center.org. And we have an entire archive of our oral histories, starting with President Ford and carrying through,

starting with Roosevelt, FDR. We have secret recordings from the White House that go all the way through Nixon. And then we also have essays on every single president and links to primary sources. And they're all done by scholars, journalists, biographers. So particularly for students, they are very reliable. Thank you so much for talking to me today. You have been wonderful. Oh, Kate, I've thoroughly enjoyed it. Great, great questions and enjoyed our conversation. Let's do it again. Thank you so much for listening to this final installment in our mini-series on the Kennedy Women. To all of our guests who took part and to Barbara for joining us, thank you so much. You have been wonderful.

You can scroll back through our feed to catch up on any of the episodes that you have missed. And if you like what you heard, please do drop us a review. We really do read them all and it does help us a lot. The senior producer on this podcast is Charlotte Long. The producer is Stuart Beckwith. This podcast contains music by Epidemic Se. sound.