Almost 50 years after Bobby Kennedy mounted a barnstorming campaign for the White House that ended with an assassin’s bullet, his grandson will rise to the national stage tomorrow to give the Democrats’ response to President Trump’s State of the Union address.
Joe Kennedy III, 37, has a dose of the family charisma to go with the name. The congressman from Massachusetts has been picked to speak immediately after Mr Trump in a slot long used to showcase rising stars.
Mr Kennedy, a twin, studied at Stanford and Harvard Law School. As a student he was said to have been known as “the milkman” for remaining abstinent. He served in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic, speaks fluent Spanish and skipped a recent vote in Congress to be with his wife, a health policy expert, as she gave birth to their second child.
Robert Shapiro, a politics professor at Columbia University, said that Mr Kennedy was a potential nominee for vice-president, adding that the congressman was “very appealing” to a younger generation of voters. “The Kennedy family name gets him recognition and his foot in the door. The fact that he’s not well-known is a plus because he’s not associated with the more extreme liberal wing.”