Harrop: We should have taken Paine’s ‘Common Sense’ on Kennedys

By Froma Harrop / Creators.com

Thomas Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense” galvanized support for the American Revolution. It mocked the English monarchy, calling hereditary succession “a degradation and lessening of ourselves” and “an imposition on posterity.”

Were he still with us, Paine might weep at the sight of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. heading the Department of Health and Human Services. President Trump had two reasons to put this crackpot in charge of a world-renowned medical powerhouse.

One was that “Bobby” was well-suited to tear down another revered American institution. Why would Trump want that? Ask a shrink.

The other is that he finds Bobby Jr. entertaining. RFK Jr. plays a “Kennedy” — the windswept hair, the jawline, the three initials. He thus comes with off-the-shelf celebrity, which boosts airtime for his destructive misinformation. One can easily buy into Bobby’s own contention that his brain is worm-eaten. Intellectually, he’s sub-delta.

Paine would shudder that media routinely refers to the Kennedy clan as “America’s Royal Family.” Bobby is Exhibit A at what could go wrong when public servants are elevated by reason of birth.

“The Kennedys” have always been a mixed bag. In a scandalous act of nepotism, President John F. Kennedy made his brother, Bobby’s father, U.S. attorney general. A few years later, Robert F. Kennedy moved to New York to claim a U.S. Senate seat. He established residency there a day or two before he declared his candidacy. He was elected and a mere three years later ran for president.

After RFK was assassinated, the Kennedys drove a movement to rename New York’s Triborough Bridge after what many locals regarded as a carpetbagger. It was successful and has since served as a taxpayer-supported advertising for the Kennedy family.

A Senate seat should not be a family heirloom, but when Hillary Clinton gave up her Senate seat from New York to serve as Secretary of State in 2009, the Kennedys lined up. After all, Robert F. Kennedy had held it, however briefly. His brother, Sen. Ted Kennedy from Massachusetts, championed John’s daughter, Caroline Kennedy, as a replacement. He reminded Democrats that Caroline would be backed by “the Kennedy family’s extensive fundraising network.” Ted’s nephew, Bobby Jr., of the worm-hole brain, was said to also be eying the seat. (Then-Gov. David Paterson eventually gave the job to Rep. Kirsten Gillibrand.)

In 1969, Uncle Ted pleaded guilty to fleeing the scene of a fatal accident after he drove a car into a pond. He and a young aide had just left a boozed-up party in the wee hours. Leaving the aide to drown, Ted walked a mile and a half to a channel and swam 500 feet to Edgartown. He returned to his hotel and neglected to call police.

In 2002, Ted joined efforts to kill an offshore wind farm on Nantucket Sound. This was an environmentally needed project favored by 84% of Massachusetts residents. “But don’t you realize,” Ted exclaimed royally, “that’s where I sail!”

It’s notable that the country that invented modern democratic rule would let its politicians claim some sort of nobility. Rome’s international airport is named after a great artist, Leonardo da Vinci. London’s airport is called Heathrow, after the formerly rural hamlet where it’s located.

In this country, hundreds of schools are named after John F. Kennedy. There are JFK boulevards in Tampa, Houston and elsewhere. The name of Bobby’s father graces public schools in Los Angeles, Albuquerque, Chicago and elsewhere. And of course, the RFK signs confuse New Yorkers who still think of their bridge as the Triborough.

We fought the American Revolution to end this sense of hereditary entitlement, the notion that children of politicians were born to rule. Sorry, Tom. We messed up.