The Torchbearer of Camelot

Previously fearful of stepping out of the background, Caroline Kennedy now appears ready to continue the family legacy of public service. Is her role with the Obama team a permanent shift into politics or a guest appearance?

SIRI AGRELL
Globe and Mail Update
June 14, 2008 at 2:12 PM EDT

When Caroline Kennedy took the podium to introduce her preferred candidate for U.S. president, veteran PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer could think of little to tell viewers except her middle name. "There aren't many people who know much about this young lady," he said.

Ms. Kennedy also faltered. Dressed in a simple white dress, kitten heels and pearls, the daughter of assassinated president John. F. Kennedy began speaking before the microphone was on, stumbled through her prepared address and kept talking as the crowd roared with applause.

When it was time to bring out her uncle, Senator Edward Kennedy, she looked palpably relieved.

Ms. Kennedy's appearance at the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles, where she voiced her support for party nominee Al Gore, was her first major foray into the public eye and did not do much to alter perceptions of her as a sincere but intensely private figure.

Eight years later, having endorsed Democratic nominee Barack Obama, who recently named her as part of his vice-presidential selection committee, Ms. Kennedy, now 50, is far from the unwitting celebrity she once was.

"Caroline was always reluctant to step out of the background, that was her preferred role," says Laurence Leamer, author of The Kennedy Women. "She was afraid. There was fear for her family, fear for what politics can do to people on various levels."

But her new, high-profile role stumping for Mr. Obama seems to be a signal that she is ready for the scrutiny, and the potential danger, of life as a public Kennedy.

In a sign that she will not escape close examination in her new role, another member of the vice-presidential selection committee, Jim Johnson, resigned this week over suggestions that he received advantageous loans from Countrywide Financial, a major player in the subprime mortgage crisis.

According to Mr. Leamer, Ms. Kennedy became willing to place herself in the public eye only after the death of her younger brother, John Kennedy Jr., in a 1999 plane crash. John John, as he was known, the editor of George magazine, was widely considered the future of Camelot and, without him, Ms. Kennedy found it necessary to fill the void, continuing the family legacy of public service.

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