Unfortunately the Curse was on us - The Kennedy Curse

And we are still paying for it, especially Ted Kennedy's curse! m/r

The Kennedy Curse | National Review Online

NOVEMBER 6, 2013   By  Robert Costa

For a half-century, John F. Kennedy has mesmerized Democrats.

It's a black-and-white picture we’ve all seen before: an earnest, 16-year-old Bill Clinton shaking hands with President John F. Kennedy. It was snapped in July 1963 in the Rose Garden, soon after Kennedy addressed a group of Boys Nation delegates. Ever since, and most notably during his 1992 presidential campaign, Clinton has recalled the moment. For him, it was more than a brief encounter; it was an experience, and one so powerful that Clinton once said it caused him to have “arthritis of the face.”

Clinton’s deeply felt connection to Kennedy is hardly unique. Memories of Kennedy’s presidency, from his inaugural address to the horror of Dallas, live on in the American imagination. But they linger particularly with Democrats, and for the past 50 years, generations of them have venerated JFK as their party’s tragic hero. Democrats may have long ago abandoned the Kennedy program, but JFK’s flame flickers elusively in their hearts.

That’s the crux of political scientist Larry Sabato’s new book, The Kennedy Half-Century, a well-reported and lively analysis not only of JFK’s presidency and assassination, but also of his complicated political legacy. By walking us through Kennedy’s evolution in the Democratic firmament, Sabato illuminates how Democrats have been both buoyed and wearied by JFK’s shadow. Democratic presidents — Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, and even Clinton — have all struggled to endure the Kennedy comparisons and to recapture the magic of Camelot.

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