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Change Your Life! |
Kennedys appear at Democratic Convention |
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August 16, 2000
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Caroline Kennedy, standing figuratively where her father stood 40 years ago, summoned her generation Tuesday to show that John F. Kennedy's New Frontier ``was not a place in time but a timeless call.'' After so much Kennedy tragedy, it was an emotional return to Los Angeles, the city where her father had been nominated in 1960 — a happy triumph that had been followed first by the murder of her father in 1963 and then by the slaying of her uncle, Robert F. Kennedy, in his presidential quest in 1968. Ignored by none in the jammed convention hall was the most recent Kennedy tragedy, the airplane death on July 16, 1999 of her younger brother, John F. Kennedy Jr. ``I thank all Americans for making me and John and all of our family a part of your families, for reaching out and sustaining us through the good times, and the difficult ones, and for helping us dream my father's dream,'' said Caroline Kennedy in her prepared text. She was preceded to the podium by cousins Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, the lieutenant governor of Maryland, and Robert Kennedy Jr., whose urgent voice echoed his father's as he made a case for saving the environment. Determinedly private and nonpolitical, Caroline Kennedy is a lawyer and co-author of a book on privacy and another on the Bill of Rights. She is married to Edwin Schlossberg, a museum and theme park designer. Embracing the Democratic ticket of Al Gore and Joseph Lieberman, she recalled her father's nomination and speech in which he called for courage and sacrifice on a ``New Frontier.'' ``Now it is our turn to prove that the New Frontier was not a place in time but a timeless call,'' she said. ``Now we are the New Frontier.'' Her assignment here was to introduce her uncle, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, a liberal warhorse of the Democratic Party, and she did it with a family story. ``My father was his godfather,'' she said of Edward Kennedy, ``and he is godfather now to my daughter Rose.'' When Rose goes to bed, she said, she does so with a stuffed bear, one she doesn't call Teddy Bear, but ``Uncle Teddy.'' Edward Kennedy, a liberal fixture at Democratic conventions, delivered a more traditional political speech, but he too started with a piece of family history. So close was the 1960 presidential election, he said, that John F. Kennedy went to bed on election night uncertain whether he or Republican Richard Nixon had won. The news was delivered the next morning, he said, when 3-year-old Caroline jumped on his bed and shouted, ``Good morning, Mr. President!'' Kennedy said Gore's election would result in ``the greatest chance of my lifetime and the lifetime of our nation to secure the promise of health care for all.'' ``There have been only three times in my life that I have supported candidates for president as early and as enthusiastically as I have supported Al Gore,'' he said. ``Two of them were my brothers.'' In her speech, Kathleen Townsend, 42, spoke out for sharing technology with rich and poor alike. Using a figure of speech that would ring true in coastal Maryland, where she is lieutenant governor, she said: ``We've established America as a lighthouse of prosperity and peace. But this didn't happen automatically and there's no guarantee it will continue.'' Robert Kennedy Jr., 46, in his speech argued that — contrary to what he called the Republican view — ``good economic policy is identical to good environmental policy.''
Gore understands that American cannot afford ``to lose touch with the seasons and the tides and the wilderness,'' he said. ``And Al Gore knows that nature connects us to God as it connects us to our communities,'' he said. ``It is the way that God communicates with us most forcefully.'' Monday's opening session heard from a fifth Kennedy, Patrick Kennedy, 33, son of Edward and a Rhode Island congressman. He invoked the names of Democratic heroes. ``In order to make this country the kind of place that lives up to its principles of fairness and justice for all,'' Patrick Kennedy said, ``we need to carry on the fight of John Kennedy, we need to carry on the fight of Robert Kennedy, we need to carry on the fight of Martin Luther King, we need to carry on the fight of Cesar Chavez,'' the farm workers' union leader who died in 1993. Townsend, the oldest child of the late Robert and Ethel Kennedy, urged the country to ensure everyone shares in the benefits of technology. ``While our economy offers unprecedented opportunities, to many Americans, the Information Age is a distant blur,'' she said. ``We must not let it be that our wealth merely affords more powerful computers to connect us to other elites, but sever us from the poor in our hometowns.'' |
