Posted on 05/05/2009 12:54:43 PM PDT by presidio9
In the end, Caroline Kennedy's teenage children convinced her to get out of the running for the U.S. Senate, a new exposé on America's most storied political family reveals.
"Mom, you are above this," older daughter Rose Kennedy Schlossberg, 19, reportedly told her mom last Jan. 21 - hours before Kennedy called Gov. Paterson to end her bid for Hillary Clinton's old Senate seat.
The report in Vanity Fair magazine details for the first time what became a pivotal family meeting during which all three of Kennedy's children expressed worry over her sudden detour into electoral politics.
Citing an unnamed family adviser with deep roots in the clan, Kennedy author Edward Klein wrote that daughters Rose and Tatiana, 18, and son John, 15, confronted their mom with concerns over how the Senate bid had changed her usually placid demeanor.
"Her children felt like she was becoming a different person - one they didn't like much," the adviser is quoted as saying in an excerpt of Klein's new book "Ted Kennedy: The Dream That Never Died."
"They had never heard her talk so tough," the adviser said. "They told her that, if she was getting this worked up getting the job, they didn't want to see what she would be like in the trenches of a political campaign."
The sobering sitdown was a "wakeup call" for Kennedy, 51, who within hours would call Paterson to end her already rocky, quasi-campaign for Clinton's seat.
"If Paterson had called and offered her the job an hour earlier, she would have accepted," the adviser said. "But after that conversation [with her kids], she wouldn't have taken the job if Paterson had come begging."
Kennedy was already furious with Paterson - whose staff later trashed her by claiming her bid was upended by tax problems - for not "automatically" handing her the Senate seat, Klein reported.
"When Gov. Paterson failed to react, and made her wait, she seethed," the adviser said.
But pushing Kennedy to run was her beloved uncle, cancer-stricken Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), who was pressing his niece to become a senator "almost like a last wish."
Battling brain cancer, Kennedy, Klein reports, has "gone back to drinking" - including on the night before an Inauguration Day luncheon at which the lion of the Senate collapsed.
Kennedy's clear affection for his niece has sparked something of an intra-family struggle over who will inherit his mantle as clan leader - with Caroline, his wife, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, and nephew Joe Kennedy, a former Massachusetts congressman, viewed as the top contenders.
"Caroline's cousins are suddenly looking at her askance, apparently wondering if she is considering declaring herself the heir to Ted's throne," a family friend was quoted as saying.
Joe has "long resented Caroline, whom he views as haughty. ... [She] is far and away the richest member of the clan," the friend says. "Her fortune is a source of unbridled envy and a favorite subject of teasing by Joe and his brothers - a mild annoyance that Caroline sloughs off with an arch half-smile."
Aides to Sen. Kennedy and Caroline Kennedy declined to comment Monday on the book excerpt, which appears in the new issue of Vanity Fair on newsstands Wednesday.
Senate RUN? I thought the governor was giving her the seat.
“I MEAN, YA KNOW”
Sorry, but this story makes it look like she was actually running for election or something when in fact she was trying to bank on the name of her family and the misguided legend of Camelot to coerce a gullible and inept, blind, idiot governor to APPOINT her. Seriously, saying she RAN implies that she actually had a following or sorts... sheesh!
Actually her daughter said, “Mom, you know, uh, you, uh are, you know, above this, um, you know.”
“Mom, you are above this,”
Yep, already a snobby elitist. Why lower youself into politics?
“Mom, you are above this”? What the heck is that supposed to mean?
Is it demeaning for a Kennedy to actually work? Kid sounds a snobby little twerp to me.
BULL! Ya know?
What?
Pray tell how this bimbo is above ANYTHING --- her only accomplishment being born into money?
I agree with what you are saying, but its worse than that. From the start, the liberal media in NY had already awarded Kennedy the seat. But none of the big Democrat names would go on the record endorsing her -including Obama, who the Kennedys believe they put into the White House. For a week before she officially stepped down, it was a done deal that Patterson was picking anybody else. He had the good manners to do so, so she didn’t have the humiliation of being publicly rejected. The point is, it was never her or her childrens’ decision.
HHmmmmm.....intersting little tidbit....and the idea that she's "above it?" HAHAHAHAHA.....yeah, she would have had to actually SHOW UP FOR A REAL PAID JOB for once in her life!!!
Nice spin, but —you know —really—like— who gives a rat’s patoot.
I guess they didnt want her baby-killing butt being Ambassador to the Vatican either. You know—like—really that was below her too.
And Fat Ted has gone back to drinking, LOL like he ever stopped. Now they are arguing who will get the throne?? LMAO like they ever had one. Bootleggers never had thrones and Ted crapped in his Post Toasties when he killed Mary Jo.
I have a tape of the conversation:
Loving children: “Mom, look, you’re just stupid and we’ve always know it. We just couldn’t tell you because you wouldn’t understand it”
Caroline: “I would have listened”
Loving Children: “No, we mean you literally wouldn’t have understood it. You’re too stupid. Go back to selling your mother’s engagement ring on QVC and stop trying to do something you’re too stupid to understand”
Caroline: “Can you run that by me again?”
Caroline: "Um, I, uh, would, uh, have, uh, listened"
Agreed.
HEIR to a Senate seat???? HEIR????? NO ONE should be an HEIR to a GOVERNEMNT JOB!! NO ONE!!
Let them eat cake.
“Mom, we need you here! With us! Watching the nanny supervise the chef’s preparation of our grilled brie on focaccia sandwiches.”
Interesting ... a Kennedy is *above* holding political office, hmmmm ...
BTW, NY Daily News, it isn't the Senate seat, but Hillary's seat that is old.
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